626: Mailbag 4/1/22

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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 zachar Esen in this episode six hundred and twenty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. We're in the heat of March madness as the twenty twenty two field is down to the final four teams, and this year fandel is partnering with Visible Wireless to give you a one of a kind contest for the final two rounds of the tournament. The Call Your Shot Pickham presented by Visible, is a free to play contest where you make predictions for this weekend's games and compete for cash prizes. Simply answer a few Pickham questions for each game this weekend and earn points for each correct answer. The more you get right, the more points you'll earn, and the more cash you could win. Head over to fandle dot com, Slash Free Slash Contest, slash Visible Wireless and make your predictions today. There's no better way to get in on the action than with the Call Your Shot Pick Them, presented by Visible. The first mailbag question this week is from Patreon and is from Matt. It says on the March eleventh Mailbag show, you mentioned that you would have Breise Hall slightly outside of the twenty twenty one Naji, Javante etn Tier. Nase went fifteenth overall in my twelve team redraft home league. Etn went undrafted due to injury, Javonte Williams and Trey Sermon went in the early sixth. Each year is a little bit different and obviously also depends on landing spot, But based off of last year's ADP, where would you feel comfortable taking the top four this year? Hal Walker, Spiller Cook, Okay, Just so everyone's on the same page, Matt is saying that as prospects, I had bres Hall just below that Nase, Javonte etn Tier, But to be clear, that's because he's projected to have slightly worse draft capital. There's still a chance that my model likes him just as much as those guys. When it's all said and done, we just have to wait and see. But this one's really tough to answer because landing spot matters so much for redraft purposes. You mentioned in the question that Nause was fifteenth overall last year, while Javonte Williams and Trey Sermon went in the sixth. The only reason those things happened was because of landing spot. People were hyped up on Trey Sermon in San Francisco. People were a little bit worried about Javante given his split backfield with Melvin Gordon, and people were very into Naji Harris because the backfield in Pittsburgh was his. Had Javonte Williams landed in Pittsburgh, he would have been fifteenth overall in redraft last year. Had Naji Harris gone to Denver, he would have been like a fifth or sixth rounder. So I genuinely mean this when I said that it wouldn't be right for me to give redraft EIGHTYP projections without running back landing spots. It doesn't mean that you can't or you shouldn't be drafting rookie running backs and best ball drafts or something right now. I just mean that this is a very specific question about ADP projection and knowing landing spots will dramatically shift that, and I think we should recognize that it's a lot different in redraft versus dynasty. Now that's part one of this question I'm sorry. It's an annoying answer, but it's the truth. If you want a higher level answer, I would expect to be fine taking a player like Bresee Hall in the top five rounds this year, and Kenneth Walker maybe top six, top seven, but Landing Spot is going to dramatically shift that now. As for Spiller and Cook, I don't know if those are the consensus top running backs. It seems pretty clear that Hall and Walker are the top two, but then you start to get into some question marks. Isaiah Spiller might even go on day three, and if that happens, you can't be using a premium pick on them. And while I do like James Cook, he's profiling more as a complimentary piece a pass catching back. He's really good, but again, landing Spot will dictate a lot for him in redraft. The only running backs I feel good about right now are Bres Hall and Kenneth Walker. I have Hall in a tier above Walker, but Walker should have good draft capital and his profile is good outside of receiving in redraft. In my opinion, the rest of the rookie running backs are totally up in the air. This as Christ says, I've noticed that you really haven't talked about Johan Dotson at all on this pod this offseason. I find this weird considering that he has a decent chance to be a first round pick. I know that your biggest knock on him is that he is not an early declare wide receiver. Have you ever considered putting a player before their last season into your model? I e. What Dotson from one year ago look better in your model? Side note? Dotson comps to me as Digs but with better jump all ability and would be insane on the Chiefs. So first off, I may not have talked about him that much on the show over the offseason, but I haven't talked about a lot of guys. If you want detailed takes on prospects, it's all laid out in the Late Round prospect Guide. And I understand that not all of you are going to read that. Totally understandable. If you're not interested or if you're not able to buy that right now, I totally get it. I'm just saying that I want listeners to remember that my breakdowns on players aren't only happening on this show. There are other places to get them. But since you asked, let's talk about Dotson. I don't know if my biggest knock on Dotson is his lack of early