1010: Mailbag - The Houston Backfield, Jalen Coker's Value, and More

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha. J J Zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode ten to ten of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in football seasons right around the corner. It's next week and there's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance earlyer than with Best Ball in DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, DraftKings giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one, and turn lineup in the fifteen million dollars Best Ball contest for just twenty dollars, and you score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of that fifteen million dollars, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your dream team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. 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Help is available from Problem Gambling called eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org eighteen plus most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibili restrictions apply void where prohibited. One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars headliner contest by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry. Twenty dollars entry required. Reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com slash NFL Dash Best Dashball sponsored by dk It's a mailbag episode today. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Noah on Patreon. It says, I know you're out on Travis Kelce, but do you think he can maintain some decent production when Rashi Rice is out? Or even with Rice out, are you still out? So with Rashi Rice in that suspension, this is one of the better outcomes for anyone who is drafting Rice in my opinion, because we're not having to wait. It's at the beginning of the season, when you have healthy players and there aren't any bye weeks, and six games that's a lot, for sure, but it could have been worse. To me, six games was always kind of the median outcome here, especially after that report from a couple of weeks ago. Now, without Rice in the mix, that's obviously good news for Travis Kelce, But that doesn't mean that I'm now in on Kelsey because that's all gonna be reflected in ADP and I've known for weeks now that Rashi Rice was gonna be suspended. The fact that this suspension is now at the front end of the season, that means that Kelsey can get off to a hot start, sure, but I really really worry about an old type end during the Fantasy football playoffs during those weeks, like Rashid Rice should be back during the final stretch of the season, and last year, when Rice was healthy, Kelsey averaged five PPR points per game and a fourteen percent target chair. He was completely unusable. And I've said this time and time again, but pretty much every non volume related peripheral for Travis Kelcey last year took a hit, yards per out run, yards after the catch per reception. He finishes the tight end six and PPR points per game because of volume, and when Rice is back, with Xavier Worthy now a second year player, with Hollywood Brown potentially healthier with Isaiah Pacheco back, I think it's fair to be concerned about what that target chair is going to look like for Travis kelce I don't think that we can just pencil in a twenty five percent share, so I'm still out on Kelsey. I actually think there'd be more appeal for Kelsey if we knew that this suspension was happening later in the season, but it's not. He might get off to an Okay, start and maybe you're five with that before moving on. I'm just not at his current cost. I'd rather just wait at the position, and I'm very nervous about what he's going to provide at the end of the year, and that's the most important part of the fantasy football calendar. This last question is from Nicholas on Patreon. It says, with the Adam Thielen trade, does this tell us the coaches are confident in Teo McMillan and Jalen Cocher and are they getting bumped in the rankings due to this? So I'm not moving Tetero McMillan because he was already going to get his I think this move of sending Adam thlen to Minnesota tells us most about Jalen Coker and how they feel about Coker, and they should feel good about Coker. I wrote about this back in March when the Late Round Prospect Guide was released, because in that guide I have year two profiles and Cocker is a year two player. Coker was better than Xavier Laget last year in yards perrout run a lot better and the thing that was nice about his production was that even when Adam Thlen was active, because remember he did miss a time last year. But even when Adam Thielen was active last year, Cocher was still very good per route. Without Flan hit a yards brought out run rate of one point seventy five with him, it was one point six to eight. And when he played with thelan only forty three percent of his routes were coming out of the slot. It was just a really impressive season for an undrafted rookie and that led to him having journey comparables, which are players who had similar ZAP scores and year two scores they went on a similar journey as one another. But his journey comparables were Jacobe Myers, Alan Hearns and Preston Williams. Myers and Hearns had pretty usable Year two seasons, and I think Cocher has a legitimate chance to be the number two option in this offense because Xavier Lagette was not overly impressive last year and he came into the league with a whole bunch of question marks. The Panthers are gonna use McMillan Lagett on the outside and Jalen Coker in the slot and don't see bunch of Tavian Sanders either. I think that he gets a little bit of a bump here too. It's a young offense and they did lose a lot of experience with Theelan. But they're not gonna make that move unless they feel really good about Jalen Coker. In my opinion, he's a huge winner of that trade and he should be on everyone's late round radar. This one's from twitters from at Giles g Man. It says who ends a fantasy season as the Texans' highest scoring running back? So my answer here is actually Woody Marx. Now, I think like from a projection standpoint, it's probably Nick Chubb, But I don't think Damian Pierce is a definite zero in that backfield, and Pierce he's more like Chubb than he is Woody Marx. They're both early down guys who don't have beefed up pass catching profiles, but Marx does. Marx is good in pass pro and he does have a good pass catching profile, at least in the ZAP model. Now, something