442: Mailbag 11/6/20

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandle and at number fire dot com in this episode four hundred and forty two of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network.

00:00:24
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:25
Speaker 1: I mentioned yesterday how we've got a listener League for the Masters, but the FanDuel Podcast Network Listener League for the NFL is still around. This week, enter the Rake Free Contest for five dollars a lineup and compete for your share the fifteen hundred dollars prize pool. To enter, visit fandule dot com Slash League Slash Listener League. Eligibility restrictions apply. The first question this week is from at not really hat Is there anyone in the Dolphins backfield worth rostering while Gaskin is down? And since there's not, do you see any scripted uptick in the passing? Or do they just let Brida and Washington eat twenty touches a game?

00:01:05
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:01:05
Speaker 1: So Miles Gaskin's on IR. Now that means that Miami has to fill a pretty big void. I don't mean that Gaskin is this like unbelievable running back necessarily. I just mean that he's seen about sixty five percent of the team's running back rushes and a sixteen percent target share this year, and that's after getting off to a slow start. They need to fill that. With Matt Brida banged up, I don't know if we see a running back just take over that backfield. I don't think that Brida would necessarily get that Gaskin workload if he was healthy, but I do think that he would be the one who would get closest without Gaskin, though I wouldn't think Miami becomes a different type of team Since they had that weird game script last week, we didn't really get to see what the offense might look like with Tua at least totally. But the only way I'm changing a pass rate projection for a team is if they lose a stud running back like a true stud. And that's only because teams and coaches think that they need to feed those players. But even then, pass rates or pass rates that we should care about, they'll largely come from game script unless you're looking at the extremes. So basically, what I'm saying here is I don't think we see a direct replacement for Gaskin, and it's partially because Brita is hurt. And then on top of that, we're probably gonna see Miami be more pass heavy than they were this past week. But that's not happening because of Miles Gaskin. It's because we can't expect Miami to be up fourteen points in the second quarter every single week.

00:02:29
Speaker 2: This last question.

00:02:30
Speaker 1: Says, is there any value in perhaps adding deep ball completion percentage QBR et cetera to a wide receiver's airyards metric to form a new metric? Hollywood Brown made me think of this, since he's got airyards galore, but they've been sub quality throws. And then I also got a question from at Jason two eight zero three six three four to one. This question says, I've heard a lot of analysts talk about air yards this year. However, it has been around names like AJ Green and Hollywood Brown who have generally disappointed in spite of high are yard yards. I've not heard anybody yet describe air yards well and what to expect through this figure. Okay, so let's talk about aer yards. Let's look at what they mean and what they're telling us. You know how targets are so commonly cited with what we do in fantasy football. Of course we want targeted wide receivers and running backs. It's really important. But it's important for a couple of reasons. It shows that the player is getting open and is doing well, which is why I always call targets a skill statistic. And then it also shows intent that not only is the player getting open, but the team is using that player and wanting to get that player of the ball. There's a similar argument with air yards.

00:03:40
Speaker 2: They show intent.

00:03:42
Speaker 1: They show that a quarterback is trying to get the ball to a wide receiver in a particular way. In Hollywood Brown and AJ Green's case, they're getting the ball down the field. Now, in fantasy football, pass catchers score points by catching passes, gaining yards, and scoring touchdowns. Receptions are due to targets, and then the amount of yards that a player sees is correlated to air yards, meaning if a player has a really low average depth of target, then he'd better be balancing that out with a lot of volume through the air. And then on the flip side, if a player is only seeing deep targets, then he needs a little bit less volume. That's a really, really simplistic way to look at it, but I think that's an easy way to sort of absorb this information. Now you can take this a step further and look at catchable deep targets like Hollywood Brown according to data that we work with a number Fire and data that my colleague Brandon Godolah pulled, but Hollywood Brown has caught six of seventeen.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: Deep all targets this year.

