801: Mailbag 9/15/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherthas y Jake Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcasts sponsored by FanDuel. Hey, thanks for tuning in. If you're looking for rest of season rankings and tiers, weekly rankings and tiers, live stream Q and as, and a great discord community, then you're in luck. Check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. It's a great place. You can learn more about it on Lateround dot com. It's a mailbag show today, let's do this. The first question this week is from Patreon is from Billy d n NC. It says, JJ, great job so far in the twenty twenty three season. Thanks. I love your ongoing analysis of regression going forward. Who's regression from week one for the the season? Do you think is more likely Rashad White of Tampa Bay having positive regression, Drake London having positive regression, or Jay Flowers having negative regression? Thanks? So, I think all of these players are going to regress in some way, as in Drake London's not gonna see one target per game. Rashad White's not going to average two point three yards per carry. Zay Flowers won't see a forty eight percent target share across the entire season. All of those players are going to regress. I would put it at ninety nine point nine percent that all three players will see different types of numbers as the season goes on. Regression doesn't mean that a player becomes good or bad, though obviously I think that's an important distinction to make here. Because someone regresses favorably, like Drake London, for example, him regressing favorably still doesn't mean he's going to live up to his draft day value. Jay Flowers regressing doesn't mean that he's falling back to his draft day value. If I were to bucket these players in terms of being optimistic versus not being optim I'd say that I'm most optimistic about Zay Flowers being able to far outperform as ADP. Then it's probably Rashad White. I'll get to that in a little bit, and then it's probably Drake London after that. But all those players are gonna regress in some way. They had some weird numbers in Week one. This beast question is from twitters from at underscore maz ff It says Antonio Gibson was supposed to be a late round darling for those punting running back this year? Is he a bust as far as what our expectations in a b enemy offense was projected to be. If so, what value does he still hold? So during the preseason, people always ask me, JJ, what are the things that you're looking for in the preseason? Does the preseason actually matter? And some of the things that I'm looking for are strictly usage related, And I talked about this on a previous mailback episode, But how the Commanders were using their running backs in the preseason shifted my brain from thinking that Brian Robinson was like a Damian Harris type back. I then bought in a little bit more at his ADP. So the preseason does matter from that perspective. Now, I didn't expect Week one numbers. In Week one, Robinson saw seventy six percent of the team's running back rushes, a sixty one percent snapshare, and pretty decent route participation. But what we have to remember about that game is that Antonio Gibson fumbled in the second quarter. Running Back carries up until that point were four to three in favor of Brian Robinson. That game ended with Brian Robinson seeing nineteen carries Antonio Gibson had three. He didn't see another carry after that fumble. We see coaches do this all the time, and then the following week things are back to normal unless Gibson screws up again, and then we've got a very very real problem, and he's had issues with that in the past. Now, don't take this the wrong way. I'd rather have Brian Robinson and it would be really tough to trust Gibson above a proven player this week. But I do think that you could consider Gibson a super super by low candidate. Given it's pretty clear his usage looked the way that it did because of that fumble, You can probably send off something insignificant for him. He might have even been dropped in some leagues. When that's the case, why not why not take a chance in saying that the reason things were so lopsided was because of that fumble. We at least have some evidence of that. This next question is from Jacob on Patreon. It says, when managing your roster with tighter benches, how do you evaluate who to cut and who to add I have a number of upside running backs like Bigsby and Sharpenay, but would like to make room for a player like Pukinakua as an example. What's the process you go through to decide if this is someone I should hold on to or drop? So I got this question probably like six times this week. How do you know when to drop someone or when to hold on to that player? This plays into another question that I got this week that's a little bit more specific. It says, JJ, how do you feel about dropping a rookie that you had the intention to hold such as Jaden Reed, Marvin mim, Zach Sharboney, or Tank Bigsby for the recent hot pickup of the week such as pokin Akua, Za Jones, Kiren Williams, and Roshawn Johnson. Appreciate the work you do as always. Thanks. So, if I'm being one hundred percent transparent, there's no easy way to answer this, but I'll tell you what goes through my head when I'm adding and dropping players. I do think that each circumstance is totally unique, Like we shouldn't just group players together who had good week ones and simply say these are the hot pickups of the week, because that makes it sound like they're just a fad, like what they did was not sustainable at all. But I approach these situations with two things in mind. Projected floor ceiling is one of those things. Basically, how good are these fantasy assets in total? What's the path to a ceiling? Could they be league winners, et cetera. But then the other piece is my current roster and analyzing that roster. If