773: Mailbag 6/16/23

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host. J James zacheris j Jake Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacher eeson in this episode seven and seventy three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning. In last week's Mailback episode, I was asked about which running back looks like a trap this year in fantasy football, and I gave kind of a controversial answer when I said, James Connor. He's in a rough offense, he's getting older. We generally don't see big seasons from middle round running backs who are past their fifth year in the league. Connor, to me, is someone who can meet expectation, but it's hard for me to call him a league winner. He doesn't have the kind of high ceiling profile that I'm generally looking for in that area of the draft. With that being said, I want to be clear that I answered Connor for that question because it was about who was a trap. I've seen people cite Connor's last two seasons and points per game as the main reason the draft him this year. It's not that previous season production is irrelevant, but this is exactly why I called him out. As a trap, those finishes are far less relevant than the current situation. Now, Connor's ADP is fine in best ball. I'm not really hating on him there. I'm just preparing for managed season long leagues to really get going where he's undoubtedly going to have a higher ADP. That's why I answered what I answered, and I want to be clear about that to kick off today's show. But today is a mailbag. Before I get to the questions, I want to remind you to go check out the Late Round Draft Guide. It's launching in just a couple of weeks and the guide is going to give you everything you need to dominate your drafts this year. You can learn more about it over on lateround dot com. Make sure to pre order before it launches on June thirtieth to get that discount again lateround dot com. Now let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from twitters from at chet. It says, when considering roster positions, if you have more flex positions, what should you be targeting in a PPR format? For example, we start one running back, two wide receivers, and two flex No tight end required, but can be used in the flex is it best available or lean more towards the pass catcher. Love the work, thanks, So there's actually a lot of nuance to this. I'll try to do my best here. To me, there are sort of two ways to think about a draft selection. The first part is just the standard value over replacement type formula. How much better is the player projected to be versus the rest of his competition. I think there are flaws to thinking only in that way, and I get into that in the Late Round draft guide. But it's not like you should ignore VORP driven analysis, not at all. Now. The other piece of this is what I've always called predictability. We can say that a player will be X number of points better than some baseline player, which is what VORP is all about. But our projections are not right all the time, and some positions are more predictable than others. Positions, as in the hit rates from one position to another, they're different. For example, let's say that you're in the first round. You've got a running back who is projected to score one hundred more points than his baseline player. You've got a wide receiver who's projected to score ninety points more than his You might think to take the running back. As a result, he looks better according to Vorp. But what if historically running backs in the seventh round performed better than running backs in the first round, And what if we always saw first round wide receivers hit all of a sudden, those ten points they're pretty meaningless. The ten point edge that the running back had in the wide receiver, it means less because it's clear that the projection for that first round running back is going to be far more volatile than the projection for the first round wide receiver. So what I'm getting at is, from a draft strategy perspective, there are market trends that can help you increase your probability of hitting at each position. There are pockets of almost every fantasy draft where it's more advantageous to go with a running back versus the wide receiver and vice versa, and that's based on historical hit rates. What I can tell you is that in a world where we'd have perfect information, a world where the RB one finishes as the RB one, the wide receiver one finishes the wide receiver one, you would want to go wide receiver heavy because wide receivers in full PPR leagues score more points than running backs do at almost every level. Since twenty eleven, the RB six has scored seventeen point nine PPR points per game on average. The wide receiver six is at eighteen point four, the RB twelve is at fourteen point seven, the wide receiver twelve is at sixteen. Now, clearly, if everyone in your league goes wide receiver heavy, there's gonna be times where it's more advantageous to go with a running back. But the Draft Guide, and I promise I'm not just saying this to sell more copies of that thing, but the Late Round Draft Guide seriously lays this kind of thing out. Overall, though you'll want to go wide receiver heavy, you're gonna want to have a lot of wide receivers in a full PPR league that feature there's multiple flex spots like this one. That's questions from Josh from Patroon. It says love your work, JJ, thanks after it talks about rookie quarterbacks and rushing quarterbacks. I'm a little concerned about Michael Pittman thoughts on him and is now a good time to sell? So I really like Michael Pittman as a talent. Strictly from that perspective, I don't think you need to go out and absolutely sell them in dynasty, especially because this could hypothetically be his last year