844: Mailbag 12/1/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with with your host JJ zacherathas J shake zacher reefon What's Up Everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode eight hundred and forty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. What's Up? Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, I want to send a reminder about the Late Round Fantasy Football newsletter. I've been sending emails out to subscribers all season long, mostly the fifteen Transactions column, but with the season getting closer to ending, things are going to be changing. During the off season, I often send email blast about prospects, the kinds of things that I'm working on with my prospect models, and more. To get an idea, you can check out the newsletter archive on lateround dot com and while you're there, subscribe to the newsletter. It's totally free. The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at Brandon Underscore Warren. It says, if I need a quarterback in redraft, who do you think I should target as best value for the price in a trade. So I've got two answers for this one. The first is that I'm still buying brock Purty. I know the last time that we saw him he only scored ten and a half fantasy points. But San Francisco just happened to score three of their touchdowns on the ground in that game against Seattle. It was also kind of a weird game script overall. When you look at playoff schedules, the forty nine ers do have a tough Week sixteen against Baltimore, but they're Week fifteen, and they're Week seventeen. It's against Arizona and Washington, so maybe find a replacement for that Week sixteen game. But leading up to that point in time, they get the Eagles this week. That's a good matchup for quarterbacks, and then at Seattle again next week. Perty's just a solid option. The schedule is still pretty favorable, so he makes sense coming off of a down game. Now. The other quarterback that I want to bring up Justin Fields, and it leads me to a question that I got on Patreon from Austin. He asked, Hey, JJ, how are you treating Justin Fields in Dynasty right now? Is he a sell or a hold? I have him and Deshaun Watson as my quarterbacks in a one quarterback league. So sin as I'm talking about Justin Fields here, I figured i'd answer that question too. I think Fields is a screaming by candidate in redraft. And I don't like to throw this term around loosely, but Justin Fields is a potential league winning by in season long leagues. And I say that from the perspective of sealing, of course, And I also say that from the perspective of how he's being viewed right now coming off of a bad game. Since returning from his injury, He's played two games. In those two games, Fields has run the ball eighteen times and twelve times. He scored twenty one point two and ten point six points in those two contests, so he had one good performance and one bad one. Mobility at quarterback is very important in fantasy football. And let me just give you a very easy example as to why from twenty eleven up until now we've had one hundred and sixty one instance is where a quarterback ran the ball more than ten times in a game while throwing at fifteen or more times. Fifteen pass attempts is not that many in a game at all, Fields has been at twenty three and thirty seven pass attempts over his last two games. For example, using that threshold was just remove any weirdness from this sample. So one hundred and sixty one instances where a quarterback ran the ball more than ten times. Essentially, of those one hundred and sixty one, what do you think the average points per game is? So, since twenty eleven when a quarterback ran the ball more than ten times in the game, how many fantasy points do you think that those quarterbacks scored on average? You ready for the answer, It's twenty three. Now take this with a grain of salt. For sure, in that sample you have players like Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson. They're gonna score a lot of fantasy points. But even if you want to just limit that sample to only justin fields and games where justin fields is played, where he hit those marks, you're looking at twenty three and a half points per game. Now, we can't guarantee that Field is going to run the ball more than ten times per contest. Moving forward, my point is that he is running the ball a lot. He's run the ball thirty times over his two games since his injury, and he's done it in half of his games this year. That's gonna give him a really nice floor ceiling combo. And then on top of that, the Bears have a really good Week sixteen and seventeen schedule. They get Arizona in Atlanta. Those are two teams that we shouldn't be scared of. So Fields could really come through big time this year for your fantasy teams. Now, as it relates to dynasty in a single quarterback league, like this question is asking, you're asking if he's a sell or a hold? Right you ask me if he's a sell or, If Justin Fields is a hold, I think he's a buy. This is what I'm talking about when I said from the perspective of how he's being viewed right now, Notice how in that question by isn't even one of the options. It's to sell or to hold him because people are worried about Justin Fields long term. He's got a questionable future in Chicago. In fact, i jj sitting here right now, I think the Bears should probably move on. But chances are Fields is going to be a starter somewhere next season. There's no doubt in my mind that he's a top thirty two quarterback in the league. There are tons of teams who could use Justin Fields. It's just that Chicago's in a pretty unique position to get a more reliable passer, and the Bears could also just keep Justin Fields. I'm just saying that, no matter the outcome here, Fields is very likely going to be a starter somewhere next year. In a single quarterback league, It's really not a big deal to buy into Variances at that position. In super flex leagues, I can understand the hesitation a little bit more, but I would expect him to probably have another couple of years as starter, and when he plays, we know that he's an effective fantasy quarterback. Now. I know that I'm zigging while others are zagging with this take, but that's also the point. This is a game about buying and selling versus expectation, and I think that Justin Fields in a lot of formats is a buye This that'st question from Twitter. It's from at Michael Rifkin. It says, is Aaron Rodgers worth a stash? So I guess I've got to talk about Aaron Rodgers. I would give it a less than one percent chance that we're actually talking about starting Aaron Rodgers in a meaningful fantasy football playoff matchup like in your normal standard fantasy league, Because not only is it going to be hard for him to find the field, He's coming off of an achilles injury. That's the number one reason why it's going to be hard for him to find the field. But on top of that, the Jets need to be competitive for him to play, or at least that's the expectation in New York. Not only is four and seven right now, but if we assume Rogers doesn't go until maybe like Christmas Eve, then they probably have to win at least two of the next three and they get Atlanta, Houston, and Miami. Now that's totally possible, that might have and it's the NFL, but I would imagine that they're gonna be underdogs in each of those games. Not only that, but in situations like this, you have to think about the information that you have when you make a decision, and that decision is whether or not you're gonna actually play