742: Mailbag 2/24/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas J J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeston in this episode seven hundred and forty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Something that you get in the Late Round Prospect Guide is analysis on the Year two model. I know a lot of you have been listening to the show so far this offseason, so you know what that model's all about. For those who are unaware, it's a model that looks the previous year's draft class and tries to predict how those players are gonna do in year's two and three in fantasy football, So what you should expect from Chris Alave or Christian Watson or Isaiah Pacheco. The Year two model tries to predict best season points per game in year two or year three, and both models at running back and wide receiver are a lot more predictive than rookie season points per game itself. I built those models last year. They're pretty new. This offseason, I wanted to see if I could make them better, and that's what I've worked on over the last couple of weeks. And fortunately I have made them better. I've tested and they're now more predictive than where they were a year ago. That's especially true at wide receiver. At running back, things can get kind of wonky because running back volume comes down to a coaching decision. You hope that talented running backs went out, but if a coach says I want to split backfield, then that can really ruin our predictions for that position. It's why both my prospect and year two models are better for wide receiver than they are running back. The wide receiver one was revamp, though, and I want to share some insights because it actually made me think about things a little bit differently. Now. I'm a firm believer that analysts should change their opinions all the time. When you get new information, you should react to that information. There's no reason you should just stick with a take no matter what. On The Cell Candidate's episode about a week and a half ago, I talked about George Pickens. My stance on Pickens that there are truthers out there, and those truthers may be under the assumption that he's in good shape to be an elite fantasy asset, while I think he has a good shot to be good. I didn't agree with that, and I still don't agree with that. Pickens has some things working against him. With that being said, this improved wide receiver year two model likes Pickens a lot more than it previously did, and in turn, I don't think he's an obvious cell candidate. Pickens is right there with Christian Watson before. I had Watson a decent bit ahead of Pickens. So this new input matters to me because I know how predictive this model is. And then the reverse is true with Wandel Robinson. I had him as a lower key by candidate, but after looking at his year two score, I'm not as bullish. He's still fine enough, but he's in a pertentile grouping that isn't as strong as it was before. I'm bringing this all up because I want to be transparent and honest with you guys. That's what you deserve. My opinions players will change, and you should be aware when those opinions are changing. And also check out the Late Round Prospect Guide. It's available for pre order right now over on lateround dot com. You get year two model profiles, prospect profiles, and more. You can read more about it and pre ordered for eleven ninety nine right now over on Lateround dot com. Now that that's out of the way, let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Josh. It says thoughts on Traylon Burks for year two love your work? Is it March yet? Hashtag prospect Guide love to see it? So naturally, since I open up the show talking about the year two model, I figured i'd answer this question first. Treylon Burks is in the ninetieth to ninety fifth percentile in that year two model. There's definitely a big dropoff that occurs after the ninetieth percentile in the model, and there's a chart in the Prospect Guide that shows this drop off. Basically, if the players in the ninety fifth to one hundred percent tiles since twenty eleven none of them failed to give you a season of twelve plus PPR points per game, which is pretty awesome, that falls to twenty two percent with this next tier. So seventy eight percent of players in this ninetieth to ninety fifth percentile tier gave you twelve plus PPR points in either year two or year three. And then it gets more than cut in half into the tier after that. One issue about this tier, the tier that Traylon Burks is in, is ceiling. I kid you not. Of the players ranked the ninety fifth to one hundred percent tiles since twenty eleven, fifty two percent of them have given us one season in either year two or year three where they scored eighteen or more PPR points per game. This is where you're gonna find Chris Olave and Garrett Wilson, those players. That falls to just nine percent with this Traylon Berks tier fifty two percent to nine percent, So just nine percent of these players are giving us a higher end wide receiver one season last year eighteen plus PPR points per game, ranked a head of Cede Lamb, so around that wide receiver six wide receiver seven range. Now, I don't think this means that he's going to be bad, and these are just general guidelines. It just means that Burkes has a bigger hill to climb to be elite compared to some of the other wide receivers in last year's class. And I think the market is about right for Burkes in Dynasty. But I do think there are plenty of question marks. If you're strictly looking at year two, we know the Titans are ready to be a run heavy team, and we're not even sure right now who's gonna be throwing the ball on that offense. But generally I'm buying second year wide receivers in re draft who showed signs of being good as rookies, and Burke's had a solid yards per rout run rate last year and it was on a team that wasn't very good through the air. He actually had one of