805: Mailbag 9/22/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Lateworld podcast with your host Jayja zacher rethas j Shake Zachers. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode eight hundred and five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, we're gonna check out everything going on with Late Round Fantasy Football. You can see all of the offerings over on lateround dot com. Okay, mailbag time, let's do this. The first question this week is from David from Patreon. It says, with the news of Acres being traded to the Vikings, how do you see that backfield shaking out? So? I feel like I talked a ton about Alexander Madison all summer. He really profiled to be an average running back, and I sent a newsletter out showing historical comps for Madison. Essentially, players who had not done a lot for the first handful of years of their career who then got a decent side workload, and there were really no true hits over the last decade among those players. The sample size wasn't huge, but it was still alarming. It was like the Mike Davises of the world. The upside with Madison this year was strictly volume based, and when you draft a running back who's strictly a volume based play, when the talent doesn't exactly line up, it makes that pick a very volatable pick. Now, I could see the upside with Madison. Of course, if he saw that volume, he was gonna be fine. Maybe not a league winner, but fine. And you could have made a similar argument about a lot of the running backs in the range that he was drafted in, which is the running back dead zone. But I said it on a Mailbag episode in August. He really did look like the quintessential dead zone back. He didn't have the talent backbone of like a Kenneth Walker. Now, of course people are gonna say this is all hindsight based, but I think anyone who listened to this show, who read my stuff this summer, you knew that there were question marks with Alexander Madison as a player. I'm prefacing with all of that because I think this acres news matters for Alexander Madison, that lack of talent profile that makes him more vulnerable to losing work. With news like this, it could have been Rashad White. It could have been Jerome Ford players who we really don't know if they're above average or not. It just happened to go down with Madison. Here's the thing, though, I actually don't think that it's some lock that cam Akers is a better player than Madison. Metrics like rushing yards over expected per carry they favor Acres, but some like success rate favor Madison. Madison actually had a higher percentage of rushes go for ten plus and twenty plus yards last year than cam Akers. Madison had the better PFF grade, and it's not as though Acres has been this crazy target earner throughout his career. He averaged a four point six percent target chair per game rate and best season that's actually pretty bad. Both players, in my eyes, are average running backs. I liked Acres more as a prospect. I think Acres is more of an athlete, which could separate him. But I also think that achilles injury really derailed a lot of that momentum. Now, I know the Vikings didn't spend anything to really get Acres here. It was almost a completely worthless trade, but I do think the trade signals that they're not totally content with Alexander Manison, which they shouldn't be. He hasn't been good to start the season, and coaching is gonna drive the value of these players in fantasy football, as is the case with all backfields, but with this one in particular, the talent involved is not as obvious. This isn't Breeze Hall versus Dalvin Cook where we can confidently say Breece Hall is gonna get more work as the season goes on because he's so much better than every other running back in that backfield. So I think that you could argue from that perspective that under this current regime, this coaching staff, which by the way, Kevin O'Connell has a history with Acres, but with this coaching staff, Madison's arrow is pointing downward more than cam Akers just given the actions that they've taken, even though Acres, which is pushed aside from his old team, which I guess means hypothetically Acres would have more upside in this offense to really take it over and to see the volume the Drafters were trying to get in drafts this year with Alexander Madison. But look, if I'm being totally honest, which I'm always honest on this show. Unless I can buy very low on either of these players, or get one of them off waivers or something, I'm not running to the Acres and Madison managers right now asking for a deal. I see this as a potential split backfield between two pretty average running backs. This is not an ambiguous backfield that I'm desperate to buy into, because I'm just not that big of a believer in the talent. This a's questions from Patreon is from Chuck Easy. It says, Hello, JJ, can you explain the rant you were going to give for same position trades? Example Drake London for Johan Dotson. Thanks so. I mentioned to members of the Late Round Fantasy Football Discord earlier this week that I was potentially going to rant about same position trades on the weekly live stream that I do on Tuesday nights because I keep getting same position trade questions. Same position trades are very annoying to me, and this is more redraft focused in Dynasty. It's different when you consider where certain teams are and how competitive they are. But I hate same position for same position deals like a swap of wide receivers or a swap of running backs because there's a guaranteed loser in that deal. One team is not going to win because one player is going to outscore the other. At least, when you trade a running back for a wide out, you're hypothetically attempting to help both