517: Mailbag 6/18/21

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyes and the editor in chief at Fandel and at number five dot com in this episode five hundred and seventeen of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. It's always exciting when a player scores a goal in the Euros, but this year it's twice as exciting. Fandel is paying out double the winnings when you bet on a player to score during a Euro twenty twenty game. Just sign up for Fandel's sportsbook and pick your goal scorer for a shot at two times a payout. In a tournament featuring some of the best goal scorers in the world. You have plenty of options to choose from, but no matter who you pick, Fandel will double your payout up to two hundred and fifty dollars and you'll have your bonus in less than seventy two hours. There's no better place to bet Euro twenty twenty than FanDuel Sportsbook. Must be twenty one years older in President of Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Sylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia. New users only first real money wager only ten dollars first deposit required. Bonus issue does not withdrawal bills like credit that expires in seven days. Max bonus two hundred fifty dollars. Restrictions apply. See full terms of sportsbook dot fanl dot com. Gambling problem called one hundred five to two forty seven hundred in Colorado, one hundred bets off in Iowa, one hundred nine with it in Indiana, one hundred two seven zero seven one seven for confidential help in Michigan, one one hundred gambler in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Tennessee redline at one one hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine, or visit one eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. I did it. I nailed it. Let's get to these questions. First question this week is from Twitter from at weston Joiner eight. What are your thoughts on the Field's slash Dalton scenario as well as Matt Nagy and his abilities as a coach to help field succeed. So I don't really have a strong opinion about Matt Naggy and his ability to help Justin Field succeed. If Fields is good, he'll probably be good. I think we get fixated on the more outlier situations like Adam and think that coaching is the key driver for a quarterbacks development. And while they matter and offensive scheme matters, the player himself matters most. And Justin Fields is a good profile and he was a good prospect, So I'm betting on Nat to go along with his rushing ability for fantasy purposes. The question here, though, is referring to a quote that came out this week from Neggi on Chris Collinsworth's podcast. Everyone is focused on Neggi saying no, Andy is our starter on the show, but right after saying that, he said, quote again, I can't predict anything, you know, how it goes. There's so many things that can happen between today and that week one. But Andy is our starter and Justin's our number two, and we're going to stick to this plan. I'm not really putting that much into this quote. He's saying what he's saying to sort of play in the middle and be able to make any decision that he wants by week one, and even if Dalton starts in week one, which I still think is unlikely. But even if Andy Dalton is the starter in week one, I would expect Justin Fields to play soon after that start. The next question is from at FF underscore Burt. How much to properly act on OTA reports? What's legitimately concerning versus what's a smoke screen. So it's really easy to get worked up about reports this time of year because we're excited football is finally happening. A lot of times, though it can just be the case of which beat reporters are loudest. So many reports that we read they're just beat writer opinions, and that's fine. It's good content and they're often just doing their job. But because reporter or two like what they see from a wide receiver, it doesn't mean that wide receiver is going to be fantasy relevant. Here's what I would say to do this time of year, though, don't ignore those reports. Some are meaningful, some aren't meaningful, but it's good to at least have that information inside your brain. But I think what's most important is your baseline stance on players and situations. If you've done all sorts of research that says Elijah Moore is bad, and then reports are saying that he's crushing camp, then you should use that to your advantage. You should sell high on Elijah Moore, which, by the way, Elijah Moore is good and he should not be sold. But you have to remember that you're playing against other fantasy managers here, and those managers are likely to put more stock into recent reports than you, hopefully will. They'll get a trade offer, do some googling, and change how they view a player based on those reports. Most reports are also going to be positive. If there are truly negative reports, and I'm not talking about two as four interception practice. I'm talking more about when players aren't like playing with starters and such. Those negative reports matter a little bit more to me than the positive ones do, because everyone's in the best shape of their life this time of year. So my stance is to consume all