1026: Mailbag - Chase Brown Panic, Drake London's Performance, and More

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zapperreathay je zacher reefon What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode ten to twenty six of the Late Round Fantasy football podcast sponsored by DraftKings.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: There's no better way to get closer to the action than with DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first a positive five dollars or more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code Late Round to play free for your share of millions. The crown is yours gambling problem called one hundred Gambler New York call eight seven to seven eight Hope, NY, and Connecticut call eighty eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven eighteen plus most states. Eligibility restarchs apply ends December thirty, first c terms at DraftKings dot com slash Promotions. Now, let's get to these mailbag questions. The first question this week is from Patrick on Patreon. It says, Hi, JJ, I want to know your thoughts on Jayden Blue. Can you speculate to what might be holding him back and where do you have him rest of season compared to guys like Woody Marx and Burchard Smith. Should I continue to hold on to Blue for when he finally gets his chance or is it time to let him go? Thanks for all your great content and community. So I know after week one I said to hold Jaden Blue, and now it's been three weeks and he hasn't been playing. Unfortunately, after week one, I didn't say Javonte Williams was a cell or else I'd be really cooked. But in all seriousness, holding or not holding Blue, it's gonna come down to your own roster and the depth of your league. I play in leagues that are deep, not all of them, but a lot of them, and in those leagues you can afford to hold on to a player like Blue and most twelve teamers, you could have probably dropped him last week when he was inactive. Now that being said, I'm kind of interested to see what happens with Cedee Lamb being out if they want to get another dynamic player in that offense. So maybe wait and see if he's inactive once again this week. But like the question of speculating on what might be holding him back. The dude was a Day three pick. I know that I liked him as a prospect. I'm not running away from that. I thought he was a good redraft selection and that was wrong more than likely. But I've come across this a lot in the first few weeks this season. A lot of the I can't believe I drafted player X when that player isn't doing anything right now, like Travis Hunter. People are so upset that they drafted Hunter when he's not playing as much as we expected on offense. Look, guys, you're gonna have a lot of misses in fantasy football. It's why me, as an analyst, it would be really stupid for me to come on my show and act like I don't miss anything.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna miss.

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Speaker 1: Stuff all the time, so is everybody else. That's the way this game is played. You're often gonna have more misses than hits because they're only gonna be a handful of true league winners every single year. If you spend a sixth round pick on Travis Hunter and Travis Hunter Bus, you're not completely screwed at that moment. You took a shot on upside, which is exactly what you should do in fantasy football, because again, there are only a handful of league winners. It's just that i'd say for Hunter, like the tenth percentile outcome is currently hitting. A lot of things have not gone his way from a fantasy perspective, and that's unfortunate. But it's gonna happen all the time, and you need to stop assuming or thinking that every move that you make is going to be perfection. We're playing a game where we're trying to forecast how humans are going to perform in a sport. Same exact thing with Jayden Blue. He might not be NFL ready period. He's not the typical NFL running back. He's undersized, he didn't see a lot of work in college. I think he's a good pass catcher, he's dynamic, but he's certainly not typical. And it hasn't happened, at least not yet. I don't know exactly why it hasn't happened, because I can't evaluate anything he hasn't been on the field. Only the coaching staff knows. But it's not like he was a slam dunked prospect. We're not talking about Ashton Genty here. This goes into another question that I got this week from at eighties underscore hairband on Twitter. They asked to talk about Caleb Johnson and what was missed with his evaluation if this is just an Arthur Smith Shenanigan's thing, and then they finished by saying, quote, I'm sick to my stomach passing on Warren in a couple of leagues and drafting this guy, unfortunately, one of the things that has gone my way this year, unlike the Jayden Blu stuff. Was liking Jalen Warren more than Caleb Johnson. But I feel for people who drafted Johnson. It's not like I thought that he was a horrible, horrible draft pick. It's not like I thought that he would be inactive in Week three. I thought he had a pretty complete profile as a prospect. But it's impossible to know exactly what's going on when we haven't actually had an opportunity to evaluate these players on a football field. We're taking the coaching staff's word for it. They're saying that they're not capable, they're not ready. All we've really seen from Caleb J. Johnson is a bonehead mistake on a kick return and then two random rush attempts where the offensive line didn't get that much push.