teams. Both teams have a shot to get better, which is the entire point of a trade in the first place. Now, honestly, I think a lot of the frustration with those deals is that they just completely lack creativity. It's similar to when people ask me who should I trade this player for. The answer isn't some specific player. The answer is looking at your opponent's rosters and seeing how you can make those rosters better. Now, I know that I'm passionate on this show, and I sound super super passionate right now. I don't want to come across like this is some super strong stance. There are times and instances where it's fine to do one of those positional swaps. A lot of my thinking around why I don't prefer them, though, is because, like I just said number one, both teams do not have a chance to get better in most cases, and I stress in most cases, there are some cases where it does make sense, where it's fine, But then number two just spend a little bit more time crafting up a better trade. Give your trade partner something that they need that you have a surplus of. That's how you're gonna get deals done more consistently. This person is also from Patreon. It's from mark. It says, hey, JJ, what is your rest of season outlook of the currently underperforming tight ends, specifically Kyle Pits and David and Joku? Are there any underlying metrics that should give us confidence? So what I've realized is that I don't think fantasy managers always have the best holistic view of positions. They just kind of have this tunnel vision look and how their team is performing without realizing that other teams are having very similar struggles. And it's always evident at tight end. Look, David and Joku, Kyle Pitts, they haven't been great. I'm not trying to sell this a different way. They have not been good, But don't forget to put their seasons in the context. After week two, David and Joku is actually ninth in receiving yards at tight end because the position is so bad. But you can look at Fantasy Life's utilization report and see for yourself. You can see some underlying metrics that matter. I keep mentioning Fantasy Life because they have free tolls that you can act. This isn't something that only fantasy analysts can see. You can see it too. But check out their utilization report and look at tight end route participation, and Joku is twelfth in the league right now in route participation. Kyle Pitts's second Those are good signs that they're still involved in that offense, are still being used as receiving weapons now. And Joko hasn't seen a very strong target share, but it's still early enough where I'm not overly concerned. Pitts's target share is still a healthy seventeen point four percent, and I think that number is naturally going to increase. No, I don't think either guy is a bye, but there are at least some underlying metrics that sham make us think that they're going to be usable moving forward. But they're not locked in no matter what starters right now this test questions from at underscore. John Marcus on Twitter says, Pat Fryarmouth only has two catches through two weeks. How do you know when to move off a slow starter? To pick up potential breakouts and musk Grave, Laporta, Kincaid, et cetera. So this plays in the last question a bit. How do you know when it's time to move on? Since we have a backbone of someone like Friarmuth being good in the past at a position that's not very easy to find production, I don't think it's smart to get rid of him after just two games. That's especially true when those two games were against very good fronts in San Francisco and Cleveland. The Steelers offense has been putrid, but I do think we need to see how this team performs in a more favorable environment. So let's not give up on Friarmuth just yet simply because of that. But I also think rostering more than one tight end is totally fine. Now, obviously, league sizes and such it's gonna dictate whether or not you can do that. But I have plenty of teams that feature more than one tight end because I want to throw darts and increase my probability of finding one of the late round guys who can actually become an every week starter. Every player is going to be different, but after two weeks, I don't think giving up on Friarmuth makes a whole lot of sense when you put everything into context, even if his underlying metrics all aren't that great. This as question is from Jake. It says, what impact, if any, do you think Kareem Hunt's signing will have on Jerome Ford? So you guys know that I try to think about range of outcomes. I fully recognize that there's a world out there where Kareem Hunt ends up being the one A in this Brown's backfield, but I don't think that's the likely scenario at all, and I'm surprised there are takes out there believing in it. The Browns quite literally chose Jerome Ford over Kareem Hunt this summer. They decided to let Hunt go, and when everyone was just waiting for them to add more depth at running back, they stuck with Jerome Ford. Their actions tell me at least that they really like him as a player. And then Kevin Stefancies come out and he said that Ford is the starter. Every backfield is essentially a committee at this point. The majority of them are Ford's not going to see all of the work in the Browns backfield, but I fully expect him to see the most work. My biggest problem with Ford right now is the Brown's upcoming schedule. They get a pass funal defense this week against Tennessee, so that matchup's not great there, and then it's Baltimore and San Francisco, so it might not be the easiest route to production over the next few weeks. But I do expect him to be the back out of that backfield that you want in fantasy football. This nast question is from Patreon. It's from