406: Mailbag 9/4/20

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Round Podcast with your host JJ zafter Retha J. J. Zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and six of the Late Round Podcast. Well many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. We've had a big week in fantasy football with all this Leonard Fournette news and takes their flying. On last week's Mailbag show, if you were able to listen to it, I laid out the reasons I wasn't drafting Fournette this year. Since then, he's been released by Jacksonville and then picked up by Tampa Bay when he was released by the Jags. One of the questions that I got for this mailbag episode was from at FF Barbecue that said, is there a team Fournette could sign with that would make you move him up in your rankings from where he was ranked when with Jacksonville. And the answer to that was no. It was a no before the Tampa Bay move, and it's a no after the Tampa Bay move. Look, I may have pooped all over Leonard Fournette's value in situation when he was in Jacksonville, but he still was at least walking into a good workload on the ground in that environment. What I was more worried about was his pass catching and then the lack of upside given the offense that he was in. So now you might be saying, well, okay, JJ, but now he's in a better environment, so that can make up for the potential lack of workload. And that's what this whole Leonard Fournette discussion really comes down to. How much should we weigh environment versus pure overall volume. You can look at that from a projection standpoint, because a projection is going to give you some output that's in the context of environment. And when I shifted Fournette from the Jags to the Bucks, his overall projection got worse. He's now got more touchdown upside, but there's more competition in Tampa and there's not as clearcut of an early down roll. Fournette has the opportunity to take over that backfield. That can happen, and maybe you want to buy into that. I'm just not nearly as bullish on him getting two hundred and twenty two hundred and thirty two hundred and forty carries in that backfield when that was going to probably happen in Jacksonville. Now, I'm all about targeting ambiguous backfields. It's one of the ways that you can really spot breakout running backs. But if Fournette ends up maintaining true RB two value in terms of ADP, even low end RB two value, then there's no way I'm gonna have Leonard Fournette this year. I'm still out. I've said negative things about Ronald Jones's game on this show in the past, but a lot of that was receiving related. I don't actually think that he's that bad of a runner, and that's sort of my issue with this signing and how it impacts fantasy football. Leonard Fournette can do what Ronald Jones can do. Fournette has pass protection concerns just like Ronald Jones does, so to me, there's a very real chance that we see a split backfield as a result of all of that, similar to what we saw with Ronald Jones and Peyton Barber last year. So it's not a backfield that I'm really going to in. I've got four net as a mid range RB three right now, and then Rojo drops to the later rounds of drafts. To me my projections and my outlook on this backfield. It's not just ambiguous, it's messy. Now before I get to the rest of the questions, this week football is back, and fandle is giving you a new way to play fantasy football this season with bestball contests. Unlike standard season long fantasy football, where you have to constantly make changes to your starting lineup and roster, you only have to focus on one thing, and one thing only. In a best ball format, the draft. All you have to do is draft a twenty player team and you're done. Each week, your top scoring players automatically start and will count toward your season total. The team with the most points at the end of the season wins. No setting your lineup, no waivers, no trades, just the draft. It's the easiest way to play season long fantasy football. For more details, was it fandle dot com or download the fandle app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. The first question is week or I guess? The second question this week is from at kevy Underscore K. Hello, JJ, how would you characterize Chris Thompson's value and upside visa VI the other satellite running backs. I have Hines rostered in debating making the switch. So I'm not as high on Niim Hines as others are because I don't trust that he's gonna be on the field all that much. He needs to be on the field to be fantasy relevant. Yes, Philip Rivers is going to target those running backs at a higher rate than what we saw from last year. I've been talking about that since Philip Rivers signed in Indianapolis. But the odds that Heines ends up seeing the field a whole lot is pretty small. Last season, in a single game, his high as snapshare was just fifty five point six percent, and he was over a forty five percent snapshare just twice, and that was on a team that was middle of the road in terms of offensive plays run while trailing, which is where you would see Hines hypothetically thrive. He's a pass catching back who could see a lot of love in negative game scripts. In twenty twenty, Indianapolis is the easiest schedule in football when you account for win total. Rivers is an upgrade Indie themselves. According to Fandals Sportsbook has a win total of nine, and Jonathan Taylor is there. That's another very very good running back body that Niim Hines has to compete with. Given