declared status. I think it's also his size and the fact that he didn't have the best metrics in the world across the board. Like if it was just size concerns, that's fine, because size isn't the biggest deal in the world at wide receivers, especially in today's NFL. But according to Pro Football Focus, Dotson was well below average in yards per route run last year against man coverage. He had a pretty average breakout age. He wasn't that special in best season yards per team pass attempt in my model. That doesn't mean I don't like him. He still grades out as an eighty eighth percentile prospect in my model, which is still really good. There are just a lot of other wide receivers in that range that I like. I have him in a tier with George Pickens, Sky Moore, and David Bell, and I think that's fair. I think that's reasonable, So to me, Dotson's fine. I just haven't talked about him, mostly because I don't have a strong take on him either way. That's why there's been more focused on someone like sky More let's say because I think he's just more interesting given his overall profile. Now your question of have you ever considered putting a player before their last season into your model? I e. Would Dotson from one year ago look better in your model? And I've done this plenty in the past. Yes. Keep in mind that the model is taking best season numbers for Dotson. Two of the three production metrics are being pulled from the twenty twenty one season. But let's pretend that he came out last year as an early declare. Would a model like him more even with the same draft capital. The model would have liked him less last year than this year. This year, he's an eighty eighth percentile wide receiver with a projected draft capital in the early second round. Last season, with that same draft capital and early declared status, he would have been the eighty seventh percentile. I think there's this belief out there that I just don't draft players when they have no early declared status. That's not true. It's just an input. Age adjusted productions still matters most So I like Dotson, I just don't love him. I'm pretty much around market value with Dotson. This next question continues that discussion around early declare status, and it's from at justin Round twenty four on Twitter. It says, we know early declare wide receivers performed better in the NFL than non early declares. What about guys like Davonte Smith who could have gone Round one if he came out after his junior season but returned to school, or Chris a Lave this year. Basically, guys who could have been Day one or Day two prospects had they come out after their junior season but decided to go back to school. Do you have data on how they fare? So getting data like this would be pretty impossible because we'd have to make so many assumptions, Like we don't know for sure where DeVante Smith would have been drafted had he not played his senior season, Same with Chris Alave, and same with any of the other non early declare wide receivers who ended up playing that extra year in college. We just don't know. We can try to make assumptions for every single player, but then our data set is just going to be filled with noise. What I think is important is always leading with what I said before, and that's age adjusted production production in general. Chris Alave is almost a ninety fifth percentile prospect in my model despite having no early declare status. That's a really, really good score. He would have had a higher score had he come out last year at the same draft capital, mostly because all of his production metrics in my model are from his junior season. So yeah, he would have looked better last year. But he still looks fine. And let's not overstate what early declared status does, because at the end of the day, draft capital is a more important input. If a Lave coming out last year went fortieth overall versus this year going twentieth overall, then he's going to look a lot better in the model this season, despite the fact that all of his production metrics came from last year and he's not in early declare. And for the record, I'm just making up draft capital there to just give an example, all things being equal, Yes, give me the guy who declared early. And in recent history, we've seen a ton of those non early declare first round wide receivers. We've seen them bust. But it's just an input. Now, if you look at first round pick since twenty eleven, and if you separate the early declares from the non early declares, you likely won't see a huge difference in production, at least in my model. The three main production metrics in my model look pretty similar among the two groups. But that's also with the non early declares playing an extra collegiate season, which tells you that the other players had better quality production overall, since it's similar while playing fewer seasons and breakout ages are better with the early declare group. Naturally, those players are seeing better age adjusted production, which matters more than simply early declared status. Early declared status does matter, but I think it's almost gotten to the point where people who are looking at numbers are almost overstating it. There are other ways to figure out if a player is good or not through data. Early declare status, again, is just an input. It's just a thing to check off or to not check off to make you feel more comfortable about a prospect. But remember that