347: Sell Candidates

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha J J. Zacher Reson.

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Speaker 2: What's up everyone?

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and forty seven of the Late Round podcast, so many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in if you missed it.

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Speaker 1: Last week, I went over a handful of players that I'm looking to buy this offseason in dynasty leagues. Today the plan is to go over players and I'm looking to sell before digging in. Though, did you guys see the XFL this past weekend? I actually thought that the gameplay was pretty entertaining. They're even more entertaining when you're playing daily fantasy football. Just head to fandle dot com, find an XFL contest that you like, and make a lineup with your one hundred dollars salary. And later this week, be sure to check out my XFL DFS primer that I'll be posting on Number fire. But for more details, was it fandle dot com or download the fandel app today. L lgibility restrictions may apply according to Dynasty League football dot COM's January startup average draft position data.

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Speaker 2: That's a mouthful, but.

00:01:10
Speaker 1: According to that data, Aaron Rodgers the QB nine, and he's the QB nine sort of in his own tier. He's well below Josh Allen, but he's well above Baker Mayfield. Maybe this wouldn't be the case in your league. Maybe people are viewing Rogers a lot lower than this. But I can only roll with the information that I've got, and what I've got is that people still view Rogers as a solid.

00:01:30
Speaker 2: Enough QB one in Dynasty.

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Speaker 1: This is despite the fact that he's thirty six, despite the fact that he hasn't finished higher than that QB nine mark in a single season since twenty sixteen, and despite the fact that rogers yards per attempt rate hasn't been higher than seven point four, which would have ranked sixteenth among qualified quarterbacks in twenty nineteen. He hasn't had a yards per attempt rate higher than seven point four since twenty fourteen. I see no reason to have Rogers ahead of Baker Mayfield, even for a contender. I talked about Mayfield on last week's By Candidate's episodes, so you can get that information on him. There but are the two players really going to have drastically different outlooks for the twenty twenty season. And if your answer is no, then why are we favoring the thirty six year old quarterback in Dynasty right now? At Aaron Rodgers' peak, he was arguably the best quarterback that we've ever seen. But he hasn't been that for a long time, and it's shown in fantasy football. The only way that you can justify ranking him this high is if the Packers do something substantial at wide receiver over the offseason, and maybe that happens. And don't get me wrong, Rogers probably still has the ability to give you a high end QB one ceiling to give you one of those seasons from a probability perspective, though we've only seen his career numbers go in the wrong direction as he's gotten older. That's not what you want from an aged quarterback in Dynasty. If someone's still valuing him as the QB nine, it's time to sell. Rogers is actually the only quarterback sell that I have on today's show. In general, looks pretty good at the position, and his spot was just so glaring that I had to talk about him So let's move on to running backs, and let's go to one of the more controversial players in all of fantasy football, and that's Derrick Henry. I took the l with Derrick Henry earlier last month on The Things That I Missed podcast, But like I said on that show, the process for not being super into Henry wasn't that far off in my opinion. Let me run back some of the stats from that show to explain why without Ryan Tannehill last year, Dereck Henry averaged sixty nine yards nice and fourteen point six PPR points per game. When Tannehill took over his quarterback, that yards per game number jump by fifty six and his points per game average rose by well over eight. When Marcus Mariota was under center, Derrick Henry wasn't that great of a fantasy back. When Ryan Tannehill, who was arguably the league's most efficient passer this year depending on the metric that you look at, when he took over, things changed for Derrick Henry. At least a portion of this can be credited to game script. Henry snapray jumped by about ten percent when Ryan Tannehill took over because Tennessee went from ranking twelfth in the NFL in offensive plays run while trailing by seven or more under Marcus Mariota to running the tenth fewest when Tannehill was playing. They were leading more for running back that's not used very heavily in the passing game. That's a big deal. Henry hit his career high in targets this past year. That's great, but he also only had twenty four targets. That's not great.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: And don't forget the Titans were a complete outlier with their red.

