998: Mailbag - Ashton Jeanty's Cost, the Miami Dolphins Offense, and More

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachersa JJ Zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ Zachariesen in this episode nine ninety eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in football seasons right around the corner, and 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, DraftKings giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one entern 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 team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. 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Eligibili restrictions apply. Void were a prohibited one per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars headliner contests by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry twenty dollars entrpre required reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best dash Ball sponsored by DK It's a mailbag episode. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Andrew Taylor on Patreon. It says, with so much uncertainty surrounding the Jags backfield, I'm throwing Dynasty darts wherever I can. At Leaquin Allen. I don't hear any chatter about him outside of Duval with his pass catching and blocking chops from college. Is he on your zero RB radar in redraft? Does he have the rushing profile to be more than a passing down back if Tank and Tutin continue to have fumbling issues and Etn stumbles out of the gate. So in Dynasty, I'm all for throwing the Laquin Allen dart. He had a really impressive receiving profile coming out of Syracuse, and he was a pre draft favorite of mine. Obviously, he went in the seventh round, so we have to adjust our priors a little bit. But Allen had a low risk draft capital delta, which means the ZAP model liked him more than his draft capital. He had a best season reception chare of almost twenty percent, which is really ridiculous, and his breakout score was eighty six point five. Both are really good receiving numbers for him. The problem for redraft is that there probably isn't that much of a need to draft him, aside from a last round dart throw in best ball, chances are just based on what they have in Etn, Bigsby and Tuton. Chances are Allen won't dress on game days to start the season unless something changes with those three backs. He's probably gonna need an injury to see the field. Anything is possible, though. It's one of those situations where we can like the talent, we can be aware of the talent, and we can be ahead of the market by having him on speed dial for when anything shifts in that backfield, Because what if those things that you're referring to actually do happen. What if beshall Tutin isn't as good as advertised, What if Tank, Bigsby or Travis Etn stumble, Then there's an opening and we'll know to be aggressive in trying to get Allen. But for redraft purposes, in ninety nine percent of redraft leagues, if not more, you don't need to be looking at Alan right now. I wish he was on a team where he at least was the confirmed number three running back on that team on that depth chart. That's just not the case right now in Jacksonville. This SAS question is from at reddit ff on Blue Sky. It's Jeremy AMD of the Fantasy Football subreddit. Jeremy asked how can reed draft players best use best Ball ADP and analysis as they start their season long prep. Now, I've talked about this before on the show, but it's an important topic to bring up each summer. Bestball ADP is not going to be the same as your season long ADP. I talked about that a lot with John Daego on last week's Perspectives episode. Your regular season long drafts will be more running back heavy quarterbacks. They might go in different spots. It's just not totally the same game. But where you can get practice in is just understanding how the markets are valuing players within their positions. Sure you'll have some better and best ball type players out there, but generally speaking, you can look at positional ADP to get a GRE but how that position might look in your redraft league. So my advice would be to focus more on the positions and where players rank within those positions as opposed to really focusing on draft strategy. Because draft strategy that's what's gonna shift most from best ball to season long. But leaning in and focusing on the positional stuff, you'll start to get a rhythm for where there are drop offs and where there's depth. That'll help you a ton during your season long drafts. And it's why I think anyone who's serious about fantasy football should probably be doing best Ball drafts right now. This beast question is from Michael on Patreon. It says, Hey, JJ, I've seen several analysts say that this year the train comes off the tracks in Miami. Do you agree? Do you want any part of that offense? I feel like Waddle could be of value thoughts, So I don't see it as much as this is the year the train comes off the tracks, as much as I see this as a make or break year for that team and that coaching staff. I'm not making the assumption that they're going to be terrible. I think that's in their range of outcomes, though. I think people were kind of taking last year's results and kind of go into the extreme with them. Tua Tunguevailoa missed a lot of time. He missed six games. In those six games, Miami only averaged one point two offensive touchdowns per game. That is egregiously bad, and we knew it was bad because we watched them play. It was horrific football. But with TUA, they had two point four or five touchdowns per game. If you assume that they were able to just maintain that throughout the season, they would have ranked just outside the top ten in touchdowns per game last year. Now, do I think what they did offensively is necessarily sustainable? No, I'm fearful of the lower A dot offense they ran with TUA last year and the impact that that made on their wide receivers. Tuas averaged at the target was six point one yards last year. That's why we saw guys like John new Smith and Devon a Chan thrive while Jalen Wattle and Tyreek Hill had their worst statistical seasons in their career, basically because instead of looking down the field, the offense was totally content with checking it down. I just see last year though, as a clear outlier year. I mean, maybe the offensive line combined with two as head injury, maybe that'll keep them in this low A dot offense. But tu has averaged at the targets throughout his entire career have been eight, seven point four, ten point one, eight point two, and then six point one like Spot the outlier. It's clearly