996: A New Way to Spot Middle-Round Running Back Breakouts

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacher reason Jay Jae Zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode nine ninety six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season's right around the corner. There's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance early than with Best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now Draftings giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one, enter red lineup in the fifteen million dollars Best Ball contest for just twenty dollars, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of that fifteen million, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your dream team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. 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Eligibility restrictions apply. Void were prohibited. One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars Headliner contest by nine four to twenty five to get one bonus entry. Twenty dollars entry required. Reward expires in thirty eight. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best dash Ball sponsored by DK I've always been fascinated with average draft position data, like we can always do analysis and see the types of traits that certain league winning wide receivers or running back share and sort of do our analysis from there. Like if we know league winning running backs always come from good offenses, then we should probably focus on running backs and good offenses. If we knew that league winning wide receivers never had a teammate draft in the top twenty fourth position, then we'd probably focus on whine outs who had a lot of projected target share for themselves. That kind of stuff, but not all of that is always actionable. If the market is factoring in a lot of the discoveries that we make from that type of analysis, it's not bad to have that information in mind, but it's not as useful as we think because a player's cost will already reflect all of those things. Like if we went to a farmer's market, you might find a fruit vendor that does a ton of business each week. They've got really good fruit objectively, but it also costs a lot to get that fruit, so the cost benefit it actually might not be there. Wouldn't you want to find the smaller fruit vendor who has better prices and may be able to offer up similar tasting fruit. That's why I look so much through the lens of ADP, because it's one way to ensure that we're finding value throughout our draft. Now through the years, something that's always been obvious when doing my ADP analysis is that pass catching running backs will outperform expectation at a severely higher rate than the alternative. Like somehow the market still doesn't factor in pass catching enough at running back. But it's one thing to say, hey, draft running backs who catch passes. It's another to actually tell you what to look for when you're doing that. And I realize that mistake when writing this year's late Round Draft guide, which, by the way, the guide will be out in July. First make sure you're pre ordering right now. I've been working tirelessly on it. I'm confident if this is the best version of that guide yet. But I'm bringing up the draft guide because a big focus of that guide for me this year has centered around making things even more action for the reader. Like I can say, hey, running backs who are league winners, they usually look like X when that X is some piece of information that we learn after the season. Going back to the quick example I shared earlier, running backs are league winners when they're in offenses that scored three or more touchdowns per game. Okay, let's say that's true. Let's say that's factual. Now, tell me which offenses will score three or more touchdowns per game. When it comes to receiving work, tell me which running backs are gonna catch a lot of passes this year. Now we can have a general idea of who will and who won't catch passes. Rashad Way, remember his second year in the league. That was a big draft guide hit that year, largely because his receiving upside was there. We knew that he had a shot to play that kind of pass catching role, and we knew that he had a collegiate profile that really dictated that, but it was still a more subjective take. Now, rather than looking at that through some semi subjective lens, I took things a step further this year to show you that one metric might be more predicted versus the market than you probably think at running back, and that metric is yards per route run. We've been working with yards per rout run a wide receiver for years now, and while myself another analysts will cite yards per oute run at running back. I'm not sure we're citing it enough, though, to be fair, I'm not really listening to other fantasy podcasts, so maybe I'm wrong. In the Draft guide this year, I break the running back position down into three buckets. Early round players, middle round running backs, and then late round running backs. I split things up because each part of your draft actually dictates that you think about the position a little bit differently versus how the market has historically behaved. There are some interesting pass catching trends with early round running backs, but I'll save that for another day. What I really want to get to today is the middle round area, which is defined as running backs ranked as RB nineteen to RB forty two. Now, there are reasons for those boundaries that I discussed in the guide, but that's all also not that important of a topic for today's show. Just know that I've defined middle round running backs as the ones who were ranked nineteenth to forty second by average draft position since twenty fourteen, which is where my ADP data goes back to and shout out Fantasy data for that data. But since twenty fourteen, there have been two hundred and thirty three middle round running backs who played at least eight games in their analyzed season, so minimum eight games played and had an ADP of RB nineteen to RB forty two. Fifty nine of those two hundred and thirty three middle round running backs finished their season with a sub five percent target share per game rate. One hundred and four of them were in the five percent to ten percent range, and then seventy