my roster is looking really, really good, then I'll have more of those high upside players on my bench. Think of it this way. Let's say that you're looking at adding Robert Woods off the waiver wire. He had a strong performance in terms of usage in Week one. He may get you some fantasy points this year. The only way that I'd be interested in rostering Robert Woods is if number one, it's a fairly deep league. But number two, it's if my starting roster is just filled with unproven players, players who have very questionable outlooks. If my starting lineup is set and good to go, I know that I'll almost never start Robert Woods. And Woods' ceiling is probably a wide receiver three at best, and that's probably being generous, but Woods would be worthless on my roster. He doesn't have a ton of trade value and he won't find my starting lineup. Now that's probably an extreme example, but those extreme examples can help you see what I'm thinking. You can sort of evaluate situations based off of those two things. Their general value as players, how they project from a floor and ceiling perspective, and then what your individual roster needs. This is why doing rest of season rankings can actually be a little bit difficult, because I don't think it's a one side fits all problem. I think they're helpful, but I don't think they fit every single roster. I may have someone like Marvin Mims rank below a week one ad like Justice Hill, but there are plenty of scenarios where I'd rather be rostering Mims over Hill, because Hill profiles to be in a committee and probably doesn't have some consistent RB one or maybe even RB two ceiling and Mims or other rookies if you drafted them, you shouldn't be dropping them after one week of poor production and usage. Part of the idea of getting rookies, and I talk about this a lot in the Draft guide, but it's to get that second half boost, especially with the guys who weren't first round picks in the real NFL draft. Now, you'd obviously want them to get more work in week one and not even have to worry about that second half boost. Just get boosted right away. But there's usually some ramp up period. Sometimes it's only a few weeks, sometimes it's longer than that. Sometimes it doesn't even happen. So I'm not ready to just drop all rookies after week one. But to this point, you also have to recognize that anything is possible and you're not gonna be flawless with your decision making. What I just said about Justice Hill, that's a projection, a most likely outcome, but who knows, maybe he surprises all of us. That's when we look back and we talk about these things and we say that move really really burned me, but it shouldn't burn you if you were logical when that decision was being made. It's going to burn you from a results perspective, but if you were logical, then your process was fine. It's hard to really give you a blanket way to approach this, but hopefully the process that I just described at least makes some sense. This next question is from Ranson on Patreon. It says, hey, JJ, we just witnessed two of the best Week one performances by rookie wide receivers and Pukinakua and Ze Flowers, but both of their teams were playing without key pieces on offense, Cooper Cup and Mark Andrews. How do you factor in these injuries when looking at their rest of season outlook? Is it too early to blow my free agent budget wat on rookie wide receivers or are they the real deal? Thanks for all that you do well, I think we should be aware that targets are still earned regardless of who's in and out of that lineup. Seeing a forty percent target chair, Nikua and Flowers were the only players to get there in Week one. Seeing a forty percent target chair is impressive regardless of the competition. Now, of course, that's not going to be sustained, so you have to ask yourself, Okay, what type of backbone does this player have? Is this player good? Is there evidence that he's good aside from that Week one performance? Clearly I think the answer to that is yes. Because both Flowers in Nikua were players to target and my draft guide this season, Flowers being a first rounder having a solid production profile. That meant that my model liked him. He wasn't in the ninety fifth percentile range, but he was above the ninetieth percentile. That's where we see a lot of hits. Nikua didn't look as good in the model, but he had some additional things to like, like a super high yards per rout run rate. Last year. It was the second highest in college we ball. When he started to get some hype over the summer, I started envisioning him playing a Robert Woods type role in that offense. To me, there's clearly more of that backbone of being good with Zay Flowers. Zay Flowers is a stud. If there's anyone in your league who has Zay Flowers and doesn't see that ceiling, you should be trading for Jay Flowers, whether that be Dynasty or Redraft. I truly think that he's a stud. He's a clear wide receiver two for me for the rest of the season. And I'm higher than consensus on Flowers because everything is pointing to him being an extremely talented player. But with Pookin Akua, it's a little bit more blurry. I'll admit it. But I don't see why we shouldn't take a chance on him to see if there's something magical there, because consider this, Since twenty eleven, we've had ten rookie wide receivers get to just a twenty five percent target share during Week one. Again, pokin Akua is say Flowers well above twenty five percent, but this is their first NFL game, and this is not considering a player like Odell Beckham, who was injured to start his rookie year. Let me just read you the names who got there. The rookie wide receivers who in Week one hit a twenty five percent target chair Kyle Phillips, Taj Sharp, Rashad Green, Kelvin, Benjamin will Fouller. This is not a good start. Oh wait, but there's Jamar Chase, Devonte Smith, Jerry Judy, DK Metcalf, and