that has to do with him playing with the late Mike Leach, but he was still good on that front when he transferred to USC. He was still a pass catcher. He had a fourteen percent reception chaired last year. Now, the downside to Marx's analytical profile as a prospect is that he was a little bit older. He's passed his twenty fourth birthday, and his speed scorer was below average. I don't think that he's some exceptional athlete, but we know that we should be focused on pass catching at running back throughout the draft. That should be our main focus. And I actually feel good about Marx as the pass catcher given the alternatives that they have in that offense, Chubb and Pierce May Ebb and Flow, with Chubb getting more of the priority, but Marx has a shot to give you a base on it receiving and maybe he just surprises and he's better between the tackles than we initially thought that we expect. So he feels like the target in that backfield. But I do think that Nick Chubb is more of the if you need points right away selection. This last question from Patreon. It's from Paul. It says Travis etn is one year removed from being RB three, is a top ten running back finish, still in his range of outcomes given the retold and redesign offense. So I see this talked about Etn quite a bit, but I think we need to put this twenty twenty three season into some context. That year, he played all seventeen games. That's gonna help any running back look good. In overall standings, he was technically the RB seven and PPR points per game, not the RB three. Now, I know that's just semantics. Some people are gonna roll their eyes at that, but I think it's important to put it in per game context. But that's not really the focus here. In twenty twenty three, Etn scored twelve times. According to PFFS expected touchdowns formula, he outperformed expectation by four touchdowns, and he wasn't very good per rush. That's the biggest problem in my eyes. He saw the highest running back rush out of his career. That led to two hundred and sixty seven carries, but he had a horrible rate of gaining positive yardage and that showed up in success rate. He had just a thirty four point five percent success rate that year that ranked thirty six of forty four qualified running backs. We're in a next gen stats and that season he had a ten plus yard run rate of just eight point two percent. We had twenty three running backs get to two hundred and more carries that year. Only four of those running backs were worse at gaining ten or more yards. I just don't think that Etn has been like undeniably good. That's my problem with him. I do have him ranked highest among the Jags running backs largely because I think that he's gonna be used early on and he has more pass catching upside than Tank Bigsby. I haven't faded him by any means. I'm just noting that I think there's a good bit of fragility with him and this profile. To me, the target in this backfield all summer and to this day has been bashall Tuton. I want to go with the upside play. I want to go with the player who I loved as a prospect, who I think has every down potential and he's a big play waiting to happen, and this could be a really good offense with Liam Cohen. Etn just hasn't been good enough Tank Bigsby. He lacks pass catching upside. Now, Tooton may end up being a zero, but I'm leaning into my evaluation for a double digit round pick if it doesn't work out, it won't sink my fantasy team. This last question is from blue Sky. It's from at in deef r. It says, hey, JJ, any advice on things to keep an eye on for post draft and going into the first few weeks of the fantasy season. Usage. People are gonna be enamored with actual points scored early on in the season. They want to get the next big thing based on that production. But if there's not good usage attached to that production, you shouldn't be as aggressive in getting that player. But also on top of that, we have to remember that we don't have many answers with who's good and who isn't early on. If a player goes absolutely nuts in week one or week two, and maybe the usage is just average but not excellent, there's a chance he's just facing a team that's going to be really bad against that position this year. But look the fifteen Transactions episode, the ten Trends episode. Those episodes are there each week to really help us understand usage, which volume is the foundation of fantasy football. Wacky things can happen in the points scored column, but what's more predictive is if that final output is stemming from good usage overall. Don't only look at the production, watch the peripherals. This best question is from Twitter is from at Adam makes Beer. It says, I've seen a lot of people talking about GoF regressing and viewing him as a fade. In the next breath, they will say that the Lions are bound to be in more negative game scripts, that they will be throwing the ball down the field more and throwing more in general. Arrow up on Jared Goff. So I don't think the negative game script thing is necessarily true, given how banged up that defense was to end last season. They may not win as many games, but they really had to keep pace and be efficient through the air to work things last year to be good as a team. Now that being said, I do think the Lions they're gonna throw more this year. I mean, you can just look at recent history for them and see that's probably going to be the case. They were twenty seventh and pass rate last year, when their two previous seasons ranked nineteenth. They had five hundred and fifty one pass attempts as a team, when they were thirty to fifty pass attempts higher and their two previous seasons. But think of it this way. Jared Goff was a better fantasy asset last year versus those two other seasons, versus twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Ask yourself, why is that the case. Well, it's because volume isn't as important at quarterback and fantasy football as it is running back and wide receiver and tight end. We need touchdowns and Goff he had a touchdown rate last year that was significantly higher than any other rate of his career. And you heard me talk about Baker Mayfield earlier this week, hopefully on that Bold Predictions episode, and how quarterbacks within that six point seven percent and seven point seven percent touchdown rate, they've all seen a dip in year over year production in points per game since twenty eleven. Jared Goff is part of that group. I would be very surprise if