1073: Mailbag - George Pickens' Outlook, the Miami Offense, and More

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherath Jay Jake zacher Reason. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode ten to seventy three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Oh, I'm still here. Thanks for tuning in. The season's winding down. There aren't many more of these podcast episodes to do, but I'm not going away. Make sure you're keeping up to date with all things fantasy and all things Late Round Fantasy by subscribing to the.

00:00:37
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00:00:46
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00:00:47
Speaker 1: Then you'll be on top of all the things going on with Late Round Fantasy Football this offseason. And there's gonna be a lot going on. I can promise you that twenty twenty six it's gonna be a big one for the business. But it's a mail bag day. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Twitter is from at Late Round dB. It says, how would you assess or approach to the Miami Dolphins offensive weapons for this Bengals matchup? With your starting Waller seemed like a must start in all formats with the data that we had with him and Tua, Now with yours, how do you view it impact on others like Waddle and Achan. My general stance is that this is bad for all the players in that offense in general. Of course, there's an outcome here where Quinn Youwers is just way better than anyone anticipated. He just surprises everyone. But we've kind of seen this story before many times, and they generally don't go in a favorable direction. The splits last year when Tua was out for Devon h Chan, that's especially noteworthy and frightening, especially as someone who's relying on a chan.

00:01:50
Speaker 2: Quite a bit this week.

00:01:52
Speaker 1: But with Tua last year, a Chan averages sixty percent running back rush air per game rate. He was at an eighteen and a half percent target shair. Without Tua, those numbers were fifty five percent, so a similar enough running back rush here, but his target share per game rate fell to about ten and a half percent. It felt pretty dramatically, And I'm not even talking about his PPR points per game.

00:02:12
Speaker 2: I'm just focused here on his usage. His PPR points.

00:02:15
Speaker 1: Per game fell dramatically with and without Tua. We're talking like nineteen point five PPR points per game with Tua and eight point eight without him. Now, look, we don't know the tendencies of viewers within this particular offense and what he'll prefer to do. And fortunately for Achan, this is a good matchup. Overall, Cincinnati's defense is playing a little bit better though. Four of their best seven games by EPA per play have come over their last four games, and that's against Buffalo, Baltimore twice, and New England, all good teams. Now, I was already nervous about Waddle in this matchup to begin with, Cincinnati's been pretty good against top wide receivers and even as a whole, they rank close to a bottom ten matchup for wide receivers this year by justin Fantasy points allowed. So yeah, this is a downgrade for these guys. I think Waddle he's something that you now consider benching this week, depending on who you have. And then Darren Waller, for me, he's now in a tier with like Theo Johnson and Dalton Schultz. He's like a high end tight end two. And then Ah Chan he's still a higher tiered guy. I don't think you're benching Devon ah Chan. I just moved him down a couple of spots below the other elite running backs overall, though not very good for fantasy football, even if Tua has plenty of question marks as a passer at this point. This next question is from Patreon. It's from Joel. It says, how do you feel about George Pickens the last few weeks. He's received criticism for lack of effort. His target share has declined below twenty percent, and he scored single digits the last two His motivation and body language seems to have changed since the Cowboys leaked he will be franchise tagged, and Cede Lamb has taken over again since.

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Speaker 2: Look, I don't know if that's the direct connection.

00:03:57
Speaker 1: If the franchise tag stuff is the pure one hundred percent reason we're seeing George Pickens kind of take some plays off, but that's also just George Pickens. This isn't the first time this has happened. This has really been a two week thing for George Pickens. They had that game against the Lions where I think things were more glaring, where he saw nine targets on a nineteen percent target chair. We can kind of brush that aside and say, Okay, he had a bad game. That happens for everyone. We just haven't been used to it with Pickens. But then last week seventeen percent target shair not horrific, but not great, and his previous five games before these two he was closer to a twenty nine percent target chair. But guys, Minnesota is a really tough matchup for wide receivers though, the third toughest matchup for wideouts by adjustin points allowed. They also rank twenty sixth and adjusted target share allowed to wideouts, so wide receiver rooms are generally seeing less volume when they face the Vikings. Now, something I think is really important this time of year is to really focus on the action. Like we sit here and we question players in week six, Week seven, week eight, because.

00:05:05
Speaker 2: There are a lot of games left to play.