the situation in Jacksonville, I would rather have Chris Thompson as a satellite backplay than Naim Heines. There's a higher potential for negative game scripts, a higher potential for those dump offs, and far easier competition. So give me Thompson over Hines. This ess question is from at Eric Blair. With less actionable information to use going into week one, does it make sense to generally go with a safe approach for start sit decisions? For example, avoid the Patriots backfield until we see how it's all sorted out. Yeah, I mean, I would argue that in ninety eight percent of your leagues you won't need to start like Damian Harris anyway, unless you got really, really unlucky before the start of the season. Most leagues are just not deep enough to that point, and of the leagues that are deep enough, you're basically looking a Damien Harris type player versus another questionable player who doesn't have any sort of real safety net either. So the good news is that you don't really need to worry about your lack of situational knowledge in week one, since the vast majority of your start sit choices are going to be with players who are obvious, they're players with some sort of role. Maybe the choice is like Hollywood Brown versus Will Fuller or something, but that could end up being a tough decision no matter the time of year, and by the way, draft Hollywood Brown and Will Fuller. This has questions from at Chris Moxley nineteen. When drafting or evaluating players, do we distinguish enough between risk or even high variants in upside? Example, Jarvis Landry going in the same area as Will Fuller while one allegedly has more upside. Fuller Landry's upside is a top twelve to fifteen wide receiver, but it's never discussed this way. Really, are we mistaking high variants for upside while not taking risk into decisions enough? I feel like upside is a hugely misused characterization of some players because of this. Yeah, I mean I would say that I generally agree with this. I will say though, with players like Jarvis Landry and you can throw Tyler Boyd into his bucket too, it's important to see how those players did what they did. Jarvis Landry has shown he has top five upside because he's finishes a top five wide receiver before. He's been in the top thirteen and four of his six seasons, but he's also needed one hundred and thirty or more targets to get there in every single one of those seasons. The year he was top five, he saw one hundred and sixty one targets. I mean, there's a correlation between any wide receiver's volume and how many Fantasy points that wide receiver is going to score. And targets are a skill statistic, but the way Jarvis Landry scores points is going to differ a lot from how Will Fuller scores points. Fuller could hypothetically get by with a twenty percent target share and finishes a top fifteen wide receiver, whereas Jarvis Landry absolutely needs that volume. Like realistically, Will Fuller could see twenty to thirty fewer targets than Jarvis Landry this year and still outscoring. That's what I think the upside discussion should start. And look, I'm not saying don't draft Jarvis Landry. He's one of my highest rostered players this year. I'm just saying that with some of the boring picks in fantasy football, who some may just push aside as not having a high ceiling, it's almost always because of how they score their points, and there is at least some validity to that. But yes, I do think overall there are a lot of people who don't look at range of outcomes properly, which is really what this is asking, and that goes for both a player's floor and a player's ceiling. This last questions from at Mark schu twenty seven. How does the number of starting positions affect auction values? If at all I play in a two wide receiver, two running back, one quarterback auction as well as a four wide receiver, three running back, two quarterback auction league. Does the value of a guy like Saquan or CMC approximately thirty percent of average budget change across these formats? Thanks? So I think they should be slightly devalued in leagues with larger starting lineups. And here's why. Let's think of this really really simply. Let's say that you had a lineup that started one quarterback, one running back, one wide receiver, and one tight end. That's it. Your goal is to always enhance your starting lineup as much as you can, so it would be logical to really blow your dollars on a high end running back, a high end wide receiver, and a high end tight end because you're not starting as many of them. You could hypothetically have a lineup with CMC, Travis Kelcey, and DeVante Adams or something like that in a format like this, and you would dominate. But if you were starting four running backs, eight wide receivers, and three tight ends or something, you'd have a worse starting roster by going that same route, since you'd be starting a lot of one dollar players, like a lot of them. So technically they should be a little bit cheaper with more starting roster spots, but I highly doubt it would be as dramatic as the hypotheticals that I just threw out there. This last question is from at Time to Pivot. Hey, JJ, Chanault is the player to own now, right? I think Leviska Chanault is a strong late round dart throw. Yeah. I don't know exactly how Jacksonville is going to use him, but he's sort of a Swiss army knife type player who can also just play wide receiver. So there's some potential that we see him with a handful of carries this year while lining up all