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Speaker 1: Zone efficiency this past season. I sent a tweet prior to the AFC Championship game that showed red zone touchdown to field goal ratio from Week seven onward. That week seven mark was when Ryan Tannehill took over. During that time and up until that Championship game, the Titans had scored thirty one red zone touchdowns while kicking one red zone field goal. To give you some perspective of how insane that is, the team that was second highest in ratio over that time was Carolina seventeen touchdowns versus four field goals. The Titans had a ratio of thirty freaking one to one in terms of red zone touchdown to field goals. The Panthers had a ratio of four point three, and they were in second. There's almost zero chance that the Titans are gonna be as efficient at scoring touchdowns next season as they were this year. Now. In general, when I'm looking to sell players in Dynasty, I'm asking myself if the guys that I might be looking to sell are currently at peak value, And I think that there's a very easy case to be made that Dereck Henry's value won't be any higher than it is right now, especially with the way that the playoffs went, because the reality of this situation is that it's gonna regress. Let's just look at Derrick Henry himself. He averaged over five yards per carry this past year, which was even better than his four point nine average the year prior. Yards per carry can be a very noisy statistic that isn't very predictive whatsoever, And with any statistic like that, you need to watch out for regression. For example, since twenty eleven, we've seen forty eight running back seasons where the running back has had one hundred or more carries and a yards per carry rate at or above five yards. That's a little over five instances per season. In twenty nineteen, we had seven of those seasons, with Henry.

00:06:14
Speaker 2: Being one of them.

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Speaker 1: Now, since we had seven of them in twenty nineteen, that means that we've got next season data on forty one of those running backs. So to recap, here forty one running back since twenty eleven with one hundred or more carries and a yards per carry rate at or above five. Among those players, only five of them were able to maintain that yards per carry rate of five the following season, and the next season average was four point three. But okay, yards per carry matters, but it's not the biggest deal in the world. We're looking for volume. And that's another slight concern with Derrick Henry. He carried the ball three hundred and three times in the regular season this past year. Let's just go through a similar exercise that we just went through. Since twenty eleven, we have thirty five instances where a running back has carried the ball two hundred and eighty or more times in a single season. That two hundred and eighty numbers arbitrary, but it's also a good bit less than where Henry was at in twenty nineteen, thirty of those players have next season data, and of those thirty players, only one guy Marshawn Lynch. From twenty eleven to twenty twelve. Only one player is able to increase his attempt numbers the following year. There are probably lots of reasons for this. Players get hurt, teams aren't as good because honestly, in order to see that much volume at running back, your team can't be trailing all the time. But whatever the reason is, we know that seeing a ton of volume year over year isn't an easy thing for a running back to achieve just naturally. And that's the worry. I'll probably have Derek Henry ranked as an RB one next year. I may end up thinking that he's overvalued as ADP and redraft. But this isn't me saying that Henry won't be a usable fantasy asset. It's me looking at the dynasty average RAPT position data of a twenty six year old running back who had a really good situation in twenty nineteen and stepping back and saying this from an odds angle isn't.

00:07:59
Speaker 2: Likely going to be repeated.

00:08:01
Speaker 1: And since you can get a lot for Henry right now, It's not a bad idea to shop him, especially if you've got him but your team is an in win now mode.

00:08:10
Speaker 2: I alluded to this next Cell.

00:08:12
Speaker 1: Candidate in last week's Mailbag show, but I think it's time to sell Carrie on Johnson.

00:08:17
Speaker 2: I'm a believer that Johnson is a good player.

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Speaker 1: I'm a believer that Derrick Henry is too, But with Johnson, my concern isn't the same as Dereck Henry's. With Henry, I'm mostly worried about regression and just selling high. With Johnson, I'm worried about how his coaches might view him and the type of running back that he is. Johnson came out as a pretty good prospect. My running back prospect model has him as an eighty ninth percentile player among all Combine invites and players who.

00:08:43
Speaker 2: Were drafted since two thousand and six.

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Speaker 1: Which, by the way, guys, I'll be talking about prospects after this week's show, so if you're into that kind of thing, make sure that you tune in. But carry On's now played two seasons in the league, and we've seen him get hurt in both of those seasons. I'm not necessarily someone who thinks that injury prone. No thiss is this huge thing. I'm sure others will talk it up more than I will, But part of our job in fantasy football is to try and think about how coaches and teams will view a certain player, especially a running back, because volume drives the game. Even if Carrie On Johnson is a really good player, if he's in the committee, then he's overvalued at his current RB fourteen EIGHTP. And that's my worry that the Lions are gonna either add someone to that backfield or just split things up and not allow Johnson to be an every down workhorse. I mean, we even saw some of that this past season. From weeks one through six, which was before Johnson's big injury this year, he had a pair of games where he was under the sixty percent running back rush share mark, and he averages under a seventy percent running back rush share. For some context, across the entire twenty nineteen season, eleven different running backs hit that seventy percent running back rush share, and that's without the benefit of not counting miss time. That's just straight up what their running back rush share was across the entire season. And I think there's some concern over his receiving usage when he was healthy. Two Verd's target share per game was just eight percent this past year. That was hit by twenty nine running backs in twenty nineteen, and again, those backs don't have the benefit of only counting games where they were healthy. I'm just saying this quickly to drive home the point that Johnson's usage even last year when he was healthy, it wasn't spectacular, and then after three games of pretty decent usage on the ground, when they started to really feature him as a running back, he ended up getting hurt for the second straight year. I think the Lions are a dark horse team to add a good back in this year's draft, but I think they've got a decent shot to at least add a body. Johnson should be fine as an RB two type fantasy asset, but the fear about Johnson's future workload is very real. Raheem Mostert's valuation is going to be all over the place this offseason. Clearly, since I'm bringing him up right now, I think he's more of a cell than a buye. We don't have a very large sample of running backs who have had their first major sign of production during their fifth NFL season. If you look back over the last decade, the names that popped up when I queried this were basically Raheem Mostert, who's going to be thirty eight years old in April, Jackie Battle who ran for almost one hundred total yards during his first four seasons before hitting five hundred and ninety seven in his fifth year, and sort of Dion Lewis. Lewis had some production, but he didn't pop until his third year in New England, which was his age twenty seventh season. That's really it. That's all we've got. So you can look at this in two ways. One way is to say that Raheem Mostert's age doesn't really matter because we don't have a large enough sample of players with his career trajectory to make any sort of claim with conviction.

00:11:35
Speaker 2: The other way to look at this is to say that there aren't many.

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Speaker 1: Late career breakouts for a reason, that players who aren't very good just aren't very good, so they don't get opportunity out of nowhere because they're not very good. I think both claims are valid to a degree. I'd side more with claim too, that Mostert may not be the best player in the world, but at this point it might not matter that much given how San Francisco might view him. I think what's going overlooked a little bit with Mostert is that even if he is going to be some sort of piece that San Francisco backfield, we know there's likely going to be some headaches there. There's gonna be a cap ceiling of some sort. In twenty nineteen, only Detroit and Miami saw their top running back and running back rush share see a lower percentage than San Francisco. To put that another way, the highest running back rush are in the forty nine Ers last year was a tie between Tevin Coleman and Raheem Moster. They were both at thirty two percent. They both had one hundred and thirty seven carries. Only Miami running backs and Detroit running backs had a lower maximum running back rush share than that number, and we know Detroit only did because Carrie on Johnson got hurt, and that trickles into the game by game level as well. No forty nine Ers running back had even an eighty percent running back rush share in a single game last year. That was the second lowest mark in the league, ahead of only Baltimore. So what does that tell us? It tells us what we already know. This is a split backfield, and less there are injuries, we know the forty nine ers are likely going to split this backfield up. And lets they get a running back who's a true workhorse. That limits Raheem moster Art's ceiling. So ask yourself. You know there's already a chance that Mostard at twenty eight years old isn't gonna last that long because he broke out so late during his NFL career. But then on top of that, we're not even talking about a high probability of him being a workhorse for the forty nine ers. In fact, Moster was barely used as a receiver last year. This is why I can't really comprehend why Damian Williams is listed well below Raheem Mostert and Dynasty League Football is January eightp. He's almost the exact same age. But we've got a sample of Damian Williams as a workhorse for the Chiefs. And while we're expecting Kansas City to add a running back this offseason, what if they enter twenty twenty with Damian Williams as their lead back. That's a far more probable outlook than it is for Raheem Mostert. Mostard's price is gonna fluctuate quite a bit from league to league, But if I had him and I can get a player like Damian Williams for him, I think that's a logical move to make. I've got a couple of surprising wide receivers on the list for today show, and the first one is arguably the best wide out in all of football, and that's DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins is currently the wide receiver two in Dynasty behind Michael Thomas. Meaning if you get rid of DeAndre Hopkins, you're getting a haul. You're getting a whole lot of assets, and I think trying to shop him makes sense, even though I'm a believer that he's the best pass catcher in the game. You always have to play the market. But Hopkins took a step back in twenty nineteen. He had by far his lowest output since twenty sixteen, when Brock ost Wiler was his quarterback. He averaged about three fewer points per game than he had during his previous two seasons. And moving forward, well, I think he can obviously be better because he's DeAndre Hopkins, He's amazing at the game. I do think that there's a little worry, the main worry being Will Fuller. I mentioned this at times on the show throughout the offseason, but Hopkins has had pretty crazy splits with and without will Folder over the last two years. He's played thirteen regular season games without Folder during this time and eighteen with him. In game without Will Folder, Hopkins has averaged eleven point two targets per game and a thirty five percent target share that's resulted in twenty and a half PPR points per game. With a healthy and active Will Folder, hopkins targets per game drops by two, his target share goes from a little over thirty five percent to twenty nine point seven percent, and his points per game drops by about two as well. This still makes DeAndre Hopkins an elite asset in fantasy football. Please don't take this the wrong way, but there are players out there who came close to what Hopkins did in twenty nineteen, and they're way cheaper and they're way younger. DJ Moore is probably the perfect example. Both he and Hopkins played in fifteen games during the regular season, and just looking at production, only more finished with more receiving yards on fifteen fewer targets. He had four touchdowns instead of seven, but he was also playing with a backup quarterback for the entire season. I'm not saying you trade Hopkins straight up for more, but you can get Hopkins for more plus some strong apps, and I think that's not a bad approach when you consider what a healthy will Fuller, which yes, I understand will Fuller can't stay healthy, but when you consider what a healthy will Fuller can do to Hopkins splits instead of him being this easy number two wide out in Dynasty, you have some real concerns. The bottom line here, and the reason I wanted to bring up Hopkins on today's show is because this is one hundred percent a market driven move. I don't hate the player at all. I love DeAndre Hopkins. I don't even think he's going to be bad over the next couple of years. But your fantasy football lineup is bigger than just one player. That's why it's not a bad call to see what you can get. A really quick and easy way to see if a veteran player is worthy of his startup draft slot is just look at where he's ranked, and then see where he's finished in recent seasons. If his ADP is well ahead of where he's finished, then he's probably a little bit overvalued. You should want to investigate things further with that player, and that's what we're seeing a little bit with Stefan Diggs. I love the player, don't get me wrong, but Dix has now failed to hit fifteen PPR points per game in all but one of his five NFL seasons. For reference, fifteen PPR points per game would have ranked at about wide receiver twenty this past year. That's really where Stefan Diggs has hovered over his career. And what's kind of strange about Diggs is that he hasn't even had an elite target share throughout his career. He's missed a game or two in every season, but his twenty eighteen was the only one where he exceeded or even came close to a twenty five percent target chair. But he's currently being drafted at wide receiver twelve, just one spot below AJ Brown, who's a stud, And it's kind of hard to back that, especially because there aren't signs that Minnesota is going to go back to their twenty eighteen philosophy where they were slinging the ball all over the field where they ranked sixth in the league, and neutral script pass to rush aten ratio. So you've got a situation with Digs where he's likely going to be on a more run heavy team in the immediate future if he ends up sticking around with Minnesota and on that team, We've seen him not live up to his current ADP very often his current dynasty ADP so quite simply, and this is probably the most basic analysis of the show, but I just think he's.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: A little bit overvalued.

