341: Analyzing 2019's Biggest Hits

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas Jay Jake zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at Fandle and at number five dot com. And this is episode three hundred and forty one of the Late Round podcast and the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. The last time you heard my voice, you listen to me talk about the big things that I got wrong during the twenty nineteen Fantasy season. I craped on myself. I always do that show before this one, because if I did this one first, you think that I was just trying to show off. That's not the intent. Today. I'm gonna look back at the things that went my way in twenty nineteen, are the best calls that I made during the Fantasy season, And I'm not doing it to brag. I'm doing it to look at the process that led me to the correct advice. That way, we can try to use that process in future seasons. Now, before get into those things, I want to let you guys know about a special offer from FanDuel's Sportsbook. Fandel's Sportsbook is giving you a chance to get in on the action risk free. Create a FanDuel sportsbook account today and make your first bet. If you lose, you'll receive a refund of up to five hundred dollars in site credit. It's that easy. For more details, visit sportsbook dot fandel dot com. Offer valid for new users only. Must be twenty one years old. Gambling problem call one eight hundred gambler. This episode is going to start, of course, with Lamar Jackson. For as bad as my Derek Henry take ended up being, at least I touted Lamar Jackson all summer as my late round quarterback, and I'd say that he panned out. The logic with drafting Jackson was the following, we have data that supports backing mobile quarterbacks, or as Rich Reebar called it years ago, we want to utilize the Konami code when making our fantasy quarterback decisions. Rushing quarterbacks are a cheat code. What we saw from Lamar Jackson during his rookie season was that he had an opportunity to be the most effective rushing quarterback ever. That's not hyperbole. He had a chance to do things on the ground that we hadn't seen at the position before. A healthy Lamar Jackson was basically a lock to rush for seven hundred or eight hundred yards. And the one stat that I threw out there pretty often during the offseason was that since the year two thousand, of the eight instances where a quarterback ran for at least seven hundred yards in the ground, seven of those quarterbacks finished as a top five option in that given season. Now, keep in mind, Jackson almost had seven hundred rushing yards during his rookie year despite playing like half the season. He was a lock to get there, so his season really would have come down to an improvement in the passing department. His weapons were objectively better, so that would help. But Greg Roman was now the team's offensive coordinator. But what I saw before the season started was an offensive coordinator who helped Colin Kaepernick and Tyrod Taylor, two mobile quarterbacks. He helped them to their most efficient passing seasons of their careers. So there was more upside with Lamar j. Jackson's arm. We knew that the floor would be there given what he could do on the ground, but there was a very obvious high ceiling if Lamar Jackson brought it together as a passer. Now, here's where things get interesting. When we're looking at a player's outlook in fantasy football, we're really weighing his floor to his ceiling combination. We're looking at what the likely worst case scenario is versus what his best case is. And for Jackson, I don't think anyone would have come close to projecting what he did as a passer this year. He had thirty six touchdowns. He had a touchdown rate of nine percent. That's the second highest in NFL history among quarterbacks with three hundred or more pass attempts. That's not predictable. I can't sit here and say that I predicted this to happen. What I can say, though, is that I recognize the upside with Lamar Jackson, and in the late rounds of your draft, that's all you need to focus on. It's upside. Even if Jackson had just an above average touchdown rate, he still would have been the best fantasy quarterback this year, and that would have been predictable. He was a great rusher who improved as a passer because of scheme, talent progression, and better weapons. That's why Lamar Jackson ended up being a predictable hit this season. Some of you may have forgotten, but there were some heated Todd Gurley debates over the off season. Some thought that he was an insane value in drafts, while others, myself included, thought that there wasn't enough thought being put into the game theory side of things. When I built projections, Gurley looked fine, But like I talked about before, you're looking at the floor versus ceiling combo for these players when you're drafting them. And what a projection didn't necessarily capture was the fact that Todd Gurley's upside was seemingly capped in that Rams offense. All off season we heard and saw reports about the Rams