405: Risers and Fallers

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zacheratha, j J zacher Reason.

00:00:12
Speaker 2: What's up everyone.

00:00:12
Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyes and the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode four hundred and five of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in right before the season.

00:00:26
Speaker 1: Every year, I like to do an episode of the show where I take a look back at all the takes I've had over the off season and in the summer, and I like to set the record straight. My opinions and viewpoints change when new information comes my way. How I felt in May about a player isn't always how I'm gonna feel about that same player in July and August. And if I didn't explicitly cover that player on the show, or at least in detail, then some of you may not know where I actually stand and where my head's at. So that's what today's show is all about. It's called risers and followers because I'm taking a look at the players risen up in my rankings and players who have gone in the opposite direction. The nice part about this season is that my rankings have been free for anyone to see. So if you've been checking those rankings out, which you can get on Number five dot com, then you've been able to see all the changes already. But this at least explains the logic behind those changes. Now, before digging into things today, I want to remind you about the Mountain Dew NBA free play that's going on daily from now through September fourth over on FanDuel. Compete in it for your chance to win a seat in a virtual event with NBA legends Gary Payton and Ray Allen. With each entry, you'll also be entered in the King of the Mountain three point Bonus for your chance to win a share a fifteen thousand dollars brought to you by Mountain Dew, official sponsor of the NBA. For more details, vi was at FanDuel dot com or download the FanDuel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. I think the obvious place for me to start today is with the Tampa Bay backfield and Keishan Vaughn. In particular, when I did my Players to Target episode, Vaughn was someone who made that list and it was right at the time that he was placed in the COVID nineteen list and when the Bucks signed Lashawn McCoy. Since then, he's free fall to my rankings. I liked Vaughn coming out. I still think that Keishan Vaughn is a pretty decent prospect. Despite getting a slow start to things, having been on that COVID nineteen list and then not doing anything spectacular at camp, I still think Kishan Vaughn is fine. I think where he was going in drafts when you could get him in the seventh, eighth, ninth round, I thought that was a logical play back in May and June for a number of reasons, the first one being is that we should be ignoring downside when picking players in those rounds, just for the most part, the hit rate isn't very good there. But then Vaughn had at least the ability to fill what Bruce arians wanted in that offense, which was in every down back who could pass, block and not leave the field. There was evidence that Vaughn could be that guy. Clearly that was wrong, at least right now. It won't be the last l of the season for me. Ronald Jones has largely shown up in camp and he's the player that you want in that backfield cost aside, I still have my fears with Ronald Jones, though. You still have to wonder why his highest single game snapshare last year was just fifty three percent when he was competing with completely replacement level running backs, and you have to wonder what his receiving role is going to look like with three other running backs on that team who are capable pass catchers. Rojo hasn't been a pass catcher dating back to his college days, at least a high volume one. He's just one of those players where I totally get the allure and he's exciting to watch as a runner that was never in doubt. I get the reason people like Ronald Jones, but I see him in this raheem mostert tier of players who could battle a committee throughout the season. He may have receiving limitations and he'll be living on touchdowns to be super fantasy relevant. Maybe that ends up being wrong. I mean, clearly, I haven't gotten the best riad in the backfield this offseason, but I've got Jones at RB twenty six and half PPR formats right now, which is basically at ADP. It's where he'll typically fall off the board. He's not someone I'm actively seeking in a draft this year, but again I get the allure enough to have some exposure.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: Like I noted in the Players to.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: Avoid episode that I did, it's really hard to find disagreements with wide receiver average draft position this year. So one of the three wide outs that I talked about on that show on the Avoid show was Tyler Boyd, not because I really disagreed with the ADP, but because I didn't see the clear, obvious upside with him.

