763: Mailbag 5/12/23

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha James Jake Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacher eeson in this episode seven hundred and sixty three of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. The Prospect Guide is done and the Late Round Draft Guide is available for pre order. You can purchase both of them over on lateround dot com. The Prospect Guide gives you what you need for your rookie drafts, and the Draft Guide is a huge strategic breakdown for season long leagues. Here in twenty twenty three, you get everything that you need for your redraft leagues. And if you're worried it's not gonna be worth it, just know that last year's Late Round Draft Guide, in its first year of existence, ended up winning the Fantasy Sports Writers Association Award for Best Publication, so there's at least something pointing to it being worth it. Anyway. Check them both out over on the Lateround dot com. Let's get to these mailbag questions. The first question this week is from twitters from at Jacob Deal Underscore Film. It says, what's your opinion on drafting for value over need In rookie drafts, the answer to this is almost always drafting for value. That's the direction that I almost always go in. There are times where you may be looking at two players within the same tier, or maybe just one tier apart, and the one player who's ranked a little bit lower fits your roster build a lot better than the other. That's fine, that's not that big of a deal if you go with that inferior player, especially when you're in the later rounds of your draft. At that point it really doesn't matter. But when you're forcing the issue, that's where I think there's a problem. When you're forcing the kneed issue. Like if you don't need a running back and you really need a wide receiver and you pass on Bijon Robinson for Jackson Smith and Jigba, that's a problem. That's bad process. That's drafting for need rather than value. And look, the fact is there are fewer alternatives in rookie drafts versus your season long drafts or a startup draft. The player poll is smaller, meaning it's then harder to actually draft for need because you're less likely to find an alternative who's at the same level as the player that you're thinking about taking. Like in a redraft league in the first round, there are typically multiple running backs and wide receivers that you're choosing from. In a rookie draft, there's only one b Jon Robinson. The gap from Robinson to the rest of the pool is much more significant, generally speaking, than what you're gonna see from a redraft league. You can always fix your dynasty roster with trades. Draft for value and trade for need. This as question is an email from Eric. It says, from listening to things, a lot of people keep saying that a rookies landing spot isn't great in twenty twenty three, but could be great in twenty twenty four. Tajy Spears is one example. Are Marvin Mims of the Broncos cut Sutton after this season? Which of this year's rookies would you go for in dynasty drafts based upon having a clearer path in twenty twenty four? I e. Who are the best stashes now? I think some stashes are more obvious than others. People are pretty high on Chase Brown, who I think is good. Taj Spears is one who you mentioned, but instead of going with those more obvious players, I'm gonna give you three lower key ones. One of them is Charlie Jones. He's an older prospect who really only gave us one big productive season in college, and that was last year when he transferred to Purdue. But t Higgins and Tyler Boyd are both free agents next year, so if Jones shows up, he could allow the Bengals a little bit more flexibility. Now, he didn't look great in my prospect model because of that late breakout, but he's at least someone to consider throwing a dart at. One player I found myself taking a ton this year, though, is Tyler Scott. It's wild to me that his teammate at Cincinnati, Trey Tucker, got drafted before him. Scott had by far the better production profile. He has a reasonable breakout age, and he's an early declare. He landed in Chicago, and Darnel Mooney and Chase Claypool were free agents next year, So if Tyler Scott comes in and plays well, he could realistically have a starting role in twenty twenty four. And then one player I haven't talked about at all on this show or even to my prospect guy because he didn't go to the NFL combine. I'm kind of intrigued by Lou Nichols. Aj Dillon is a free agent next season. Aaron Jones should be around, but he's going to be twenty nine years old. In December. The Packers took Nichols in the seventh round out of Central Michigan, and he really has an impressive production profile. He's two hundred and twenty pounds and he had a best season reception share in college of almost fifteen percent. After plugging him into my model because he wasn't in the model pre draft. His top comp is Jayajaii, which isn't that bad of a comp when you consider where Nichols was drafted. A JII had some fantasy production throughout his career. Anytime we get size with a receiving profile, we should pay attention. He's clearly just a dart