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Speaker 1: There's more forecasting going on at this point in the season, though, We're essentially saying are we starting or sitting this player? And if we're sitting him, should we be dropping him? And I think with Pickens, you're probably starting him given the state at wide receiver right now. I plan on researching this over the offseason. I've been talking about it over the last couple of weeks, but wide receiver twos they've been terrible this year for the most part, and wide receiver threes they've been so much more replaceable than usual. And even if Pickens starts to find himself in that group of players, he's still going to be someone that we're ranking ahead of those players.

00:05:42
Speaker 2: Think of it this way.

00:05:43
Speaker 1: Let's say that George Pickens has another single digit pper point game this week on like an eighteen percent target share. Next week the Cowboys get the Commanders, great matchup, We're probably gonna be putting Pickens as a top twenty wide receiver again, even with the down performances, unless something has happens on the field that clearly tells us not to do that.

00:06:03
Speaker 2: Because even though some of those.

00:06:04
Speaker 1: Players are likely going to outscore him, someone like I don't know, Jaden Reid, he might outscore Pickens, who knows. I mean, it's just a two game sample. We can't necessarily project that. When we're projecting these things, we're looking at the most likely outcomes. So my feeling with Pickens is that I think that we can be a little bit forgiving here. He's certainly not as much of a lock as.

00:06:26
Speaker 2: He was like three or four weeks ago.

00:06:28
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I don't think that's really changing our approach unless we're in a shallower league or unless we have an unbelievably loaded team. This is still, overall a very good fantasy environment. If he's running routes, he has a good chance to score some fantasy points. Maybe he won't be top six, but because of that environment, he can still be useful. This next question is also from Patreon, is from Ben. It says, how do you handle a quarterback like Jacobe Bursett in the playoffs?

00:06:57
Speaker 2: He's been nails.

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Speaker 1: But I'm in a two week Super FLYW Dynasty final, and I also have Lamar and Justin Herbert, and I'm trying to wrap my head around not playing probably Herbert versus Dallas for him. Do I trust the numbers and let it ride? Well, I think you have to ask if this is fluky from Jacoby Brissett, Are there signs of regression?

00:07:18
Speaker 2: Is what he's.

00:07:18
Speaker 1: Doing just simply unsustainable, because as we know by now, Persett has been a top twelve quarterback a QB one every single week that he's been a starter, including last week against Houston, which no other quarterback has been able to do. One thing we should keep in mind here is that the Cardinals are the number one team in football and pass rate over expected. No team is throwing it at a higher rate than the Cardinals are, so that can help him on the touchdown front. Usually, when I question if what quarterbacks are doing is fluky, I look at touchdown rate first touchdowns divided by attempts. Because Bersett is averaging almost forty three pass attempts per start, he's getting more opportunities for touchdowns, and his touchdo rate as a result is still a reasonable four point seven percent. There's nothing abnormal about that at all. I then look at some advanced metrics. He's fifth in the NFL and completion percentage over expected. He's twentieth in EPA per dropback. He's actually got a lower deep ball rate than most quarterbacks, and according to PFF, he's not even doing anything crazy on.

00:08:19
Speaker 2: Those deep balls.

