883: Using Running Back Prospect Scores in Season-Long Leagues

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Speaker 1: This is the Lab podcast with your host JJ Zacheris J J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode eight hundred and eighty three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. As almost all of you know, I have a prospect model and a year two model. The prospect model, called the ZAP model, helps me project how well a player is going to perform during the first three years of his career. The year two model takes inputs from a prospect's first season in the NFL and it tells me which players are best set up for their second and third seasons in the league. I'm confident in those models because I've tested them. I also now have a few years of being an analyst while using them, and I've seen good results anecdotally. The model's changed a bit this offseason, but the backbone is still there. I know that this is that model. The prospect model is more predictive than rookie draft average draft position when looking at a player's first three years in the league. What I don't fully know is whether or not we can use these models for our season long leagues. Are redraft leagues, so of course I did a little data analysis to find out. I looked at historical average draft position data or ADP data, and sort of layered prospect scores in year two scores on top, and I want to share some of those results today. I'll be talking running back. Next week, I'll do the same thing but at wide receiver. Now, before digging in, I want to remind you about a special Underdog fantasy offer. If you've never played over at Underdog, you should change that immediately. They've got best ball drafts, a great pick them game, and more for you to try out. Yours truly's going hard with best ball drafts this year in particular, and I'm creating content around that experience as well. You can use that content to your advantage when drafting, and you can also use the Late Round Draft Guide. The guide is currently available for pre order over on lateround dot com, but for anyone who's not on Underdog, if you sign up today using promo code late Round, you'll get two things. One a really strong deposit offer, but two On July first, when that draft guide is finished, it'll be email to you. You get a free Late Round Draft Guide, So head to Underdog Fantasy dot Com or download the Underdog app. When you go to sign up, use promo code Late Round and make it a posit. You'll get that deposit offer along with a late round draft guide that'll be delivered on July first. Again, that's promo code Late Round. So the first thing I need to do is touch on the ZAP model itself. The model spits out prospect scores for players who either went to the NFL Combiner who were drafted, and the model dates back to twenty eleven. Scores are on a scale from zero to one hundred, but because there are so many players in the model who are undrafted or who went in the late round the draft, anything below a score of like seventy, that's when things start to be a little concerning, or I should say, those scores don't hit at a very high rate. Scores of ninety five are better. Those are typically reserved for the elite players like Bjon Robinson, Jamier Gibbs, those types of players, and then the ninety to ninety five range is filled with very solid backs. Players in the eighties can kind of go either way. The year two model is built pretty similarly. Any score from ninety five to one hundred is going to capture an elite player. For the most part. Anything in the ninety to ninety five range, you've got a really solid player. But with the year two model, when you get below ninety, you run into more issues. The reason you run into issues below nineties because the model is more predictive. It's more predictive than the prospect model. You're now looking at a year of actual NFL data with that model, with the year two model, so we have a sample of the player playing in the league. That's huge. It's important to wrap your head around because I'll be referencing different prospect score ranges throughout today's show. I'll do my best to help you out so that you don't get lost. But that's the gist of how the models work and how the scores are distributed. Now, my goal with the analysis was to see if there was anything glaring when it came to where we've been drafting running backs in the past in our redraft leagues and how strong those running backs prospect scores were or year two scores. Like let's say hypothetically that when you drafted RB twos in the past, guys in the RB thirteen to RB twenty four range. Let's say all of the running backs in that range who had prospect scores under ninety never score ten or more PPR points per game in a season. That would be interesting, wouldn't it. It's not true, but it would be interesting, right. I wanted to see if there were any trends like that. Now. To research this, the first thing I did was look at historical ADP. Now, in the past, I'd been using ADP from my fantasy league, but I'm shifting focus to ADP via Fantasy Data dot Co. It still gives us ten years worth of data, and I found it to be a little bit cleaner, so we've got ten years of running back ADP. Rather than looking at round drafted here, I bucketed these running backs up into four groups. RB ones, RB twos, RB three's, and RB fours. RB ones are guys drafted in the top twelve at the position. RB twos being guys drafted as the RB thirteen to the RB twenty four and then so on, and I only included players