00:04:34
Speaker 2: He was a floor pick rather than a ceiling one. To me.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: Here's some of the logic that backs that up, and I talked about this on that show. Tyler Boyd had one hundred and forty seven targets last year, and he still finished twenty sixth in PPR points per game. His sixteen game target share was twenty five percent with aj Greenback. Despite the small sample splits that we've seen in the past between those two players, there was some concern as to how high that target share could go or where it could grow. We haven't seen Boyd hit a serious ceiling yet in fantasy football. He's been wide receiver twenty six and wide receiver nineteen in points per game over the last two years, and a lot of that is due to how he's used in the Bengals offense. He's a slot guy who's total just six end zone targets over the last two seasons. Fifty Three different wide receivers hit that mark last season alone, and I get that Joe Burrow is there now, but history has shown us that rookie quarterbacks don't produce top twelve and top twenty four wide receivers at a very high rate. So that was the argument against Boyd, not really against Boyd, but against Boyd's ceiling. But after drafting more and seeing how things have played out, I don't totally feel the same way about Tyler Boyd. Number one, I think that we could see an outlier type season from Joe Burrow as a rookie, as in he may not limit his pass catchers as much as other rookie quarterbacks have. That's just based on him as a prospect and how he's evidently doing in camp, but also AJ Green's been hurt and John Ross missed time.

00:06:03
Speaker 2: Tyler Boyd has gotten the most reps with Joe Burrow among relevant pass.

00:06:07
Speaker 1: Catchers on that team, and that can matter with a rookie quarterback, especially in this environment that we're in right now. Like Ronald Jones, I'm basically at ADP with Tyler Boyd. I think he's a great candidate to exceed expectation, which is why he's a popular value choice by analysts right now. He technically is a value. I just don't draft for straight up values in the middle rounds. I want more of a ceiling. But with that being said, I do think that I undersold that ceiling earlier in the month, given all the things that have happened in Bengals camp in August, A lot has gone down in the Washington backfield this offseason. They drafted Antonio Gibson in the third round of the draft, and then the off the field stuff happened with Darius Geis and he's no longer on the team. That leaves the football team with Gibson, Adrian Peterson, JD McKissick, and Bryce Love. I've been pretty open about loving Antonio Gibson on Twitter, but I don't know exactly how much I've talked about him on this show. My prospect model largely looks at production when trying to figure out which running backs are going to work in fantasy football at the pro level. And for a guy who had seventy seven career touches in college, that means the model didn't like his production profile, or at least as much as the higher end running backs in this class. But number one draft capital matters, and number two he had a good reception share and that's a piece of my model. So he actually came in with a decent percentile ranking in that model. And then when you cap it off with his outlier athleticism, there's a lot to like about Antonio Gibson. There's the potential that he's the next David Johnson. Fantasy pros rankers have Gibson at RB forty three. I'm in the lower thirties. Like I just talked about, the middle rounds have a low hit rate in general in fantasy football, in most cases you should be ignoring downside, especially if Gibson is like the fourth running back that you're drafting on.

00:07:56
Speaker 2: Your own team.

00:07:57
Speaker 1: And I always go back to this idea, but people just avoid backfields because there's no clear cut number one guy.

00:08:03
Speaker 2: They do it all the time.

00:08:05
Speaker 1: But when it looks like there's a committee, that means there's an opportunity. There's an opportunity for a running back to emerge, and that's where you get breakout players. They tend to come from ambiguous backfields, and I think Gibson could be that guy this year. I'm still throwing some darts at Bryce Love too, just in case. I'm not drafting Adrian Peterson, though, because the chance that he becomes anything more than like an RB two or even an RB three is pretty slim. I want real upside now. I've talked about how I generally avoid RB twos in fantasy football a lot on this show. The guys who are after the very clear top tier of running backs and usually ranked in that RB twelve to RB twenty four range. This year, it's more like the RB fourteen to like the RB twenty five or twenty six range. Their hit rates just aren't very strong, and we usually see them with similar ceilings as players who are drafted in that next tier backs. The episode I did this offseason on Drafting League Winning Players talks about that a bit, which is episode three hundred and seventy nine. I've also said on the show that the three traditional RB twos that I'm most interested in this year are Chris Carson, Jonathan Taylor, and James Connor. Carson sort of slipping right now with reports at his workload may not look as good as we'd want it to look, So that really leaves me with Jonathan Taylor, who I like just strictly because I think he's a monster and could just take over that backfield during the second half of the season. And James Connor. Everything points to James Connor being a workhorse in that Steelers backfield, and like I talked about on the Bold Predictions episode last week, the last time Connor was a starter and Ben Roethlisberger was healthy, he was averaging over twenty one PPR points per game. You can't say upside doesn't exist with James Connor for that fact alone. The situation is a little bit different these days with a slightly different offensive line. There's no Antonio Brown, so maybe the Steelers offense won't be as efficient, but market share wise and backfield share wise, we've seen James Connor dominate. His ADP is now creeping up, though, but I do think it's justified, and I wanted that to be known because I haven't talked enough about that situation on this show, and I do remember early on in the offseason talking about how the Steelers were sort of a dark horse candidate to take an early round running back. I'm in on James Connor. This episode is largely covering running backs because their situations can just change so quickly. But one wide receiver who's evidently crushing right now is Brian Edwards. I talked about him on last week's Mailbag episodes. This shouldn't be that much of a surprise, but I'm not shocked that he's looking good. He had the best breakout age in this year's draft class, he had great production in college, and he ranked in the eighty fifth percentile in my model. Anything above the eightieth percentile is good. I genuinely believe that Edwards would have been drafted a lot higher had he not had an injury entering the draft. So will he outperform Henry Ruggs this year? I'd love to see what this offense is going to look like in Week one to feel confident about answering that question. And this is where a lack of preseason can hurt us. But I do think it's entirely possible. I think it's possible that Brian Edwards is better than Henry Ruggs for fantasy purposes, I still have Rugs ranked ahead of him, but in leagues with twelve or more teams, I'm absolutely down with stashing Brian Edwards.