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Speaker 1: He actually only has one deep ball touchdown this year, so it's not like he's doing all this because his wide receivers are breaking free unbroken coverage. He's just been really methodical on Arizona's defense just hasn't been playing that well. So that volume, those game scripts, those environments, they've been great for him as a passer. And look, this time of year, we only have a two game sample, like I've been saying, and in his two games, they get Atlanta and Cincinnati. Those are two great matchups. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we look back and we see Jacoby Brissett as the best quarterback option over these final two weeks. That's absolutely possible given these matchups. Meanwhile, you mentioned Justin Herbert against Dallas. Yeah, Herbert's not a bad play this week. But let me give you this nugget to make this choice pretty clear from a process standpoint. Justin Herbert hasn't scored fifteen Fantasy points in each of his last five games. Sure, blame the injury. I don't care, but he's still dealing with that injury. He's had some tough matchups. Sure, but Herbert is not a locker right now. Jacoby Brissett has literally not been below eighteen standard Fantasy points as the Arizona Cardinals starter. His lowest point this season has been more than three points higher than any of Justin Herbert's games over the last month plus, the result can be in Herbert's favor. We might see Justin Herbert rankheaded Jacoby Brissette at the end of this week. Of course that can happen. But I feel pretty good about Jacoby Brissett, and I think others should feel good about him too. If it doesn't work out, the process definitely was not wrong, and at least you can live with that. This last questions for Patreon, it's from it says Tampa Bay versus Carolina this weekend, big game for both teams. Tedoro McMillan has had about three bad games in a row, only getting four targets last week. On the other side of the field, we have a mecha Abuka who started off hot but is tailed off and is no longer than number one with Evans back on the field, but still had seven targets last week. Looking through your rankings this week, I'm curious what your logic is on having McMillan ahead of Abuka by a decent margin. Do you consider things like big division swinging games when thinking about your tiers and ranks for the week or is it strictly data. My process for doing rankings is having a baseline projection that I run each week, But I don't sit and rerun projections all week long trying to make them perfect. I'm not playing dfs with them. I'm not selling the projections. No one is looking at these projections. It's a full time job to maintain projections. I'm telling you guys, it's not an easy thing if you want them to be accurate. I'm just doing it to get a base from there. I use my ball knowledge via data points and what I see happening more subjectively to create the rankings, and as I go through the week, I'm researching more. I'm discovering new things about matchups, and I'm shifting players based on those new things. If you listen to my discussion on perspectives last week was subverted down. I think you can sort of see two data heavy analysts who approach things just kind of differently, And to me, there's nothing wrong with that as long as there's a service and helpfulness it's being provided. But subverted down is very much focused on nailing that projection with a ton of data inputs going into that projection. I'm a little bit looser with how I'm looking at things. For lack of better term, I'm probably injecting a little bit more subjectivity than he is now to something like a division rivalry game. Go into how I'm ranking players, I mean not really, since a lot of what I'm working with will start at the sportsbook line level and work its way down. If that line was really high or really low, then that'll be reflected to some degree and how I view those players, Like, what in information do we have about a Mecca Buca and Tetero McMillan to tell us that they're going to be better because this is a big game. How is that going to actually change our approach right? I have no idea, But to me, this is about looking at what's going on right now within those offenses. For Abuka, we have Jalen McMillan and Mike Evans back and like I said on the ten Trends episode, we got a sixty three percent route chair for Abuca last week, he just happened to see a twenty two percent target chair. He was targeted at a pretty high rate per route run. But routes run allow a player to actually see targets. He needs to be out there running on as many dropbacks as possible. If he's on the sideline, he doesn't matter. The average target share for all wide receivers who have had a rout share between sixty percent and seventy percent this year is below fourteen percent. Last week, obviously a Mecca a Buka outperformed that. Meanwhile, Teteroa McMillan hasn't been below a ninety percent route share since Week two. So if you look at the ninety to one hundred perce in terms of route share, that's when you get the more elite players, and that target share it goes from below fourteen percent to about twenty four percent. And that's exactly why I'm focused on route participation rates alongside target share and raw targets. Now, McMillan's had a couple of mediocre outings in a row, but the Panthers also took an insanely run heavy approach against the Rams that oddly enough ended up working. And then they faced New Orleans where the Saints are one of the biggest run funnels in football. When teams face the Saints this year, they see their pass rates fall by seven percentage points. That's the biggest drop in the league with any opponent, so I think the last couple of games for McMillan just haven't been totally normal. Tampa Bay is a matchup is the opposite. It's a pass funnel defense that typically sees opponents throw the ball more against them, at the second highest rate in the league, behind only Jacksonville versus those opponents season long averages. Overall, Tampa Bay is a better matchup for McMillan than Carolina is for Mecca Buca. McMillan's run more routes, he has a higher projected target share, and I'd argue there's just way more volatility and way more unknown with a Mecca a Buka, given the wide receivers in Tampa Bay right now and.

00:14:10
Speaker 2: What we saw last week.

00:14:12
Speaker 1: So that's a little bit on my process for creating rankings, what I see in these two wide receivers and why I have McMillan ranked well above Abuka this week. I would imagine consensus agrees that McMillan should be ranked ahead of a Mecha a Buka, but hey, these wide receivers, they're both non elite wide receivers. They're not locks at all, so anything's possible. The last question this week is another Patreon one from John. It says two Trevor Lawrence questions Number one, how much do you trust his recent performance with Jacobe Myers continuing, especially with a tough matchup against Denver this week? And then number two bit of a game theory question, but I'm going against someone who has Myers? What do you think about starting Lawrence as a hedge? Are there instances where it makes sense to adjust your lineup based on dependencies between players and head to head matchups? Okay, let's first talk about Trevor Lawrence. He's been really strong of late, since Jakobe Meyers started getting more involved in that offense. Lawrence is averaging twenty three and a half standard Fantasy points per game. Now, obviously that forty four point outing last week that's skewing things a bit, but.