with the Colts. It's at least the last year of his deal. I don't think Indianapolis like wants to part weighs with him, but anything's possible. Indianapolis is one of those situations where having Anthony Richardson can end up being tough for their playmakers. Yes, like I talked about on those episodes, mobile and rookie quarterbacks are not good for their pass catchers and even their running backs. But Indy's coming off a truly pathetic season offensively. They were dead last and touchdowns per game last year. It's almost hard for them to be worse. And I think in fact that they have Richardson, it's starting to be baked into these players. ADPs both Jonathan Taylor and Michael Pittman. At least in these best ball drafts where everyone's going super wide receiver heavy, Taylor is fine where he goes. Even though I'm not super high on Michael Pittman here in twenty twenty three, He's actually fine where he goes too, at least in relation to other wide receivers. I do think the early market is doing an okay job at evaluating these players. Where I think we may find some value is when more casual drafts begin and everyone gets excited about a player like Jonathan Taylor. I'm just not sure that Michael Pittman has the household name to get people to overdraft him, which is why I still think he's probably more of a hold than a clear cell. But if someone in your league understands how talented Michael Pittman is that he is a good wide receiver, then yeah, you can see if you can get something big in return. This sas question is from at MJA seven to one six. It says, is there any way a robust tight end strategy of drafting Kelsey and Andrews in the first and second round doesn't win all of the leagues? Yeah? Honestly, I think that's a pretty bad idea. This is one of those classic cases where if fantasy managers just enamored with the players that they're getting while ignoring the players that they're not getting. Fantasy football, especially in the early rounds, is just as much about the players that you don't get as the players that you do. Get, which is to say that opportunity cost is often ignored by fantasy managers. The first two rounds of fantasy drafts have by far the best hit rates for both running back and wide receiver. It's not even close. So when you pass on those positions that early, for not just one tight end, but two tight ends, the cost in doing so is massive and the pushback would be but jj, I'll dominate the tight end position, then I'll be able to flex one of those guys, and then the rest of my league won't have tight ends to play. Okay, but the rest of your league now has a big advantage over you at more important positions in fantasy football, the positions where you're starting more than one of them. It's fine if you want to go after one of those guys. I'd prefer Kelsey given the stability in the upside, but going with both of them completely ignores the notion of opportunity cost. The only time you should do something like that is if you're in a league with like six or eight teams where every team is going to be stacked, and you want to corner the tight end market, so you know that you're going to have an advantage there because in those leagues you need to try to get an advantage at every single position. But in a normal twelve team league, I'm fine with getting one early round tight end, but I'm definitely not fine getting two. This s's question from Patreon is from Utah get Metua. It says is stacking your quarterbacks with his pass catchers beneficial and dynasty leagues, So I get stacking questions almost every single week. I've talked about it before on the show, but doesn't hurt to bring it up again. Stacking, as we know, is an up side move. In DFS, people are stacking because they're trying to win tournaments. When a wide receiver scores and you have his quarterback, you're getting those extra points. If the duo goes off in a game, then you're getting that correlation and scoring more points for your lineup. In tournament environments, stacking as a must, whether you're talking best ball tournaments or DFS tournaments. But if you're in a normal twelve team dynasty, it's not that important. Every single contest that your team is in is essentially a fifty to fifty situation. You're facing one opponent. You don't need massive upside In that type of environment, unless that team that you're facing is really really good, it's still fine to stack in your redraft league, your dynasty league. That's not what I'm saying. I just don't really think of it from the perspective of weekly upside. I think of it from the perspective of season long upside. If that wide receiver that you're drafting, let's say, if he ends up far exceeding expectation, there's a good chance the quarterback is too, or vice versa. If the quarterback does really really well, then the pass catchers on that team they're gonna do really well too. And I chase upside all the time in my leagues. So from that perspective, stacking is good and fine. I'm not against stacking. I'm just saying, don't force it. I see people make trades all the time that aren't beneficial for their team just for the sake of stacking. But when you're not in a tournament environment, it matters a lot less. The last question this week is an email. It says, hi, JJ, sometimes we draft rookies when we think their sophomore year's situation will improve. For instance, this year, Marvin Mims when we think Jerry Judy and or Cortland Sutton are gone, and Tyler Scott when maybe Darnell Mooney or Chase Claypool are gone. However, if they don't produce their rookie season while their circumstances are poor, can they truly break out? Your model punishes players who don't produce as rookies like Jamison Williams and Khalil Shakir, giving them low second year breakout probabilities. Is there