00:11:26
Speaker 2: He's a big, big riser.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: One of the players that I talked about on the Players to Target episode earlier this month was Darryl Henderson. Now, admittedly there's a lot working against him. He didn't show up last year, and like I talked about on the bailing on unproductive Rookies episode at the start of the offseason, that's a bad sign for future success. It's not a death sentence, but the probability that a player ends up being a stud after a really poor rookie season, especially a running back, it's not great. But I pushed that aside because number one, Darryl Henderson was a good prospect. He had a final season yards per team play rate that was second best among every running back in the last two draft classes. Only Jonathan Taylor was better, and that's a fairly predictive metric. Then number two, the Rams have somewhat of an ambiguous backfield, and it's an offense that you want to invest in but most importantly number three, the cost. Henderson isn't going for anything substantial, so sure, I'll throw that dart. My liking Henderson has never meant I disliked cam Akers at cost, and that's especially true right now since Darryl Henderson is dealing with a hamstring injury. Acres is now rising and I'm excited about him because he was something that I liked entering the draft. His raw numbers didn't look amazingly great, but he was also in a horrifically bad situation in college. When you give his numbers some context, some offensive context, Acres was above average in the class and yards per team play, and he had a final season reception share above eleven percent. My prospect model has him as an eighty ninth percentile running back, and that's not that far off from Jonathan Taylor. So I'm cooling off on Henderson a little bit because of the injury, but his ADP looks to be reflecting that injury as well, and I'm buying into Acres as much as I was before, as having the highest probability to take over that backfield by the end of the season. I just think that the injury to Henderson is making it an easier path to see. That's why he's a riser. And speaking of rookies, how about Jalen Rager. He's now ranked as my top rookie wide receiver in redraft leagues, just ahead of Ceede Lamb. And it's pretty easy to see why he doesn't have a whole lot of competition at wide receiver to the point where you could call him the top wide receiver on his team right now. The Eagles utilize their tight ends more than almost any other team in football, but Rager has a very very clear path to a twenty percent to twenty five percent target share this year. Like that's a possible outcome for Jalen Rager. And if you're curious, he was my wide receiver four in this class according to my model after inputting draft position. But there was a pretty decent sized drive and tier after Reger and he had basically the same score as Justin Jefferson and Ceedee Lamb. Jerry Judy was number one in the model. The prospect profile is there, that's why I'm referencing the model. The situation is there, the versatility is there. You've got to love Jalen Rager, and I feel like I haven't given him enough of that love on the podcast this summer.

00:14:23
Speaker 2: Okay, so Austin Eckler.

00:14:25
Speaker 1: I didn't think that I would have a whole lot of Austin Eckler this year because there are a lot of things working against him.

00:14:32
Speaker 2: Now, let's talk about those things. First.