of that information. The more information the better, but don't let it really shift all of the research that you've done up until this point. A week of practices shouldn't make you go from hey, this player has a really great prospect profile and he should smash in the NFL to this guy's trash that shouldn't happen, and then use that to your advantage because people love to fall into the recency bias trap. This has questions from at Phillip Wilson fifty six at which exact point in this year's running back ratings does the running back dead zone begin and end? Keep up your uniquely smart and innovative work, Phil, So if you missed the episode on the running back dead Zone last week, I'd go listen to that before you hear the answer to this question. It's episode five and fourteen. This is a hard one to answer because the running back dead zone is more about probability and opportunity costs than anything else. I'll just do my best here. The reason I think the dead zone exists is because running backs usually dry up fast and fantasy drafts, and people then panic once that happens, and that drives up the cost for running backs who probably shouldn't be so expensive. And usually those running backs come with pretty obvious risk, like Mike Davis this year. Could I see a scenario where Mike Davis has a good season? Absolutely? Is there risk involved in targeting a twenty eight year old running back was on his fifthteam with a small workhorse sample size, of course, but even still, people will reach for a player like Davis over some established wide receivers because he's one of the last backs with a projected decent workload in those early to mid rounds. It's a supply and demand thing. And again I'm not giving an opinion here on Davis per se. I'm just saying that it's very easy to get enamored by a projection without necessarily weighing the downside. So what this means is one way to see where this dead zone may exist is by looking at projections and seeing where there are clear drop offs and then comparing that to ADP. Because hypothetically, if there's a big drop off in projections but that drop off isn't necessarily reflected as much an ADP as in the ADP. Of those players that the drop off and projections are comparable, then those are going to be players that you may want to avoid, and that could be the start of this year's dead zone. Now, my projections don't easily and simply align with ADP, but I can tell you that once you get into the range where you question a running back's true warkhorse potential, not just because of talent, but because how a team is likely to use that running back. That's where you start to get into what i'd consider the dead zone this year. When you get to players like Josh Jacobs or JK. Dobbins, or Miles Gaskin or Mike Davis. Those are the players I'm likely not going to have a lot of this year unless they fall in drafts, because they're players with questionable workhorse profiles. Whereas right before them, you'll have someone like Chris Carson who has that potential, who's shown to have that potential. Now again, I can't stress this enough. If you're in a draft with sharper fantasy managers, then the gap in ADP between these players is going to be less significant. What I mean by that is, let's say that I've got Chris Carson and Miles Gaskin back to back in my projections. But let's say there's like a one and a half point per game difference from Carson to Gaskin. That's a pretty significant drop in value from one player to the next. If Carson and Gaskin are going really close to one another in the actual fantasy draft, then that's where it's clear to me at least that someone is reaching for Gaskin, likely based on supply and demand, and they're entering that running back dead zone. But if there's like a two round difference in where those two running bass gets selected, then that's justified. It makes sense gas Can actually becomes someone that you might want to target in that case, because remember, the running back dead zone is in some black and white thing. It's a value and probability thing. You're avoiding running backs in that round four or five area and getting wide receivers instead because the wide receivers have much stronger hit rates and win rates in that area of the draft. It doesn't necessarily mean that those running backs won't pan out. Some of them have and some of them will. It's just that you're better off waiting a little bit longer at the position, and you're better off targeting wide receivers. So I would honestly think a little bit more loosely about what the dead zone is and what it means. But if you want to define it in more of a direct way, I would say to not ignore the downside that a lot of the round four and round five running backs have dead zone running backs are usually running backs who project fine enough, but they either don't have a reliable history or they don't have true Belko potential. The most important thing to remember, though, is that the dead zone isn't just about the running backs themselves. It's about the alternatives. It's about the fact that there's a lot of good wide receivers in that area of the draft, and those are the players that you should