limiting Gurley's workload. So if we knew for a fact that Gurley wouldn't see workhorse volume, then drafting where he was being drafted didn't make a whole lot of sense. He didn't have that much upside. More importantly, we didn't exactly know what a decreased workload would even look like. A huge part of Todd Gurley's game for fantasy purposes under Sean McVeigh has been crazy work close to the goal line. After seeing where CJ. Anderson got work in the playoffs, last season, there was a real fear that Gurley wouldn't see his normal touch count when the Rams were close to scoring. Now, looking at gurly season, a lot of things happened. Some of them stem from the workload stuff, but some of them didn't. What didn't is that the Rams took a pretty big step backwards offensively from twenty eighteen. Their yards per play dropped by about point seven and they ended up scoring thirteen fewer offensive touchdowns. The entire offense was worse, and that includes the offensive line. That line didn't get nearly as much push as we had grown accustomed to seeing, but Gurley's workload did get worse. He saw his lowest running back rush share of his career when you look at things on a per game basis, and what was really key was that his target share dropped to just eight percent. He saw thirty one fewer targets a year over year when he played one more game. The Rams actually targeted their running backs at by far the lowest rate in the league this year. They ranked twenty third the year before. There was almost an eight percent difference in target share year over year, and Gurley didn't see as many goal line opportunities this year either. Some of you may think it's because the Rams weren't as good offensively, but they had twenty five running back rushes from within the five and twenty nineteen, and Gurley saw sixty percent of those carries. In twenty eighteen, he saw seventy nine percent of them, and in twenty seventeen ninety six percent of them. Malcolm Brown took on a bigger role close to the end zone, and that also capped Gurley's potential. So I think I read the Todd Gurley situation pretty well. I still had him as a fringe top ten running back entering the season, but it was hard to buy into the upside when we knew heading into the season that his workload was likely going to be capped. Building projections, for me, is just as much about the process as it is the results. When you look at what an offense is working with and you see the potential target share that's up for grabs in particular offenses, you can spot inefficiencies in average draft position. One of those that I spotted this year, and again I'm not saying that I'm the only person who spotted this, I'm far from that, but it was with Chris Godwin I missed on oj Howard. I talked about that last week. But Chris Godwin was someone who was very clearly walking into a huge opportunity for a team that was likely to be throwing a good bit and throwing down the field a good bit. The Arian's offense is less about volume, but it sure loves a high average depth of target, and that's perfect for your fantasy wide receiver. But one of the things that scared people off of Godwin was that he had a teammate who was also going to see a large target share in that offense. But I talked about this before the season started. Entering the year, in the seven seasons prior, we averaged one point six wide receiver teammate pairings per year finishing as wide receiver ones together in that same season. The likely pairing for twenty nineteen was Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, but it was very easy to see that Godwin and Evans were right up there. Evans didn't even technically make it this year because he missed games and he finished at wide receiver fifth teen and cumulative points. But it's important from a process standpoint to not be afraid of drafting a number two wide receiver when everything else aligns for that player to have a big year, and that was the case for Chris Godwin. Now it's really weird talking about this after he's dominated the playoffs, But I was on the fade Patrick Mahomes in drafts train entering the season. Now this isn't shocking given my history and how I approach fantasy football, but Patrick Mahomes was a very tough sell for me in the third round of drafts this year, mostly because of cost, but also because of regression. Mahomes is the best quarterback in football. I freaking love Patrick Mahomes. He's one of those players that I'll be talking about with my kids someday and she just won't even understand it. She won't be able to comprehend it. But fantasy football is a game about the game of football, and in fantasy football, quarterbacks are inherently devalued. If you have any questions about that, you can go check out episode one hundred and thirty nine on Superflex Strategy, where I talked through the late round quarterback of Pro Coach before digging into how that approach changes in Superflex leagues. We can say that Mahomes got hurt and that he didn't have Tyreek Hill for the entire season, and that things