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Speaker 2: It's okay to not have.

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Speaker 1: Full answers for some of this stuff, but we should understand history and typically when things go down a certain way with how coaches handle their players, typically those coaches aren't gonna be massively, massively incorrect. Like if Caleb Johnson doesn't play a decent number of snaps this season, he's almost definitely not going to become something in fantasy football. Same deal with Jayden Blue. So we move on to the players that we have seen that we can evaluate wood.

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Speaker 2: He Marx.

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Speaker 1: I think he's looked a part, and honestly, he's played a little bit bigger than what his frame suggests. I like what I see and I like the trajectory on the peripherals front. No, I don't think he's going to turn into a league winner the same way that I think bea shall Tutan could, But I think Marx can be usable. Brishard Smith tough to really go all in when he's a little bit smaller. But I'm still holding out some hope that the Chiefs could use them in like a Jeric McKinnon like role, because they need to do something with those running backs. And when a situation calls for a change, I want to be ahead of that potential change. I just think that we need to take a step back and remember that these were all relatively low cost players. Caleb Johnson aside, they had pretty low odds of hitting in the first place. I did an episode of the show back in March on the truth about Day three draft selections. It's so rare for these guys to be consistent fantasy starters. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't.

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Speaker 2: Throw those darts.

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Speaker 1: We should because the alternatives in the late rounds of your draft, the alternatives on the waiver wire, they're not.

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Speaker 2: Very good either.

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Speaker 1: But we're lucky to have just two or three decent hits from Day three each year, just like we're lucky to have two or three decent hits off the waiver wire for veterans. So those are my thoughts. Hopefully you were able to take away something from my rambling. I think the general message here is that it's okay to not have an answer for some things. We're making educated guesses based on the information that we have, and with a player like Blue, we basically have no information aside from the fact that he can't dress, but we have to take the coach's word for it to some degree and not just have take lock forever.

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Speaker 2: This last question is from Ian.

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Speaker 1: It says, what's the panic level for guys like Chase Brown and Brian Thomas Junior who had preseason top ten ranks but are currently underperforming due to structural issues like bad offenses and bad quarterback play? At what point are they a panic sell?

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Speaker 2: If not? Now?

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Speaker 1: So, I don't think panic selling anyone is a really good idea because that tells me that you're doing it on emotion and not logic. I'll be honest, though I've been doing this for thirteen years now, I've seen some stuff, but this is, by far, without a doubt, the most panic that the fantasy football community has ever been to start a season. It's been absolutely wild seeing how people are reacting to things. I can't stress enough how important it is to just look at this stuff as rationally as you can and remember that one or two games, three games is not that big of a sample size. You of course have to react, and I've reacted. Brian Thomas Junior, Chase Brown, They've fallen in my rest of season rankings. But the Chase brown stuff in particular has been absolutely insane to me this week. I've had emails from people asking if they should drop Chase brown for a random flyer like wood he Marks. Can we just relax for a minute here, I'm saying that to myself too, because I'm getting worked up. But even this question, this isn't as much of a panic. But I got this question on Patreon from Jason. It says, Hey, JJ, what in the world do we do with Chase Brown Do I try and move on from him for a lower tier running back? Do I have to hold The Bengals offense looks like a sinking ship.

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Speaker 2: Guys.

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Speaker 1: The Bengals offense has played one game, one game without Joe Burrow, and it was on the road against a ferocious defense where the Bengals made some really costly mistakes early and then things spiraled one game. Now, I said on the show last week that I did think people were a little bit too bullish on Jake Browning. But it's amazing how fast all that can change. Now people are acting Cincinnati, He's never gonna score a touchdown again, And here I am sitting here telling you all to at least give that game some context.

