516: Using Average Draft Position to Predict Team and Quarterback Performance

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa J J. Zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at fandle and at Number five dot com in this episode five hundred and sixteen of the Late Round podcast. With many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in Fantasy analysts, including yours. Truly, we do studies all the time to focus on average draft position trends. Just last week, I did an episode on the running back dead Zone that really is just a deeper examination of historical average raft position. Also, can I just say ADP from now on? During this episode, I think ninety nine point nine percent of you know that ADP stands for average draft position, So I'm going with ADP anyway. I love studying ADP trends because ADP is essentially a fantasy manager's behavior, and we don't always have easy ways to measure that behavior. It tells it that's how fantasy managers think year in and year out, And while players change and positions get deeper or shallower, there really are consistent things that we see every single season when it comes to ADP. That's sort of what the running Back Dead Zone episode was all about. On today's episode, I want to do some more ADP analysis. This time. My plan is to dig into what happens to team offenses when the fantasy football market seems to be into players in those offenses. In other words, if there are a lot of players from one team getting drafted early, what does that mean, what does it mean at the team level, and what does it mean for that team's quarterback in fantasy. Before get into the analysis, did you know that Fandal has a special free to play game centered around PGA Tour events. Make golf prop picks on the final round of any PGA tournament on CBS for your chance to win a share a five thousand dollars. Prior to the start of the final round, go on the Fandals sportsbook app and submit answers to all this game's prop questions. Answer the most correctly for a chance to win money prizes. So head over to Fandel for the next PGA Tour event and pick some props for the final round. Agent location restrictions apply. No purchase necessary, void were prohibited. Payouts paid a non with drawable site credit that expires seven days after receipt. For more information, visit fando dot com, slash free games, slash swing for the Green. So when I started looking into this average draft position data, which by the way, is courtesy of my friends over at my Fantasy league dot com, my main intent was to basically see if fantasy managers could help predict strong NFL offenses through ADP. Basically, if players from the same team are drafted in Fantasy football early and often, then that must mean that we expect big things from that offense. Like if we're drafting Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelcey, and Clyde Edwards Hilayer with top three round picks, then our expectation has to be that the Chiefs are going to be good offensively. Not only did I just want to see if we were targeting the right offenses, but I wanted to see how much better those offenses actually performed versus the league average. I'll explain to all of this in a second, because I'm sure this only sort of makes sense. Basically, a lot of my research is found that after round five or so in a twelve team league, things start to tail off in terms of expectation. To put this another way, the opportunity cost is pretty high through about round five. It's still relatively high in round six and seven, but there's a drop off that occurs after about round five. And that's just a rough estimation. So what I did was I looked at eighty p since twenty eleven, so over the last ten years, and I looked at all the teams that had three or more skill position players selected in the first five rounds of twelve team leagues, so top sixty picks. Just to give you an example, last year, Seattle was one of six teams to meet this criteria. You had Chris Carson, Tyler Lockett, and DK Metcalf. They were all top five round picks. According to my Fantasy league dot COM's data, over the last ten years, we've had forty nine different teams with three or more teammates getting drafted in the first five rounds. And for the record, I'm not including quarterbacks here, just running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends. Of those forty nine teams, ten of them, so only a little over two twenty percent of them finished the season below the league average that year in total touchdowns, meaning eighty percent of them finished above the league's average and then on top of that, of the ten teams who didn't finish above the league's average in total touchdowns, only two of them finished with more than five touchdowns below that average. So basically, only two of the forty nine teams finished way below average in total touchdowns. One of those teams was an Eli Manning led Giants in twenty thirteen. The other was an Arizona Cardinals team in twenty fourteen, the year that Carson Palmer got hurt. If you look at the degree in which these forty nine offenses with highly drafted skill players are finishing in total touchdowns, it's pretty glaring. On average, they finished with about six more touchdowns in their season's league average, and this is only reemphasized when you narrow that criteria and look at players draft in the first three rounds rather than the first five. It doesn't happen nearly as often. For the record, but since twenty eleven, ten teams have seen three skill position players draft in the first three rounds of twelve team leagues, so an average of one per season. Over the last few years. The only teams that have hit this new criteria have been Kansas City and Minnesota. It's obvious as to why Kansas City would be involved here, but Minnesota's been fortunate to have a super narrow target tree and an elite running back over the last few years. They didn't make it last year with Stefan Diggs gun, but they did in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen with Stefan Diggs, Dalvin Cook, and Adam Thielen. Regardless, though, of those ten teams, seven of them exceeded the league average and touchdowns scored, and they outpaced that league average by an average of seven point four touchdowns. Maybe