it's not everything. And honestly, at this point you may be able to get discounts on players who don't declare early because of recent history and because of the way that people view them. But at the end of the day, our sample size in recent history is really not that big. It's something You should still pay attention to it, you should still recognize it. But it's not the end of the world. This last question is from Patreon. It's from Josh. It says thoughts on Michael Pittman. I'm hearing people worried about a run heavy offense and Colts possibly adding more wide receivers. I'm a rebuild in a standard scoring league. I don't know why we should think the Colts are going to be any more run heavy over the next couple of years versus this past year. In twenty twenty one, only four teams had lower pass rates than Indianapolis did, and they were actually pretty average in neutral script pass rate last year, and that neutral script pass rate is actually more predictive for next season overall pass rate than previous season overall pass rate is. So, if anything, I think we should expect the Colts to throw more in twenty twenty two. As for them adding wide receivers, look, my stance on this is pretty simple. If you think a wide receiver is good, you shouldn't have huge worries about competition, at least in the long term. Like, yeah, Tyreek Hill joining Jalen Waddle is not good news for Jalen Waddle. But it's not like Waddle just got destroyed and that he won't be relevant anymore. If you think someone will see dramatically worse production, and I'm talking like a huge drop in ranking and it's because a new player is entering the picture, then I'd question if you actually thought that player, that original player was good in the first place, because good wide receivers will see targets. I don't mind Pittman at all, He's on the right trajectory. But this is like what I said for Elijah Moore last week. The Jets are definitely going to add more wide receiver help. Will that hurt Elijah Moore? I mean, yeah, maybe a little bit. But if you're a believer that Elijah Moore is a beast, then you shouldn't worry about competition unless the team starts adding tons and tons of elite players. This is also more of a dynasty take than a redraft one, because competition can change the range of outcomes for a player from a target chair perspective. But when you start to worry about competition, it could be a sign that you're just worried about the player himself. If there's a wide receiver out there who you think will lose a ton of value if his team drafts someone, then I'd argue that you don't think very highly of that wide receiver. Pittman has at least shown us that he has the potential to be a really, really good player. We can't just assume an incoming rookie is going to take that away from him. And if a rookie does, then Pittman isn't who he thought he was. This last questions from at Dennis Underscore are our ff Hey JJ love the show, Thanks Guie. Team leagues have started to become my favorite style of play. It's fun and eliminating friends every week than having a blind auction for his players. Any advice you have for this style of league? So, I actually played in a couple of guillotine leagues last year and I've been playing them now for a few years. You can go to Guillotine leagues dot com and find leagues for yourself. I've been playing with other friends and analysts. The way a guillotine league works is that each week a team is eliminated from your league, they get chopped, and when they're eliminated, their players go to the waiver wire, and the rest of the remaining teams then bid on those players. So there's a lot of strategy involved, specifically around the timing of spending your budget. Now, this is gonna come off so humble, braggy, maybe even just braggy, But I won both of my Guillotine leagues last year. I felt like I sort of cracked the code. There's obviously luck involved in that, and it probably won't happen again, but I felt good about my strategy. In most leagues, you're gonna find that teams spend way too much of their free agent budget early on, but you have to remember that your goal is and to score the most points each week. In these leagues, it's to not score the least. You just need a team that can get by. There's no need to go nuts spending on players early on, because early on you're competing against fourteen fifteen to sixteen teams. Your chance of actually being eliminated, if everything else is equal, is pretty slim. So if you have a decent enough draft, you'll probably be good for a handful of weeks to start the year. And strategically, I think a late round quarterback approach makes the most sense. In that format, you're guaranteed to get some output from a lower tiered quarterback, and you're not chasing ceiling. You're chasing floor. Eventually you're gonna need a ceiling, but that won't come for a couple of months. You just have to be patient. Just remember that good players will consistently hit the waiver wire, and at the end of the day, your goal should be to become the free agent budget bowldie, where when there are five or six teams left, you can just pick whoever you won off the waiver wire each week. And remember, as the season goes on, we get more information players, we have a better idea who's good and who's not in fantasy football, like after Week one last year, we had no idea that Cooper Cup was going to be the beast that he was. So you want to