797: Mailbag 9/8/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacheras j Jake Zachers. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode seven and ninety seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, I just wanted to remind you that even with the Draft guide being far less relevant these days, there are still ways to support me and this show, all while hopefully winning fantasy titles. Check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. I've got in season weekly rankings, rest of season cheat sheets, livestream q and as, and more. You can also access the Discord, which is honestly such an awesome community. Obviously I'm biased, but I truly feel that's the case. Just this week, someone posted in a Discord quote, this is the best fantasy space that I found, and it's not even close. Everywhere else people are rude as hell to each other. Late Round QB has a fam vibe going in here. You can check all of this out over on Late Round dot com. The first question this week is from Logan and it says, hey, JJ tunes for thanking in. How long is too long to keep a young tight end like Dalton Kinkaid on my bench. I know rookies normally take time to ramp up, but in my league, we only have five spots, so bench space is at a premium. What indicators can I look to early in the season to help make decisions on these young bucks? So I got a ton of questions this week about what indicators to look at early on in the season to see if a player is going to be good or not? And I got questions like this one, when do I know when to drop a player. I'll be talking through a lot of these indicators on the fifteen Transactions Show each week. You're gonna want to look at things like snapshare routes, run route participation, and the more obvious ones like target share and actual production. There's just no blanket answer for how long is too long to keep a young tight end on my bench because it depends entirely on where that play is trending, and it depends entirely on who you'd be replacing that player with, which is what my rest of season rankings can be helpful for. But I wanted to kick off today's show with this question because the answer is always going to be It depends. Fortunately, there are things that we can look at to see if there's potential production coming or if a player like Kincaid or whoever else is going to be a bust. We won't be right about these guys all the time, but we'll be right more often than not. The next question is from at Stacemaster twenty one on Twitter says, who's a great grab and stash for the taxi squad before the season starts and they lock sometime? I've been stashing in dynasty leagues recently? Is Chris Brooks, who's a running back for the Dolphins. I know a lot of you guys probably have never even heard of Chris Brooks. Now, the chance that Brooks really pans out is not great. He wasn't invited to the Combine and he wasn't drafted either, so he's not even in my prospect model's database. With that being said, we should always be looking to target and big a his backfields in fantasy football, and Miami's definitely ambiguous. I talked about that with Devon Ah Chain on the fifteen Transaction Show, and if you look at this Miami backfield, you've got a whole lot of speed, but you don't have a lot of size. Raheem Mostert, he's a smaller back. Devon ah Chain obviously a smaller back. Savon Ahmed is also a sub two hundred pound back. Chris Brooks is a big boy. He weighed in over two hundred and twenty pounds, So he offers something different within this ambiguous backfield. And that's literally enough for me to be intrigued because analytically, not a whole lot stands out. But if the Dolphins decide that they want some change of pace bruiser, maybe he ends up getting a shot eventually. And let's not pretend that this system has never produced some super random running backs. Look at the Shanahan tree. We get random running backs giving us production all the time. So as a random end of bench stash you can get for next to nothing in Dynasty, why not wait? In see this as question is from at Honolulu Past Blue. It says, would you consider holding two defenses if you drafted the Cowboys as defense seven but the Ravens were there with the last pick and you scoop them up for Week one only? Or would you drop one for one of your waiver wire pickups from fifteen transactions. Roshawn Johnson is on waivers. Thanks JJ. You don't need multiple defenses at least this time of year if you're planning ahead, if you're looking forward to the playoffs later in the season, that's one thing. But streaming defenses is not overly difficult. And I say that because over on my other podcast, Living the Stream, we've been tracking our streaming defense picks for years, and when the seasons all said and done, we usually have the equivalent of a defense three or defense four in points per game, meaning for absolutely zero cost, we're matching production of almost every fantasy defense out there, aside from the truly elite ones. I would much sho'd rather have a player like Roshan Johnson than any defense in fantasy football, any of them. You have way more to gain if a running back breaks out than if a defense ends up being one of those defenses that you can plug and play. Focus on using a different defense each week and streaming the position. It's a winning strategy. This ask questions from Andre and it says hi