of those running backs had a ten percent target share per game rate or better. Now, get this, of the players with a sub five percent target share, only one point seven percent of them outperformed their average draft position expectation by two or more PPR points per game. Now, average draft position expectation, it's exactly as it sounds. It's the number of points we'd expect a player to score at a certain ADP. That's all based on historical data. So if that player's actual points per game exceeded his expected points per game by two or more points, he'd be in that one point seven percent bucket. But one point seven percent is an insanely small number. For the backs who had target shairs between five percent ten percent, that number jumps up to twenty one percent. Twenty one percent of those players outperform ADP expectation by two or more points per game. For the guys with target shairs above ten percent, the rate about performing expectation by two or more points per game is forty three percent. And when you talk about ceiling, I mean forget about the guys who don't catch passes. When looking at middle round running backs who exceed expectation by six or more points per game, which are like the true league winning players from the middle rounds, none of them out of the fifty nine with sub five percent target shairs got there. Meanwhile, just two percent of the one hundred and four running backs with a five to ten percent target share per game rate, just two percent of them got there. But then almost sixteen percent of the backs who had a ten percent target share per game rate or better were able to outperform expectation by six or more PPR points per game. Look, middle round running backs have this really wide range of possible target share outcomes. There are so many archetypes of running backs in that area of your draft, and that makes for a larger discrepancy and outcome when it comes to target share. So the clear trend here is that you basically only want a target pass catchers in the middle rounds of your draft. But again, saying that is one thing, Actually having a tool to find it is another. Now, you can look at previous season target share to get a decent idea, but that's a bigger and better idea for early round running backs. Why Because early round running backs generally have a season under their belt. That's why they're being drafted in the early round. With middle round guys, you'll have players who were like part time players of the year prior and they're being drafted as an RB three because maybe they showed us something, or maybe they're in an ambiguous backfield where the backfield appears split. The middle rounds are full of running backs who were unknowns, while the early rounds they're not. That's basically what I'm getting at here, and why simply looking at how previous season target share is correlated to outperforming expectation in the early rounds is more impactful than the middle rounds. In the middle rounds, you're better off looking at previous season yards per route run. Now, going back to our sample of two hundred and thirty three middle round running backs, one hundred and sixty seven of them were coming off seasons where they had run one hundred or more routes and shout out PFF for the routes run data. So essentially, we're starting with two hundred and thirty three running backs, but then we're removing a chunk of them because they either didn't get enough run as a receiver in the previous season or they were rookies. I then grouped those one hundred and sixty seven back into four buckets. You could think of them as Tier A, Tier B, Tier C, and Tier D and yards per route run and that's previous season yards per out run. Tier A is the best group, Tier B is the second best, and so on. Now, Tier A is designated by running backs who hit a one point seven yards per route run rate in their previous season or above. It's arbitrary, but it gives us a decent enough sample to work with. Twenty five running backs did that after hitting one hundred routes run in their previous season. Tier B is one point two to one point seven yards per rout run, Tier C is point seven to one point two, and then Tier D, the worst group, is less than point seven yards per rout run in that n minus one season or the previous season. Tier B has fifty two running backs in it, Tier C has sixty four, and Tier D has twenty six. So we have four groups that are formed by previous season yards per out run. This of the twenty six running backs who had a sub point seven yards per out run rate in their n minus one season that previous season, just eight percent of them exceeded ADP expectation the following year by two or more PPR points per game. Every other group was at least twenty four percent, so three times the rate of Tier D. Meanwhile, not a single one of the twenty six running backs from TIERD exceeded expectation by six or more points per game. Not a single one of them had a monstrously high ceiling. Now, on the flip side, the best upside rates they come from Tier A. Twenty four percent of them exceeded expectation by four or more PPR points per game. That's seven percentage points better than any other group. Twelve percent of them outperform expectation by six or more PPR points per game. That's nearly double any other group. To put this another way, previous season yards per out run can at least directionally get us closer to hitting on running back in the middle rounds. And for the record, this all comes down to target share. Since twenty fourteen, we haven't seen a single Tier D running back get to a ten percent target chair per game rate, meaning they have some sort of yards per rout run rate below point seven in one season and then the following season they failed to reach a ten percent target share. And as we just discussed, a ten percent target share means a lot out of the middle rounds. Now. Of course, a lot of those players just didn't have high target shairs in the previous season to begin with, and previous season target share that can be helpful too. It's just that statistically, yards per route run for middle round running backs is more helpful. And not only that, but this is not just for the extremes. This is not just looking at players who had really low yards per out run rates or players who had really high