who ended up playing eight or more games in the season. The reason I'm bucketing things up this way for the record is because there are so many variations to fantasy football these days. Overall, ADP can really fluctuate from one game type to the next, but ADP typically fluctuates across positions, not within the position. So you can still take these learnings and apply them to any redraft league. So we've got four buckets from there. I just wanted to started a high level and look at all of the running backs in each of these groups who actually had a prospect score. Some of them won't have one because they were drafted before twenty eleven so before the model started, or because they didn't get drafted or go to the combine so they weren't in the model's database. And like I said, I also only looked at players who played eight or more games in the season. So to give you an idea of sample size here and what I'm talking about. Among our RB one group, we have eighty nine player seasons who simply had a prospect score. There were ninety one in the RB two group that had a prospect score. That was then eighty one for the RB thre's and eighty eight for the RB fours. So in total we have a decent sample size to work off of. Here. My next step was to split each of these buckets up by prospect score. Again, let me just give you an example so we can all wrap our heads around this. The RB one group, it had eighty nine running back seasons with prospect scores. Forty eight of those seasons came from running who had prospect scores in the ninety five to one hundred range. So that's its own group. That's a very high proportion of players, but that's not that surprising because running backs drafted early RB ones. Those running backs were generally really good prospects, so a lot of those players had prospect scores when they came out above ninety five. Fifteen of the RB ones had prospect scores in the ninety to ninety five range, nineteen in the eighty to ninety range, and so on. I did that for all four of our running back ADP groupings. Now, keep in mind, i'm looking at running backs of all ages. Here. There are rookies, there are veterans. It's every running back, every running back who was in RB one, in RB two, in RB three, or an RB four by ADP, I'm just grouping them up by prospect scorer. Now, after these buckets were created, I tested to see if there was anything going on with these groups, and they're kind of was. Let's start with the elite players, the RB one ones by ADP, the top twelve running backs by ADP. The best subgroup of these players were, unsurprisingly, the RB ones who had prospect scores above ninety five, About fifty eight percent of them ended up exceeding ADP expectation. What do I mean by exceeding ADP expectation, Well, every spot in ADP has some sort of expected points per game outcome. When you get a running back fiftieth overall, he's expected to score some number of Fantasy points per game. And fifty eight percent of the RB ones who had elite prospect scorers exceeded their expected outcome. Their actual points per game was greater than what was expected. And that's a pretty awesome number because it's a little bit more difficult to exceed expectation in the early rounds than the middle and the late ones. And that number was well over fifty percent. Generally speaking, Top forty eight running backs by ADP, So all of the ADP groupings top forty eight running backs who had prospect scores above ninety five, they generally fared well. Generally speaking, that's not that surprising, though, because the better the prospect, the better the NFL player. If that weren't the case, then my model would suck. But what is kind of interesting is that the prospect scores seem to matter a whole lot less for players who are drafted as RB three's or RB fours. To phrase that another way, and RB three someone's drafted in the RB twenty five to RB thirty six range, he exceeded ADP expectation at just as good of a rate if he had a prospect score of like seventy three compared to ninety seven. For the most part, I'd say you'd still want a better prospect. But the data isn't that convincing at all. Now. I don't think this means that the prospect scores are unpredictable. You have to think about what we're analyzing here. We're looking at all running backs, not young running backs, not rookie running backs, all of them. We're looking at all running backs who are being drafted as RB one's, RB two's, RB thre reason RB fours. If a player is being drafted as an RB three or an RB four, that means there's probably not a whole lot going in his favor for one reason or another. Maybe he's in a split backfield, maybe he's hanging on by a thread at the end of his career. He once had a good prospect scorer, but he's not the same running back anymore. That's why he's not being drafted early. So in total and in total is the key here. In total, when you're looking at RB threes and RB fours, which are your middle round, your later round running backs, you don't need to focus heavily on prospect score for the players in the earlier rounds. That does seem to be different now, I think the logic is the exact same as the why. If a running back is being drafted high, he's probably at the peak of his career. Things are going his way. If he's at the peak of his career, then his prospect scorer probably has a little bit more reliability because he may only be in his second or third year in the league. But where we do run into some truck is when we have earlier round running backs with bad prospect scores. Let