610: Analyzing 2021's Biggest Hits

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacheri JJ zacher reson What's up Everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at Fandle and at number fire dot com. And this is episode six hundred and ten of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Last week, I talked through some of my biggest misses of the twenty twenty one Fantasy season on today's show. It's a little easier on me because I'll be talking about the things that went right. I do think that you can learn more from the things that you get wrong versus the things you get right. But there's still a lot to learn with the things that go your way. If results are good, we often don't look back at the process to see if we just got lucky. And when we fail to do that, we repeat a process that actually may not be that strong. You want consistent, reliable results. You don't want just straight up luck because that invites variants. So again, it's the same form at his last week's show. I'm just talking about things that went my way versus things that didn't. Now, before we get into those things as you know, it's Conference Championship Week this Sunday. The Rams play the forty nine Ers, the Chiefs play the Bengals, and Fandel is giving you a chance to get in on the action. All you have to do is go to fandel dot com and create your own daily fantasy lineup for the NFL Sunday Million Contest. Play for a chance to win part of the one point five million dollar prize pool. There are a ton of cash prizes to be had, so head over to fandle today and create your daily fantasy lineups. Eligibility destrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandel app for more details. I'm pretty pleased with the Breakout tight Ends episode that I did over last summer. On that show, I gave criteria to use when looking for a breakout tight end or a player drafted in the non early rounds who exceeded ADP expectation by a large margin. The criteria for the tight ends was the following. You ideally wanted your tight end and to have some sort of baseline target share from the previous season, and you also wanted your middle or late round tight end to be young. But those two things weren't nearly as important as two other factors, quarterback play and athleticism. And then all the while, it made a lot of sense to find tight ends who were in a more ambiguous situation, especially if the tight end was the first pass catcher drafted from his team. At the end of that episode, I threw the following stat at people. I said, since twenty eleven, we've had thirty six tight ends get drafted in the double digit rounds who had quarterbacks being selected as top five quarterbacks by average draft position. Of those thirty six tight ends, eight of them were breakout tight ends. That was a hit rate of twenty two percent, which was one of the better hit rates that I could find while doing the ADP analysis. That then led me to talk about two tight ends in particular over the next week or two. And remember this episode dropped in July, but I talked about Blake Jarwin and Dawson Knox. Knox was actually something that I highlighted in week one's fifteen Transaction show, or the episode that dropped before Week one. Now, obviously Jarwin was not the right tight end to get in Dallas, and I amended that take. When we learn more about that situation. The fact that I had Dalton Schultz on like seventy five percent of my rosters this year, that tells me that I was on that situation early. But Knox and Schultz both really ended up exceeding ADP expectation, with Schultz finishing as the tight end five and PPR points per game Knox the tight end nine. A lot of the criteria on that show helped me crush the tight end position in general this year. It allowed me to avoid most of the middle round bus like Tyler Higbe and Noah Fan and I was in on Mark Andrews because he was the first pass catcher being drafted from the Ravens Now. It wasn't flawless, of course, I had a little bit of t J. Hockinson and I didn't have enough Gronk. But I'm very pleased with how the tight end position went for me this year, and I can fully thank that process for finding breakout tight end. Entering the season, I was pretty much at ADP with Austin Eckler in terms of where I was ranking him. I remember getting a mailbag question where someone asked if Eckler had a top three ceiling and My answer was, essentially, if he gets goal line work. We knew Eckler was good, we knew he had a high pass catching ceiling, but in order for him to be a real difference maker, a real elite asset in fantasy football, he needed more touchdowns. Now I'm bringing him up today as a win because I think my process with Eckler is a really good example of properly reacting to what happens at the start of the season. Every year you hear fantasy analysts after Week one. They sit there and they say, don't overreact. It's just one week. But we still need to react. We still can utilize the information that we learned in week one to make better decisions moving forward. And that's what I did with Austin Eckler. On the ten Trend Show after Week one, I talked about Eckler being a by candidate, and it was because in the Chargers Week one game against Washingtingon, while he wasn't targeted, he saw the team's goal line work, and we knew that Eckler was a good pass catcher, So the lack of looks through the air in that game that wasn't that big of an issue. We knew they would come, and