990: The Gray Area of Fantasy Football

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JAJ zacherathis j J Zacherth. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode nine and ninety of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast.

00:00:19
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:21
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, I do episodes like this one where I kind of just go I don't have the clearest goal in mind when I put together my little show sheet, but I know there's a general message that I'm trying to get across, and today's message is the following. We need to get away from this black and white thinking that's rampant in fantasy football. Maybe it's hot take culture taking over. Maybe it's the fact that clicks are more important than more genuine content. Whatever the reason, the fantasy football world seems to be losing the gray area when that's the opposite of what actually should be happening. As we mature with this game, as this game becomes more and more popular and we become more and more interested in it, you would think there'd be more recognition to the fact that variance is everywhere within it. Like I've been around for a while now, I've been doing this as my job for twelve years. At this point, I sort of grew up in the fantasy football space, starting when I was in my early twenties, childless, living in an apartment with my girlfriend who's not my wife, thinking I had the answers when I had none, And trust me, I know that twelve years from now, I'll be looking back at this exact moment, probably saying the exact same thing. But as I've watched the fantasy football space grow into the awesome community that it's become, I've seen aspiring fantasy analysts pop up and gain popularity. And something that I've noticed with those up and coming analysts is that the first year when that analyst gains a significant platform, when they're able to talk to thousands of people for the first time, that first year is always full of insane confidence. They fire takes out there like it's no one's business. But that first year humbles you. Man.

00:01:58
Speaker 2: You realize that when.

00:01:59
Speaker 1: You to put yourself out there, that means you're putting yourself out there to be both right and wrong, and when there's more pressure to be right and when you're then inevitably wrong, you realize on a much deeper level that this game of fantasy football that.

00:02:13
Speaker 2: All of us love.

00:02:14
Speaker 1: It's impossible to bat a thousand, even if everything seemed to line up perfectly prior to the start of the season. After that first year, you go from having more black and white takes to realizing that this game, it lives in.

00:02:28
Speaker 2: The gray area.

00:02:30
Speaker 1: There's really no need to say this absolutely will not happen. You're not scoring fantasy points based on those bold outcomes. Instead, you start to add words like probably and likely to your everyday vocabulary. Your take goes from he's definitely gonna finish as a top fantasy producer to he's probably gonna finish as a top fantasy producer.

00:02:52
Speaker 2: Because you know that in this game, anything can happen. Anything.

00:02:57
Speaker 1: Now, I bring all this up because just a couple of weeks ago, less than a couple of weeks ago, I made a trade in one of my dynasty leagues. It's one that's filled with other analysts. It's a fourteen teamer. There are deep rosters. It's a league for sikos, but in that league, it's a superflex league. My roster's loaded at wide receiver, it's fine enough at tight end. The quarterbacks are iffy, the running backs are super iffy. Now, to anyone who's listened or consumed my content over the last week or so, you probably know where this is going. I brought it up on Perspectives with Jeff Bell last week. I wrote about it my weekly newsletter, which, by the way, totally free to subscribe over on Late Round dot com. But going into that league's rookie draft, I had the one oh six, where I'd planned to take Treyvon Henderson, a perfect addition to my roster. But I knew that I wanted to bulk up at running back because this draft class is filled with talented runners.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: So I made the following move.

00:03:51
Speaker 1: I traded away Romadoon Day and I received the eighth overall pick in the rookie draft, the one oh eight. Now, I'm a believer that you guys generally don't care about my teams, but in this case, it's a slower part of the football calendar, and honestly, the conversation around this trade has been so incredibly interesting to me. It found its way to Reddit last week, and more people sided against the one to eight than for it, like by a pretty healthy margin. And by the way, shout out to Reddit. I really enjoyed the conversation that I have on there for the most part. Now, Like I said, I also talked about this trade with Jeff Bell last week on Perspectives, and naturally I receive some feedback. One comment on Spotify said, quote Roma dunsay might be the most divisive stance JJ has ever taken. Another comment said, come for rookie draft analysis, stay for a half hour of Roma doonsay talk with an eye roll emoji. They also spelled a dounsay with an A. Then it said good job, with a note that they were being sarcastic. Needless to say, that person is gonna hate today's episode. Now, whether it's those comments in the podcast email, some comments on blue Sky or Twitter or on Reddit, the conversation around this trade has really surprised me. Not in a bad way, just more in a really kind of way, Like that comment about Roma Dunza being the most divisive stance I've ever taken.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: Brother or sister.