have more cash to spend on these players than other teams in your league. When the season's over, you'll look back at your league's transactions and realize how much other teams overspent early in the season. Don't let the shiny new toy distract you from the fact that your goal is not first place. Each week, it's second to last. The slash quest is from at rodo Dad. Where is Tua in your dynasty quarterback rings? Why won't he have a third year bump like Josh Allen did, now that he has a real offensive line and a better version of Stefan Diggs. Okay, let's pump the brakes for a second here. I think we have to recognize that Josh Allen is an outlier period. He made one of the biggest leaps that we've ever seen a quarterback make in NFL history, literally, and it wasn't just his situation that got better. He got better. He started making better decisions, and he has totally different tools in a different skill set than Tua does. So I don't think that comparison is really worth us digging into now. As for my rankings, just a reminder you can get my rankings over on the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. For more info on that and the other things that I'm doing, just head to Lateround dot com. But in my March update, which I did after things settle down with free agency, I had Tua QB sixteen and I think it's hard to put him ahead of the players who were ahead of him. Right ahead of him are Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford, and then you get into last year's top rookie quarterbacks and a player like Jalen Hurts. I like Tua. I think Tua gets a lot of unnecessary crap from fans in the media. I broke him in that situation down on the episode from earlier this week, so you can go back and listen to that for more. But I think he's got a decent enough ceiling with his new situation. It wouldn't surprise me if he moves upward to my Dynasty rankings after twenty twenty two. But at Josh Allen year three bump, I don't think that's a reasonable thing to assume. The last question this week is from at FF pol Tsunami. Is now the time to sell Jonathan Taylor? He isn't a big time pass catching running back and won his touchdowns regress. Thanks, I'll hang up and listen. So this question got some hate from a couple of people on Twitter. How could you possibly sell Jonathan Taylor after what he did last year? Well, you're selling him because you're getting something substantial in return. It's not like you're giving him away for mediocre pieces or you shouldn't. At least, Dynasty League football dot COM's trade finder tool is showing that Taylor is being actually traded for, not hypothetically, but he's actually going for about three first round rookie picks plus some. In most cases, that's not surprising. So depending on your team situation, I don't think it's crazy to trade them away. I don't think it's necessary. But if you're trying to build some depth and really build a longer term powerhouse, getting those assets can help you do that. Now, some will say you're giving up the best player in fantasy po ball in order to build a powerhouse team. How does that make sense, Well, your roster is more than just one player. If you invest heavily in that one player, you run the risk if something were to happen to that player, your roster then immediately loses a ton of value. And by invest heavily, I'm not just referring to if you were to trade for Jonathan Taylor right now. If you have him on your roster, you're heavily invested because he himself is worth so much in Dynasty, So if something were to happen, you're still losing that value. Even if you didn't pay up to get him in the first place, and yeah, you can make a similar argument for a lot of players. I'm not saying that you can't. I'm just making the argument for trading him away. So you can walk away from this episode and at least think about every single angle because I'm not saying that you have to trade away Jonathan Taylor. Trust me, if you're looking to win this year, I would probably not trade him away. Since DLF started tracking Dynasty ADP and twenty fourteen, we've only seen Christian McCaffrey, Alvin Come, Saquon Barkley have more than two seasons with an ADP in the top five. Jonathan Taylor, who's in that category of being an elite running back asset, is currently at two seasons, and I think we should expect him to still be in that range next year as long as everything goes according to plan this year. We shouldn't expect what he did last year to happen again, but he's still going to retain value if he has a season like we're projecting him to have, so that market value information tells us that he's probably one year away from being a more obvious cell candidate. That's probably the best direction to go, that's probably the optimal direction to go. But you're gonna get a ton of really good assets right now for Jonathan Taylor proven ones. Even so, if you're not competitive and if your format rewards depth, I can understand trading him away. I don't think it's a slam dunker and obvious move, but I at least can see the argument, and I just wanted to show both sides of that argument so you can make an informed decision on your own based on your your current situation. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football 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 for listening everyone, I greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend, and I'll talk to you next week.