646: Mailbag 6/17/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha j J Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar esen in. This is episode six hundred and forty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in, sports fans. There's no better time than today to sign up for Fandle Fantasy. For users who have had to make a deposit on Fandle Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you have to do is the positive minimum of ten dollars in your FanDuel DFS account and you'll be instantly rewarded with two free vouchers. Is a limited time offer, so be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head over to fandle dot com or download the Fandel Fantasy app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandel app for more details. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Kirby says, hey, JJ, I listened to your Ambiguous Wide Receiver episode three times to make sure I understood it well. I haven't looked at ADP data yet like you have. Who are some guys that may struggle to break out this year based on your data in the study. My first thoughts were Davonte Smith, who now has aj Brown who's probably going in the first two to three rounds, and then Alan Robinson, who has Cooper Cup going ahead of him. Not sure how far Smith and Robinson are falling ADP wise, but those are a couple that came to mind. Do you have any more examples from this year? Thanks? So, anytime I publish an episode like that one, I assume questions like this are gonna roll in, so let's talk about it. Alan Robinson is not really someone that we should be concerned about with the data that I talked about in that episode. He's not a middle round pick. He doesn't go in round six through nine. So everything related to having a teammate in the early rounds doesn't really matter for Alan Robinson, or at least that's not what that episode was about. Davante Smith is really interesting because, like I said on the show, there's more defining breakouts than just historical ADP trains, And this is something I talk about in my draft guide, which you can pre order on Lateround dot com right now. But Smith is interesting because he gets knocked for having that early round wide receiver teammate. Yes, aj Brown is going early, but what's more important in finding a breakout is age, and he's at the age that you want to target in the middle rounds. I'll talk about that more in a second. This is why I always preface these types of studies with but there's always more to the story. The historical ADP stuff is just to find general trends and they can be helpful. Like after doing that work, Hunter Renfro becomes a little bit scarier in my opinion. He's a middle round wide receiver with an early round teammate, and that's not even considering Darren Waller. Brandon Ayuk is another one, with Deebo Samuel going so early, and how about Adam Thielen. Adam Thielen's going in the middle rounds and Justin Jefferson is a top half first round pick. But those are some players who unfortunately fit this mold of being middle round wide receivers with early round teammates. They're not wide receiver ones and they're not coming from truly ambiguous situations. That concept does matter less at wide receiver than it does at running back, though, I think the focus in the middle rounds should mostly be team wide receiver ones over team wide receiver twos or worse and then sort of branch out from there. But there are other factors that play into this, and I'll get to those factors next month on the show. They'll be in the Draft guide in more detail too. The next questions from at Castle Underscore Jeff on Twitter says, great pod on the ambiguous wide receiver room. It makes a lot of sense to target wide receiver ones and middling offenses, but is it better to target a high powered offenses wide receiver two versus an uncertain offenses wide receiver one? Thanks JJ. So I got another one from at jj pacfan that says, referencing the ambiguous wide receiver episode, have you found any correlation between middle slash late wide receiver breakouts and quality of situation? Top draft quarterback team win totals, team history of past rate and or use of ten eleven twelve personnel. Okay, so I figured i'd bring this up on today's show since more than one person was asking me about it, just to reiterate what I just said. There are other factors that play into whether or not a player is a potential breakout or not. All I've done the last few weeks and then that last episode is look at ADP trends. With that being said spoiler alert at a high level, so team offensive situation quarterback situation, I haven't found much correlation. In fact, when looking at middle round and late round breakouts, their quarterbacks average draft positions have been lower. They've been worse than non breakouts. Part of that could be the fact that I'm analyzing this stuff based on ADP expectation and all that is already baked into a player's cost, But that's still important to know. You can largely ignore situation and focus more on whether or not a player is a team wide receiver one in the middle rounds or not, and all the other stuff that I talked about in the show earlier this week too. So, Jeff, to ad to your question directly, you have better odds when the player is a team wide receiver one. There are times that still go after the wide receiver twos, like when you layer on age, but team wide receiver ones have hit better than team wide receiver twos in the middle rounds. It's not a black and white thing, but it is a thing. The next question is from at Conbin NFL, and it says, referencing your ambiguous podcasts, who are some of your favorite targets in the middle rounds for running back and wide receiver? So one last time, I haven't talked through everything when it comes to finding breakout players in the middle and late rounds. I've done that in the past and not a lot has changed, But the last few weeks has been focused strictly on ADP trends. Just want to make sure that's as clear as possible. But I'll give one running back and one wide receiver I like in the middle rounds based on some of that data. At running back, I'm very into Tony Pollard this year. I haven't bought into Pollard that much in the past, only because he hasn't fit the breakout criteria all that well with Zeke getting drafted so early year after year. But Zeke's a dead zone running back right now and Pollard's still a mid round pick. That demographic has hit pretty well in the past. Think Austin Eckler the year Melvin Gordon was holding out, or Tarik Cohen when Jordan Howard was a dead zone back. Pollard's interesting because his ADP is really in a spot right now where I've got his projection, meaning he's being drafted at his projection. But we all know there's more upside to a player like Pollard than a random running back in the middle rounds. If Elliott gets hurt or goes down, Pollard has a much higher ceiling than other players going in his range. So Pollard is someone I'm targeting, even though he's a team RB two at wide receiver. I'm gonna give you more of a general answer. There are a ton of middle round, second year wideouts this year who are being drafted as their team's top wide out. Focus on those players. Those players have hit tremendously well in the past. We've had