00:05:14
Speaker 1: If that's my most divisive take, then I'm not doing a very good job of explaining myself in this podcast. So let's take today and walk through this because I think it's a situation that perfectly describes how I view fantasy football. It's a scenario where you might have that aha moment where you realize exactly what I'm trying to say when I say that this game has a lot of variance and that you should be living in the gray area. I'll make you realize that this is not a divisive stance about Roma Dunza at all. In fact, I actually like Romadunza. My thought process in trading a Dunza for the one oweight, and I've stated this several times now, but it was that at worst, with that one.

00:05:55
Speaker 2: O eight pick, I was looking at a mecha Buka.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: At worst, at best someone like Quinn Shawn Judkins would fall, which gave me the perfect need for my team. Now, some may say that's silly that I should never give up on a player like a Dunza for a player like Agbuka. Not only was a Dunza a better prospect, but Iguka is buried on his depth chart in Tampa Bay. I'm just delaying this exact same scenario happening next year, right because as we know, a Dunesay competed with good pass catchers in twenty twenty four, his situation was not that desirable.

00:06:29
Speaker 2: But to me.

00:06:30
Speaker 1: There are a lot of assumptions being baked into Roma Dunzay's overall valuation, and the majority of those assumptions are favorable ones. When I approach my own evaluation of a player, my goal is not just look at data that favors some narrative that I'm trying to drive home. I want to see the pros and the cons. I do the same thing with some of my more robust fantasy football analysis too. As I'm writing it, as i'm putting it together, I'm actively thinking, how can someone poke a hole in this argument that I'm building here. No player is flawless, and if you approach a player assuming that he's flawless, you're gonna have a hard time doing well in any fantasy format, especially in dynasty. Now, for Roma Dunsay, the current pros, the good parts of his profile, or that he was a good prospect. We can excuse some of his underwhelming year one numbers when you give them offensive context, and when you can bind some of those rookie season numbers with his overall situation. There are some players who he compares favorably to. One of them, for example, is DeAndre Hopkins. That's something I wrote about extensively in the Prospect guid. I even brought it up on the show a few months ago. There's a path for roma Dunza to be a DeAndre Hopkins like wide receiver, even knowing that I traded a Dunza away because there are cons to his profile two. We can make excuses for his rookie season numbers, and we should to some degree, but his rookie season numbers were also pretty bad. Hitty yards per out run rate of one point one eight yards per out run is a pretty predictive metric, especially for rookie wide receivers. In my year two model database, there are over one hundred and fifty wide receivers who ran fifty or more routes as rookies with first year yards per out run rates below one point three. So that's a number that's a good bit higher than where a.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: Dunsa is at.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: Just five of those wide outs ended up giving fantasy managers a season of fifteen or more pper points per game and either year two or year three, yes, situationally, things were not good. When people heard or read about this trade, they would say, but don't you realize that he played in such a horrific situation. Of course, you've got to at least give me the benefit of the doubt here and know by now that I'm not going to make decisions or think about players without any sort of context. But yeah, that's why we can explain some of this away. But how much that's the real question. A situation can't just cancel out everything that a Dunzay did in year one one, right, Like, we can't just assume that season never happened. That wouldn't be a very fair way to do analysis, because if we do that for a Donsay, wouldn't we then have to do that for every other wide receiver who may have stepped into a situation that wasn't ideal as a rookie. There are tons of instances where that's been the case. Maybe they haven't been identical to a Dunezay's circumstances, But where do you draw the line. Where do you draw the line and say we don't have to worry about that rookie season whatsoever. My point is that there's a mix here. We need to recognize that his numbers were pretty poor. His peripheral numbers were not great. Historically, wide receivers usually don't become stars after that kind of rookie season. But we can then also recognize that Caleb Williams had really bad accuracy when he targeted a dounsay that he had tough competition, that is, coaching sucked. Like, trust me, guys, I get all of that. I'm just saying that we can't let that overshadow the actual production that we know has some predictive value, actually a lot of predictive value. What I'm doing here is living in the gray area. I recognize the range of outcomes for Roma Dunza. I fully see a scenario where he's great. I also see a scenario where he was just an overvalued prospect and it didn't totally totally work out.