00:18:02
Speaker 1: The depth at wide receiver is pretty crazy right now in fantasy football. That's what I talked about on last month's episode on the Death of the Elite wide Receiver, and all signs point to Stefan Diggs not being in that elite elite tier. He's an unbelievable wide receiver who I think we all love the watch. I'm just speaking from a production standpoint.

00:18:21
Speaker 2: So if you know that player.

00:18:22
Speaker 1: Won't be hitting that tier, that inherently will make him less valuable. I'm just not sure that he's being valued that way by the market. If you didn't hear episode three hundred and forty three last month on bailing on Unproductive Rookies, then this next player that you're gonna hear is gonna sound more shocking than any of you who did.

00:18:40
Speaker 2: Listen to it.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: But I think right now is the time to sell Nikhil Harry. Yes, I liked Harry last year a lot. His production profile was there, especially when you adjust for age. He had the right size, and he had the draft capital to back it all up. And then he got hurt and then he didn't produce. And I think it's really really important as a fantasy manager to not make excuses for a player. Yes, Nikhil Harry was hurt, and as I mentioned on the Unproductive Rookies episode, that at least gives us some hope. But the chance that he hits if we solely look at rookie production, is fairly low at this point. Already, it's pretty low. Among top twenty wide receivers since twenty eleven, about nineteen percent of them had rookie season production that was as bad as Nakhill Harry's. A one in five chance of hitting is not the best. And the main reason I'm bringing him up is because of where he's currently being drafted. If he was being valued as like a wide receiver four or something, then I would be all for holding tight. I may even buy Nikil Harry if that was his price, but he's not. He's being selected one pick, one wide receiver pick below Terry McLaurin, and he's being drafted ahead of Robert Woods and Jarvis Landry. I played dynasty by looking at a three year window, with more weight being put on those first two seasons, and from a probability standpoint, there seems to be a much higher chance that Robert Woods and Jarvis Landry outproduced Nikil Harry than Naikill Harry out producing them. But of course Harry has the ceiling. But that ceiling is strictly there because of ambiguity. But what exactly is that ceiling? What's a reasonable ceiling for Nikill Harry? The truly elite wide receivers in fantasy football right now weren't as unproductive as he was during their rookie year. The only player who was was Antonio Brown. So Harry's chance to be elite really is.

00:20:28
Speaker 2: Not that high.

00:20:29
Speaker 1: That's why I'm selling him right now, because if he has a bad sophomore season, he's gonna be worthless as a dynasty asset. I hope that doesn't happen, but I'd rather get a really solid contributor now without having to risk it. The last player I want to touch on today is Zach Ertz. Ertz was another guy that I brought up quite a bit on the podcast during last offseason and had everything to do with how he's performed when the Eagles have had competition at pass catcher. In twenty eighteen, when the Eagles added Golden Tate, we watched zach Ertz's target chair fall by three and a half percent in twenty nineteen. This past year, we saw a similar split with Alshon Jeffrey. Erz's target share without Jeffrey was almost twenty six percent per game. When al Jon Jeffrey was in the lineup, the number fell to twenty two percent, and by the way, when DeShawn Jackson also played in Week one, Ertz was below an eighteen percent target share.

00:21:19
Speaker 2: It does seem like.

00:21:20
Speaker 1: His twenty eighteen season the only one where he exceeded fourteen and a half Fantasy points per game. It seems like that was an outlier. That's where he scored seventeen and a half points per game. Where the Eagles were a top ten team and passed a rush at temp ratio and where his target share was over four percentage points higher than any other season of his career. Ertz is going to be thirty years old in November. He plays a position that's pretty replaceable in fantasy football, given that you're only starting one of those players at the position, and the Eagles are likely going to continue to add at pass catcher and Dallas Goddards started to come on during the second half of last season. Again, Ertz is a fine player. This has everything to do with the market. If you can get a solid return on him now, it's worth it. But that's going to do it. For today's show, 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 don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you later this week with the weekly Mailback Show.