twelve of those types of wide receivers in the middle round sample that I was working off of on that episode earlier this week, and the average difference between expected points per game and actual points per game among those players was one point nine to three, meaning these guys were outperforming expectation by almost two points per game. On average. The breakout rate was well over forty percent, and we know inherently that wide receiver ones are better than wide receiver twos. You know see in the draft guide that year two wide receivers are good bets too, And there are a lot of these types of players this year and I'm very interested in that group. The next question is for my buddy at Davis Maddick, and he says, who is your favorite bet for this year's James Connor slash Leonard Fournette. So imagine Tony Pollard as a middle round running back that I'm into right now. But if we're going more towards the James Connor Leonard Fournette arena, that means we're looking for a running back who people mostly thought was washed but ended up having a big season. And even with the signing of Jack McKinnon this week, I think Clyde Edwards a Laire fits that mold. He's a pass catching back or he at least has that skill set. That's good. He's got the right ADP trends working in his favor too. Both of those running backs were in good offenses and we're getting that with Cech and a huge reason his ADP is where it's at is because he's burned Fantasy managers like, yeah, he hasn't been great but let's be honest here. People are sick of Clyde Edwards a Laire and don't want to draft him. People did the exact same thing with Leonard Fournette last year. You can even make the argument for James Connor given his injury history. So as much as it pains me to say, I think Clyde Edwards Hilaire at least loosely fits this mold, at least you can latch onto the story about his gallbladder from last season as a reason as to why his year two numbers took a hit. This last question is from Patreon. It's from Michael. It says, hi, JJ love the show. Thanks. You've mentioned in the you don't necessarily have trade targets, but rather you have people you are looking to sell. I'm wondering if you have any strategies you use to do this, because in most of my leagues, the second of players added the trade blocker advertised as open to receiving offers on player X, his value goes way down. Do you just go from team to team making offers but without identifying the player that you're looking to move on from, or are there other ways to go about it? Yeah? So what this question is referring to is the idea that I don't necessarily always go into my league and say, I really want a trade for player X, because I'm a believer that our consideration set for players that we'd want on our roster should be large, not small. Plenty of players are going to help you in fantasy football, not just five or ten of them. That doesn't mean I don't have players that I generally want to buy. There are still by low candidates, so I at least want to clear that up. I'm still looking to trade for specific players. I've just found it to be much easier to get deals done when you're more open minded, not handcuffed to a group of players. You have to remember that doing a trade is like making a sale. You're not gonna get a sale done if you're trying to get something from someone that they don't want to give up. So if you're sitting there and you're like, I really want Joe Mixon, but the mixing manager is like, I'll only sell Joe Mixon for Jonathan Taylor. There's no point in targeting Joe Mixon. You're not gonna get him at a fair price. Instead, I look at my own roster, the thing that I can actually control, and I say, who do I think I could sell high right now? And then I find teams in my league that could use that player, and I try to fill that need. I don't necessarily broadcast the league that I'm trying to sell player X. If I had Antonio Gibson and I saw him as someone to trade away right now, I don't always just put him on the trade block. Instead, I go team by team and find teams who could really use a running back, and I propose a trade to that team with Antonio Gibson. I'm getting rid of something that I don't want that much anymore, and I'm giving it to someone who might need him. And my hope is that the league manager who might need that running back, who might need Antonio Gibson, my hope is that he values Gibson more than I do. The reason I bring up the idea of not being so infatuated with particular trade targets is because it limits your ability to get deals done. I still have players I want to trade for, I just am open to trading for more than just them. The last question this week is from at Josh Alvarez, and it says, is there a player in the later rounds that your model doesn't like, but when you watch him, you know he can ball out. Yes. Remember, any model that I have that relates to talent is going to be my prospect model. My projections aren't as concerned at projecting the talent side. I mean, they inherently do, but it's just a different type of evaluation. But since I get things wrong all the time on the evaluation front, there are always later round players that my model didn't like, and then I do based on what I see. Kadarius Tony is the easiest example of this for me. I wouldn't say I was lower than the consensus on Tony last year. In fact, I know that I wasn't. That's all because my prospect model wouldn't allow for me to, So I guess I can't sit here and say that my model doesn't like Tony or didn't like Tony coming out. He was still above the ninetieth percentile in that model, which is really good. But that was largely because a draft capital his collegiate statistical profile looks like the profile of a bust. And I mentioned that plenty last offseason. It was just that everyone in the fantasy community was believing that, so it wasn't hard to be higher than the consensus. We still don't know if Tony is going to be good or not, but when I watch him, when I see what he did last year, there's no way I can just blindly follow a bad statistical profile. This is part of the reason draft capital can be so helpful, and why having this model can be helpful. It doesn't allow me to be totally irrational. Tony's someone who I think is a great breakout candidate this year. I think he has a chance to ball out. It's at least in his range of outcomes, and my model just wasn't in love with him coming out to spite his draft capital. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You know it's Follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB, and check out lateround dot com. You can pre order the Late Round Draft Guide right now and get in your inbox right when it launches on July first, the guide will talk through draft strategy for twenty twenty two season long leagues, give you my favorite targets, avoids, late round darts, and more. It's updated weekly from July first through August. Every update hits your inbox so you'll have my up to date thoughts through the summer. Pre Order it now for nineteen ninety nine before it goes to twenty four to ninety nine on July first. I promise it will be unlike any other draft guide that you've read before. Thanks everyone, enjoy your weekend, and Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there