00:10:21
Speaker 2: He didn't become a star.

00:10:24
Speaker 1: I think it's healthy to see that this can go in two very different directions. Now, going back to that trade, Remember I was kind of hoping to get a running back in that one O eight spot, with Agbuka being sort of a worst case scenario. But I also had the flexibility to get like RJ. Harvey if I wanted to. And for the record, Agbuka wasn't even the player that I ended up getting. I moved up one spot in the one oh seven and I got quinch On Judkins, So this wasn't even in a Dunza for Igbuka trade. But I do think strictly looking at Igbuka is a really really interesting exercise, and it's one that people who read my newsletter last week really ran with. There's this idea out there that a Mechagbuka is just going to be in Roma Dounsay's.

00:11:03
Speaker 2: Situation next year.

00:11:05
Speaker 1: That how we view at Dunzay right now, That's how we're gonna view Agbuka, which I understand the logic good prospect, but in a crowded situation in year one leads to less opportunity, which leads the worst fantasy production, which leads to us questioning Igbuka's true long term viability at least to some degree. And I think the general consensus like the Donsay as a prospect more than Igbuka, So Igbuka will get even less of a benefit of doubt compared to a Dunza right now.

00:11:35
Speaker 2: But when we focus on that.

00:11:36
Speaker 1: Soul comparison, we're losing sight of the various outcomes that could really occur here. For one, what if Agbuka does have some sort of down year production wise, like from a points per game perspective, but his.

00:11:47
Speaker 2: Peripherals are really strong. You don't think.

00:11:49
Speaker 1: Fantasy analysts are going to tout him into year two. You don't think that's going to raise his overall value in dynasty. Or what if the Buccaneers really do let Mike Evans walk next year? Or what if Chris Godwin doesn't get back to his old self after sustaining a really gruesome injury last season. Now, of course there's an out here where Agbuka's back with a healthy Evans and a healthy Godwin in twenty twenty six, and that could cap his upside for yet another season. But is that not kind of what's happening with Romadunze right now, at least to some degree.

00:12:22
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not an apples to apples.

00:12:24
Speaker 1: Comparison, But something that just keeps getting lost in this discussion with Adonsay is the fact that this new Bears coaching staff used their first two picks in this year's draft on pass catchers. They got Colston Lovelin and Luther Burden. Is it not possible that Romadunza actually has tougher competition this year than he had last year. I mean, he was playing alongside Keenan Allen last year. Allen still hasn't signed with a team. He's thirty three years old, inching towards the end of his career.

00:12:55
Speaker 2: That's the thing.

00:12:55
Speaker 1: When I see people tell me that Agbuka is just going to be the twenty twenty sixth version of Roma Dune, that he'll be right in this spot that a Dounzay is in right now, I just don't see how we're.

00:13:05
Speaker 2: So confident and that one singular outcome.

00:13:10
Speaker 1: I don't see why we're thinking about this in such a binary black and white way. You mean to tell me that it's likely that it's probable that we see at Mecha Buca have a bad season on the peripherals front, that his yards per out run will be well below average for a star wide receiver, and then we watch his team, the Buccaneers, draft pass catchers with their first two round picks.

00:13:31
Speaker 2: That's probable.