Aaron Rodgers in your starting lineup. Rogers would be very tough to trust in his first game coming back. You'd have to see him perform well before you even remotely trust him. In your fantasy lineup. If he does well, maybe you play him in the next matchup. The problem is, let's say that he comes back in Week sixteen, which is a Christmas Eve matchup against the Commanders. Okay, you're not gonna play him against the Commanders though, it would be so insanely risky, even though the matchup is amazing. It would be so risky to play Aaron Rodgers in that spot. Well, the next week, Championship Week in most leagues, they get Cleveland. You're not gonna want to start Aaron Rodgers coming off of this achilles injury against the Browns more than likely. The only way that I could maybe see this being a thing is if he comes back in week fifteen against the Dolphins. You don't play him that week. Though. Let's say he does Okay, he looks fine, and then he gets Washington the next week. That's a really good matchup, but so many things have to go favorably in order for that to happen. I just think that you're better off stashing a running back handcuff because an injury to a running back that's more likely than a predictably usable performance by Aaron Rodgers in week sixteen. That's just my two cents. It's a great story and all, but I think that we need to be as realistic as possible. Your bench space is valuable. This last question from Patreon, It's from Adriel. It says, with many teams like myself in the thick of the playoff push, how do you feel about players who have had favorable matchups and put up duds recently? Puka Nakua comes to mind. Yeah, Look, it's really hard to answer a question like this when it's so broad. I think every play needs to be analyzed individually. Otherwise it's just impossible to give a blanket answer to something like this. But let's just use Pookin Nakua as an example here and walk through the process that I would take in order to know if he's someone to trust or not trust down the stretch when I go and make buy and sell transactions for the fifteen transaction show, I'm looking at players who have either been performing really poorly or performing really well. That's sort of the starting point, and Nakua of late has not been that good in Fantasy football. He scored single digit PPR points in three of his last four. That tells me that there's a chance, a chance that he's a bi low candidate. Right. A lot of people can get scared off of poor production, but we know that there's some variants involved in fantasy football. Crap happens. A player might underperform because of matchup, because of circumstance. There are a lot of reasons. The first question I'm gonna ask is if the volume is there with Nakua. He's one of five wide receivers this season to have a twenty percent target share and every single game played. Volume has not really been a problem for Nakua. He's seen seven, seven, seven, and eight targets over his last four that's not bad at all. Now, from there, I'll ask myself if circumstance has had anything to do with the poor performance and with Nikua, I think the answer is kind of yes. Matthew Stafford was banged up in one of those four games. He didn't play in one of them either, Nakua and the other two outings had one good performance and one bad one. You can also look at how real the performances were during this stretch for Nakua. He's been a low end wide receiver two. According to Pro Football Focus, as expected fantasy points model, meaning where he's seeing targets, how he's being used. He should have produced over thirteen pper points per game. Instead he's been at nine point seven. So Nakua has played under expectation of late expected fantasy points shows that his volume shows that his circumstance shows that. So it would make sense then to call him out as a by candidate and to be completely transparent. I almost did that on this week's fifteen Transactions episode. He was removed at the last minute. But I think that Naku is a bye. You then have to look forward though after going through that process, look forward and think about a projection. You've got to look at schedule, at his current situation to see if anything's changing, and so on. With the Rams, they have a brutal two game stretch here, they get the Browns and the Ravens. We probably shouldn't expect the world from this passing attack, but a playoff schedule against the Commander saintsan Giants could look a whole lot worse. That's why I think Nikoua is more of a bye than a cell. I don't think we'll see early season Nakua, Don't get me wrong, but he's a talented player and he's shown off a ceiling. He's seeing consistent volume in his offense, and his matchups are totally fine when the fantasy season matters most. The last question this week is from Patreon as way from Andre. It says, Hey, JJ, thoughts on what's going on with Travis Etn. I'm a little worried about his recent output and upcoming schedule. While his Week seventeen matchup is great, I'm worried about him helping me get there. Thanks. So, what I've realized in doing fantasy analysis is that fantasy managers only worry about players when they're playing poorly. When a guy plays well, when he's producing in fantasy, it's only human nature to just sit back and be like, well, yeah, he's good. That's why he's doing well. He's a good player. But I talked about this a couple of weeks ago in the Late Round Perspective's episode with Ben Gretch. Travis Etn is a very good player. He's an RB one in my rest of season rankings, but he was playing over his head to start the season. From Week one through Week eight, Etn averaged twenty and a half PPR points per game according to PFF's model his expected Fantasy points per game. During that stretch sixteen point two, he was still in RB one even an expected Fantasy points, but he was playing above expectation. Now, it's important to remember that regression doesn't mean an over correction. We wouldn't expect his future games to be below expectation just to then equal things out. That's not how this works. We'd expect future games to be at expectation, and it just so happens at Over the last three weeks, ETN is playing over six PPR points below expectation. That expectation the amount of points we expect him to score per game. It has dipped by about half of a point over his last three games. But ETN is just not performing as well. Now. You might be a little bit concerned by Deernest Johnson's usage of late, but some of Johnson's usage has come down to gamescript and it's within a small sample. And ETN had a period of time in last week's game where he was a little bit banged up with a chest injury. You can see it on Fantasy life dot COM's utilization report. ETN was targeted more per route last week than in previous weeks, but his over our route participation was actually lower, and it might have been because of that chest injury. Regardless, I think ETN is still an RB one rest of season. It's just that he was out performing expectation to start the year and now the opposite has been happening. Things may not even out completely. It doesn't always happen, but to me, Jacksonville's schedule, it's not scary enough for me to say that ETN managers are doomed. I think ETN is fine as a whold. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by steting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening to everyone. Hope you enjoy the Late Round Perspectives episode that's dropping later today. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you next week.