JJ, I was looking to go anchor running back at my draft and ended up having to draft my running backs later Pierce Montgomery and Rashad White. My question for you is around your recommendation to stash Sean Tucker. I know you've always said that handcuffing is a floor play, but does your philosophy change at all with ambiguous backfields instead of just stashing for injury. Thanks. My philosophy generally does not change. No. I've said this before, but we have to remember that ambiguous backfields are not locks to have one player emerge. It's just that we're targeting these types of players in these backfields in the middle rounds over a middle round running back with a clear cut starter, because these ambiguous backfields simply hit at a better rate. There's a chance that we see Chicago with the committee all year, or there's a chance at Miami's the same. There's still good targets to have in your bench, though, because there's a ton of value to gain on climbable depth charts. With Rashad White and Sean Tucker, what you're really saying is that you believe a back is going to emerge from that backfield if you have both of them, Because I would be shocked if you're going to start Sean Tucker and Rashad White on the same season long team this year. I would be shocked if that's an optimal move. But since we're chasing sealing more than floor, you're better off having one player from multiple backfields in order to maximize the upside. In order to maximize the potential of hitting on more than one backfield, I also want to do a better job of being clear with expectations this year. I'm saying to add Sean Tucker because I think he's a good player and he's an interesting stash. But the chance at Tucker pans out not very high, and I also don't think that that Bucks team envisions him being a huge pass catcher. That's part of the reason that I've been high on White this offseason. He's a good receiver. I feel good about that role. So if you have White, I would not be adding Sean Tucker. If someone like Roshawn Johnson is out there. Not only do I like Johnson more than Tucker rest of season, but he'd fit this kind of build a lot better. And I know that it can be uncomfortable, and yes, there are some league types, some instances where you might want to play it super safe and get a handcuff, but the name of the game is first place, not fourth or fifth. This sash question is from at user three five three five nine to three. Are you concerned about the Cowboys change and offensive coordinator how a lower pace in the addition of Brandon Cooks could impact the pass catchers, primarily CD Lamb. You'll hear some chatter about the Cowboys on the Late Round Perspective show that drops after this show, but overall, I'm not that concerned about the passing volume. Definitely not for Cedee Lamb either, because he's gonna get his In my opinion, the Cowboys aren't really built to be super run heavy. Now, others may disagree with that idea, and again this gets talked about a little bit in the Late Round Perspectives episode, but if you look at this team's personnel, it doesn't really scream ground and pound. I also don't think that people realize that Dallas wasn't some super pass heavy team. Last year they ring nineteenth and pass attempts. They had two more pass attempts than the Commanders. They were actually twenty second in pass rate. I actually think there's a decent chance that we see more pass attempts this year for Dallas than what we saw last year. Like I said, they weren't super pass heavy last season, and the personnel tells us that they're gonna throw the ball. Maybe I'm wrong though, but it's a reason to be bullish enough on the pieces within this offense. The sus quest is from at AJ's FFB Madness. It says, do you expect Van Jefferson to get most of the target share? Does he even play the cup position? If not, why would he get more target share with Cooper Cup out? This is a good exercise on just projection building in general, so let's dive in. No, Van Jefferson does not play the same role as Cooper Cup. Jefferson's played no more than thirty five percent of his snaps from the slot in a given season. Cup has never been below fifty six percent. Cup can destroy opponents in that area of the field. Jefferson's usually a perimeter guy. So why would he get a higher target share with Cooper Cup out? And the answer to that is team competition. Every team has a one hundred percent target share. Target shairs are going to add up to one hundred percent because there's a calculation of individual targets divided by total team targets. With that being said, it's time for one of my really really awful analogies. Pretend your family has a tradition where you alway eat an apple pie every Thanksgiving. Like you, your three siblings, and your parents, you destroy a pie. I honestly, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get through this without laughing because it's such a bad analogy. But look, you've got six people eating a pie. Two of them are parents, they're adults, two of them are teenagers, one's like a seven year old, and then the last one's a toddler. Your goal is to eat this pie, all of it. This is your tradition. Your family eats pie, the entire thing. Now, clearly the toddler, the seven year old, they're not gonna be able to eat that much, so you plan for the teenagers to eat more than them, and then maybe the parents the