the better yards per route run minus teammate wide receiver yards per route run rates that we've seen from fifty plus target rookie wide receivers since twenty eleven. Basically, that shows us that he was pretty efficient given his situation. I would assume that Burkes's ADP is going to reflect this poor offensive situation, assuming that it stays looking not very good. And since we know year two guys are good bets, sophomore players the NFL at wide receiver or good bets, he's probably something I'm gonna end up drafting as long as that cost is reasonable. The says questions from at WSCII. It says, can you talk about how you think about early declare in light of extra years of eligibility due to COVID and recent success of non early declare prospects in the NFL, like Davonte Smith and Chris A Lava? Are you weighing it less? So? I ranted about this a lot last offseason, specifically with Chris A Lave. The dynasty community overrates the absolute you know what out of early declare status. It drives me absolutely nuts. And it's not that it doesn't matter. That's the thing. It does matter. Analytically, early declared status does matter. It's just that there are things that get signal like this, and then people just run away with those things. There's nothing bringing it back down to earth. Chris Alave and DeVante Smith are perfect, perfect examples. My model loved both of those players because their profiles were great elsewhere. Smith had insane production. Chris Alave had great production with NFL caliber teammates to go along with a better breakout age. And I say all of that because when you ask are you weighing it less? It makes it seem like I'm weighing it heavily. But my model doesn't weigh it that heavily. It's just an input. It won't dramatically shift a player's score, and because of that, I personally don't see the need to shift things at the moment. I test the model every year and make sure that things make sense, but it's gonna be hard for there to be this significant signal this quickly after just a year or two of some of these wild things happening in college football with COVID and NIL deals, because it's not like every single player is staying in school for four years now. We still have plenty of guys that are leaving early. It's really just a smaller subset that we're looking at here, and if they're good enough, they should be able to overcome that non early declared status. I hate to be annoying about my prospect model, but this is exactly why I worked on creating one in the first place. I talked about this last year in the guide, But when I first started prospecting, I just sort of have haagardly put things together and said, here it is. This is the way that I'm evaluating players, until finally I realized that I needed a real goal. That goal ended up being trying to predict how well a player would perform across his first three years in the league. And when you have that goal in mind, and when you can actually test things to ensure accuracy, everything changes. You don't get as concerned about these one off metrics because you realize that everything really works together. Chris A. Lave wasn't an early declare. Okay, yeah, sure he gets knocked slightly within the model, but guess what, he was still a ninety eighth percentile prospect in that model because of his teammate score, his production profile, in his draft capital. It made absolutely no sense to write him off because of that one singular thing. So that's how I approach this kind of thing. We need more nuance with prospect evaluation, with members driven scouting. Throwing dudes out because they don't check a box is an easy way to lose. This beast question is from at the Birch. It says, is Jamiir Gibbs coming up as elite in the model? Receiving production definitely matters within my prospect model, but draft capital matters a ton to more so at running back than at wide receiver. And right now Gibbs is looking good as the number two back in this draft class. From a draft capital perspective, consensus big boards over on NFL mock draft database dot Com have met twenty ninth overall, regardless of there's a big gap over there from Gibbs to the next running back. So he's getting boosted by that projected draft capital and in turn, he's almost a ninety seven percentile prospect in the model, and that's a tier that you definitely want your running back to be in from a fantasy perspective. Sixty percent of running backs in the ninety fifth to one hundred percentile end up seeing a fourteen plus pper point per game average when averaging out their top two seasons across their first three years in the league. I know that was a mouthful. I know that probably didn't make that much sense, But basically, you're getting like multiple mid range RB two seasons from players in that tier the majority of the time. That's across their first three years in the league. If the draft capital shifts, then obviously the evaluation shifts. This is still very early, it's still only February, but he does seem like a great bet at RB two. This ask questions from at Jacob deal Underscore film. It says, after the top two is there a clear tier two of incoming running backs? Seems like there are six plus all in a jumple. So again, it's still February, it's still early, but I personally think there were fewer than six running backs in that next tier right now. I've got Zach Charbonay as my RB three. I think he has the potential to be pretty good. We'll see what happens at the combine. But if the players ranked after Bjon Robinson, Sharbonay had easily the best comps in the model. James Connor was his top one, Kareem Hunt was one of his comps, and then there was Devonte Booker two. But he's the one player in that next tier who's got the right size to be a bell cow. I like a chain, but his size profile is scary. Deuce Vaughan looks really good analytically, but he has major size concerns. Sharboney doesn't have that. I