over the field. But he's not like an Antonio Gibson type player. He's not just gonna go from wide receiver and play running back. I'm into Lavisco though I liked him a lot in this great wide receiver class. He had a really strong prospect profile, and he should get an opportunity right away on arguably the worst team in football. There should be some passing volume in Jacksonville. This questions from at understander underscore of who are your favorite running backs and wide receivers in the rounds six to nine range? Nice? So I'm gonna use Fandal's best ball leagues from my ADP source here. So players drafted at pick sixty one through pick one hundred and eight, Zach Moss is one of them. He's got an ADP that's later than pick one hundred right now, And like I've talked about on the show in the past, the ADP gap between Zach Moss and Devin Singletary should be a lot smaller. Singletary had just two goal line rushes last year, and Moss is the bigger bodied player who could end up stealing that work and be that guy, and then he's showing up as a pass catcher too. I just don't see much of a difference at all between Singletary and Moss. I'm basically starting to prefer Moss straight up. Antonio Gibson's another guy that I'm targeting. He could see a decent sized target share in that offense given there's not a lot of alternatives. But there's also not a lot of alternatives in Washington's backfield. Gibson is sincerely an athletic freak. You guys, I think that he comps well or has a high end comp of David Johnson, and then at wide receiver, it's a lot of second year guys. If Terry McLaurin falls, that's ideal, but his ADP is in the fifth round on fandle. But I love Hollywood Brown's upside this year. Love Deontay Johnson, I like Will Fuller, Michael Gallup, Jarvis Slandry, and I'm warming up to Tyler Boyd, Marvin Jones. The wide receivers in that range are unbelievable. So those are some of my targets in the middle round year. This ask questions from at Underscore b N. Smith. Can you expand on your comment and last mailbag about not liking rankings. I'm assuming you'll use them in conjunction with other tools. Yeah, I mean, look, rankings are fine. I just think that they force fantasy managers to not think as deeply as they could. They don't think enough about positional scarcity because they're just working off of a list. They don't think enough about being reactive and extracting value because they're just working off of a list. And then just in terms of what these rankings provide, it's a linear way of looking at the game when the game is anything but linear. But then on top of that, they're like the norm of the fantasy football industry, which I get, Like, I understand why rankings are important, but because they're this go to thing that people ask for and people need, it forces us to look so heavily at player analysis when there's just so much more to this game of fantasy football. There's so much game theory and strategy to uncover, and I think rankings dumb things down a lot and don't allow people to see that fantasy football is far more than just picking the right guys so that's my general feeling about them. I think they're fine for content, they're fine for discussion, but I think they're really over sold in the community as a whole, especially since there are some places where the rankings are just going to reflect a straight up projection when we know in the middle and late rounds we should be way more focused on the higher range of outcomes and not the median projection. So those are the reasons that I don't really love rankings. This has questions from at FF Hansenator. Hi, jj, I just found your podcast this offseason and I'm loving what you do. Thank you. My question is about Teddy Bridgewater and his perceived value with CMC, DJ Moore, Curtis Samuel all having decent expectations and their defense being so bad, should we not be higher on the ball distributor. I love Teddy Bridgewater this year, but I love them as a player to snag in a super flex league rather than a single quarterback league. It's the competition is so good at quarterback, there's no reason in most formats to get Teddy Bridgewater. But you're right, there's a lot to like. There's a new regime that could be pass friendly and running a fishing offense. He's got great weapons, and the Panthers are probably gonna be in a lot of pass heavy scripts because the defense is so bad. I am in on Teddy. I just don't know that you have to be like when Jared Goff and Ben Roethlisberger are often the last quarterbacks taken in drafts, it's not necessary to go after Teddy Bridgewater. Give him the question marks that still do surround him. I wouldn't be shocked one bit though, if he's someone that we're streaming a lot this season. The last question this week says what is the value of the Shan Jackson with Jalen Rager's injury? I think d jacks is a very good value right now. Obviously the Eagles are lacking at pass catcher. But what I love about Jackson is that the Eagles open up their season against Washington and then they get the Rams and what could be a high scoring game, and then they face Cincinnati. So while Jalen Rager is sidelined, we might see Deshan Jackson have some big week to help people get off to a good start. So I am buying DeShawn Jackson right now. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've yet subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone. Next week we have four episodes per week throughout the entire season. Really excited. Enjoy your weekend.