Rewind: Relying on the Waiver Wire

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's another Late Round podcast. Rewind I'm not gonna talk a whole lot to introduce this episode because the intro of the episode itself explains things pretty well. But it's a show from a couple of years ago that I did with my colleague Brandon Goadula, and it helps us all understand how easy it actually is to play the waver wire each year in fantasy football. As always, I hope you enjoy and I'll talk to you on Friday with the Weekly Mailbag episode. Things are always easier to predict in hindsight. We see it in fantasy football each year. Why weren't you hier on Jared Goff last year? Someone will ask me, well, I'm sorry, I didn't foresee him having the biggest jump in adjusted net yards per attempt from one year to the next. In NFL history, hindsight can certainly be helpful. We need historical evidence to make a case for the future. We need to look at results to help us with future predictions. Otherwise we'd still assume that RAMS offense is bad. But hindsight can also get us into trouble. Hindsight can force us to create narratives that really aren't true. Take handcuffing and fantasy football is a perfect example. Remember when DeAngelo Williams went off in twenty fifteen after Le'Veon Bell suffered a season ending injury. That year, Williams was drafted higher than usual for a backup because Le'Veon Bell was suspended for the first two games of the season. Williams was the workhorse back for the Steelers in weeks one and two. Once Bell returned, we didn't hear from Williams for weeks. He wasn't relevant again until the Steelers' ninth game of the season, a week after Le'Veon Bell was injured, but from then on he dominated. We look back at that season as a reason to handcuff running backs. Despite running back handcuffing being wildly unsuccessful through the years, people still point to Williams in twenty fifteen as the reason to handcuff. And what's crazy about how we view this in hindsight is that Williams was on the majority of waiver wires when Le'Veon Bell was injured. He wasn't even rostered. People dropped D'Angelo Williams once Le'Veon Bell came back from his suspension, hindsight tells us one thing, and it's not always the same as what actually happened. Brandon Gadoula has been studying this type of bias over on Number five over the last few years. He's not looking at handcuffs, though, he's looking at the waiver wire, and he's looking at real data that shows us how well we've actually collectively been at predicting success off the waiver wire. I sat down with Brandon to talk about his waiver wire studies that he's done, and then I asked him how his results should change the way that we draft our fantasy football squads. You'll definitely think about things differently after hearing Brandon's thoughts. Brandon, what was the motivation for the waiver wire articles that you've been producing on Number five over the last couple of seasons. Was it sort of a direct response to a particular strategy like zero RB? Essentially, why did you start looking into this really unique data?

00:02:42
Speaker 2: I think it was a combination of a few different things. Really. After the twenty fifteen season, which is when I first conducted the study, earlierund running backs were kind of falling out of favor. Just twelve were being taken inside the top two rounds. Nine are inside the top two rounds this year of late June. So yes. Firstly, the motivation to study this came from kind of the more widespread adoption of zero RB. Secondly, you know, I was motivated to see how good we were as a fantasy community at finding waiver wire gems. I didn't have my mind made up one way or the other about our ability to do this. I just kind of wanted to see what the numbers said. My thesis question actually was just what is a waiver wire running back or receiver worth? It was as simple as that. And thirdly, you know, not saying I was the first to do this type of analysis, but I just hadn't really come across any study that actually looked into how waiverwire pickups fared after being added to fantasy teams. Most analysis that I saw or did myself included performances before these players were added to teams, which doesn't help our fantasy squads actually, and it actually hurts our analysis when we look back, and ultimately, you know, I won't lie. Was a little bitter at this point. Twenty fifteen was the David Johnson rookie season. Johnson was someone who I drafted in twenty fifteen. I wasn't alone in that he was a tenth round pick. He produced on a handful of snaps early on, had a return touchdown looked explosive, and where I didn't draft him, I actually added him because he kept looking good. A lot of people actually added him that year after Week two, according to my data, but Bruce Arians didn't want to play him. Johnson didn't get more than ten offensive touches or fifty percent of the snaps until Week thirteen, so on some teams I dropped him by that point. It wasn't easy, but I had to do it in some spots. You can call that bad managing if you want, but there's an opportunity cost for clinging to potential players during a single fantasy season. Then, of course, Johnson was announced the Week thirteen starter because of injuries. He was a top thirty PPR back, and each week from thirteen through sixteen prime Fantasy playoff time, he was a top twelve back and three of those four So my experience with David Johnson as a waiver wire or zero RB candidate in twenty fifteen was pretty different than those who got him entering Week thirteen kind of wrote him to a fantasy championship, and that mattered to me. I think some added contexts like that should matter when we examined prior seasons, examine our ability to prognosticate the same thing happened with Balalpal the next year as well. So you know, this stuff just isn't as simple as clicking ad and riding these players to a fantasy title. So I wanted to study it closer.