Carter. It says, Hi, JJ, love all your stuff. I drafted Jerome Ford because you had him as a dart throw and I'm enjoying not having to blow all my free agent budget on him. Thanks. My question is around Quintin Johnston. I know rookies tend to do much better as the season goes on, so you're trying to keep stashing him and hoping or is it time to move on thanks a player like Quintin Johnston, rostering him depends entirely on your team and your league. I know it's an annoying answer, but it's a true answer. If you have a league with short benches and if you need production right away, you might have to drop Johnston for a player like Josh Reynolds. That's just the reality. If you're in a league where benches are deeper than it's easier to just wait for something to happen. But Johnson's been dropping down my rest of season rankings each week. He was a really volatile prospect. I talked about that a lot during draft season. T Higgins was a comp that my models spit out for him, but so was Brashad Perriman. Like if you wanted the guy who had the highest chance to bust in round one, so among Zay Flowers, JSN and Jordan Adison, it was Johnston. He had a great ceiling though too. It just came down to your personal risk tolerance. Now. I was curious about something this week related to this. How predictive is week one and two production for a rookie wide receiver, not in terms of how well they do in their careers, but just rest of season, And it turns out it's pretty predictive. I looked at all rookie wideouts since twenty eleven who played in Week one and Week two. I then looked at their average points per game during those two weeks. I simply compared that number to how well that player performed after week two and through the rest of the season and PPR points per game, So week one and week two points per game versus week three through the end of the season points per game. The correlation between those two numbers the R squared was point four to one, which is pretty strong when we're talking about fantasy football and football in general. So far Johnson's average two point three PPR points per game. No wide out since twenty eleven has averaged more than thirteen PPR points per game from Week three onward, who scored fewer than three PPR points per game and weeks one and two. Most of the big outputs from week three onward came from players who at least did something during the first two weeks of the season, even Amanas Saint Brown, who had that monster rookie season, that monster stretch. He was at four point six PPR points per game across his first two games. Of course, this is looking at week three onward. There are pockets where players can produce, especially at the end of the year. But this is just to say don't ignore this slow start from Quinton Johnston. It is somewhat predict so I can understand needing to drop him right now. I'd try to hold on because it's hard to give up on rookies after just two weeks. But I know that it's not always easy if you need immediate production. That's just how it goes sometimes. The last question this week is from at JH seven to one to two three on Twitter. It says, with the Patriots seeming to need to pass more due to a tough schedule, does it look like Hunter Henry is a top ten tight end for the rest of the season potentially? So I think you sort of answered this one for yourself. The Patriots are passing more due to a tough schedule period. I would be shocked if this pass rate continues. The only team that's run more plays this year offensively while trailing is Houston, and it's by a huge margin. Houston's run one hundred and forty four plays while trailing. New England's at one forty one. And then the next team's on that list. It's the Giants and Bears, and this is pre Thursday night football. Those two teams are at one to twelve. This is why looking at peripheral numbers, this is why it matters. I don't think Henry's going to be a bad fantasy asset rest of season. But he's currently eighteenth and tight end target chair and he's on the fringe in the top ten in route participation. He's just scored twice to start the year, so everyone's really into him because he's actually producing his target chair though has been in a pass heavy offense, which is why his totals have been decent at six and seven targets. But this is why we look at target chair. People always ask me about this. This is the perfect example. The Patriots, for instance, they get the Jets this weekend. What are the odds that New England is trailing consistently by a lot of points in that game that they go with a pass heavy approach against the Jets because to start the year, like I said, they've been trailing more than almost any other team. As a result, they're first in airyards, but they're ninth in air yards per attempt because they're third in total dropbacks, they're fourth and pass rate. When you look at target sha and you use that as a predictor, you're able to be more reactive with your projections. Hunter Henry's average six and a half targets per game. But if he maintains that target share and the Patriots throw the ball less, then that total is gonna drop again. I'm not saying Henry's a bad player to have rostered. I just think this new England offense needs more context right now. He's totally fine to have rostered. His touchdown upside could keep him in the top ten. It could. I've just seen way too many people crowning him prematurely. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Angel to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and also remember to follow the Late Round Fantasy Football account on Instagram, which can be found there at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening, everyone, enjoy your weekend. I'll talk to you next week. I