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Speaker 2: Now, Look, I'm.

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Speaker 1: Absolutely worried about how bad that Bengals offensive line looked in Week three. Chase Brown had one rush where he was first touched past the line of scrimmage. That's what I counted after watching it. I mean, they were absolutely manhandled. But there was an interesting tweet from my friend Jacob Gibbs this week where he looked into this. He said, it's been rough for Chase Brown and Cincinnati's offensive line, but it's worth noting that things can't possibly remain this bad all year. Over the last ten years, the lowest of team's running back group has finished in yards before contact was point six to zero. The Bengals are currently at point one point eight. Only nine percent of teams over the last ten years have finished below one point zero yards before contact. Not only that, but Chase Brown had a nineteen percent target share in that game, and in a normal gamescript environment, he's gonna see a healthy running back rush share. Now, his fantasy outlook is going to take a hit, because any running back who loses his star quarterback won't have as many scoring opportunities. But his peripheral should still look fine even if he's not as efficient, and why aren't people this emotional about other volume based runners behind bad offensive lines or in bad offensive environments.

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Speaker 2: We're only doing it.

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Speaker 1: With Chase Brown because expectations were so high entering the year. But things will change because he lost Joe Burrow. He lost one of the best quarterbacks in all of football. So my stance on Chase Brown as to hold selling him now would definitely be selling pretty low given how the market has reacted and given what I've seen this week, unless you can get like high end RB two value out of him right now. Meanwhile, with Brian Thomas Junior, I just don't think you're gonna get good value for him right now. Like there are instances where selling low does make sense, I just don't th most those fantasy managers are going to be super excited right now to buy Brian Thomas. And he does still have decent peripherals, and we know he was and is a very talented up and coming player. But look, it's possible that Thomas plays well below expectation this year. I dug into this a little bit. If you go back to twenty eleven and you look at all the rookie wide receivers since then, who have scored fourteen or more PPR points per game. You get thirteen wide receivers outside of last year. Thomas was almost at seventeen PPR points per game last season, So I'm making these parameters pretty loose now. Of the thirteen rookie wide receivers since twenty eleven who scored fourteen or more PPR points per game, twelve of those receivers played at least eight games in year two. Actually, all but one of them played at least twelve games. Kelvin Benjamin was the odd man out of those twelve receivers who played significant time the following year. There were three who kind of underperformed in PPR points per game in that year too, Tank Dell, Brandon Auk, and Keenan Allen. Everyone else scored at least fifteen VPR points per game. So it's a really really good hit rate, but it's not a one hundred percent hit rate, because nothing is in fantasy football. Keenon Allen's one of the three who was drafted relatively high. He had a wide receiver eleven price tag that year. His second year in the league. Ayuk was wide receiver twenty two. Tank Dell wide receiver twenty nine. Now, don't get me wrong, Brian Thomas had higher expectations. In my opinion, the year two model gave him a score above ninety nine. Keton Allen was at ninety seven, Brandan Ayuk ninety six. But they all had really good rookie seasons and then we're heading into year two. Now, the good news here is that Allan and Ayyuk are good players when they're healthy.

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Speaker 2: That should be good for Brian Thomas long term.