00:13:34
Speaker 1: Like part of the reason, if not a huge chunk, of the reason that Roma Dunday is less attractive today than he was a month ago is because more competition was added to that team. And yet we really haven't seen his overall price tag change that much over on keep trade cut. Adunza is still the wide receiver twenty in Dynasty Now. One common pushback and I saw this so many times, But something that people kept telling me is well, what about Jackson Smith and Jigba? Because as we know, Jaysn was drafted in Round one, he had really tough competition on his team at wide receiver, and then he had a pretty poor rookie season. It's a whole lot like the Roma Dunsay situation, and it's a whole lot like a mechag Buka. I've even made that comparison with Agbuka. But when we look at Jackson Smith and Jigba as the sole comparison, we're losing sight of the greater picture. Yes, guys, there's a scenario where Romadunza sees a rise like JSN did last year. That's in his range of outcomes. Remember I've comped a Dunsay to DeAndre Hopkins this offseason. But not only did the Zap model just like JSN more as a prospect, but the Seahawks didn't go out and draft a tight end tenth overall and a wide receiver thirty ninth overall the following season. And not only that, and this is most important, but JSN didn't have the same type of value in the dynasty market the following season after his rookie year. I just told you that Roma Dunsay is the wide receiver twenty over on keep trade cut, despite a down rookie season, despite his team drafting two pass catchers with their first two picks. Despite all of that, he's still the wide receiver twenty. He dropped his five wide receiver spots since the NFL Draft ended last year. At this time, Jackson Smith and Jigba was the wide receiver twenty five. According to Dynasty League Football's ADP, he was the wide receiver thirty five, and there was a point in the summer on keep trade cut last year where JSM was closer to wide receiver thirty. To me, that's signaling that the dynasty market is making more excuses for Romadonsay than it was Jackson Smith and Jigba, because keep in mind, JSN had arguably better peripherals in year one than Romadonsay had, and his team didn't go out and draft a tight end and wide receiver with two top fifty picks in the draft, and yeah, clearly the Ben Johnson effect. That's what's happened here too. In fact, i'd argue that's the main reason a lot of this is happening, and I'm not dismissing that. What I'm trying to focus on here is the fact that this really centers around cost and how the dynasty market is reacting to things. And to me, the market isn't reacting enough to some of those things. Typically with players like this and situations like this, we see a little bit more of a drop. Everything in fantasy football comes down to price. I'll draft anyone at the right price. I'll trade for anyone at the right price. Like I'm sure a lot of you have some sort of dream car. I'm not a car person. I don't really have that. I know a lot of you do. What's stopping you from getting that dream car resources. You only have so much money to spend, and you need to allocate that money appropriately.

00:16:51
Speaker 2: You're not Jeff Bezos, or.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: At least I don't think Jeff Bezos listens to the Late Round podcast. I would love to have kept Romadunze, but that's not how fantasy football works, and to me, there's a point right now where playing probability with Romadunza does make sense, where I can flip him for a similar cost that I bought him for, despite the fact that he received more youthful competition, and despite the fact that he did have an underwhelming rookie season, And in turn, my worst case scenario is basically putting me right back to where Romadunza is this year because a Mechagbuka was that worst case scenario, and yeah, I'd have to wait another year to be in this position, and time is money, time is valuable. But also that's more of a worst case scenario. There's a better scenario here where Agbuka has better peripherals than Romadunza, whereas competition is weaker in year two than what we're seeing right now with Adunzay, where his team doesn't go out and add more pass catchers. Maybe framing this another way will really help. We know that in Dynasty, managers don't have forever. They're not the most patient people in the world, nor should they be. You can't wait around for players to develop because as each year passes and if that player is not getting any better, you know the odds of him actually being a stud get exponentially worse. So let me ask the question that I asked Jeff last week. Where would Roma Dunze have to rank this season in fantasy football? What kind of points per game output would he need to see in order to gain value in dynasty year over year. That's the question that seems to never get answered. What kind of production are you expecting a Dounza to see? Not a mechag Buca, but a Doonzay? Because I can tell you this, My projections right now have Roma Dunza at wide receiver thirty six. Most rankings have him around there too. Mike Clay's projections the gold standard in the fantasy space. His projections have a Dunsay at wide receiver thirty nine. That's a huge discrepancy between dynasty valuation and c in long valuation. And what those projections tell us is the most likely median outcome. That median outcome for a dounsay, is a fringe wide receiver three season. And if a Dunsa hits a fringe wide receiver three season, what do you think is gonna happen to his dynasty value? That's then two seasons of underwhelming production, of non super usable production. Dynasty managers are not going to buy into that. So while you can sit here and say that a Mega Buca's most likely outcome would be placing him in a spot that's similar to Roma Dunza this year, what about a dounsay's most likely outcome. You can't ignore that when talking about a trade like this. You know, the funny thing with all of this is that a Dunza has a very very real shot to be someone I'm aggressively targeting the season in redraft leagues because the price is different. Cost is everything. Spending a wide receiver three to wide receiver four pick and redraft on a young and talented wide receiver who's getting the offensive scheme upgrade and who does have an interesting ceiling, I'm going to ignore the floorcase there all day long. Give me the ceiling. That's all I care about. Dynasty doesn't always work that way, depending on your roster. My roster was one where I wasn't in the business of having a highly volatile asset, which is what I think we've established. Roma Dunze is there's a high ceiling. But if he doesn't produce this year, there's also a very scary floor. I had an out I had an opportunity to get an asset, a running back asset who had a narrow range of outcomes, and it would help my team more in the immediate future for that team to compete now.

