778: Rookie Running Backs in Season-Long Leagues

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Speaker 1: This is the lad podcast with your host JJ zacherathas J shake zacher Reef. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacher Esen in this episode seven and seventy eight of the Late Round Fantasy football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before get into things today, I wanted to give a shout out to bird Dogs. Have you guys tried their shorts before? They're awesome? Other shorts that I've worn are made of stiff, restricting cotton, but bird Dogs fixed that issue by inventing cloud knit fabric that looks just like khaki but stretches. You get a way slimmer fit without having a sacrifice movement. They use anti stink sweat wicking fabric too, and that keeps me cool and dry all day long when I wear them. I know that I talk about how I wear gym shorts all the time because they're so comfortable, and these bird Dog shorts are seriously just as comfortable, but with a way better look. To check them out for yourself, head to birddogs dot com slash round and use promo code late Round at checkout that's birddogs dot com slash Late Round, or you can use promo code late round. Last offseason, I did a study on rookie wide receivers in season long leagues. The data that I presented show that not only are rookie wideout's good bets just in general, but they're especially good bets because of the second half of the season and how they perform during that second half. Most rookie wideouts score more fantasy points during the second half of the season, which makes sense because they're getting acclimated to the NFL game. A big reason those players are valuable in fantasy is because fantasy managers hate uncertainty. The market can't stand it when things aren't predictable, so fantasy managers push down the cost of players who have no experience because there's more up in the air with those players. But if there's one constant throughout this year's late round draft guy, which you can get right now over on Lateround dot Com, by the way, but if there's one constant theme throughout the guide, it's to embrace that uncertainty. Embrace the fact that we know little about these players, because oftentimes those players are the ones who become big values. And that's not just a wide receiver, it's at running back, too. For whatever reason, I never got around to doing this episode on running backs. Well, I should say there is a reason the reasons that people seem to be more willing to draft rookie running backs and season long leagues than rookie wide receivers. Running Backs can produce immediately in the NFL, and I think most people understand that it doesn't take as much for them to get used to the NFL game. So we see rookie running backs have these big seasons all the time. But is it possible that they're still undervalued in season long fantasy? Yes, it's possible because they generally are in this year's draft GUD I go position by a position, and I break up fantasy drafts into different buckets. At running back, I've got the early rounds than the running back dead zone, than the middle rounds, and then the late rounds. The early rounds go from pick one to pick thirty in a twelve team league, so the top of the draft through the middle of round three. The dead zone then starts there and goes to the end of round six. There's some overlap with the middle rounds, but the middle rounds consists of round six through round nine. Running backs, and then the late rounds are the backs taken after pick one oh eight or backs going in the double digit rounds, and I usually cap that off at the fifteenth round, just so that we're not dealing with players who never sniff a football field. Now, I've talked about this before on episode six hundred and forty three. That episode was un beating the running back dead zone. But one of the easiest ways to find value in the running back dead zone is by drafting rookies. Last year was Breece Hall and Damien Pierce. This year it's looking like Jamier Gibbs. Historically, rookies out of the dead zone have produced like back half second round running backs. Genuinely, they've been that good. The running back dead zone is not a great place to get running backs, but there are running backs who emerge from the dead zone every single year. And you can look even earlier than the dead zone and find a lot of successes too. I've brought this up on the show a lot in the past, but one of the things I like doing is looking at player performance versus average draft position expectation. Just picture a scatterplot. The X axis, the one that goes left to right that represents average draft position ADP. The y axis, the one that goes up and down, represents a player's PPR points per game. So a running back gets drafted fiftieth overall and then he ends up scoring ten PPR points per game that year, that's one data point. A back gets drafted seventieth overall, he scores twelve PPR points per game that year, that's another data point. You can do this for every player and get trend lines to help us show expectation or how many points per game we'd expect a player to score at a particular ADP. I use this information to spot market related trends, like how rookie wide receivers are generally undervalued by the market. Now since twenty eleven, according to my Fantasy League ADP data, we've seen thirty rookie running backs get drafted before the end of round six in the twelve team league or pick seventy two of those thirty, twenty eight ended up playing eight or more games, so unfortunately this data does exclude Breze Hall. Of those twenty eight, eighteen of them ended up playing above EIGHTP expectation, so they were expected to score some number of points according to their ADP, and they outperformed that expectation. Considering ADP expectation is average, we'd expect fourteen of those twenty eight to play above expectation, but eighteen are playing above expectation. And on top of that, eleven of the twenty eight exceeded ADP expectation by three or more PPR points per game. That's what I consider a moderate breakout. Players who outperformed that expectation by three or more PPR points per game. That's almost a forty percent rate among these rookie running backs drafted in the first six rounds. Meanwhile, when looking at every other running back drafted from pick one to seventy two since twenty eleven who played eight games, so all the non rookies in this group, those players had a moderate breakout rate of twenty one percent. So you're looking at forty percent for the rookies and twenty one percent for the non rookies. Rookie running backs aren't just there as dart throw picks in the late rounds. They're really good picks in the early rounds too, And if you think about it, it makes plenty of sense as to why if a rookie running back is being drafted early. Chances are he's in line for a lot of touches, or he's at least projected to see a lot of them. The reason he's not drafted higher than he is