throw. The chance of him hitting is not very high, but there are definitely reasons to believe that he should be rostered in Dynasty, at least in deeper leagues. This says questions from Patreon. It's from Clay. It says, hi, JJ, your prospect guy didn't include Khalil Shakir, which means he's statistically unlikely to be fantasy relevant. I can't ignore the constant hype drum beat though. Is he a buy or a sell? So here's the deal. I've gotten questions about the Prospect Guide in Khalil Shakir a ton over the last couple of months, and I totally understand why. But in the prospect Guide in the year two model section, I had to draw the line somewhere with which players would be featured, and he just missed the mark because his year two score doesn't look that good. I don't know how it would look good. He barely played as a rookie and it's not like he was a Day two pick last year. Now, with that being said, my prospect model did like Shakir quite a bit last year. For a Day three pick, he was one of my highest drafted rookies last year. It was him, Kyle Phillips, and Isaiah Pacheco. One of his comps in the model was Cooper cup. I thought that he would go earlier than he did in the draft, and then the Bills just didn't use him that much. So my general take on Shakiir is this. I like him as a player and I am absolutely rooting for him. I've got him stashed in leagues, and I think that you should too, if he's cheap enough. But we have to ground ourselves with reality here too. Shakiir has a year two model score in the sixty seventh percentile. Among all the wide receivers in the Prospect Model with a year two score in the seventieth percentile or lower, only one has given us a season of fourteen PPR points per game or more, and year two or year three that was Alan Hearns, and then only Cecil Shorts and Willie Snead along with Hearns have given us a season of twelve or more PPR points per game. If you were with me last year, you know that I talked about Shakir the same way that I talked about Isaiah Pacheco. I was very high on him. So I'm sitting here right now saying that it's probably going to be an l I mean, he was a Day three pick, so whatever. But the chance of him really really hitting is not very great. And I don't want to just hold on to a take like that when we have this new information. That new information being that he didn't do a whole lot last year and that's important. There's a lot of signal to that. Wide receivers who do very very well during their rookie season do anything during their rookie season, they have better hit rates down the line than guys who don't do a lot at all. Now, with all that being said, I do think he can be a productive enough player. The Bills didn't add a slot guy in the draft, though They're gonna use Dalton Kincaid there in some way, Shakir can walk in and maybe see a twelve to fifteen percent target share this year. So if you want to get him for very little, I'm totally for it. Even though his chance of hitting isn't very high. It's not like the market is sitting there though, saying that his chance of hitting is high. This isn't like Gabe Davis last year. You don't have to spend a lot to get Khalil Shakir. So I'm never gonna stop someone from getting him, especially because I liked him as a prospect. I still think there's some shot for him to be like a wide receiver three type, but a true difference maker in fantasy football that seems unlikely based on history. This says, question is from Brandon on Patriot on It says, how do you go about projecting a player like Calvin Ridley who missed significant non injury related time and is also on a new team. You cross your fingers and you hope for the best. In all seriousness, though projections are not an exact science. There's a lot of subjectivity that goes into them. I've done shows in the past on the process of building projections. I think the most recent was episode three hundred and seventy three with Rich Rebar that was back in twenty twenty. But we're making educated guesses when we're building them. I mean, maybe educated guessing isn't the right way to phrase it. If you have a projection system and it's thoughtful and it works off of the right things, that's going to be better than someone building projections manually. Like with my projections, I start at the team level and I work my way down to the quarterback level, and then I get to dipping things up between running back, wide receiver, and tight end. And to get the team level numbers, I've got some regression related formulas that I use to help with quarterback numbers. It's the same thing. And then the big thing to figure out with the skill position guys is market share, statistics, target share, and backfield chair. That's what drives a player's projection most because volume drives production, so some players are easier to project than others. We have a pretty good idea of the type of target share and efficiency a player like Justin Jefferson's going to see this year. His touchdown total might fluctuate a little bit because that's less stable, but from a volume perspective, he's been in the twenty eight to twenty nine percent target share range in each of his