00:05:36
Speaker 1: So you're talking about this study, and you're talking about the analysis, can you explain the process that you went through and doing these waiver wire studies.

00:05:43
Speaker 2: The process itself is pretty simple. Using weekly waiver edition numbers from flea flicker dot com, I found the players who were at it at the highest rate in a single week during each season since twenty ten. From there, I examined how they performed after being added to our fantasy team and a big number. I also looked at they're two weeks leading into the addition to compare to see if big performances were triggering the influx. In additions, I do focus primarily on the top thirty editions at each position, so running back and receiver for each season, so that's about two per week during the year. But I do narrow it down at times to see the top ten or twelve ads at certain points in the research. But the reason for the top thirty cutoff just is that I wanted to look at the more obvious editions each season to see others quote unquote like can't miss or must add additions, sort of fared we shouldn't care where rely on like anecdotes where you know I've had I had someone tell me that, like someone dropped Todd Gurley one season and he picked him up and wrote him to a fantasy title, and like, we shouldn't bank on that. So I try to read that stuff out. And the cutoff also helped to weed out some of the more speculative ads, guys who weren't expected to make an immediate impact, not stepping into a bigger role all of a sudden because of injury, you know, kind of like a David Johnson back in twenty fifteen. And you know, frankly, if finding waiver replacements was easier, hard or entirely random, the top thirty should show that.

00:07:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes total sense. So let's start with the high level results. Of the study and then sort of dig into specific examples. What is the data that you've compiled showed you are we actually good at playing the waiver wire? Are there actually viable options at running back and wide receiver to grab off the waiver wire each week?

00:07:27
Speaker 2: So it's a few questions. The first that you know, just kind of at the high level, we're almost always late to react to waverwire pickups, especially at wide receiver. That was kind of an unintended finding of this study, really, but frankly it might be the most important that should shape our sort of retroactive analysis of these players, that their best performances may have come when they were barely owned, let alone started on fantasy teams. It's just good to keep in mind that we're slow to react because when we you know, we can't spot most breakouts or backfield chain until they actually happen, you know, shocker, We can't predict when a starter is going to get hurt anything like that. But you know, by the time we add and start these players, their best weeks are generally behind them because they aren't early round talents who have you know, high volume roles as well, so they just can't really sustain the production that generally leads to the influx in additions, and that means that we're kind of just reacting to peak performances and adding these players just in time for them to be kind of mediocre fantasy assets again. You know, the high level takeaways from a sort of positional standpoint, we can't replicate or replace the ceiling of early round picks with waiver additions. You know, by that, I mean the top waiver claims each year don't score top twelve or top twenty four level weeks at a rate that's on par with the top twelve running backs and receivers in terms of average draft position. That should make sense, that's not groundbreaking. But when you look only at a waiver player's post edition performance and account for missed games from players who were drafted, the top twelve backs and receivers in terms of average draft position just outshine these waiver players, which should at least impact our thinking about passing up those first, second, even third round running backs who kind of have a stranglehold on their backfields entering the season. To put that a little bit more clearly, even with the risk of missing games getting injured, a first round running back is significantly more likely to give you ceiling and floor games than even the top waiver editions. You know, during a season, even when we look only at the time after these waiver players are actually added, actually have a you know, kind of an ostensible path to production, it still favors their early round picks.