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Speaker 1: Now the bad news is that we do have examples of this actually kind of happening where you drafted a player really high who's coming off a great rookie season and they disappoint. You could even apply this to Lad McConkey to some degree. Now, I'm not gonna assume that's gonna happen. And like I said, I think Thomas's peripherals have still largely been fine, and I think the Jags offense conceptually they've looked fine too. I like what I'm seeing. They're just not executing very well. But I doubt we get to the point where Brian Thomas is living up to his draft day cost, where he's averaging like sixteen seventeen PPR points per game. I currently have him as a low end wide receiver one, and when you hear that, you're gonna say, wow, that's really high. But the wide receiver position is kind of a mess throughout right now. Hopefully we get some clarity soon. This aash Christ is from td May. It says, curious your expectations for Jackson Dart as a streamer or two quarterback option going forward? He obviously gets a tough schedule here to start the next five games or so, but do we have any optimism he settles into a near every week option in two quarterback leagues and two quarterback leagues. I have plenty of optimism. Yeah, he's gonna bring some rushing production to the table and that's gonna help elevate his floor, which is very necessary for a rookie quarterback. The weapons in New York really aren't bad. I think they compliment each other really well. But like you said, the schedule's tough. They get the Chargers, then the Saints in New Orleans, the Eagles, Broncos and Eagles over their next five, but then after that it does open up a little bit. So yeah, I'm into Jackson dark he was someone I liked as a prospect. He's got rushing upside and he's got something that like psycho mentality that Josh Allen has. He's gonna be really fun to watch. This NAXT question is about a player that I got a lot of questions about this week. It's an email and it says I'm in multiple leagues and I have Drake London in half of them. Recently I was offered Jalen Warren for London. I want to believe in the talent, but the quarterback play is currently subpar. What do you do in these situations? You have to ask yourself the question is the player bad? And the answer for Drake London is that he's not bad. He's a very good wide receiver. Then you have to ask yourself is this current situation sustainable? And to me, I don't think we should just assume that the Falcons are gonna throw for a hundred fifty passing yards a game. They were awful in Week three and that's what's really scaring us. At least in Week two they faced Minnesota and they had a pretty reasonable game script to play with. Michael Pennox wasn't great, but he was legitimately terrible in Week three, but guys, bad games can happen. I'm far from a Michael Pennock's apologist, and he has not been good, but we have to understand that he's had six career starts. We should be open to him having a bad game, even in a good spot. Meanwhile, London was banged up heading into that Week two game and then the team was horrible in Week three regardless, though he still hit nineteen percent target shaars after a thirty five percent target share in Week one. Now, I like Darnell Mooney throughout the draft process, and I like him right now as a by low, and maybe he has a bigger role than some expected, but I still think London settles in around like a twenty five percent target share this year, and with games upcoming against good opponents were the thout are at home and they're likely going to have to pass more. I have faith in Drake London where there's a backbone of consistently strong production, where he's done it with multiple quarterbacks, multiple bad quarterbacks. I have more faith in London than I do Brian Thomas. That's why I have him ranked well ahead of him right now. So hold tight with London and as much as I love Jalen Warren, don't trade away Drake London to get Jalen Warren. If that's Drake London's market value, people should be buying like crazy right now. I got another email. This one's from Teddy. It says you had Travistn as a cell last week on the fifteen Transaction Show.

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Speaker 2: Do you still feel like he's a cell? Yes? I actually think he might be more of a cell. I've seen him ranked.

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Speaker 1: As a low end RB one and rest of season rankings across the industry. This week, I think he's a mid range to possibly lower end RB two. The narrative surrounding Travis Etn has been a lot stronger than his actual usage in that backfield. Right now, he's sitting with a rush air that's outside the top twenty at the position. He's got a route share that's also outside the top twenty. He's a target share that's well outside the top twenty. His short down and distant snapshare according to Fantasy Life data, also well outside the top twenty. And he's got a rookie running back in Beashall Tutan who could easily steal more work as the season goes on. Oh and by the way, he scored last week, but the Texans literally let him score at the end of that game to get the ball back. So yes, etns is sell for me. If you can get low end RB one or high end RB two prices for him, I would do it. The last question this week is from Kevin on Patreon and says, with the by candidates you suggest on Tuesdays, I'm always curious as to how aggressively we should be going after them. Just to exemplify from this week, you mentioned Josh Jacobs as a bye should be looking to trade one of my current running backs, Cook Warren Genty for him.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