Mike Evans. Now, I think this small sample signals better things for Zay Flowers than Pukin Aakua. For sure, because the players who hit they were all early round picks. They were all incredibly good prospects. But there's also someone of a bias here because early round picks are gonna find the field more in week one, But regardless, that's a pretty great group to be part of. Only Kyle Phillips, who I also thought was a fun slot prospect, but he just can't stay healthy. Taj Sharp and Rashad Green were players who sort of fit this out of nowhere pookin Akua mold because Kelvin Benjamin and Will Fuller were also good prospects, or enough prospects. Kelvin Meagumin was probably overdrafted, That's what my model says, but regardless, they were decent prospects. It's really Kyle Phillips, Tase Sharp, and Rashad Green. Those are the out of nowhere players. But for what it's worth, Tase Sharp and Kyle Phillips didn't actually have great outings. They didn't have massive PPR production. Rashad Green's the outlier here. He saw thirteen targets in his first NFL game. He then produced in Fantasy football during that week, and then he never saw more than four targets again in a single game across his entire career. My point here is that what pukuin Akua did should not be understated. It's just one data point, yes, and a lot of the things that I just threw at you. They're not everything. It's just to look at history to show you that what he did in week one, what Zay Flowers did too, that's no easy feat. And in week one they were even better than the names that I just talked about. So I feel great about Flowers moving forward. Even with Mark Andrews. Maybe things get a lot worse for Nikua if and when Cooper Cup comes back, we should recognize that. My guess is that Nikua can still hit that seventeen to twenty percent target share range though with Cooper Cup in the lineup, and that's enough for me to say that you should be more aggressive than not, or you should have been at least when adding him off the wire this week. My general philosophy, as I talked about earlier this week, is that you should have that aggression off the waiver wire when we're talking about younger players. I said this last year with Garrett Wilson. I said it last year with Christian Watson. There are going to be misses, and it's going to be frustrating when you miss, but those are the players that the market tends to be slow with. The last question this week is from at GMN Pride four, It says, what is your initial thoughts on Rashad White being extremely inefficient? In Week one? The volume was there, but I worry it won't continue to be there if he struggles like that moving forward. So I know I talked about Rashad White on the ten Trends episode, but I thought that I could get more specific on today's show. One of the big knocks on White entering this year was that he was an inefficient rusher last year, But that was too high level of a statement in my eyes. He was inefficient, yes, but when given context, he was fine, especially for a rookie. Was he great? No? But he had comparable numbers to his backfield Maten Leonard Fournette. And the argument for White as a player in fantasy has to do with his receiving more than his rushing. In Week one, Rashad White had a very similar success rate to Sean Tucker. Now, sample size alert, we're working off of very small sample sizes here, but the question at hand is about week one, so I'm discussing week one. You'll also see that stat where White had thirty eight rushing yards under expected according to next Gen Stats. That's not great according to Seth Walder at ESPN, that was a bottom five number dating back to the start of last year. On a per rush base. Tucker was better than White within that statistic, and he was slightly better in success rate, albeit similar It was thirty five percent to forty percent. But guys, these sample sizes are horrendously small. They're so so small. What I care about for fantasy purposes is intent. It's volume, and in Week one, White had a top five snapshare at running back. His route participation ranked in the top ten. Now, don't take this the wrong way. I'm not saying that he was good. I'm also not saying that he undoubtedly will be good. I'm just saying the following. Number One, it's not like Sean Tucker or another back in Tampa Bay took over and ran far more effectively than Rashad White. Once again, situation is at least partially to blame here. Number two. If we were guaranteed this type of workload all season long, this type of participation, then Rashad White would be the most obvious buye in the history of fantasy football because he underperformed dramatic based on that workload. Now you might be hearing that, and you might be saying, Okay, well he sucks. He's gonna lose work, and that's totally valid if you feel that way. I'm just not sure that another back is gonna be dramatically better. And I don't think White is necessarily bad. He's maybe not the best runner in the world, but I do have faith in his past catching ability, which is the key reason anyone should have drafted him in the first place. I didn't go out on the fifteen Transactions shows screaming that you should buy Rashod White after week one because I do think that some of these numbers are concerning. I'm not dismissing them, I'm not writing them off. I'm merely giving you the other side of this story in order for you to make the best decision for your roster. I think overall, Rashad White's more of a buy than a cell, and if you have him, I would just hold him. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you have subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Remember to follow the Late Round Fantasy Football Instagram account at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone. Hope you enjoy the Late Round Perspectives episode later today, and I hope you also enjoy Week two. Take care,