343: Bailing on Unproductive Rookies

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa j J zacher reson what's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot Com in this episode three hundred and forty three of the Late Round podcast the many shows that are part of the Fan Duel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Something that's been on my mind recently sort of stems from a discussion that's been happening on the show over the last couple of weeks. When a rookie wide receiver or running back is unproductive, is it an opportunity to buy that player or should you actually be selling them? Nikhil Harry is a perfect example. He was a top rated asset in rookie drafts last year, but an injury derailed his early season potential, and then when he found the field, he wasn't all that productive. Some people now see Harry as a very clear by candidate. According to Dynasty League Football dot COM's January startup average draft position data, Harry's listen that wide receiver twenty nine. He's behind others from this class like DK Metcalf, Deebo, Samuel and Terry McLaurin. But some see Harry as someone to sell because of what we've seen historically with wide receivers who didn't do a whole lot as rookies. So what should you do if you have an underperforming rookie, if you've gotten Nikhil Harry or Andy Isabella or Damian Harris, how should you handle managing those assets? I'll talk about that on today's show. But before digging in, I don't know if you guys heard, but the Super bowls this weekend and a big game calls for a big contest. Fandal's Big Game Bowl is back in a big way for the Super Bowl with three million dollars in prize money, and that includes one million dollars to first place. And it's all for just nine dollars. So, like five players, turn on the game and take your shot at one of the biggest paydays in the industry. For more details, was it fandle dot com, slash NFL, or download the Fandle app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. So our goal in rookie drafts is to find player who not just outperform their average draft position, but players who can give us real production over one or multiple years. For the purpose of any study like this, we've got to sort of set arbitrary parameters. So I'm going to be examining players who have had at least one top twenty season at their position since twenty eleven, as well as players who have had more than one top twenty season over that timeframe. That's going to help us define what being successful is, because if the goal here is to see whether or not someone like Nikhil Harry will ever be successful after a bad rookie season, there needs to be some definition around the term successful. Since twenty eleven, we've had seventy five different wide receivers finished with at least one top twenty season, and we've had eighty five running backs finished with at least one top twenty season as well. Forty six wideouts have done it multiple times, and forty nine running backs have done it more than once. The question to ask, then, is how did those players perform during their rookie campaigns. How did successful fantasy assets do when they were rookies. Let's just keep this fairly simple and straightforward and just look at fantasy points scored among the seventy five wide receivers who have had at least one top twenty season since twenty eleven, seventy nine percent of them had fifty or more PPR Fantasy points during their rookie season. That fifty number is arbitrary just for the record, as is one hundred points, which was hit by sixty one percent of the wideouts, and twenty eight percent of them had one hundred and sixty or more points, which is usually the wide receiver forty range. Only three wide outs of the seventy five wide receiver sample scored fewer than twenty fantasy points during their rookie season, and actually those three players, Vincent Jackson, Wes Welker and Victor Cruz, they all ended up with multiple top twenty seasons since twenty eleven. Now, because I mentioned Victor Cruz and Vincent Jackson, you may be wondering about injuries. Obviously, a player isn't going to do very well if he sustained an injury as a rookie. Victor Cruz played just three games because of one, and Vincent Jackson started his career off with injuries too. Now, as I mentioned about seventy nine percent of wide receivers with at least one top twenty season, had fifty or more fantasy points as rookies. Of the twenty one percent who didn't, and we'll call this group the underachievers, but of the twenty one percent who didn't, which is sixteen wide receivers, three of them didn't get there because of injury. Now, to be honest, I don't think this tells us that we absolutely need to give up on players who were completely unproductive during their rookie year. Not that fact. I mean, if you look at players with more than one top twenty season over this time, you've got forty six wide receivers. Forty six wideouts have had two or more top twenty seasons since twenty eleven. Of those forty six, seven of them didn't have a big injury during the rookie year while also finishing with fewer than fifty fantasy points. Basically, fifteen percent of the wide receivers with two or more top twenty seasons since twenty eleven, fifteen percent of those guys were bad as rookies, and it wasn't because of an injury. That's not necessarily a death sentence. It's not great, but we've seen bad rookie campaigns turn into usable fantasy careers. But I want to say probably the most important thing to point out here is the investment made by teams to get those plays among the rookie wide receiver underachievers since twenty eleven, and I'm looking at all underachievers here, so not just players with more than one top twenty season, but of the underachievers, only one player was drafted higher than sixtieth overall in the NFL draft. That was Mike Williams, who was injured during his rookie year. Meanwhile, six of the fifteen players in the rookie underachievers group went undrafted. Think about what this means. We've got this sample of successful fantasy wide receivers who have had at least one top twenty season over the last nine years. Of those seventy five wideouts, sixteen of them failed to score fifty points as rookies. Of those sixteen wide receivers, only one of them was really highly sought after entering the draft. Six of them were completely undrafted. And I have a theory about this. Players who were drafted late or players who went undrafted, they either number one didn't get a fair shot to play right away, or number two they weren't as ready for the NFL at the time of the draft, but they were able to develop into something better. So I do think that you should be worried if you have a highly drafted wide receiver who failed to perform in year one while also not getting hurt. There's a lot to worry about jj R Sga white Side. He's not someone that I would be buying right now because of this information, and as hard as this is for me to say, the same probably goes for Andy Isabella. Both guys were second round picks, they were at least active for a lot of games, and they still didn't produce. That gives them pretty rough odds to succeed later down the road, and I do think this exercise hurts other twenty nineteen year one failures like Nikhil Harry and Paris Campbell. It lowers their potential