895: Mailbag 8/2/24

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zacheratha.

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Speaker 2: J J Zacherson.

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Speaker 1: What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode eight hundred and ninety five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

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Speaker 2: Oh hey, thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: If you're thinking about getting the Late Round Draft Guide but you haven't purchased it yet, consider signing up on Underdog because if you do, you get the draft guide for absolutely free. Here's how it works. Just head to underdog Fantasy dot com and sign up with promo code late Round. Once you do that, and once you make a deposit, Underdog will send you an email with a link to the draft Guide.

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Speaker 2: That's it.

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Speaker 1: It's a twenty five dollars value for absolutely free. You get to play bestball and you get the draft guide.

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Speaker 2: Again.

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Speaker 1: That's Underdog Fantasy dot Com promo code Lateround. Or you can always just head to Lateround dot com and purchase it for twenty four ninety nine. But why do that when you can get it for free anyway. It's a mailbag day, let's get to it. The first question this week is from Travis on Patreon. It says, do you have a rough order slash tiering of defenses for leagues that draft them. So I don't do defensive rankings because we're not gonna likely play the same defense week in and week out during a fantasy season. We should be streaming. And for those of you who think that you can't stream to high end defenses, you're wrong. Denny Carter and I have streamed defense three defense four equivalents basically every year over the last decade on my other podcast, Living the Stream with zero investment at the position. If you can find a defense that becomes a week in, week out starter, that's great. Of course you want that, but it's not necessary to draft into that. So with that in mind, you should be looking at early season schedules for your defenses. I probably should have brought this up on the show earlier this week, but let's do it now.

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Speaker 2: To start.

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Speaker 1: Seattle was a team that I called out on that show earlier in the week because they get the Broncos and the Patriots and weeks one and two that makes them a good streaming option. In week one, they're four and a half point home favorites with a pretty low game total. Their road favorites in Week two with another low game total. The Chargers are another team that you can focus on. It's another team that I brought up on that episode. LA gets favorable matchups against the Raiders and the Panthers in weeks one and two. Their favorites in both games and both games have low game totals. You could also just look at week one matchups here, depending on which book that you're looking at. Cincinnati's a nine point favorite in Week one against New England.

00:02:42
Speaker 2: The Saints.

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Speaker 1: They're at home against the Panthers with a really low game total and they're four and a half point favorites. The Bills are seven point favorites against the Cardinals. So those are three more defenses for you. So if you're looking for a last round dart throw defense, I'd look at those teams. Seattle in LA for the first two weeks, and then Cincinnati, New Orleans and Buffalo as the remaining ones. This best question is an email from Patrick. It says, why isn't the market more bullish on Dalton Kincaid. He's the highest drafted wide receiver or tight end from the Bills according to ADP. He's in his second year. He had an excellent rookie year that outperformed expectations. Draft capital is there, and he's athletic. He's tied to the QB one in fantasy football, targets open up with Diggs and Davis GUHNN, thanks JJ Patrick. So those are definitely the pros to Dalton Kincaid. He was a great prospect. There's room for a high target chair. Josh Allen is a top quarterback. All of that is true. But here's the downside case and why I think that he's just properly valued. I'm not really high or low on Dalton Kincaid right now, but that means that he's not something that I'm targeting heavily. And here's why. Number One, there are a couple of market related trends that don't favored Alten Kincaid's super well. Here in twenty twenty four Historically, tight end ones by ADP who didn't reach double digit PPR points per game in their previous season, they don't do it very often in the current season. In fact, we haven't seen any of them do it since twenty fourteen. Now that's usually just been low end tight end ones. Usually only the low end tight end ones are coming off a poorer season like that, but with Kincaid, he wasn't quite there now compared to other tight ends historically. I do think Kincaid gets a little bit of a pass here because he was a rookie last year. And again, we haven't seen many tight ends coming off a sub ten point per game season who then get drafted in the higher end portion of tight end one territory the following year. But it's something to call out. It's something to at least pay attention to. Now the second thing, and I think this is more important than the first one, but it's how pass heavy the Bills are going to be. When they changed offensive coordinators last year, when Joe Brady took over, there was a shift in how they operated. They became more run heavy. In fact, each of their final six games showed that they had to drop backs over expected rate south of zero, meaning they were running the ball more than expected in every single contest down the stretch last year. So the volume side probably won't be there, at least compared to other Bills teams in the past. Now, the final thing here, number three, I think this is the most important one. It's Dawson Knox. Knox missed weeks eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve. Last year, during those weeks, Dalton Kincaid averaged a twenty two and a half percent target share per game rate and thirteen point eight PPR points per game. When Knox returned, that target share per game rate fell by four percentage points. He scored seven point four PPR points per game. There was a dramatic shift in his production. Now, again, Kincaid was a rookie, but having a capable body next to him, a tight end, that's not a good thing, and it has a chance to limit him now. Like I said, I get both cases. I think Kinkaid has a real shot to lead that team in targets this year. He was a great prospect according to my prospect model. But in my eyes, the reason he doesn't deserve to get drafted where Mark Andrews or Trey mcbridego is because of these other factors, and unlike a player like Mark Andrews, Kincaid hasn't shown us that season long ceiling yet. The best question is from Patreon. It's from Jamie. It says, is drafting last year's top skill player at the one oh one every year more a prediction that he'll do it again or risk aversion in the assumption that he's the most likely to be one of the top players this year. Anecdotally, it feels like we just set and forget last year's best guy without much analysis into the future. So probably one of my least favorite talking points in fantasy football is that you shouldn't draft a certain top player, let's say a wide receiver, because wide receivers never repeat as wide receiver ones from one year to the next.