generally be targeting. This person's an email, it says, hey JJ. Last season, rounds two to three were littered with quote breakout players like Miles Sanders, Kenyan Drake, and Josh Jacobs, and due to various reasons, they didn't deliver based on cost. This year, similar types of year two backs are being drafted in the same range. Akers Gibson, Dobbins Swift, What are some key lessons to apply in twenty twenty one, aside from injury to avoid similar outcomes for players going in that ADP range? I E. Are there any identifiable data points that would lead you to stay away from any of those second year backs at current cost? Thanks love the show at f City. So this question is really interesting to me because it really shows how fantasy managers think about expectation. In the question itself, it says, quote, they didn't deliver based on cost. And it's definitely true that Jacob, Sanders and Drake that none of them became elite running backs last year. They didn't far exceed expectation to become league winners. But if you look at historical data and you plot average draft position by points per game result, none of those players really played far below expectation. Now, granted, when you do an exercise like that, things will probably skew a little bit more favorably to recent seasons because more points are being scored in those most recent seasons. But if you chart the last decade, by doing this, you can get a trend line that shows ADP expectation, or the number of points that we'd expect a player to score at a certain ADP. Last year, according to the formula that I'm using, Kenyan Drake was one point four points per game below expectation, Miles Sanders was exactly at expectation in terms of points per game. Josh Jacob's actually exceeded expectation given where he was drafted. Again, this isn't adjusted for the season or for era, but it does tell us that we probably aren't always being fair when we talk about expectation. I mean, Josh Jacobs still averaged about fifteen and a half pper points per game last year. It's not like he torpedoed your team. He just didn't hit his ideal outcome. Miles Sanders was hurt and he did just fine down the stretch. Now, I'm bringing this all up because expectation really drives the answer to your question here. I would expect a lot of the backs that you mentioned to be able to meet ADP expectation. They're set up well, they were all good in their own way last season, and they were all good prospects. There are fewer red flags for those players than what we saw last year was someone like Kenyan Drake. I wouldn't expect all of them to exceed expectation, though some of them are going to be like Josh Jacobs last year, Miles Sanders last year. That's bound to happen. I hope it doesn't, but it's a likely outcome based on what we've seen historically. That doesn't mean that they didn't live up to ADP expectation, though, it just means they didn't far exceed it and to be fair, you should be looking for players who have the best opportunity to far exceed expectation. That should be your goal in the early rounds. Everyone drafts for just safety, but you need those players to blow up too. So of the players on that list, I think Akers and Gibson have the best chances to do so, and I'll throw Clyde Edwards a layer in there as well, even though he wasn't mentioned in the question. Whereas DeAndre Swift and JK. Dobbins, they're limited from a ceiling perspective given the offenses that they're working in, so all of them should be expected to live up the expectation in my opinion, but Gibson and Acres and maybe Ceh seem like the best bets to jump tiers by the end of the season. It wouldn't totally shock me if DeAndre Swift or JK. Dobbins that they jump a tier, because they're both really good players. Their situations are just clearly worse. This next question is from at roto Heats. Sully says, I have been in the Kyle Pitts as my one oh one camp since January after the Julio Jones trade to Tennessee. Do you think others should join me? Love the show and all your work. Thanks man. I love Kyle Pitts. I've drafted him in multiple dynasty leagues this offseason. I'm buying into the hype because I think that he's an awesome prospect, the one on one in this class. Though that's a little bit too rich for me, and the easiest way to think about this and to see this is just by looking at historical startup adp Dynasty league football dot COM's average draft position data for startup drafts. It goes back to twenty fourteen. If we look at August drafts for each season, here's where the tight end one was drafted. In twenty fourteen, Jimmy Graham was the eighth overall pick. In twenty fifteen, Rob Gronkowski was seventh, and twenty sixteen, Gronk was tenth. In twenty seventeen he was twentieth, and twenty eighteen he was twenty eighth and twenty nineteen, Travis kelce was twenty first. In twenty twenty, George Kittle was twenty first, and right now in June, the tight end one is Travis Kelcey and he's going seventeenth overall. Now that's not necessarily a reflection of these players' talents. It's more reflection of the demand of each position. In fantasy football, tight ends just matter less because you're only