Jared Goff has a better twenty twenty five season than twenty twenty four season. And look, I know that this is counterintuitive, but all of these things can be true. The Lions can throw more, while Jared Goff sees regression and he's not as good of a fantasy asset. I think he's a candidate to match ADP. But when I'm drafting in the later rounds, I'm not gonna force it with a profile like this when there are so many good pocket passers to choose from this year. To me, he's no different than a Jordan Love or a Justin Herbert, or even a CJ. Stroud or Trevor Lawrence. In fact, when it comes to upside, you could argue the other guys more than Jared Goff with quarterback because we're taking them late, and because they're more replaceable, we need to chase ceiling even more. And I don't think Jared Goff has that type of ceiling. You can draft him in super flex leagues, but in single quarterback leagues, where he generally goes, I'm not really getting Jared Goff. The last question this week is from Patreon. It's from Matt. It says, hey, JJ, I often hear you say that you would reach for a running back if your league mates were on a run of drafting running backs. However, I always thought it was better to zig when others are zagging and get the value at the falling wide receiver in that scenario, Why is it better to follow in the steps of your league mates rather than be different and try to get the best player available. Thanks. So if I say that often, I apologize because I don't mean that you should reach for a position when your league has a positional run. What you might be referencing is how I talk about reacting to your draft, which is essentially, you go into your draft, you have some idea of how things are going to go down, but you have to switch that up based on how your league mates are drafting. And I actually got a few questions about this idea this week, so let's just dig into it. You may go into your draft with a particular ranking sheet, hopefully it's mine, and most drafts will generally go in a similar way. You won't see like wildly different evaluations of players from one draft to another, but sometimes you do, and in those instances, you need to react to how your draft is doing things. This is most obvious in super flex leagues. Now. I've been publishing super flex rankings this summer, but I think this year, more than any other in recent memory, superflex rankings they're mostly irrelevant. Genuinely, I think I'm actually doing more harm for people than good by putting together super flex rankings because I'll value quarterbacks a certain way for those rankings. But you could very easily get into a draft this year where quarterbacks are getting drafted over and over and over again in the first few rounds. You could also be in one where the big four drop off the board and then there's Joe Burrow and then there's just not much movement at the position. You need to react to how those drafts are going. In the first instance, where people are drafting quarterbacks early and often, you have to recognize that quarterback is eventually going to run out. There's only so much much supply. Like you can and you probably should draft running backs and wide receivers in the first couple of rounds as opposed to taking a player like Jared Goff the two three turn. But you also have to recognize that quarterback isn't infinite. The position does eventually dry up. So if you're not reactive to what's going on, you're gonna walk away from your superflex draft with Daniel Jones and Joe Flacco as your starters. Meanwhile, if the vibe of the draft is that people are waiting longer than expected to draft that quarterback, you don't want to force the issue because Let's say that you have this giant tier from Patrick Mahomes all the way to like Justin Herbert, who's at like, I don't know, QB sixteen. This is just an example. But let's say that Patrick Mahomes goes in round two. You want to be drafting quarterback at the end of that tier to extract as much value as possible. You might be able to get Justin Herbert in round five, and you see Herbert and Mahomes as relatively interchangeable. That's why they're in the same tier. And again this is just example, it's just a hypothetical. But if Justin Herbert, if you get him in round five, that makes the team who took Mahomes look a whole lot worse because they got Mahomes all the way back in round two, and you see Herbert and Mahomes as interchangeable. If you're not reacting to what's going on in your draft, where drop offs occurrent positions, and how the flow of the draft is going, then you're not extracting as much value as you could possibly extract. Reacting to your draft essentially has to do with tears and knowing what you can get later. If what you can get later has shifted because of how your draft is going down. Then you have to react, and you may need to force the issue a little bit and draft a player above where he's ranked. This, to me is what differentiates a good drafter from a mediocre or bad drafter. Anyone can look at a rankings list and just draft off of that list. But if you don't have a holistic understanding of where these pockets of value might be, then you're not going to be walking away with the most valuable team roster. If you know that you can get a comparable wide receiver around later, then you don't have to force it with wide receiver in the current round. You may rather get another position, even if that player at that other position is ranked below the wide receiver. And a lot of that, if not all of it, is dictated by how your league is drafting. Sometimes you do need to reach, Sometimes you should reach. It's not comfortable, but it's a necessary thing to do. So that's combining both things reaching and reacting. I'll never say to simply reach when there's a positional run. All that does in a vacuum is devalue the player that you're drafting, that you're reaching for. However, if you know that that position is about to dry up, that it's about to hit a huge wall, there's a big tier break, then you do have to reach in those instances. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are bestorting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and for it to follow me on Twitter and on blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week. Everyone greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your holiday weekend and next week football season. In that football season schedule, it officially begins, I'll talk to you then,