do think that Sean Tucker and Tank Bigsby they might be in that next tier with Sharboney and a Chain two. And I'm not ready to put Zach Evans there for reasons that I talked about in the show earlier this week. But I think Sharbonay is the clear RB three right now. I like some of the other backs around him, but he's got the more obvious NFL bellcow profile. Now. The last question this week is from Twitter, and it came up during a conversation that I was having on Twitter. For some background, Kylie Yeates of Football Guys twitted a simple pullout on Wednesday. He asked what would you rather have in a single quarterback dynasty league? The one oh three or Drake London? And my response was that I would love to hear the one oh three argument. Most people who are on the one oh three side seem to prefer js enterg Ax and Smith and Jigba, but I don't agree. I don't agree with that at will. Mackenzie then asked a question that I thought would be really useful for the mailbag. He said, love reading your work, jj JSN looks so good in twenty twenty one that it's interesting you rated Drake as the better prospect. Do you think your model knocks JSN because of his twenty twenty two and or was Drake's versus JSN in twenty twenty one alone still in Drake's favor? So let me just break this down. My model had London with a ninety eight point six percentile score, which is obviously very very good. He didn't have a stellar best season yards per team pass attempt to eight because of all his injuries in college, but he made up for it elsewhere, whether it be best season, receptions per game, or the biggest thing, draft capital. We can't lose sight of draft capital when we're having these discussions. Drake London was the eighth overall pick in last year's draft. I think people sit back and they're like, okay, but we've had plenty of men. This is in the top ten in the NFL draft in recent history, which isn't wrong. Corey Davis, John Ross, Kevin White, Tevon Austin, Justin Blackman. They're all misses. But prior to last year's draft and since twenty eleven, we had fourteen wide receivers drafted in the top ten. Of those fourteen, all but one of them gave us a season with eleven plus ppero points per game over their first three years in the league. The one who didn't was Kevin White because he couldn't find the freaking field. He barely played. Six of the fourteen have given us a season of eighteen or more PPERO points per game. You can say five of twelve if you want, if you want to remove players who didn't quite have enough games played to qualify. But that's forty two percent or forty three percent of those top ten picks. So forty two percent of them have essentially given us a wide receiver one season, a higher end wide receiver one season, and PPERO points per game over their first three in the league. Now, right now, JSN is projected to go in the early twenties in the NFL draft. I have no idea how accurate that's gonna end up being. Again, it's still February, but let's just run with that. Let's run with that idea. Since twenty eleven, we've had twenty two wide receivers drafted between the twentieth and thirty second pick, so the twentieth pick through the end of the first round, and for the record, no wide receiver last year went in that range. Half of those twenty two wide receivers failed to score ten plus PPR points per game across their first three years in the league. Remember, thirteen of fourteen that were drafted the top ten got to eleven plus PPR points per game. And you remember how forty two percent of the top ten wide receivers got to eighteen plus PPR points per game. Well, among this group, among this group of wide receivers who were picked twentieth to thirty second, that numbers fourteen percent. This is why draft capital matters. This is why Drake London is currently projected to be a better prospect than Jackson Smith and Jigba. If JSN goes in the top ten, then there's absolutely an argument and maybe that's what you're banking on, but it doesn't seem like that's a likely outcome right now. There's a component of talent evaluation that's embedded in draft capital. A team said we like this guy so much that we're gonna spend a top ten pick on him. Drake London going eighth overall is not the same as JSN going twentieth overall. There's a massive difference there and it shows up in the numbers. Now. The other reason to like London over the one ZHO three is because his season last year was a lot better than you think among fifty plus target rookie wide receivers since twenty eleven, So these are only the good wide receivers because they got fifty targets. As a rookie, London was fourteenth in yards per route run. He was third in targets per route run. He was second in target share per game, and he was fifth and yards per team pass attempt. Here are the players who are better than Drake London in rookie season yards per team pass attempts since twenty eleven. Justin Jefferson, Stud Jamar Chase, Stud aj Brown, stud Odell Beckham, stud Odell Beckham was the only guy who was better in target share per game too. And when you beef that threshold up to sixty targets instead of fifty, only Tyreek Hill was better in targets per route run. I mean, the literal only reason that Drake London didn't dominate fantasy football last year is because Arthur Smith hates us. And yeah, the situation could be better, but you don't buy situation in dynasty. You buy the player. Situations change, and they can change quickly. I have nothing against JSN as a prospect right now, he's sitting in the ninety fifth percentile on my model. But we need to stop dismissing Drake London because he's very, very very good. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and know for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Remember to check out that prospect guide over on lateround dot com. Otherwise, thanks for listening everyone, enjoy your weekend. I'll talk to you next week. Two