last two seasons. Projecting him for a twenty eight percent target share isn't that much of a stretch. That's what we've seen over the last two years. Calvin Ridley's projection is going to have more volatility, and this goes for any player who's in a new environment or who's coming off an injury. You're looking at what they did historically on the volume front. For Calvin Ridley, he saw target share per game rates of fifteen percent and seventeen percent as a first and second year player, and then he blew up in year three and he had a twenty five percent rate. He started to see good volume in his fourth year, but he didn't play that much, and then last year he was out. So chances are he's not gonna be under a fifteen percent target share, right, we know that's his absolute floor. He did that as a rookie. He's never been below that number during his entire career. He may not get to a twenty five percent share, though, when you consider that he's only done that once across an entire season, he hasn't played in like two years, and he's on a new team, and then you factor in the competition on said team. So when you play it all out, Ridley's likely in that twenty one maybe twenty two percent target share group, and then from there you can use some regression analysis to figure out his yards per target, which feeds into his total yards, which feeds into his projected touchdowns. Says a very generalized way of talking about projections, but hopefully it helps a little bit with a player like Calvin Ridley. This escourse is from at f F Underscore Coop ninety nine. It says, is it better to draft for landing spot or build slash, draft capital, slash, et cetera when drafting late round running backs in your opinion, is a Zach Evans or Sean Tucker in a climbable depth chart better than an Evan Hall, Chase Brown Eric Gray, who are buried but statistically better bets well. I think we should first understand that there's some opinion on what's a good landing spot and what's a bad landing spot. Like you mentioned Chase Brown here and him being buried, but he could emerge sooner than we think. I think the landing spot in Cincinnati's actually a really good landing spot. But the way I approach the late rounds at running back is that if there's a screaming value or like an obvious late round pick that I really like, I'll get him regardless of landing spot. Aaron Jones back in the day is a really good example of that working out. But if there's not that obvious guy, and I don't think there's a ton of them this year, I think it makes plenty of sense to elevate later round running backs based on landing spot and immediate opportunity, because your goal with those types of players is to watch them appreciate in value to extract value from them. We know the hit rates for third and fourth round rookie picks is really really low. So rather than hold on to these assets and just hope for the best for multiple years, it's important to know what we've got, but also to see them get better in value immediately. Of course, you can combine those two things too, and you get a very obvious target when those two things collide. That's what Isaiah Pacheco was for me last year. He was someone I liked more than the consensus as a player, and he also had a great landing spot. But overall, it's definitely a it depends type of situation and answer. If there's someone who's obviously great, go get them. If a player is just maybe a little bit better based on your process, but he's buried, likely won't get that much opportunity. It's not a bad idea to side with the guy who might be a little bit worse, but as a clearer path to year one playing time, because again it's a late round Darthrow, we want to see these guys appreciate in value, and at the end of the day, it's not like our evaluations are going to be right all the time anyway. This last question is a short one is from at Austin Abbott ff it says, JJ, why do you only date back to twenty eleven? Is that when you started collecting data for your model? So yeah, I always please date things back to twenty eleven. You guys hear me talk about that all the time on this show, since twenty eleven, all the way back to twenty eleven, et cetera, et cetera. I go back to twenty eleven, though, because that's around the time that the NFL became a more past friendly league. When I relate current data across some sort of timeframe, I want to do it in a way where I'm not comparing the twenty twenty two season to like two thousand and one, because those are two totally different eras. In the NFL, things are a lot different now. I also think it's helpful to have some sort of stopping point with data. I'll go further back if need be, and I use data beyond twenty eleven to test things, but for purposes of communication and the things that I talk about in some of the studies that I do, I've found that twenty eleven is just a logical place to start. That's all it is. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get 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 forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week. Everyone greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you next week