weren't as clean for him in twenty nineteen as they were in twenty eighteen. That's also part of the point. A lot of things went well on the regular season for the Chiefs offensively last year, that it was going to be really hard for Patrick Mahomes to duplicate his results, and the top thing to look at with him was touchdown rate. I bring it up all the time on the show, but it's because touchdowns are really important to fantasy football, and if a player is scoring touchdowns at an unsustainable rate, then that rate is going to eventually regress. Earlier, when I was talking about Lamar Jackson, I mentioned his nine percent touchdown rate being the second highest in NFL history among three hundred plus attempt seasons. Mahomes Is twenty eighteen was fifth highest. And if you look at the twenty seasons in NFL history where a high volume quarterback had a touchdown rate at or above seven and a half percent, so a lot lower than Mahomes' twenty eighteen season. Only one player's name is a repeat on that list, it's Peyton Manning, meaning Tom Brady, Dan Marino, Kurt Warner, Aaron Rodgers. Essentially every quarterback in NFL history has failed to have multiple touchdown rate seasons at or above seven and a half percent. In twenty nineteen, Mahomes finished with a touchdown rate of five point six percent. Now, to be honest with you, guys, that's probably lower than what we should expect for Patrick Mahomes, but we certainly shouldn't expect anything close to eight and a half percent year over year. I think if there's one player who can join Manning as the only duplicate on that outlier list, it's probably Mahomes. It wouldn't shock me if he has another crazy season like he did in twenty eighteen, but you shouldn't bank on that. You could bank on that if it was a late round pick, because you're only looking at upside in the late rounds, but he wasn't. When you're drafting a onesie position, or a quarterback or a tight end or a player who you're only starting one of them in your starting lineup, when you're drafting one of those players early in your draft, you need to almost guarantee that that player is giving you a significant edge over his competition. Mahomes wasn't this year. Lamar Jackson was far above Mahomes and points per game, and Deshaun Watson, Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford, and Dak Prescott each averaged more points per game than Patrick Mahomes did this year. Even if you removed the games Mahomes got hurt, In Mahomes was right in line with those other quarterbacks. There was no edge. Mahomes is a safe draft pick. He's going to produce for you. But drafting is not about safety, it's about value. You can't ignore positional scarcity and aim for safety, or at least you shouldn't, because with that logic, you should just draft Justin Tucker in the early rounds every year too. Entering the year, you had a big five running back group of Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Ezekiel Elliott, Alvin Kamara, and usually David Johnson. After that fifth running back, the consensus was sort of all over the place. But heading into the season, I had that sixth guy as Dalvin Cook, and judging by what you great listeners have said to me via Twitter, and email. A lot of you guys got Dalvin Cook because I seem to be higher on him. I mean, a lot of you didn't get Dereck Henry because of what I said in the preseason. But this is the what I Got right podcast. We're only looking at the good stuff. But one of my bold predictions this year was actually that Cook would finish as a top three Fantasy running back. If you listened to the show last week, then you heard me talk about how we often overstate the impact a coordinator can have on a specific position. I believe that's true, even though it's really hard to test that theory. We don't know how to measure how overstated it really is. What I do think that coordinator data is really effective for is at a higher level when looking at general philosophy, and with Kevin Stefanski's interim offensive coordinator in twenty eighteen, we saw a pretty dramatic shift and how that Vikings offense was being run. They became a lot more run heavy in neutral game scripts. Adding Gary Kubiak and his run friendly history and it all aligned well for Dalvin Cook. His biggest hurdle was staying healthy, and he mostly did so. You've got a discount on him because of his health, but it was worth the cost benefit given the upside that was there in this new offense. That's a very real instance where exploring coordinator data can help you win your league. Now I'm going to group these next two things together because they're from the same position and it's a little bit more philosophical. I did say last week that I was okay with drafting that middle tier of tight ends this past year for the first time ever, and how that was a mistake oj Howard specifically, But I also faded the big three tight ends and that was a win. This ties directly into what I talked about with Patrick Mahomes. At a onesie position or a position in your lineup where you're only