00:09:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really interesting. Have you found that there's more success at one position versus the other? And we're talking obviously about running back or wide receivers. In other words, are we getting better value off the waiver wire at running back or at wide receiver?

00:09:59
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we can't really pluck wide receivers off the waiver wire, who add a lot to our teams necessarily from a ceiling perspective, Top waiver receivers just kind of perform like low end fantasy receivers. So they're out there if we're desperate, if we just need like low end flexes who kind of hit or miss. But any receiver who's not really inside the top twenty four just you know, one of the best, most consistent producers. They're all kind of the same from a big picture perspective with hit or miss production. As for running backs, there are more options because running back situations are generally just clearer. A waiver wire running back can be projected for twenty touches play fifty to sixty percent of the snaps the week after being added. That's not how targets go when a pass catchers, you know, when pass catchers get hurt. We saw that in twenty seventeen, when basically every Giants pass catcher was injured. We picked up Roger Lewis. He didn't do much from a fantasy perspective. In fact, he actually killed teams who kind of picked him up and him because he had I think three straight weeks with fewer than three PPR points something crazy like that. So it is very different and it is kind of hard to find receivers off the waver wire.

00:11:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So twenty fifteen, like you said, that was a big year for zero RB, but you know, looking back and in hindsight, it also looks like someone of an outlier season. Did your results show the same. Did twenty fifteen provide a lot more useful waiver wire running backs than other seasons? Did?

00:11:30
Speaker 2: Yeah? A bit, Yeah, especially in terms of like ceiling performances like top twelve weeks. I like to hone in on the four weeks after we add these players, just to see like a short term window of kind of a replaceability for them. Not every addition, you know, as well as expected to take over a huge role for the rest of the season. After all, it could be just a short term injury for a starter. But twenty fifteen's running back class posted a top twelve week thirty two percent the time in that four week post edition window. No other class since twenty ten top twenty three percent, and that came after three straight seasons with a top twelve hit rate below sixteen percent for these additions, So you know, looking back, it probably just felt extra refreshing to find some waiver wire gems after three straight down years from waiver wire running backs. But if we open that up and look at top twenty four performances in that span, the twenty fifteen class still good, just doesn't stand out quite as much from that perspective. They had a forty eight percent hit rate and that four week window, again, forty eight percent of their weeks were top twenty four performances in terms of PPR scoring. In those four weeks after we added them, it was actually forty seven percent and twenty sixteen. It was forty eight percent back in twenty ten, So it wasn't entirely off the charts, or you know, it wasn't an anomaly by any means, but it was probably the best overall waiver class over the past eight seasons. But I think, maybe, you know, perhaps that class came just at the right time, with zero RB sort of gaining traction with injuries in that twenty fifteen season to the early round running backs, and I think it caused us maybe to get a little overconfident with our ability to find these replacement running backs from the waiver wire.