when they came, he had a shot to finally combine that work through the air with truly high touchdown upside. I was into buying high on Eckler early in the season because sometimes that's what you need to do when you see a path to an elite season, and as we know, Eckler had that elite season because his coaching staff did not hold him back. It's a good example of simply reacting to peripheral numbers early in the season. Sometimes just one week can lead you to a big return. Naji Harris finished twenty twenty one as the RB three in total PPR points scored at running back, and he was the RB eight in PPR points per game. And what's interesting about that RB eight ranking is that I kept throwing a stat out there before the season about Najie Harris and it specifically called out being the RB eight in fantasy football. Let me read you something that I wrote about Harris being the RB eight before the season. I said, quote back in twenty eighteen, James Connor, in just thirteen games, saw over seventy percent of Pittsburgh's running back rushes and a targets. Here North of ten percent. If we assume Harris hits those marks two relatively modest projections. Giving everything I just said, then he'd joined a list of thirty nine running backs who have hit those marks over the last ten years. Of those backs, only two of them finished outside the top ten at the position in season long scoring. Now, clearly a player being able to hit those marks means that he was able to stay healthy throughout the entire season. Even on a points per game basis. Though those running backs thrived, all but one scored more than fourteen PPR points per game, and thirty three of the thirty nine hit seventeen PPR points per game. Why is seventeen important? While a back hitting seventeen PPR points per game last season would have finished as the RB eight, people were scared off of Harris because of the Steelers offensive line, and it was understandable to project low efficiency for the rookie. The Steelers were unlikely going to get a lot of push. But as we know, volume is what drives fantasy football, not efficiency, and that volumes would allow Nase Harris to have such a strong season, you gotta always buy volume. On last week's episode, I talked about how I probably put a little bit too much emphasis on mobility at the quarterback position this year. To be honest, I was pretty average to below average with a position in twenty twenty one. I won't hide from that. But one player I had a lot of and one player I talked about buying before the season started Jalen Hurts. He was sort of the quintessential laterist round mobile quarterback and he hit. He was the QB six and points per game, and he was less than a point away from being the QB four. I think what got me on to Hurts was pretty obvious. In his four starts in twenty twenty he averaged twenty three points per game. And that was despite the fact that according to Pro Football focus is data of thirty nine qualified quarterbacks, Hurts was thirty fifth and clean pocket passer rating. Plenty of people were off of Jalen Hurts because of his passing, and honestly, entering the year, I was off of Herts long term and in Dynasty for the same reason. If he couldn't get that part of his game together, then there's just a higher likelihood that he wouldn't be a starter long term. An availability over a long stretch of time that matters in dynasty, but in redraft, the chance that he'd be benched was not very high, and even if he did get benched, it wasn't gonna happen right away. And then on top of that, the Eagles had a really nice schedule entering the year, which made me just feel better about the investment because if Hurts started out the season strong statistically, there would be even less of a chance that he would be replaced. That was the logic entering the year. I think we absolutely should use this same logic moving forward. The difference between Hurts and the rookie quarterbacks this past year was that Hurts was not a rookie. We should have more confident and honestly, I think that it should make us feel more comfortable taking players like Justin Fields or Trey Lance and redraft in twenty twenty two. We just got to see how things sort of shake out this offseason. Mobility at the quarterback position is not everything, but it still matters, and Jalen Hurts, who threw just sixteen passing touchdowns this year, he's a perfect example of that. One of the things I realized about halfway through the season was that I didn't necessarily have a stellar year in terms of choosing the right players. Like, yeah, I had some Cooper Cup, I had some Jonathan Taylor. That was all good and fine, but I wasn't going on Twitter telling people that they absolutely needed to draft those players. But what I think I did do well was avoiding the right guys. That's what kept my teams going in redraft this year. The running back dead zone was alive and well in twenty twenty one. It started around Josh Jacobs, who was fine enough this season, but we're talking David Montgomery, Chris Carson, James Robinson, Miles Sanders, Miles Gaskin, Mike Davis. There weren't really league winning players being drafted in that dead zone range. So that was a w for me. Episode five hundred and fourteen covered the running back dead zone and it covered why I think it exists and why you shouldn't take running backs there. And as I've noted on this show, avoiding running backs in that area of the draft, it