adults, to eat more than the teenagers. This is just a really weird family. Now imagine a world where everyone is ten years older and they're still going through the same really weird tradition. The teenagers are now in their twenties, that seven year old almost graduating high school. The toddler is now a middle schooler. All of a sudden, those parents, the ones who are eating the most pie by far ten years ago, they're now eating less pie because there are other people in the family who are capable of eating a lot of pie. This is how it works with projections. As odd as that analogy was, when Cooper Cup is active, he's like one of the parents, He's gonna gobble up a huge chunk of the target share pie because he's good. In the parents' case, they're just bigger, they're older, they can consume more food. But with Cup, he's talented. He's good at what he does, so he sees a higher target share. Meanwhile, if there were other players who were also talented, they'd start to take up larger portions of the pie too. The secondary players and offenses, they're like teenagers turn twenty something year olds or the seven year old turned teenager. Okay, I gotta be done with this analogy. Basically, without Cooper Cup in that lineup, he's taking twenty five to thirty percent of the team's targets with him, those have to go somewhere because remember everything equals one percent. I'm not saying that targets aren't earned, they're earned. Target share, though, always equals one hundred percent. So from that perspective, look at LA's weapons. You've got Van Jefferson, Tyler Higbee, pookin Akua two to at Well and their running backs. Jefferson no longer is competing with Cooper Cup for target shair, so we naturally will see a higher target share in that offense, even if he doesn't play the exact same position and do the exact same things. Because the alternatives to Van Jefferson are not proven players, they might not even be good. It's the same deal with Tyler Higbee. From a projection standpoint, Higby's going to see a jump in target chair without Cooper Cup, and from a projection standpoint, two to at Well and pookin Akua all of a sudden have more intrigue because that thirty percent target chair that Cooper Cup had, some of that's naturally gonna go to them because it has to go somewhere, and now the Cooper Cup is out, those guys are gonna be on the field more. Now it's important to not confuse all of this with actual production. Van Jefferson may see a higher target shair. That doesn't mean that he's gonna see better production. The offense might be a lot worse without Cooper Cup. It probably will be. So he could see a twenty five percent target share and still not be really really amazing in fantasy because the offense could just be really bad. But strictly from a target shair perspective, he's becoming a more talented player in his offense compared to where he was with Cup, and talent is leading to that opportunity. And for the record, don't forget about Pookinakua's name. It wouldn't surprise me if he's a popular waiver ad next week. Maybe it's gonna be two to at well. But Naku is a really good player. He can sort of play that Robert Woods role within this Rams offense. The last question this week is from at ABQ Joe underscore arn It says, what's the one take you've had this preseason that scares you the most? The thing that scares me the most is how the things that I communicate can then be taken and consumed Because sometimes I don't do the best job communicating things, and sometimes I say things and people will understandably run with it. It's easily the toughest part of my job each season. This is the downside of what I do. Nothing is more frustrating than being misinterpreted and misrepresented. And I'm not saying that only happens because you, a listener, misunderstands me. I'm not putting this on you a lot of times. It's just the way that I present information. That's why I try to be as detailed as possible. And this is honestly why I really like late round perspectives because I can share my thoughts in a more conversational way. You can sort of see how I'm viewing some of these players in a different way. But to be a little bit more direct with this answer, anytime you're down on a player who's objectively talented, that's always scary. Like Dereck Henry, I opted to go with wide receivers instead of Henry for the most part this year, aside from best ball managed leagues here, that's scary. The Buccaneers wide receivers. I was lower on them versus the consensus. DeAndre Hopkins, same deal. Those players scare me where we have evidence of them being very, very good, but I was lower on them versus consensus for one reason or another. But I'll be honest here. I don't fully fade or fully target players because average draft position changes. Some drafts, I end up getting guys that I didn't intend to get because their cost becomes attractive. That's also something I talk about on this week's Late Round Perspectives episode, which drops this afternoon. That's what we call a teaser in the business. But that's it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You don't to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB and follow the Late Round Fantasy Football Instagram account at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening to everyone. Enjoy Week one, have a great weekend. I'll talk to you next week.