00:13:17
Speaker 1: So I've got to ask you, because I very very strongly oppose handcuffing and fantasy football. As people who listen to the show know, have some of the unsuccessful waiver wire running back claims been the result of just not knowing who a running back handcuff is, or I guess I could say, how often do we see people picking up running backs at a high rate after that running back didn't have a big performance, So essentially someone who's stepping into a situation where his starter got hurt.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: Well, Fazzy Whittaker was the most added. He's the most added running back in a single week in twenty sixteen after Jonathan Stewart got hurt. The next week that year, Jordan Howard kind of became a mustad. So you know, you can take stabs at these guys, but you're you also put yourself at a risk of sort of missing out. So it's one reason the sort of petition your commissioner to give you a free agency budget rather than just waiver order. But also Kerwin Williams was the second most added player in a week in twenty seventeen after David Johnson's injuries, so that you know, those two examples right there kind of might answer your question. But as for Williams, he had no weeks inside the top fifty in terms of PPR ranks from week two, so after his pickup to week twelve, that's ten straight weeks without a top fifty PPR performance. But then in weeks thirteenth through sixteen he was a top thirty six back three times, sort of giving you some low end potential in the playoffs. So it depended on when you picked them up what your expectations were. But you know, for the sample over the past eight seasons, we have two hundred and forty backs who were top thirty editions by my method, two hundred and twenty seven of those players played the week prior to the addition. Only fifty of those so just twenty two percent were worse than the RB thirty six that week prior to being added. So it's not often that we're adding these guys after a dud week for one reason or another. Another thirteen were added at a high rate after not playing the week prior, so if we if we add those in, we have sixty four players in our sample. But these more speculative editions, these kind of unfinished players finished outside the top thirty six fifty six percent of the time. That next week it's fifty or at a sixty four percent actually, if you factor and missed games and the numbers worsen or just stay bad from there. Rbs who had a top thirty six week before being added fall outside the top thirty six just thirty eight percent of the time that first week after we add them to our team. So yeah, in situations where perhaps we didn't see a back take over the week prior, do seem like worse bets When there's that ambiguity than the players who at least gave us one week of good, good production before we added them.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have some sort of sample size in a way of these players producing in some way, shape or form, as opposed to these guys just coming out of nowhere.

00:16:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much it. If we haven't seen it, you know, there might be a reason why we haven't seen it. And you know, the number, the numbers just say that it's not quite as likely that these guys are worth the pick up.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: So the big question to ask, and the final one of them, I'm going to ask you, how do you think that this all should affect fantasy football draft strategy?

00:16:25
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like there's a lot of pressure in the fantasy community to sort of take stands and be bored about our predictions. But I'm of the mindset that we kind of just need to embrace being wrong because we're wrong often, and that we should just account for that. You know, hit rates don't matter if you're you know, just perfect with your analysis can nail every situation. I'm not, and I know that i'm not, so I want to play the percentages. So to me, what these numbers say is that we need to be okay with taking a first round running back, especially like the top four this season. The potential weekly floor and ceiling for these guys, even when you account for those missed games, the potential to miss these games, they just dominate the other running backs. You know, something I didn't even get into is that running backs drafted thirteen through thirtieth, so not even you know, not late round picks, but just not the clear cut guys with great situations, like they're generally worse than the top twelve waiver ads for the year. The reason for that, we can kind of extrapolate is that, you know, we're adding waiver guys when the situation becomes clearer, you know, fifth and six round picks. You know, running backs they don't necessarily have a clear path to production, and they may never get that path clear during the season. Waiver additions at least have that much going for them, you know, at running back, draft them early or just maybe wait and take flyers off the waiver wire when volume pops up at receiver. We kind of also need to draft them early for more realistic ceilings and floors. You know, if you can't get like Le'Veon Bell or David Johnson and Todd Gurley, like, you should still be trying to go with elite wide receivers, but you'll probably want to snare like a low end you know, running back one to maybe like a guy with an ADP of like eight to fourteen that or just what you know, wait as long as possible and try to employ a zo RB full on and then you can avoid wasting waiver capital on receivers. But the third through sixth rounds still offer some good usable receivers, so I think we should load up on them after we get our elite running backs if possible. Just again, relying on waiver receivers not a good bet potentially. The real takeaway is, you know, trying to trade those guys if we can during the season. But implicit in all this is just, you know, don't spend early picks on quarterbacks and tight ends because we're missing out on a chance at the most likely, most realistic elite performers at the positions that matter. And I'm pretty sure you can get on board with that, JJ.

00:18:52
Speaker 1: I sure can. It always comes back to opportunity cost. Brandon, thank you so much for hopping on and talking about these studies. If you guys want links to those studies, feel free to hit up Brandon on Twitter at Godula thirteen. I'm also on Twitter at Late Round QB, and don't forget to subscribe to the Late Round podcast by searching for it pretty much anywhere you can get podcasts. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you later in the week.