allows you to find league winning wide receivers that frequently come from those rounds, like Cooper Cup this year. It enhances your odds, it enhances your chances there was one player from that zone in particular that I did not like this year, and that was Mike Davis. I had a really hard time using highest draft capital on a twenty eight year old journeyman running back who really didn't have any seasons under his belt as a true belcow back. Now, I just spoke to the idea of buying volume and fantasy football with Naji Harris. So you might be wondering right now, Well, JJ, shouldn't you have bought into Mike Davis then too, because he was going to see a lot of volume in a black and white world. Yes, but there's a big difference between naj D Harris and Mike Davis. One of them was a top ranked prospect coming out of the draft without any sort of sample in the NFL. The other was a proven journeyman back, maybe an underrated back. Sure, that's fine, but when players go through the career that Mike Davis went through, they're not guaranteed volume. When a team takes a bulldozer of a running back in the first round of the NFL Draft, chances are he's going to see a lot of looks in his offense. Was I sitting here calling Cordero Patterson saying that Patterson was going to have an RB two season. No, I was not saying that. But this is a great example of why talent still matters at the running back position. When a running back isn't anything super special, he's got a chance to lose work period, end of story, even if you can't foresee who that competition is going to be. And that's what's important to keep in mind moving forward. Even if there seems to be a lack of competition doesn't mean there will be. Never dismiss a player's historical profile and the type of player he is. Remember that study I did this past offseason on pass catchers and offenses with rookie quarterbacks. Long story short, over recent history pass catchers associated with offenses who have rookie quarterbacks, they don't perform very well. We rarely get elite seasons from them. The study got me off of Alan Robinson this year. Now, this is a show where I inherently seem like I'm bragging. I understand that, but I had zero Allan Robinson across any of my leagues this season because of that study. Even Jacobe Myers, who played all seventeen games and he gobbled up one hundred and twenty six targets, even he wasn't super relevant Fantasy football. In points per game, he was a wide receiver four, and he was a wide receiver three in total points. Jacksonville wide receivers trash Bears wide receivers. I mean, Darnell Mooney was fine in some because he finishes a fringe wide receiver two, but he was a wide receiver three in points per game. He was a fine pick. He was a solid pick, especially in Bestball, but he was not a need mover. Brandon Cooks was actually the best wide receiver attached to a rookie quarterback this year. He was a lower end wide receiver too, and we've seen some hits like that through the years. No one is saying that pass catchers can't do well with rookie quarterbacks. But if you want an elite season a wide receiver one season from a wide receiver attached to a rookie quarterback, your odds are against you. The same goes for tight ends, though Hunter Henry was fine enough, and even running backs to some degree. The bottom line is that the process for avoiding these wide receivers is going to be profitable in the long run. You're gonna have hiccups like Keenan Allen last season, but those hiccups seem to come from players who are incredibly good and who are in line to see absurd target shairs, similar to what we had with Brandon Cooks. So maybe that's something to a mend moving forward. But generally speaking, being off of pass catchers who had rookie quarterbacks this year, that was a w The last thing I want to get to today is with Michael Pittman. Pittman was one of the poster boys for me with my wide receiver breakout criteria on episode five hundred and twenty six, I laid out some criteria to look for when spotting breakout wide receivers or wide receivers drafted after round five who exceed ADP expectation by one hundred and more points you should be looking for year two wide receivers. You don't need to worry about quarterback ADP like you do at tight end, so Carson Wentz's low ADP was not that big of a deal. And when wide receivers drafted after round five were the first pass catchers being drafted from their team, their hit rate increased. That was Michael Pittman two. The only thing that Pittman didn't totally fit was that typically these breakout wide receivers don't come from nowhere. They traditionally have had a previous season with a decent target share, and Pittman wasn't quite there, even when you consider he was banged up as a rookie. I think that was a win overall for that process. I'll try to go over those studies every year because it's good to refresh our brains on the topic. But that specific study was wh I had a lot of Michael Pittman this year and Michael Pittman finish as a wide receiver two. Again, just like last week's show, I didn't go over everything, but I think I covered a wide variety of things that I got right and why I got them right, so that we can repeat those same processes in the future. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round 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 everyone. We got a mailbag show later in the week. I'll talk to you then.