overall ceiling in the league. We likely would have seen something from them during their rookie year if they had a high probability of succeeding later on in their career. I don't think it's necessary to sell those players versus the Arsega white Side or the Isabella types, but it's something to keep in mind. I also discussed the market a little bit later on before that, though, I want to talk about running backs. Like I said earlier, we've had eighty five different running backs give us a top twenty season since twenty eleven. Of those eighty five, sixty four of them had fifty or more points during the rookie season, or seventy five percent of them did. Fifty six percent of them had one hundred more points. But we should note that running backs outside the elite guys in fantasy are generally scoring less than wide receivers are, which is part of the reason we see lower numbers at these thresholds. I'm going to continue looking at these arbitrary cutoffs here, though, because it's the easiest way to sort of explain what's going on, and even though they're arbitrary, they still tell us a usable story. Essentially, there are fewer success stories for running backs who didn't produce as rookies versus wide receivers. If you just look at the bottom of the barrel, or running backs who failed to score thirty points as rookies but then went on to have at least one top twenty season, you get fifteen guys. Among those fifteen, four of them went undrafted, and all but one, with that one being Shane Vereen who wasn't anything special as a fantasy asset, but all but one was drafted after pick one hundred of the NFL Draft. So basically, if you've got a second or third round running back who didn't do a thing in year one, you should be worried about that player. The odds that Damian Harris really pans out are pretty slim. And you can even make the argument for a back who I thought was one of the best in the class last year, and that's Darryl Henderson. Based on what we see from running backs drafted in the first three rounds, Henderson's got a lot of volatility moving forward. And the other thing to point out here is that of the players in our eighty five running back sample who hit one hundred or fewer points during their rookie seasons, which accounts for thirty eight of the eighty five, only seventeen were able to finish in the top twenty at the position for more than one year, and just six were able to do it for more than two years. Now, I know that this just sounds like a lot of random data, but let me explain it in a more concise way. Earlier on the show, I mentioned that a wide receiver forty performance usually hovers the one hundred and sixty point mark in PPR formats year in and year out, and among our wide receivers who had at least one Top twenty performance since twenty eleven, twenty nine percent of them were able to hit that mark. As rookies, they were able to be wide receiver forties or better. But the average running back forty performance through the years equal to one hundred and seventeen points. That's a lot less than one hundred and sixty. Among Top twenty running back performers since twenty eleven, we're looking at forty nine percent of them hitting that Marcus rookies. That's twenty percent higher than at wide receiver. And get this, if you look at wideouts who had more than one Top twenty season since twenty eleven, those wide receivers had an identical rate of being wide receiver forties or better during their rookie year as the subset of wideouts with just one or more Top twenty season. They were identical for running backs fifty seven percent of backs with two or more top twenty performances since twenty eleven ended up hitting that RB forty threshold as a rookie. That's significantly higher than at wide receiver. So this might be confusing, but it does tell us two things. First, and we know this, but running backs are going to pan out at a much higher rate as rookies than wide receivers will. That's just generally why we see a higher rate of successful fantasy backs doing well when they're rookies. Second, if you want sustained success at running back or more than one random top twenty season, then chances are you're gonna need that running back to be pretty damn productive during his rookie year. The same isn't as relevant at wide receiver. So let's assume that Josh Jacobs was terrible in year one. We know Nikill Harry was bad, but let's just assume that Jacobs was bad too. If that was the case, then what this is telling me is that I should have more faith in Harry becoming something more significant than I would with Josh Jacobs, because early career production for running backs is more revealing for future success than it is at wide receiver. And if you've got a dude who didn't perform his rookie year, and you can't really blame it on injury. There's a very small likelihood that player is going to work out, especially if he was a higher round pick. But this doesn't exactly answer the question of should you then buy or sell these players? Like if everyone followed these roles, then Darryl Henderson would be close to worthless, but there's still a market for him. One of the things that's not talked about enough with this type of analysis is what's actually going on in the market and what the alternative is. For example, let's say that you've got Darryl Henderson. He could absolutely still pan out, and I hope that he does, but we now know the odds of it happening aren't very great. But let's say that you've got Henderson and the best offer is a fourth round rookie pick. This is obvious, but you should not automatically accept that deal just because you know that Henderson's probability to give you a top twenty season isn't very high. Now I'm referencing probability for a reason. There's still a chance that he works out, But also you have to compare those odds to the odds that you'll find something better in the fourth round of your rookie draft. Let's not sit back and pretend that fourth round picks have high hit rates, but I will say chances are the market is overvaluing the potential of these players who didn't perform as rookies. If you want to play the odds, it's likely that you're better off selling the down first year as opposed to buying it. Think of it this way. Let's look at Damian Harris. He tallies twelve total yards this year. Of the backs with at least one top twenty performan since twenty eleven, only Spencer Ware, Joike Bell, and Justin Forcet were that bad during their rookie season. That's three and a half percent of the sample. Meanwhile, since twenty eleven, we've seen better hit rates from fourth round rookie picks according to my Fantasy League dot COM's average draft position data. Whether it's Alfred Morris, Trek Cohen, Aaron Jones, Chris Carson, Dion Lewis, C. J. Anderson, the hit rate there is actually better than the odds of Harris working out. When strictly looking at rookie season production, and it's because rookie draft ADP isn't all that predictive. So with all that being said, it's probably best in these cases to move on and try to get the most of you can for these players before they inevitably become worthless. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, even if you're not, do me a favor and leave a rating interview. You can also follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag episode.