00:20:43
Speaker 2: So I made the move.

00:20:45
Speaker 1: And look, guys, not every trade you do has to be lopsided, like I think a Dounza for the one a weight is just a fair trade on paper.

00:20:53
Speaker 2: That's why I proposed it in the first place. I don't mess around.

00:20:57
Speaker 1: I don't think there's a situation where it's like, give me the one aweight ninety five percent of the time. Again, because I like to live in the gray area. People see this trade and they see I made an action. They assume because I made that action, that I think that Roma Dunza is bad, or that you should trade him, or that he's some obvious cell candidate. I mean, just read that comment about this being the most divisive stance that I've ever taken.

00:21:24
Speaker 2: That couldn't be further from the truth. My stance on a donsday is actually relatively neutral. I'm just recognizing that this could go in many different directions. I'm recognizing that fantasy football isn't some black and white game.

00:21:40
Speaker 1: And you know what, we may look back at this episode a year from now and Romadunza might be the wide receiver seven in Dynasty. He might have blown up in twenty twenty five, and inevitably someone's gonna come after me, call me a moron, and call me a loser. But guess what, that's a result that happened among many that could have happened. In that case, the ninety ninth percentile outcome would hit, And yeah, that would suck for that one singular Dynasty roster where I made that move. It sucks when that kind of thing happens. I've made deals in the past where I traded a player who, in my mind had a very low probability of hitting, and then that player hit and you look back and you say, man, this roster would have been so much better had I not made that move.

00:22:25
Speaker 2: But when you made that move, you.

00:22:27
Speaker 1: Were simply playing probability, you were looking at range of outcomes. You were living in the gray area. That outcome is just sometimes what happens in fantasy football. That's not the only action you're ever going to take in this game. If your process is sound, which I think this process is sound, then you'll win out in the long run across all of your actions. You know, the main reason you don't hear me sit on this podcast or go on social media victory lapping my hits is because of this. When an unless hits on some probability driven outcome, they're not totally hitting on that prediction. One of my bigger wins from a prospecting standpoint over the last five seasons or so was with Isaiah Pachecko.

00:23:11
Speaker 2: I was telling readers and listeners to take him in their rookie drafts that year.

00:23:15
Speaker 1: I sent a tweet when the Chiefs drafted him that Pachecko was coming for Clyde Edwards Alaire's job. I was half joking, but it was still crazy to say at the time. But if I actually nailed that prediction, I would have ranked Pachecko as a first round rookie pick. I wouldn't have said, hey, get him in round four as an afterthought, because no one else wants this guy, and I think there's at least a chance that he hits, because whether we see it or not, we inherently are looking at this game through a lens of probability. It would have been idiotic for me to take a late day three running back as a first rounder in rookie drafts because late day three picks rarely pan out, and there were plenty of holes to Pachecko's profile. It just so happened that the high end of his range of outcomes ended up hitting, and it's fun to celebrate when those things happened. Why play fantasy football if you can't have fun when these situations go down. There's just no need to be obnoxious about it, to say, look at me, I got this right because I'm a genius. Because there were so many different possible outcomes for a player like Isaiah Pachecko, there were so many ways.

00:24:25
Speaker 2: For you to not look like a genius.

00:24:28
Speaker 1: It's like when people sit there and they say, told y'all when they're talking about Pooka Nakua, No, you didn't. You absolutely did not tell people that pokuin Akua would be one of the best rookie wide receivers of all time. I liked Nikua too, he was a late round dart throw in my draft guide that year. But I wasn't sitting here saying that he would give us wide receiver one production that's insane. And just like there were a lot of outcomes for Nicua and Pachecko, there are a lot of different outcomes for Romadonza.

00:24:58
Speaker 2: Some of those outcomes.

00:24:59
Speaker 1: Will make me target him in some leagues, while some of those outcomes will make me want to trade him away because fantasy football it's a game about probability, and since it's a game about probability, you need to live in the gray area. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found it. Follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Make sure you check out the Late Round Prospect Guide over on Lateround dot com. That's obviously still for sale. And while you're there, subscribe to the free newsletter. But I've got a mail bag coming for you later this week. I'll talk to you guys then