00:04:34
Speaker 1: As the original question noted, Lamar Jackson hasn't been on the same page with Hollywood, but Hollywood has caught every single one of his catchable targets. So what you're looking at is probably not a Hollywood Brown problem. It's probably a Lamar Jackson problem. But the thing is the statistics that were cited earlier, like QBR or accuracy on those throws, we can't just assume that those are predictive. We can't assume that a player and how he's performing right now is how he's going to perform through the end of the season, Like should we just assume that Lamar Jackson is going to be this inaccurate on his deep ball throws to Marquise Brown from here on out. If anything, I'd say there's a better chance that Brown ends up doing way better on those deep throws, that he ends up progressing in a positive way. I think that's more likely than him remaining the same because, after all, his catch rate on these passes, if you look at receptions divided by targets, it's well below the league average.

00:05:25
Speaker 2: A good example that Brandon.

00:05:26
Speaker 1: Pulled when I was talking to him about this topic earlier this week was with t Higgins. Higgins right now has cut eight of seventeen downfield targets, but five more of those were catchable, meaning T Higgins could have done a lot more on those passes. Basically, what I'm saying here is it goes a lot of different ways when you pinpoint individual players, and we should always want to dig in for more context. Like when people blanket certain statistics across the league, they're not saying, or hopefully they're not saying, that every player in every team necessarily has the same rate. Quarterback play is going to be different from team to team. A team with Patrick Mahomes, a player getting a lot of air yards in a Mahomes offense is going to be more valuable than a player getting a lot of air yards and a drew lock offense. That's no different when we look at any other statistic, though, So my advice with something like this would be to not pinpoint these individual players so much and think that the metric sucks as a result, or that it's not very good or it's not very predictive. I'm not saying that's what you guys are doing here, But the reason we look at air yards is because of all the reasons I just mentioned. And even a player like AJ Green, he's been better recently. He had great peripherals to start the year, and he has gradually gotten better. He hasn't been as bad. But this is just a high level statistic that can give us a trend. It can give us a general idea, and then we should want to investigate deeper.

00:06:50
Speaker 2: Like most data in football.

00:06:54
Speaker 1: This next question says when should you start planning for the playoffs ie? Picking up defenses, etc. So it depends on how active your league is, but I think that you can start doing the defense thing in a couple of weeks. If you know your league is not going to be super active and forward thinking, you can wait a little bit longer, but hopefully you guys heard some playoff recommendations on this week's fifteen Transactions episode, and I'll even start to lean into playoff specific pickups around week eleven. This next question says, looking back on your Breakout Wide Receiver podcast from the summer, have you gained any additional insights? Through nine weeks? Dk Metcalf, Terry and Robbie Anderson roughly matched your characteristics and have smashed, while many second and third year guys have struggled to make the leap. So I haven't dug into the numbers and looked at preseason ADP versus postseason result because I'd rather do that at the end of the year. But I've seen the study that I did on wide receivers, running backs, and tight ends. I've seen the studies be cited in a lot of places, and that's absolutely awesome and I very much appreciate it. But I also want to say those studies were done with specific parameters, like hopefully they help, but we have to recognize that they were very specific for the wide receiver.

00:08:04
Speaker 2: One.

00:08:04
Speaker 1: I looked at wide receivers drafted after Round five who exceeded ADP expectation by one hundred and more points. So technically, of the three wide receivers that you just talked about in this question, only Robbie Anderson is really in play within this study. And keep in mind there are only like five of those types of wide receivers in a given season, like five true breakout wideouts. And also keep in mind that the second and third year breakout thing was just one of the pieces of criteria. It wasn't to just draft second and third year wide receivers. But I also don't think that we should be gaining insights after eight weeks of football. That goes against what the study was really all about. We've got to be patient, but I will gladly look back at the numbers when the season is over and see how the criteria fit for certain guys. This as questions from AT Brian Hughes eighty eight. Based on the draft capital spent in poor performances of rookie running backs this season, like cech and Jonathan Taylor, how will you approach drafting rookie running backs in the future. Look, I don't think Jonathan Taylor and Clyde Edwards Hlaier's seasons are going to change my approach to rookie running backs at all, because it's too small of a sample for them to change my approach. Now, I understand this need for some like groundbreaking answer here, but sometimes things either do or.