last season. To be totally truthful, though, I'm having a hard time saying Jalen Waddle is an obvious value in Tyreek Hill two because there's still a chance that Miami doesn't change things up. It's not like the coaching staff changed. I feel better about those types of shifts when the coaching staff is revamped, like in Jacksonville. But we don't have that Miami. That gives it a higher chance that things remain the same. And to be honest, a lot of the middle round wide receiver trends that I talk about in the draft guide, they don't favor Jalen Waddle. I like Waddle. I think Waddle is a very talented wide receiver, and trends are not foolproof. I'm just noting that this is not an obvious situation to buy Waddle. I think it's just properly rated at the moment. So to me, this is less about this offense definitely going off the rails. It's more about it being a make or break season. I think Miami has to get their wide receivers more involved this year down the field. That's if they want to have a shot at winning anything. Maybe the coaching staff doesn't see it that way, but that's when I think that we could see some issues. This question is an email from Henry. It says, HIJJ, this is a two part question. Everyone always talks about a player who can beat ADP. How do you determine how many total points or points per game a player needs at a given ADP? And once you have that metric, what are you using to determine if that player will outperform that points per game? Seems to me like people call players values at ADP without really knowing what type of projection that draft position bakes in. Love the work you do and I can't wait for the Draft guide, cheers Henry. So this is something that's littered throughout the Draft guide every single year, and it's no different this year. I look at things through the lens of average draft position expectation. And the reason I do that is because we often look at all these metrics and all these numbers and things that correlate to next season success in fantasy football, but we don't factor in ADP. When we do that like, for instance, let's say previous season points per game correlates to next season points per game at running back. If you were to layer on average draft position, that might already be accounted for, as in the market is already baking in previous season points per game, and sometimes the market's doing that too much. So we can't just say, okay, this matters for next season production when there's a cost component to all of this. So what I do is I look at ADP expectation. I take average drapt position data courtesy of fantasydata dot Com, and I see how players have performed at different ADPs through the years. I can then take a trend line and create a formula that shows me what a player is expected to score at a particular ADP and points per game. To make this data cleaner, I only look at players who played eight or more games in their given season, and it's all based on PPR points per game. I'm not really concerned with players just hitting expectation, though, especially in the middle of the late rounds. Like a running back who's going seventieth overall, he's gonna have a relatively low expected points per game rate or not a super usable rate, I should say I want him to outperform that by two, by four by six PPR points per game. So that's the lens that I look through. Now to your second question of once you have that metric expected Fantasy points per game, what are you using to determine if that player will outperform that points per game mark. That's what the draft guide's all about. There are trends for every position at every area of your draft. What we look for in the middle rounds at running back isn't necessarily the same thing that we should be looking for in the early rounds, and that's based on how the market has behaved historically. There are tons of metrics and tons of situations that we should value in dvalue based on where you're drafting. But that's how ADP expectation works. And for the record, I think a lot of people get this wrong. I see analysis saying this player didn't live up to his ADP because he was ranked as the RB six and he finishes the RB eight, when that's probably not the case. He probably did live up to ADP expectation. I wrote a newsletter about this earlier this week. Like an RB six has historically been drafted ten to eleventh. Overall, his expected points per game average is sixteen sixteen point two PPR points per game somewhere in there. If he finishes the RB eight, based on history, he probably would have scored close to seventeen PPR points per game. So we actually did outplay expectation even if his finishing ranking was lower than his ADP. And that leads me to the next question. This last question from Patreons from Dino miz It says, Hey, JJ, a huge fan of your work. Thanks. I want to challenge Ashton Gent's current ADP and see what you think here. Well, I do think it's possible for him to get there. I see this more like Marvin Harrison Junior from last year, where his draft ADP was his ceiling, which he unfortunately did not hit. It also doesn't give me a ton of confidence that the Raiders offensive line is poorly rated and Genti had over three hundred carries his last college season. I personally think he should be ranked a little lower in both Redraft and Dynasty startups for those reasons. What are your thoughts on this? So in Dynasty, I'm just going to disagree he's a generational talent according to my prospect model. I don't want to dismiss that. I completely understand why he's ranked where he's ranked in Dynasty, but I do think there's a real conversation to be had in redraft. First off, I wouldn't be overly concerned about his collegiate work. I haven't found a study that shows that previous season workload in college has any meeting or matters with current season workload or injury for rookie running backs. But second, let's just look at history here. I know Marvin Harrison Junior burned many of you last year, but he was also just an outlier. He had by far the earliest ADP of any rookie wide receiver since at least twenty fourteen, and I'd imagine well beyond that too. According to Fantasy Data's ADP, Harrison Junior went fifteenth overall last year. The next closest rookie wide out since twenty fourteen was fortieth overall. I know, not in your league. I'm just going by what ADP says, but Harrison Junior was definitely an outlier. From that perspective, Ashton genty, He's not, at least not nearly as much. We've had seven rookie running backs get drafted in the first two rounds of Fantasy Draft since