starting one of them in fantasy football. You could think of my stance this way. Jamar Chase is one of the best prospects that my model has seen, and that dates back to two thousand and six. I don't have a tight end model, but let's just assume that Kyle Pitts is one of the best tight end prospects as well. And let's give Pitts the benefit of the doubt and say that he's a better prospect at his position than Jamar Chase is at his And that's probably the case given where they were drafted in the actual eye NFL draft. Kyle Pitts, though, has to be that much better because he's a tight end. In fantasy football, you need more wide receivers, so they're more important. That's why it would be tough for me to take Pits over someone like Jamar Chase. And you could easily argue Naji Harris or Travis Etn here as well. But I think that Chase is the easiest and the best example to use given his profile, I'm high on Pits, though I don't think it's totally egregious to have him as the one oh one. It's just hard for me to put him there when historically the top of startup drafts or the market value of these players skews towards running backs and wide receivers. The next question this week is from at swerven' shrvin. Though we haven't studied the effects of podcasters moving homes, are we changing the process of evaluating receivers changing offenses? This year it's not as pressing, but going into the future, how do we separate the results of Diggs and Hopkins from the rest. So I missed on Stefan Diggs last year, but I will say it wasn't because of him switching teams. The main crux of the argument was volume based, which was stupid, and it's something that I talked about on the Things that I Missed episode from back in January. You can go back and listen to that episode to see how bad I am my job. It's episode four hundred and seventy four. The reason I didn't care as much about the switching teams thing with Stefon Diggs is because the data set that looks at wide receivers who switched teams, it's generally filled with non elite talent. If a player is switching teams, that means he's likely not very good or at least not elite because a team didn't want to keep that player around. DeAndre Hopkins and Stefan Diggs are elite players. We knew they were good going into last year. That was never in question. And yeah, there's some subjectivity in hindsight bias involved in saying this, but I think that's the main thing to keep in mind. With the numbers that we see with wide receivers who switch teams, they usually don't perform as well. But we're not talking DeAndre Hopkins' level talent here all the time. We're usually talking pretty replacement level players. If the talent is there, it shouldn't matter. The last question this week is from at Bobby Heaters. Can you explain the TJ Hockinson hype this year? Seems like the main argument for him is that he's the only legit receiving option on a team that's going to be playing from behind a lot. As if that wasn't the case last year too, Not to mention he got a major downgrade from Stafford to Goff. Something that I've learned in doing fantasy football analysis is that it's never a good idea to buy into a player simply because of situation. Don't get a player just because there appears to be no alternatives in an offense, or just because the team is going to trail a lot and maybe be more pass heavy than expected. I don't think that's exactly what's happening with TJ. Hockinson, though he's good. He had a nineteen percent target chair last year in his second season as a pro. He was a good prospect, he had great draft capital. Hockinson is a good player, and I do think the pass catching competition in Detroit this year is worse than last year, even if you only consider Marvin Jones being gone. But Galladay played at least a little bit last year two. So Hawkinson not only can improve on that target share number because he's another year in, but because he's good, he can take advantage of weaker competition on his team. Now, I will say, given all of that, my projections generally do agree with the idea that people may be buying into Hawkinson a little bit too much this season. It's as if they're too focused on the lack of competition in the individual player skill or the potential target shair without looking at the overall team outlook. Detroit's not projected to do very well offensively this year, and even with a boosted target shair, Hawk doesn't really have crazy touchdown upside, and he looks worse than my projections as a result, at least compared to the consensus. I have him met tight end six behind the big three Kyle Pitts and Mark Andrews. To me, he seems like a player who can meet expectation, but I worry about anyone in that offense far exceeding expectation, So from that perspective, I think he's priced slightly too high. Where he goes in drafts has also historically been a pretty bad spot for tight ends in terms of hit n I'd rather have some wide receivers in that range. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere. Podcasts can be found, and no one forget to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I really appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend.