727: Mailbag 12/16/22

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacherisa Jay Jake zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode seven hundred and twenty seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. With only a handful of Monday Night football games remaining this season, Fandel and Visa are coming together to make sure the excitement surrounding Monday Nights is at an all time high. Introducing Monday Night Perfect Picks presented by Visa, a free to play contest on Fandel that gives you a chance to wint to share of ten thousand dollars in cash prizes courtesy of Visa. Here's how it works. You'll be presented with ten questions centered around on field action for Monday Night's NFL game. Fans who answer the most questions correctly will when their share of the ten thousand dollars prize pool. It's that easy. The contest is now live. Said to fandle dot com, slash free slash Contest, slash Visa Perfect Picks and make your picks before Monday night. That's fandle dot com Slash Free slash contest slash Visa Perfect Picks No purchase necessary. Asian location restrictions apply, void were prohibited. See full terms of FANDLE. Dot Com, Visa and financial institutions have not sponsored or offered this promotion. Anyway, It's a mailbag episode. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Andrea. It says, JJ, now that we're in the playoffs, what are your thoughts on non playoff teams who have nothing to play for money, draft order, et cetera making roster moves. So this is a debate that pops up this time of year each and every season. And I know I've talked about it before on the show, but I think it's worth reiterating. I think most people probably think that teams that are completely out of it shouldn't be making roster moves, and I probably lean on that side too, I at least lean on that side more than the other side. But the counter to this is why should playoff teams have an easier time getting players off the waiver wire. That's the other side of the argument, and I feel like it's not talked about enough. Think about it during the season you're competing with eleven other teams in a twelve team league for players off the waiver wire, it's really hard to get players. As a result, in the playoffs, that goes down to maybe six teams in the twelve team league, then it's four teams, and then it's two teams. Is that really fair? Is it fair to have such better odds of landing the best player on waivers? There are teams that got into the playoffs that are absolutely loaded. They should be rewarded for being so strong, but they may not have players that they can easily drop into free agency. So all that's happening here is that worse playoff teams are getting better. The better playoff teams aren't necessarily benefiting. Again, I still lean on the side that says non playoff teams probably shouldn't be adding players when they're not playing for anything, or at the very least they shouldn't be going after players until waivers first initially run. Then it's more fair game. But I don't think there's like a super super obvious answer here because I'm not sure playoff teams should have such an easy time getting players off the waiver wire. This has questions from at Tyler Underscore. I Underscore am Underscore says, hey, JJ, love the show. Thanks using your process helping me get to the playoffs, and over half of my leagues wish me luck. Good luck. What happened last week in the Kansas City backfield? Did Jerick McKinnon earn more workload moving forward or is Pacheco still the guy to have there? I think they're both sort of the guy with Isaiah Pachecko being a little bit more stable, but they both played pretty clear roles for Kansas City. Sometimes gamescript and game plans are going to favor McKinnon more. He's the pass catcher of the pair. Clyde Edwards Hilaire has been out for three games now. In those contests, McKinnon has a fifteen point four percent target share per game rate according to Pro Football Focus, He's run fifty six routes, Isaiah Pacheco thirty six. It's pretty clear the kind of role that McKinnon's playing, but let's not downplay what Pachecko's done. He's now seen a nine percent and seven percent target share over his last two games. Ever, since CEH's injury, Pachecko scored sixteen sixteen and twelve PPR points. He's averaging a running back rush share per game of seventy one percent. He's been the early down guy for the Chiefs, so he's been totally usable too, and his rushing work is going to give him more projectable output than what we're gonna get from McKinnon. Honestly, though, I don't think that we really learned anything drastically new about the backfield last week. McKinnon is a superior pass catching option, at least regarding how they're using him and what it means for fantasy. I think we already knew that going into the game. Things just really fell into place for him. He really converted last week. You remember when Clyde Edwards Alaiir was scoring at a crazy pace through the air earlier this year. It's not sustainable, but it's more sustainable than what you'll see in other offenses. A player playing that role can have these mons weeks. I anticipate this weekend Week fifteen being more of a pa checko game than what we saw last weekend because Houston's not in great shape and it's a team that you can run on effectively. You can argue the same for Week sixteen against Seattle. But both players should be on fantasy radars every week. It's just that Pachecko is a little bit easier to project, and he's going to give you a higher floor given the type of role that he's playing in that offense. And I'd argue that even though we saw McKinnon go off last week, moving forward, Pachecko still probably has a higher ceiling given the game scripts and matchups that Kansas City could see through the fantasy playoffs. This last question is from at RUI Underscore. Most it says is Mark Andrews a liability at this point of the fantasy football season. So I know Mark Andrews hasn't been good compared to how he started the season, but a liability to be a liability at the tight end position, you've got to be really, really bad. Andrews has still been a top twelve tight end in weekly PPR, scoring in three of his last four games. He just hasn't been the elite Mark Andrews. Last week was a disaster for Baltimore in the quarterback situation, But if you want to walk away with something positive, Andrews had a thirty five percent target share. If Andrews was doing this at a position like wide receiver, that would be one thing, but compared to other tight ends, he's still one of the best options out there because the position is just so bad. This best questions from at pac fan ninety six, How do you best think through defenses bad offense versus good defense? So I saw this question and I sat back to try to think of a way to sort of describe a process for picking a defense, and I came up with the following. Let's broadly think of offenses and defenses as either good, average, or bad. So you have a good defense and average defense and a bad defense, and then you have a good offense and average offense or a bad offense. Now, clearly we're not getting super scientific here, We're just generally placing offenses and defenses into these buckets. From there, you can think of playing defenses in this way. First, you want to find a good defense playing a bad offense. Right, a defense that's good most weeks for fantasy purposes facing a bad offense. Generally speaking, I'm sure the lines over on Fandal's sportsbook would show that type of game as being lopsided. More than likely there would be a big spread then you want to look for an average defense against a bad offense, So having a crappy opponent is the thing that you're probably gonna look for most. From there you can find a good defense versus an average offense, and then from there you can find a bad defense versus a bad offense. That's just a very high level way of looking at it. I'm just approaching it that way because you ask bad offense or good defense, which one do you choose? And the answer is that it depends. You obviously want to base your decision off of more than just that, but that's sort of the grid to think about while you're making these defensive choices, And that's at least how things seem to unfold each week for me when I'm looking at projections and doing my defensive rankings. This tast questions from at Pedro GB five to one to two says, what is Alvin Kamara's status right now? What type of players should I be benching for him in the playoffs? So I might be a little bit more bullish on Kamara down the stretch than most. Mark ingram isn't in the picture anymore. In the last time we saw New Orleans Ingram met a thirty five percent running back rushhair in a freaking eighteen percent target chair. Kamara played more snaps, but Ingram's usage was beyond frustrating. The Saints aren't likely going to trust a running back outside of Kamara in that way moving forward, and realistically, Kamara's peripherals have not been that bad even during this tough stretch. He's averaged a running back rush share per game this year of seventy four percent. He hasn't fallen below a ten percent target share in a single game. He's just not finding the end zone that much. So why should we be optimistic? Well, you're gonna have to deal with the annoyance of Taysom Hill. That's going to lower Kamara's touchdown ceiling just a little bit. But the Saints have a really favorable schedule. At least in weeks fifteen and sixteen, they get the Falcons and the Browns. Those are two teams that you not only can run on and use your running back against, but there are two teams the Saints could hypothetically beat. Then in Week seventeen, you get Philadelphia. That's a little bit tougher. So without Ingram, with the peripherals being what they are and the schedule being pretty favorable. I still think that you can feel okay enough about Kamara as an RB two type this week. I think he's a lower end RB one. This last question is from at Finns twenty three Jets three. Has a Conquo earned trust to be a top tight end going forward? A top tight end? No, that's pretty bold. We have to keep in mind that a Conquo still ran fewer routes last week than Austin Hooper and Treylon Burks was out. A Conco scored eleven and eighteen and a half PPR points over his last two prior to that, the eleven games prior he had one game over seven PPR points. And yeah, he's a rookie. He can grow into a bigger role. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying what was the difference the last couple of weeks Traylon Burks was out. If he returns, he's going to command a target chair in that offense. Is a conquo of likely a good tight end who's rising. Absolutely, he's got the best yards per route run rate in the league right now at the position, and he's a rookie. You obviously will see a natural rise in production with a player like that, but I don't think he currently can be trusted as a top tight end as a streamer for sure, as a player with a locked in no doubt role, He's not quite there objectively, as much as I want him to be there. The last question this week is from at babs L one seven to nine. How do you approach split backfields? Are you looking at their opponents? So I think a lot of people in the fantasy space, whether we're talking analysts or just fantasy managers, they don't look at split backfields properly. In my opinion, In the vast majority of split backfield cases, the running backs involved are playing very specific roles. Like the Kansas City backfield. McKinnon's the one who's playing on passing downs and getting more work as a receiver, but Checko's the early down grinder. We see this with wide receiver too. Wide receiver is not just one position. There's a lot of positions at wide receiver. Running backs just a little bit more focused. But not all running backs play the exact same position. They're not doing the exact same thing. So when we say split backfield. It's really important to not just know that a backfield is split, it's important to know how it's split. Sometimes teams rotate their running backs each drive. A lot of times a running back is more of an early down player and that's it. Other times he's only out there on third and longs in hurry up situations. Understanding those roles is absolutely key when you're analyzing an upcoming slate of games. I talked about this a little bit on yesterday's Sleeper Show. I may end up being wrong with how Houston deploys their running backs without Damian Pierce, but I think there's a very real chance dar agoom Wala is used as their pass catching back. And this week Houston gets Kansas City. It's a game where they likely won't be leading, meaning they're probably gonna be wanting to use their pass catching back. He'll be out on the field a little bit more. Now, I don't mind Burkhead either, It's just that that's how you can look at opponents and sort of see which running backs might be more useful. Same thing on the other side of the field in that exact same game. It sets up to be more of an Isaiah Pacheco game. So how I approach split backfields is I try to get in the head of coaches and I look at data to see the kind of role that each of these players are playing, because there's usually a reason players are doing what they're doing. And then from there you can overlay a matchup on top of that to see which direction you might want to go when setting your lineup. That's going to do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't fit to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, please check out lateround dot com. Otherwise, thanks for listening this week. Everyone greatly greatly appreciate it. Good luck in week fifteen. I'll talk to you next week.