twenty fourteen. Four of those running backs, Bijehn Robinson, Clyde Edwards Layer, Saquon Barkley, and Ezekiel Elliott ranked in the top six of their position. Elliott and Barkley crushed their ADP expectation, Robinson Cech played below expectation. So we've been fifty to fifty with the super highly ranked rookie running backs. The next step down to round out those seven, you get Naji Harris as a rookie, Kareem Hunt is a rookie, and Christian McCaffrey is a rookie. Naji Harris and Kareem Hunt were both great against expectation. Meanwhile, CMC played point six points per game below expected. So, for being completely objective here, early round rookie running backs have actually been decent through the years. I don't want to say they've been amazing, but they've been better than average. So when you say that Gent's being drafted at a ceiling, I mean, sure, maybe that's the case, maybe this is his ceiling, but you can make that argument for almost any running back in that range because the expect is really really high. But I also don't really buy into this logic. I'm definitely not saying that Ash and Gent is a target. There's offensive environment trends that scare me with genty, But why are we assuming this is his ceiling? His expectation at that ADP, as I alluded to with the previous question, is like sixteen to sixteen and a half PPR points per game. He can get above that. That's definitely in his range of outcomes. Now, I'm not someone who's going to be actively targeting Genty, especially because I like Christian McCaffrey more and that's not how consensus has it and season long at the moment. But I don't think his ADP is that egregious. It seems like a reasonable spot to have Ash and Genty a generational talent, at least within the running back rankings. The last question this week is from Patron is from Zach Shephard. It says, Hey, JJ, love the show. Thanks. In your most recent Perspectives episode, you talk more about the running back dead zone, something I thought of as you were talking about it. Do you think it's a statistical anomaly? That the dead zone happens roughly the same area of running backs RB twelve to eighteen to RB thirty year after year. Is it because of coaching tendencies usually keeping the amount of bellcals roughly the same historically when accounting for around the same number of running back injuries per season. Relatively new to fantasy football less than ten years, and curious if this was the case back further, when offensive tendencies skewed more strongly to run heavy. So, first off, it's been a while since things were like really run heavy. Our data isn't that good, Like, we don't have data that goes back to two thousand and five, at least to my knowledge, to see how the running back dead zone was formulated and if it was or not. I always relate back to twenty eleven with my data because that was a point in time where this newer pass heavier NFL came to be. Like last year's pass rate across the league was actually below fifty five percent for the first time since twenty eleven. So things haven't been getting passed heavy yer since at least that point in time, since at least twenty eleven. But to your question, I've talked about the dead zone for years now, and anytime there's some trend, I attempt to explain why, because sometimes we just do see some statistical anomalies. Let's first define the running back dead zone. To me, the dead zone has always been about the fact that low end RB twos in fantasy football have historically not been that much different in hit rate than like high end RB four's and low end RB threes, and drafting those low end RB twos has been a bad call because the opportunity cost involved. You're missing out on some really good tight ends, quarterbacks, and most importantly wide receivers. But why why have those low end RB twos been bad? Well, my logic is that, to your point, we only have so many obvious and true bellcals entering a certain season, and when those players dry up, fantasy managers panic and they draft running backs who are inferior talent wise but project to get big workloads. The perfect example of this is a Mere White last season. The truth is, though, plenty of running backs have still emerged from the dead zone through the years, and I notice myself, and I talked about this on perspectives, but I notice myself finding trends and things to look for in a dead zone back to find that player who emerges to the point, or just made the concept more confusing because consumers will just take the dead zone idea and they'd say, Nope, I can't draft a running back in this area of the draft no matter what. And that's why I don't really want to talk about the dead zone anymore, at least the way that I used to talk about it, because everyone has all these different definitions, it just makes people more confused. Now I talk about this more in depth in the Draft guide, and in the draft guide, I basically say that the running back dead zone isn't really a dead zone. It's more of an archetype zone. There are just some running backs that you don't want to draft in that area of your draft, similar to how there are running backs that you don't want to draft in the middle to your draft, right after the dead zone or the early rounds of your draft. Now, I do think the dead zone is formed in the past because we have a limited supply of bell cow backs, and drafters are gonna force the issue. They're gonna panic, and they're gonna roster fill. They draft inferior talents. But I also think we've oversimplified what the dead zone actually is and that doesn't do anyone any good. So it's on me to change that narrative a bit, which is what I'm attempting to do with this answer and in the Draft guide this year, and probably with a future episode of this podcast. So I guess to me, the running back dead zone, it's dead. 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 shirting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and know for to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. And just a heads up, I'm gonna be on a family vacation next week, so you won't be getting the same podcast schedule over the fourth of July holiday. You will, however, get a special edition of Becoming a Best Ball Bro. But then after next week we're right back on track. The Tuesday episodes will be back. Becoming a Best Ball Bro is going to be happening, and I'll be rotating perspectives with this mailbag episode, so enjoy the holiday. Make sure you're pre ordering that Late Round Draft Guide because that does launch on July first, and I'll talk to you guys soon.