00:09:16
Speaker 2: Don't go your way.

00:09:18
Speaker 1: Ceh would have probably been fine overall, and I don't mean that he'd be necessarily living up to expectation and where he was being drafted, but he wouldn't have sunk you either if Le'Veon Bell doesn't get released and then signed with Kansas City.

00:09:29
Speaker 2: So let's keep that in mind. Jonathan Taylor was a fourth round.

00:09:33
Speaker 1: Pick and he had a lot of upside. I still think he has some upside. That upside just hasn't hit. That's part of the variance of fantasy football. But to me, Taylor is the guy that would make someone feel more hesitant about drafting rookie running backs early moving forward. But we can't focus so heavily on that one data point when there are other data points that tell us otherwise. And I'm not saying this as someone who advocates you draft rookie running backs early. That's not what I'm trying to say here at all. I'm saying that I think it's so so important in fantasy football, and really anything that you do to not focus so heavily on one data point while ignoring the rest. Again, I'm not definitively saying go after rookie running backs. They're great, They're never gonna bust, because I haven't really done a study on that in a few years. I'm just saying that Ceh and Jonathan Taylor's finishes this year shouldn't drastically influence your feelings towards rookie running backs. This ask questions from at FF tyler o looking at the playoff schedule, are their players worth targeting for trades right now? So I tweeted out a chart on Thursday that shows every team and then how they're week fourteen through sixteen, opponents have defended each position and adjusted fantasy points allowed.

00:10:45
Speaker 2: And what that chart shows.

00:10:47
Speaker 1: Is that Tampa Bay's passing attack in the offense in general is in really good shape for the fantasy playoffs, and Derek Henry should go nuts too. And that checks out whenever I go look at the schedule, because they get the Jags, Lions, and Packers. Chicago's offense is in a good spot. Baltimore's offense is in a good spot, and then on the other side of things, Minnesota, Miami, and Houston are probably some of the offenses in the worst spots. But check out that chart on Twitter. You can find me at Late Round QB and it should help you out a bit. I'll obviously be featuring some players on the fifteen Transactions podcast too.

00:11:21
Speaker 2: This next question is from at T.

00:11:23
Speaker 1: Clark says, thank you for everything, JJ, You're welcome as the season gets later, what's your opinion on making trades with zero to eight teams or teams that really don't have a chance of making the playoffs? Look, I think it's fine to do as long as your league rules allow for it. But if there are purposefully bad trades being made, that's collusion. But my feeling about this kind of stuff is pretty consistent. Do whatever you want to do within the rules of the league. Sometimes when that happens, the league realizes that there aren't rules in place that should be in place. That's happened in the past, and leagues that I commission as the commissioner, you just have to adjust them the following year.

00:11:58
Speaker 2: But do whatever you want within the rules.

00:12:02
Speaker 1: This last question is from at Brindley Michael, I know you're buying Travis Fulgham, but why are you so confident with the return of Goddard and Reger. Well, first off, Reager and Goddard returned last week, and Fulgham came through with a six catch seventy eight yard in one touchdown line and a twenty seven percent target share. I think with a question like this, what's the logic and thinking that Folgum's just gonna disappear. I mean, we can probably expect somewhat of a dip in target shair with these players returning, But a piece of the transaction for buying a player like Fulgum or buying Jalen Reger is because of the schedule.

00:12:33
Speaker 2: The Eagles have a really nice schedule from here on out.

00:12:36
Speaker 1: Fulgham is good. I'm cool with saying that he's a good wide receiver. I don't think this is that much of a fluke. He's played really well. That combined with strong usage in a good schedule, makes me feel confident. Had we seen a major dip this past week, maybe just maybe I would feel a little bit differently, but we didn't, so I'm very cool with him from here on out. That's going to do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and if we can, follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you have a great weekend and I will talk to you next week.