00:17:52
Speaker 1: So, I wanted to throw this question in this week's mailbag because I've gotten a ton of questions this year that's around how to sort of use my content. But I also think this goes back to my general trade philosophy that I need to repeat on the show. When you hear me say to buy a running back like this week Josh Jacobs, your mind shouldn't automatically go to trading away one of your running backs for Josh Jacobs. Straight up, I'm actually pretty against a one for one trade like that, because trade should help both parties, and a one for one deal where you're trading the same position, there's going to be a loser. Get more creative with your trade offers, find ways to help both teams. But on the fifty Transaction show, I'm giving buy and sell recommendations just based on the players who I think should be able to perform better as the season goes on, and I try to overlay that on top of general market sentiment or how the market is feeling about those players. And that's a very subjective thing to do, especially I'm doing that show on Monday, so you guys can listen to it on Tuesday, so I'm doing it early in the week. But honestly, this is similar to my players the target and avoid in the draft guide each year, like, yeah, those are the players that I generally draft, but you shouldn't be getting those players at all. My rankings and tiers. They're there to give you an idea of how I viewed one player versus another. I got so many emails over the summer and people were asking if the players the target list should override my rankings. No, of course not. I'm just giving you guys, some context on players that my rankings tend to like more or less than the market. It doesn't mean I'm getting those players no matter what, or I'm avoiding those players no matter what. In fact, there are gonna be some players on my avoids list who I probably didn't even have ranked that much differently than your market than your draft, and if you followed my rankings and tiers, you might have actually drafted them.

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Speaker 2: That's happened to me plenty of times in the past.

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Speaker 1: Because there's no set market, there's no one thing that is the market, at least that you can quantify. When I say that I'm referencing the market, I'm just generalizing. Look, guys, I'm merely here to give you recommendations, and I want you to be able to valuate your team, evaluate where you're at, and decide if you want to act on that information or not.

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Speaker 2: That's all this is.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be a fantasy football analyst who just says, here, here are the players I like. Have at it with nothing more. What good does that do. We're playing this game to have fun, to escape the insanity of the real world, because it's a hobby that we all enjoy. I want to show you, guys, how I've won in the past and how I've been successful in the past, and I don't want to do that by just giving you my end results. I want to show you the why that fifteen transaction show. It gives you the recommendation, but then it explains the why. And look, I want to help you be successful by recommending the right transactions. Of course, nobody wants to be wrong, but I also want you to truly understand the transaction so you can apply the same logic to other moves in your fantasy league.

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Speaker 2: This is really just a long winded.

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Speaker 1: Way of me saying that you can and you should take the recommendations, but make sure you listen to the context, because I'll provide an explanation of the time a player that we're looking at and what we're analyzing, at least I try to, and from there you can make the choice that's most logical for your fantasy teams. And look, I can't answer the how aggressive question because everything in fantasy football does come down to cost, and some managers are gonna be really irrational, especially when it comes to trading. I could say that Josh Jacobs is a bye and that you should get them aggressively.

00:21:23
Speaker 2: But if the.

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Speaker 1: Manager in your league only once James Cook and Molik neighbors, then you shouldn't be buying Josh Jacobs. Throughout my time as a fantasy analyst, I've had a lot of people take something from the fifteen Transaction show and then hit me up on social media with a screenshot of a trade that just went down, and they're like, thanks to you, I got this player that you called a bye and then in that trade they basically lost the trade. It was a bad trade for them to make. You can't make those transactions no matter what. You still have to apply your own logic for your own team. All I can do when I'm speaking to an audience of people is give you general guidance. From there, you have to make what you think is the best decision based on all the factors that I talk about on the show each week. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are a betrotrating for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't for it to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I got a Late Round Perspectives episode dropping later today. I will also be live on the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel at one pm Eastern for the Late Round Fantasy Football Show, but if you miss it, that'll drop in the podcast feed tomorrow morning.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening everyone. Greatly appreciate all of you. Have a great weekend.