me run through this. Since twenty fourteen, one hundred and eighty running backs draft in the top twenty fourth the position had a prospect score. So we've got one hundred and eighty running back seasons. Of those one hundred and eighty, seventy six had scores between ninety five and one hundred, so they were elite prospects. And of those seventy six, forty seven exceeded ADP expectation. That's a rate of over sixty two percent. That's an awesome hit rate. We kind of talked about that earlier when looking at RB ones, but this includes RB ones and RB twos. When you look at how well those players exceeded expectation by three or more PPR points per game, which is what I call a moderate breakout, the rate is thirty seven percent, which is really, really, really really good. What this means is that historically RB ones and RB twos by ADP who had elite prospect profiles, they've been really great to have in fantasy football, especially if you can find an RB two. So the RB thirteen to the RB twenty four with that kind of profile, an RB two with an elite prospect profile absolutely smashes. The numbers look okay enough when you're analyzing top twenty four running backs who had prospect scores above ninety and above eighty. They're not as good as the elite guys, but they're still good. It's when you drop below eighty where things start to get sketchy. Going back to our sample, we've had thirty running backs drafted as top twenty four backs since twenty fourteen who had prospect scores below eighty, so their RB ones or RB twos by ADP, but their prospect scores were questionable. Of those players, only twenty seven percent ended up exceeding ADP expectation. You should think of the norm of exceeding expectation as around fifty percent, so that's a lot lower. And get this, only one of the thirty running backs exceeded ADP expectation by three or more points per game. Just one. That was Devonte Freeman, and that was back in twenty sixteen. This might be a little bit confusing, so let me just give you an example. Last year, people were drafting Damian Pierce as the RB eighteen. But Pierce was a Day three pick in the NFL draft who naturally didn't have a strong prospect score. As a result, his ZAP model score was in the sixties. He had a good rookie season and that allowed his ADP to rise. In year two, he was in that RB two range, but then he flopped last year. So I think the reason for this trend is pretty simple. Draft capital plays a role in a player's prospect score. If a team drafts are running back early, that running back number one is probably talented, but number two a team might be a little bit more lenient with that player. If a team spends a seventh rounder to get him, and that seventh rounder hits in year one or year two, that team might not be that tied to the player. That's way different than how the steel have generally felt about Naji Harris, for instance. And so in turn, those higher capital running backs are still getting a lot of volume regardless of how good they are, even if the talent isn't totally there. And this isn't just for younger running backs either. Look at Alexander Madison last year. Madison's prospect score was seventy seven. He wasn't some elite prospect. He then got an opportunity, and not only was he not talented enough to seize that opportunity, but the Vikings didn't feel some strong tie to him. Miles Gaskin from a few years ago. That's another example, Mike Davis from that same year. They fall into this category two. So my recommendation to you is this, if a player is being drafted early, like top twenty four running back early, and he seemingly came from nowhere, he's probably not something that you want to heavily invest in. Now, that's for the entire running back position. I also wanted to look at what things look like for first and second year running backs as well, because these models are specifically tailored towards those players. And once again, this data points to rookie running backs being very good bets in your redraft leagues. I say once again because I've done episodes and written about rookie running backs a lot in the past. This is just another example of it. But anyway, rookie running backs since twenty fourteen, we've only had eighteen running backs enter the league with a prospect score above ninety five, and only fifteen of them played eight or more games as rookies. The reason the samples were much larger with the stuff that I just talked about to open up the show is because those running backs repeatedly would rank in the top twelve and the top twenty four each season because they're good running backs. But yeah, among those fifteen, the hit rates in year one are crazy good. In redraft, ten of the fifteen, so two thirds of them were able to exceed ADP expectation, and seven of the fifteen, so forty seven percent of them exceeded ADP expectation by three or more PPR points per game. That's an absurd hit rate. That is absolutely bonker. Now, there aren't any running backs from the twenty twenty four class with a score above ninety five, but at every level of your draft you should be targeting those players. Seventeen more running backs had scores between ninety and ninety five while playing at least eight games during that first year. This is across all ADP groups, and of those seventeen, fifty nine percent exceeded ADP expectation while thirty five percent of them were moderate breakouts. Again, those are very very strong numbers, and to be honest, those are the strongest takeaways that I saw with rookie running backs. We