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Speaker 2: It was still solid enough at eighteen point three without it. But that's the thing. Eighteen point three. The descriptor we'd use for that is solid.

00:15:23
Speaker 1: It's not elite, it's not amazing, And yes, you can definitely say that taking away a performance like that is silly. It's like taking away the longest run for a running back when calculating yards per carry I'm just giving some context outside of last week's game. As a matchup, Denver's not easy, and keep in mind during this Trevor Lawrence stretch, he's faced mostly easier matchups, especially his last four. He's faced Arizona, Tennessee, Indianapolis, and then the Jets, all reasonable matchups for a quarterback. Denver's a bottom five matchup according to Justin Fantasy points allowed. Lawrence has faced six teams this year that ranked twenty fifth through thirty second and adjusted points a lot of quarterbacks, meaning they're like bottom eight matchups for quarterbacks. And for the record, Houston represents two of those matchups. In those games, he scored ten, eight, twenty six against the Chiefs nineteen ten and fifteen standard fantasy points. That's good for a fourteen point seven point average. Now, I think he could be better than that this week, but I don't think he's like a must start even after last week's performance. It's a tough spot for any quarterback, and this game is in Denver. Now to your other question, I've talked about this a lot on the show Blocking Opponents. I mentioned it last week when someone said if they should start Isaiah likely because their opponent had Lamar Jackson, and I mentioned how that's not that good of an idea because Lamar can score points without likely scoring points, which is what we saw. But you're approaching this from the quarterbacks perspective. I do think there are instances where starting the quarterback of one of your opponent's players as an okay move. Like, for instance, I'm in a league where I have Jacoby Brissett, one of my opponents has Trey McBride. I feel really good about the rest of my lineup versus the rest of his lineup. Let's say I have a decision between Drake May and Jacoby Bursett this week, and let's just pretend that I would probably start Drake May over Berset in a normal circumstance, but it's close, Like let's say that's like fifty five to forty five. Well, because it's close, I might decide to just go with Bersett to mitigate some of the Trey McBride damage. Because Trey McBride is playing out of his freaking mind. He's such an important edge and such an important fantasy asset. McBride can score more points than Berset with a big game, but at least I know that my quarterback is tied to that big game, and then obviously if a touchdown doesn't go to McBride, my team is gaining a nice little edge. But to be clear, I'd only do something like that if number one, it's a truly close call from a start sit perspective. But then number two, you're doing it with a player that's incredibly meaningful. With to Kobe Myers, he's playing great, but this is the Broncos that we're talking about. On the projections front, He's not projected to be like a top twelve wide receiver this week, and Trevor Lawrence isn't projected to be a QB one, so there's not really a huge need to force something like that.

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Speaker 2: I'd rather just play the optimal play. I would imagine your opponent has way better players this week than Jacoby Myers, and I think in a lot of leagues there's a chance you have a more optimal play than Trevor Lawrence this week. But as usual, your question would come down to who you're starting instead. If it truly is close, then sure, play Trevor Lawrence. If you like the other matchups that you have against that team.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: Just please don't force it, because when you force something like that, you start to become suboptimal. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB.

00:18:53
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening everyone.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: Like I said yesterday, with the holidays next week, there's a limited podcast schedule, so this is also the last Mailbag.

00:18:59
Speaker 2: Episode of the year.

00:19:00
Speaker 1: It's really been a pleasure doing all the various Thanks for tuning ins this year and answering your questions on this show. This is always one of my favorites to do each week. Now, I do have a Perspectives episode dropping later today, you don't want to miss that, and then I'll also be live with David Kitchen at one pm Eastern on the YouTube channel to do the Late Round Fantasy Football show. Tune in for that if you miss it, though, it's going to drop in the podcast feed tomorrow morning.

00:19:22
Speaker 2: I appreciate all of you. Thank you so much for listening.

00:19:25
Speaker 1: Good luck in the semi finals and I'll catch you next week with the fifteen Transaction Show