starting one of those players, there's less room for air for that player when he's selected early. Meaning even though Travis Kelce was the tight end one this year, and even though George Kittle was the tight end two, they weren't giving you the type of edge that you need in order for that draft pick to really pay off. The main reason for that was highlighted in episode two hundred and fifty nine on tight End Streaming, but It's the same with quarterbacks, just not to the extreme that we see with quarterbacks. You can get usable tight ends later in your draft. There's a reason that the tight end twelve won't fall off the board oftentimes until the double digit rounds because the position isn't in high demand. That means when you take one early, your opportunity cost becomes a lot greater. You're foregoing the opportunity at a more important position like running back or wide receiver. People like myself who tend to fade early round onesie players, we don't do that thinking that those players won't finish as the best at their position. It's that you can get usable players at that position late in your draft. Tight End is more forgivable than quarterback for a lot of reasons. But even still, drafting one of those tight ends early didn't provide the type of edge that you'd want from early round tight ends. And as I talked about in my Bold Predictions podcast, all three of those tight ends were bound to be worse this year than they were last year. And we saw that Kelse dropped by two and a half points per game, Kittle by about point three, and Ertz by over three and Ertz was the one that I liked least because of how competition impacted his performance, and we saw that again in twenty nineteen when players got hurt. Zach Ertz became a lot more relevant in fantasy football now. All the while, one of MY favorite late round tight ends ended up being Darren Waller. He was another guy that people hit me up about after the season, thanking me for backing him. Now. Process wise, I generally just try to find athletic pass catchers at tight end who may have an opening to see work in their offense. Waller had all of that in twenty nineteen, especially when Antonio Brown left the Raiders. That's something that I'm going to continue to look at moving forward and finding those late round gems. Now. The last thing that I wanted to talk about today was more of an in season move, since I haven't really gone down that path on today's show, But it was an in season move that I referenced a couple of times on my fifteen Transaction show, and it was all about buying Saquon Barkley specifically for the Fantasy playoffs. The matchups were there and they were obvious for Barkley. He was facing Miami and Washington in weeks fifteen and sixteen, and by the midpoint of the season we knew with pretty strong certainty that those looked like good matchups that those would end up being good matchups. He ended up ranking as the RB five and the RB one in those two weeks, and he really ended up helping people win fantasy titles. Now, I wanted to close on this one for a few reasons. First off, if a player is getting volume, and if that player ends up being in a good scoring environment, then he's going to score fantasy points. That scoring environment can come in a lot of different ways. But second, it's a really good example of how planning for the postseason can indeed help you win when the postseason hits. Of course, schedule isn't your top priority. You need volume first and foremost, but when that volume is likely to be there, it's okay to buy into a good schedule. That happened with Josh Allen too. He averaged five fewer points per game in the Fantas playoffs, and he did during the rest of the regular season, but it was obvious that it was gonna happen given a schedule of Baltimore Pittsburgh and New England from weeks fourteen through sixteen. There was no reason to ride Josh Allen when he plays a replaceable position. So the story here and the reason I wanted to bring it up, is because those small wins for seeing those bumps in the road, those can go a long way when we know the fantasy season is skewed so heavily by two or three weeks of performances. Don't ignore matchups. Now, I got other things right this year, obviously, but I wanted to highlight some of the bigger things that would be more interesting to talk about today. I enjoy going over the things that I missed more than the things that I got right, because it's generally more helpful. But looking back on the things that went in your way and ensuring those things went in your way because of a sound process that's key too. So hopefully this all helped in some way that you didn't walk away from today's show thinking that this was just one giant victory lap, Because again, if I wanted a victory lap, I wouldn't have done last week's show. I can promise you that that's gonna do it for today's though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe 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. The Mailbag episode will be back on Friday, so I'll talk to you then