this is a little bit obvious, but all this is to say that if there are teams that have a whole lot of players being drafted in the early rounds of fantasy drafts, chances are those are the right teams to bet on to score a lot of touchdowns, and it could end up being good teams to target with later round picks as well, since our goal here is to associate our players with good offenses. Now, I've done analysis like this in the past for quarterbacks in particular, and I wanted to rehash that and talk about it on today's show because I think it's really interesting. I did the exact same thing, but instead of looking at total team touchdowns, I looked at where a quarterback was ranked in the preseason and where he finished in the postseason. Because if all of his skill players are being selected early, that means the quarterback is probably good in some way. Right. The problem is quarterbacks on those teams, they're generally coming with high ADPs. For example, if the forty nine team since twenty eleven with three or more teammates being drafted in the first five rounds, the average quarterback rank in terms of ADP for those team quarterbacks was eight point three. To put this another way, if a team has three skill position players being selected in the first five rounds, that team's quarterback has been usually drafted as a QB eight. That means it's pretty hard for those quarterbacks to really exceed expectation. In fact, if you look at the quarterback rank in terms of ADP and compare it to where those quarterbacks finished, there was on average a three spot drop, so that QB eight quarterback finishes the QB eleven. That's not what you'd like to see, but it's not surprising because there's been a good bit of variance at quarterback. When looking at ADP over the last decade. There's a lot of fluctuation there. And on top of that, like I said, these quarterbacks didn't have a lot of room for air with their ranking. They had to be very, very good. What's really interesting, though, and I've made this point on the show in the past, is what happens when you specifically look at later round quarterbacks or quarterbacks not drafted in the top ten at their position. So, again to reiterate, I'm looking at quarterbacks here since twenty eleven who have had three or more teamates teamates who play running back, wide receiver, or tight end drafted in the first five rounds. Over the last ten years, we've had sixteen quarterbacks of the forty nine in our sample who were drafted at QB ten or worse. So think about what this means. These quarterbacks have a lot of good teammates being drafted early, but for some reason they're being drafted relatively late. Of those sixteen with a QB ten ranking or worse, thirteen of them improved on their APPS average draft position by the end of the season. The average quarterback ranking among this group was QB fourteen to fifteen. The average finish was QB eleven. I was also curious if this applied to pass catchers only. Thus far, I've been looking at all skill position players, so running backs are included. But what happens if a quarterback has two wide receivers, maybe a wide receiver and a tight end. What happens if they have two pass catchers who are being drafted in the first five rounds? And what I found was pretty similar data. We've had sixty six instances of this happening over the last ten years. And by the way, teams that have two good pass catchers, they actually exceed the average in total touchdowns as a team, almost as often as if they had three top five round players. But specifically for quarterbacks, let's go back to quarterbacks of the sixty six teams. The average quarterback rank in ADP from those teams has been QB seven point five, so QB seven to eight. When looking at postseason result, that ranking usually drops again by about three spots. That's similar to what I talked about earlier. But again, and if you only look at late round quarterbacks, we see a trend. Of those sixty six teams, twenty two of them had a quarterback with an ADP of QB ten or worse. Of those twenty two quarterbacks, only eight of them finished with a worse ranking in postseason result. The average quarterback ranking among this group was QB fourteen to fifteen. The average finish was round QB eleven to QB twelve. So what does this all mean. Well, it's pretty clear, and it's obvious to a degree, but teams with a lot of players who are drafted early tend to do better than the alternative. And then in addition to that, those teams generally come with costly quarterbacks. That's not surprising. But if you can find a quarterback who's on one of those teams and who has a low end QB one or QB two price tag, that's a quarterback who's worth targeting. Some examples this season of non elite quarterbacks with three or more players being drafted in the top sixty include Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, and of course Ryan Tannehill. Tannehill's the most interesting for me there because of what he can do with his legs. If you look strictly at quarterbacks with two or more pass catchers, so not running backs were being drafted in the first five rounds you can essentially the same players, and I think that you could add Joe Burrow in there subjectively because his non Jamar Chase receivers are still being selected around that area as well. Now, like most studies that I do, I don't think this is everything. It's just another thing to keep in mind as you draft. I'd still prioritize mobility at the quarterback position over teammates with high ADPs. And remember this too. Average draft position is not flawless. If you can pinpoint an entire offense, it seems to have a good chance to exceed expectation. That's when you can really really hit and really really profit. Like if the Jets end up being really good offensively this year and you buy into that that that's a huge w This is just a small way to find an edge against your peers. Recognize which teams are being drafted early, target those teams, and target the quarterbacks on those teams who are generally being drafted late. That's going to do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and NOFE could follow me on Twitter at late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you later in the week with the weekly Mailbag show.