ones. Even guys who had point seven to one point two yards per route run rates they only hit a ten percent target share the following season at about a nineteen per rate. There were nineteen of those Tier C players who had target shaars of ten percent or better and their n minus one season their previous season, so they hit a ten percent target share per game rate in one year. They ran one hundred plus routes that year, and they had a yards PERU run rate of point seven to one point two. Then they played eight games the following year. Of those nineteen with pretty low yards per UH run rates and a ten percent target share, only five of them had a target share per game rate above ten percent the following year. You would think something like that might be a little bit stickier, but it's not as sticky when the back is ineffective per route run. And just to be totally clear, yards per route run is something that you can look at across all rounds of your draft. It just seems to be the most meaningful when things are most up in the air, which is the middle rounds. Like I said, in the early rounds, most players will have a high target share projection. In the late rounds, most players are just gonna kind of suck for fantasy purposes. In the middle rounds you get a wide variety of usable players. And this all works in both directions. If a player had a low yards perroule run rate, then he has a better chance to not see an uptick and target share the following year. If it's high, though, then he's gonna have better odds of getting to that ten percent target shair mark. And then these players are going to have better or worse odds at exceeding ADP expectation as well, which is the most important thing. Now, the obvious question based on all this information is who should we be targeting and who should we be avoiding in twenty twenty five. And I want to say none of this is full proof. You shouldn't just take one metric and full on fade a player based on one metric. This is all about probability and improving our probability of hitting on some of these players. But funny enough, the main middle round running back this year who had a sweet yards perroule run rate last year was David Montgomery. Now, there are many reasons why his situation is just simply unique, so so if this is super actionable for him, but it's still interesting. But there's also Austin Eckler. EIGHTYP sources may not have him quite in the middle round range, but he's at least rounded, and regardless of where you are in your draft, like I've been saying, yards per out run does seem to matter to some degree. He was literally at one point six y nine to four last year. He was point zero zero one yards away from hitting our relatively arbitrary one point seven threshold. Now I mentioned Eckler on becoming a best ball bro but the gap between him and Brian Robinson, in my opinion, shouldn't be nearly as wide as it is now. On the other end of things, there are three backs to call out. Jordan Mason is one of them. He had a point five to four yards per out run rate last year. And remember, players below that point seven mark have not hit a ten percent target share the following season since at least twenty fourteen. But it's Jordan Mason, then it's Remandre Stevenson, who likely won't get there now with Trayvon Henderson in New England. And then there's one surprise player. It's Chuba Hubbard. Now, Hubbard technically is like on the fringe of being an early round pick versus the middle round one. But to reiterate, it's not like these trends seas do exist when you hit RB nineteen. It's just that we gradually can shift our focus to different things. Hubbard has never been a beast in yards per out run. He actually had just a point seventy nine yards per out run rate and twenty twenty three that led the following year. It's almost a twelve percent target share per game rate. So he wasn't a Tier D running back, but he wasn't far off. But I'm probably gonna be more bearish than bolish in twenty twenty five. We rarely see, in fact, we haven't seen since twenty fourteen a running back with this low of a previous season yards perrou run rate see a high target share the following season, and they haven't given us any league winning seasons either. And look at what the Panthers did this offseason. They added Rico Dowdell, he can play a pass catching role, and they drafted Trevor Etn who's a pass catching back. There's definitely a scenario here where Chuba Hubbard isn't used quite as much as a pass catcher here in twenty twenty five, and if that happens, that's not good news for his ability to outperform cost There are some others who are more fringe, and I break things down more in the draft guy, but those are the big ones. To watch out with this research. Now, look, it's not that yards per out run is this perfect running back stat it's not. We see research done all the time on which stats correlate to next season's success, and that research is obviously really helpful to this game that we all love, and running back yards per out run it probably won't rank very high on that list of metrics to focus on. But what's missing from that analysis is what's actually being captured and what isn't being captured by the market. Some statistics, like touchdown rate at quarterback, some stats see really poor correlation year over year. We shouldn't be drafting players based on previous season touchdown rate, But because the market actually seems to do that, then we can lean into it too, because we know how to spot values. Then that's what I talked about a couple of weeks ago on that Touchdown Raate episode. We're doing the same thing here, except we're targeting the statistic because to this day, gamers are just still undervaluing pass catching at running back and this is one way to increase your odds and hitting on that league winning pass catching back. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening to everyone. Becoming a best ball bro be out tomorrow, so look out for that, and then later this week, I've got a mailbag episode coming your way. And don't forget that the Late Round Fantasy Football show that's been happening each week over on YouTube. That's at YouTube dot com slash at LATEROUNDFF. Go subscribe there so you don't miss it. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.