00:14:33
Speaker 1: Number one, Philip Rivers is gone. The Chargers have had good pass catching backs with Philip Rivers, but they've also ranked in the top six and running back target share in six of their last nine seasons.

00:14:45
Speaker 2: Nice.

00:14:46
Speaker 1: Now we're hearing reports out of Indianapolis about how Rivers is targeting his running backs a whole lot out of the backfield there. I just don't think that we can overstate the loss of Rivers and how it might impact Eckler's target share here in twenty twenty, Eckler also had We had a third of LA's receiving touchdowns last year. That's by far the highest rate that we've seen by a running back since twenty eleven. And since twenty eleven, we've only had fifteen running backs with a twenty percent touchdown share over that time, and only one of them increased that touchdown share year over year, Eckler has touchdown regression coming. I also don't know if we can assume the Chargers are going to be as pass heavy. They were second in neutral script pass to rush ratio last year, and they were top ten.

00:15:29
Speaker 2: In pass attempts.

00:15:31
Speaker 1: So if Eckler is going to have a top five ceiling, I would argue that he absolutely needs to be the goal line back on that team, which can happen, sure, but they did draft Joshua Kelly, who was apparently crushing it in camp, and Eckler hasn't been overly effective at the goal line during his career. So I always saw Eckler as more of a floor play than a ceiling one. But I also expected as ADP to be higher than it is. I thought that we would be having to draft Austin Eckler as a running back, but he's not been that. I actually have him ranked higher than his ADP right now, because I have him higher than Aaron Jones. I do have my concerns, clearly, I don't see the same extreme upside that others do. But Eckler is more than fine at his ADP in my opinion, and I've gotten a lot more of him this season.

00:16:18
Speaker 2: Than I expected.

00:16:21
Speaker 1: The last situation in players that I wanted to bring up on today's episode is the New England backfield and Damien Harris and Sony Michelle. I think you guys know this by now, but my general philosophy with backfields is that in the later rounds, I'm almost always going to target the unknowns versus the knowns. And here's what we know about Sony Michelle. He's seen two hundred or more carries in each of his first two seasons in the league. He had two hundred and forty seven last year. He's also yet to hit a target chair higher than three point four percent, and that's why he's yet to rank higher than thirty first in PPR leagues at the position. He's fine as a fill in, he's fine as a player in super deep formats, but he's not going to be a league winning player. More than likely, the chance of that happens continues to look slim. I see Sony Michelle just like I see Adrian Peterson. Peterson has about twenty five years on I'm sure, but neither guy is likely going to have a super high target shair. And even if they grab hold of plenty of early down work in their offense. Chances are it's not going to really move the needle. I'd much rather get a Bryce Love and see if he can emerge, or in the Patriots backfield. Damian Harris. Harris has become one of my highest rostered players this year. I don't know how it happened, but it happened. Maybe it's just because I knew that I was probably gonna avoid Sony Michelle, but Harris is on a lot of my teams right now. Like Daryl Henderson, Harris is another one of those players who didn't do anything during his rookie year, so historically, improbability wise, things don't look great. But like I mentioned on last week's Mailbag Show, I think it was on last week's Mailbag Show, Harris wasn't a bad prospect. His production was mediocre, partially because he shared a backfield in college with Josh Jacobs. But the capitol is fine, the profile is fine altogether, and because his cost hasn't shot up to a spot where the opportunity cost and getting him is super significant, I'm fine with playing probability here and seeing what we've got. I think there's at least a chance it's in his range of outcomes, that Harris is a Sony Michelle, plus that he ends up seeing a similar workload that Michelle's seen in the past, but he has more versatility as a pass catcher.

00:18:25
Speaker 2: So I'm in on Damian Harris this year.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: He's a riser and I will not be drafting Sony Michelle. Now, hopefully all this helps you guys understand where my head's at before we get the season going. It's pretty wild, but this is the last non mail bag show of the off season. Starting next Tuesday, I'll be bringing you this show four times per week. I've got the fifteen transaction show happening each Tuesday, the ten trends episode that I started last year happening every Wednesday, then a matchup show, and then the weekly mailbag. I'm ready for it, and I hope that you guys are too. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and no forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, talk to you later in the week.