even in the dead zone, even in the early rounds. The reason he's not being drafted higher is ambiguity. We've never seen the back play before, so people get scared and they don't draft him, even if they're still drafting him relatively high. Since twenty eleven, eight rookie running backs have been drafted in the first three rounds of twelve team leagues. That's not a lot, but there's been eight of them. That's the top thirty six overall. Those eight were Saquon Barkley, Clyde Edwards, Hilaire Ezekiel, Elliott, Najie Harris, Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, and Trent Richardson. Now, Dalvin Cook only played four games during his rookie year, but he was still outpacing his points per game expectation by three point four points before getting injured. The only player on that list to not exceed ADP expectation was Clyde Edwards a laire and on average, those backs outperformed ADP expectation by two point six points per game, which is ridiculously good. The market undervalues these early round rookie running backs and these rookie dead zone running backs, so you should target them. But the market kind of does the same thing in the middle rounds in the late rounds too. Now, just as a reminder, I consider the middle rounds as round six through round nine of a twelve team league, pick sixty to pick one hundred and eight. Since twenty eleven, rookies in the middle rounds have had the second best moderate breakout rate among all NFL years. So that's comparing against a year two running backs, year three running backs, and so on. They exceeded ADP expectation by three or more points per game at the second highest rate. Only second year running backs were better. Here's the problem, though, When looking at a true breakout rate, which is what I define as a player exceeding ADP expectation by six or more points, these rookie running backs don't look as good. And this is likely because when you get to the middle rounds of your draft, you're no longer looking at rookie running backs who are locked into decent sized workloads in the early rounds. Those backs are ready to roll. They're going to see huge workloads. That's why they're being drafted early despite never touching an NFL field. Middle round rookie running backs might be in a committee. They might start the year a little if yer so across an entire season, they can break out moderately, but it may be more difficult for them to be a full blown, true breakout because they're starting their season off a little bit slower. And that's exactly what the data shows. Since twenty eleven, we've had twenty four middle round rookie running backs play eight or more games in the season. Twenty four first year backs who have been drafted between pick sixty to one oh eight of those twenty four, nineteen played at least five games during the first half of the season and the second half of the season. I promise I'm going somewhere with this. On average, those players saw an increase in fantasy points per game of one point five from the front half of the season to the second half. And get this, if you only look at their back half points per game number, and if you use that to compare to ADP expectation, their moderate and true breakout rates get even better because they're performing better during the second half of the season. Across the entire season, middle round rookie running backs had a moderate breakout rate of thirty three percent. They exceeded ADP expectation by three or more points at a thirty three percent clip, which is really good. Remember that's the second best subset. But when you focus only on their second half numbers and you ignore their first half ones, that moderate rate goes from thirty three percent to forty two percent. When looking at true breakout rate, which is when a player exceeds ADP expectation by six or more points. When you focus on these middle round rookie running backs across the entire season, their true breakout rate is only four percent. That's below average, That's what I talked about earlier. But when you look only at their second half numbers, that jumps up to sixteen percent. That would then make them one of the best true breakout subsets. You want to generally avoid older running backs in the middle rounds, the ones past year five of their NFL career, But if you're looking at the back half of the season when things matter most. Rookie running backs out of the middle rounds do really really well, and then doing the same exact exercise in the late rounds yields very similar results. Age is less of a factor in the late rounds. Just look at last year. You had Jeric McKinnon and Jamal Williams come out of that range and really perform well. They outperform their expectation, and these late round rookie running backs don't stand out a whole lot when looking at season long numbers. But think about what a late round rookie running back is. He's a complete dart throw. He's likely a late Day two, maybe a Day three draft selection who doesn't have a super clear path to volume in year one. If he did have a clear path to volume, he'd be drafted earlier. The chance that he sees a big workload right away is slim, which means is overall points per game numbers, they're not going to look as strong his season long numbers. It might take him a minute to start seeing the field more, but those players can see the field eventually across the full season. Late round rookie running backs, so first year backs who got drafted after pick one aweight all the way to pick one eight. Those late roundbacks had a moderate breakout rate of twenty percent. They had a true breakout rate of seven percent. But when you focus only on their second half numbers, those rates once again rise. The moderate rate goes from twenty percent to thirty one percent. The true breakout rate is even more bonkers. It goes from seven percent to almost twenty five percent. At literally every level of your season long fantasy draft, rookie running backs are values. They're straight up values in the early rounds and through the running back dead zone, and then in the middle rounds and in the late rounds. Their fine season long picks when you're looking at numbers across an entire season, but they're exceptionally good picks when you focus on what they're capable of doing during the second half of the year, which is the most important part of the fantasy season. This is exactly what we found with wide receivers, and it goes back to what I said at the top fantasy managers, they hate uncertainty, they hate not knowing it exactly what they're getting. You shouldn't, though, embrace that variance. It's gonna help you win fantasy titles. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are mestaching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. Remember to check out the Late Round Draft Guide over on lateround dot com if you like what you heard today. There's a lot more of this kind of stuff in the draft guide. Otherwise, I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag Show.