actually never saw rookie running back with a prospect score below eighty get drafted in the top twenty four at the position in redraft, so there's not a whole lot of insights from splitting up those groups. So basically, if a rookie running back is being drafted in the top twenty four, and that rookie running back had a Prospect Score above ninety, he's probably a good draft selection in your season long league. And then there's the year two running backs, the guys who played their rookie s and are entering the second year of their NFL career. They have a year two model score. Seventeen second year players since twenty fourteen played eight games in the season with a year two model score above ninety. Five of those seventeen eight were moderate breakouts, which again crazy crazy good hit rate. Not to be clear, this group is basically the pretty good to elite prospects who then had really good rookie seasons. Guys were expecting big things from in year two. They tend to do very very well against ADP. Meanwhile, we've only had eight running backs in total since twenty fourteen with top twenty four running back positional ADP and a year two score below ninety. Just two of those eight exceeded expectation, so they were top twenty four running backs, and they had a bad year two score. They didn't exceed expectation at a very strong rate. Only one of them was a moderate breakout. Now, those are both well below average rates. Our sample size isn't huge, but once again we're looking at a situation where if a player is being drafted relatively early after failing to reach a year two score of ninety, that player might be in trouble. And you may be wondering jj which year two players fit that criteria this year. Now, I can tell you that my prospect guide is available over on lateround dot com and includes all that information. But I won't do myself any favors here from a sales perspective. I'm just gonna let you know that none of the players in last year's class really fit this criteria in twenty twenty four, Thankfully, there are players who are being drafted in that RB three RB four range, though, who have scores below ninety. One of them is Chase Brown, who have been back and forth on basically all offseason. And I'll admit, after doing this research, I do like Chase Brown more. I think there's a good chance that he meets expectation maybe even exceeds it by a couple of points per game. But I'll leave you with this. The year two model is obviously predictive, I wouldn't be using it. That means low scores just generally don't yield great results. It's very rare for a score below ninety in general to eventually give us like amazing output. And that's what this data does show, and it is the unfortunate side for someone like Chase Brown. We've seen thirty eight second year running backs get drafted as top forty eight backs since twenty fourteen while playing eight or more games and having a year two model score below ninety. Let me rephrase that second year player top forty eight running back by ADP eight or more games played in that second season year two models score below ninety. Of those thirty eight, half of them exceeded expectation, which is the norm. But it also tells us that year two players in general are good bets in redraft, which is something I've talked about for years because these players weren't incredible prospects. They're not amazing players, but thirteen of them were moderate breakouts, which is a really strong number. Remember, though, this is all versus EIGHTP. Players with low year two scorers are generally not early round picks, so it's easier for them to beat their ADP in the end. Among those thirty eight running backs, just two of them were able to score sixteen or more PPR points per game. That's an RB one season. So I think with someone like Brown or even someone like Taj Spears, who's like right on the fringe in the model between being above and below ninety, I think they're good bets and reed draft this year to be solid. They're good zero RB type backs in my eyes. I just don't know if we're gonna end up seeing them hit a really high ceiling that's just based on history. Now, before I let you go, I want to sum this whole thing up because I know I threw a lot of numbers at you. I haven't done one of these episodes in a while. It felt great to do one, but I know they're not always so easy to digest. Here are the three big takeaways from all the stuff I just talked about. Number One, when it comes to early round running backs in your fantasy draft, if they weren't strong prospects but being lifted in ADP because of a great previous season, you want to be cautious. Number two rookie running backs are good bets in fantasy period. If you can find a great prospect as an RB two or an RB three by ADP, you should snatch him up. And then number three. Year two running backs are also great bets in fantasy, not just rookies, but second year guys too. Players with year two scores above ninety five, they're excellent targets in your draft no matter where they're being drafted. And while poor year two scores are bad for a player's ceiling, if a year two running back is being drafted in the top forty eight, regardless of his score, he's still a pretty good bet to beat his ADP. Got it cool. Next week we'll do wide receivers. That's it for today's show, though, thanks toll Ofy for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. I Gotta Becoming a Best ball bro episode coming out tomorrow, and then a Perspective's episode later this week. I'll talk to you then