any precedent for players who we know will have better sophomore situations and then truly break out later? Or is the practice of betting on year two actually heavily flawed? Thanks Clay So, I think the first thing to note here is that no one should be strictly betting on year two. I think in this question, you're making the assumption that these players buried on their depth charts have no chance of producing as rookies. Marvin Mims can still produce in year one. With Khalil Shakir last season, the hope wasn't that he would just find a role in year two. The hope is that he would perform well in year one because he was a good prospect. So if there's this idea out there that we should be betting on year two, that we should be in our rookie drafts looking only at year two, I don't think that notion is right. It's more of a combination of factors because in Dynasty, we're looking at two different aspects of player value. We're looking at actual production, which is what you're focused on here with this question, and we're looking at appreciation or a player's value in the market. Those two things don't always line up. A lot of projecting goes on. If those two things lined up perfectly, then Bejon Robinson wouldn't be the top running back in Dynasty. He's yet to produce anything at the NFL level. In turn, you're looking for as many ways possible for a player to improve, both in terms of production and market value. Of course, the number one thing that you're gonna look for is talent. For a player like Marvin Mimms, I believe he has it. For someone like Shakir I thought he had talent. I still do to some degree. For Tyler Scott, there's talent there. None of those guys are like first round studs, and we have to be cognizant of how low the hit rates are for Day three players, but compared to where they were drafted both in the NFL draft and Fantasy football, these guys seem talented. So the hope here is not to just draft a player in your rookie draft who might have a better situation in year two. The hope is a draft talented players who have a chance to emerge immediately and then who also have a path to even more volume during their second season in the league. So, like I said, your question here is sort of assuming that a player just didn't emerge or show off his talent in year one. Marvin Mims is a really good example. Of course, we're going to be more excited about him when he's not playing alongside Courtland Sutton or Jerry Judy, but he can still be good for a rookie wide receiver. In that environment. It may be a little bit more difficult, but talent usually ends up winning out at wide receiver. The nice part for a player like Mims is that if he doesn't do a ton this year, there's still some hope if his situation improves, people will still be buying him. He won't completely be lost value. Wise And I know what you're thinking, OKAJJ, But why not just take talented players who are in good situations? Well you should, It's why I like Jordan Addison. He's talented, but he also has a good chance to appreciate and value this year because of his situation, because of where he landed. But for a player like Marvin Mims or a player like Tyler Scott, the market is generally going to give you a discount because of their immediate situation. So if you know that said situation might improve pretty quickly, then you know that the market may be overemphasizing the short term situation that the player's in. I just think it's important to remember that we shouldn't be drafting rookies strictly for their year two. I mean, you can do that a little bit more when you're talking like the fourth round of rookie drafts, like where Tyler Scott went, because fourth round players aren't doing anything in fantasy football anyway. They're complete dart throws. Their hit rates are so low, so having that something extra can be helpful. But Scott is still someone that I view as talented. Marvin Mims, I think he's talented I'm leading with that talent evaluation first and foremost and hoping that those players can do something during their rookie seasons. The fact that their situation may get better in year two just means there's even more room to appreciate. That's it for today's show, so though thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and soft to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Now, before I let you go, I want to send some Father's Day loved all the dads out there, but a Late Round Fantasy Football patron wants to do the same. Sam sent me a heartfelt message about his dad, who passed away a few years ago. His dad was, as Sam calls it, an og fantasy football player. Sam remembers his dad manually scoring his touchdown only leagues from the USA today back in the eighties. Sam wanted to give back this Father's Day and memory of his dad, so he purchased six Late Round Draft guides to give out to anyone who may not be in the best financial situation to get the guide. This year, so be honest about that. But if you're wanting a chance at the guide, head to Lateround dot com purchase the Late Round Draft Guide. Remember it's the Draft Guide, not the prospect Guide. And when you check out, use promo code Dad. That's Dad. When you do that, that's going to make the purchase for And another thing, this discount code will not work until one pm Eastern on Friday the sixteenth. All the people on the West Coast aren't usually able to be part of these giveaways because all the guides are usually gone by the time they get to listen to the show. So when one pm Eastern hits on Friday, you can use that promo code to purchase the guide. Remember it's Dad, So a big shout out to Sam for being awesome and for sharing a sweet memory about his dad. This is why fantasy football is the best. Enjoy your Father's Day weekend. I'll talk to you next week.