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Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, sure, that's.

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Speaker 1: Not wrong, because it's really really hard to repeat as a top player at a position that has a lot of competition. You mean to tell me that you'd be upset of CD Lamb finishes the wide receiver two this year because you drafted him as the wide receiver one.

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Speaker 2: Of course not.

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Speaker 1: We're building projections and looking forward, and we're saying Lamb has the best median outcome of any wide receiver in the game. That's why he's the first wide receiver falling off of draft boards. It's the same thing with Christian McCaffrey. Of course, anything can happen, but he literally broke fantasy football last year. Even if he doesn't match what he did a season ago. It doesn't mean that he's not worthy of being the RB one. In fantasy football, ninety eight percent of projection systems are going to show Christian McCaffrey as the RB one. Now, I can't speak for the entire fantasy football world, but I don't think that we're just setting and forgetting at these positions based on last year's numbers. It's that we recognize the floor ceiling for these players, and oftentimes they're players who did really well the previous season because they're good at the game. Like you should bet against CD Lamb finishing as the wide receiver one this year. If you were to give me the field versus CD Lamb, you would take the field all day long. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't be ranked as the wide receiver one, though, because you're not telling me who you actually think the wide receiver one is gonna be, and why does your choice have better odds than CD Lamb.

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Speaker 2: Any good analyst is looking at current season inputs.

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Speaker 1: They're not just taking previous season numbers and using them in the current season. They're projecting, and look, you can make arguments for other guys. I'm not saying that Lamb and CMC are the absolute wide receiver one in RB one this year. What I am saying is that fading them in those spots simply because of what they did in the previous season, I'm gonna need a little bit more than that. This T'ST question is email from Andrew. It says, I know you love talking about rankings, but comparing your overall rankings to something like Fantasy pros Expert Consensus rankings, your quarterback rankings are consistently lower than the market, sometimes by forty to fifty spots. It looks like you make up the gap by being a bit higher on wide receivers, which I can understand any thoughts on the discrepancies at quarterback. So I went and I compared my rankings to ECR and this is not totally wrong. I'm definitely lower on quarterbacks than the market in general. But there's a key piece that's missing here, and it said I'm significantly lower on a lot of the later round quarterbacks, not the earlier round ones. I'm only two or three spots different with a lot of the elite guys, and then I'm thirteen spots different with a player like CJ.

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Speaker 2: Stroud. And that comes back down.

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Speaker 1: Then when you're comparing where I'm at with Kyler Murray, after Murray, you start to see some major differences. So I'm close enough to the market with a lot of the earlier round guys and into the middle round, and then I'm significantly lower with the lower end QB ones into that QB two range, especially in QB two range. So why is that? The answer is pretty simple. I think a lot of the pocket passers are just ranked way, way too high on fantasy pros. I write about this in the draft guide. But there's a lot more volatility with passing numbers than with rushing numbers. That's what's really changed with the position over the last five years. The top quarterbacks are largely rushing quarterbacks, yes, but they're rushing quarterbacks who can also throw the ball and post crazy numbers through the air. A quarterback's touchdown rate is more volatile than a quarterback's rushing numbers are. We know who the top rushing quarterbacks are going to be, but we can't say as confidently who the quarterbacks with the most touchdown passes are necessarily going to be. So I play into that variance, and I say, instead of investing in Brock Purdy or Jared Goff, who are fine. They have the potential to give us crazy touchdown rates, They have the potential to give us a crazy go season through the air. But instead of investing in them, I'm gonna spend it running back and wide receiver to help ensure that I get good players at the more important positions in fantasy football, and I'll let the falling quarterback come to me. If I'm going to go with a late round quarterback strategy, like to me, the upside case for a player like Will Levis or even Matthew Stafford, It's not so dramatically different than the upside case for a player like Tua tongue Iloa. So why rank Tua so significantly higher in my overall rankings? An upside at the end of the day is all I really care about with a late round pick. The last question this week is from Patreon is from Patrick. It says, could you share what you're changing in how you approach best ball drafts once you get to season long redrafts. I heard you say during the latest Perspectives episode that perhaps redraft strategies should more closely match best ball. Is that how you're actually thinking about it. But basically, what I meant when I said that was that a wide receiver heavy strategy and a lot of fantasy leagues makes a lot of sense, and it's made sense for a while.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: On top of that, I think the underdog market does a really good job of pocketing running backs properly.

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Speaker 2: Now, what I mean by that is it recognizes that the running.

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Speaker 1: Back dead zone is real, and it shifts the opportunity cost to an appropriate place. My rankings have been like that and reflected that for years and years now. That's what I really meant by that comment. Now, with that being said, something that keeps getting brought up something I've talked about in the past is stacking. Now, obviously in best Ball we're stacking like crazy. We're getting team stacks in almost any format, and then game stacks when there's a playoff. Because we're playing against so many people, we're looking for as much favorable variance as humanly possible. We need high ceiling outcomes to win, and stacking does that. When a team's offense does well, all of the players in that offense will do well in Fantasy foo and that's not just on a weekly basis either. I think people think of stacking as just helping their team in a singular week, but this goes beyond that. It's also big from a season long perspective. I just talked about Will Levis. Let's just bring him up. Let's say that you stack Levis with Calvin Ridley and DeAndre Hopkins. Well, not only do you have interesting week to week upside, but what happens if the Titans throw for forty touchdowns this year, then that entire offense, the pass catchers, Will Levis, they're gonna outperform their season long expectations. It'll be felt on a weekly level, yes, but it's gonna be felt on a weekly level consistently. It's not just a let's hope we get lucky and this is the week that the Titans go off. No, in this scenario, the Titans passing offense is going off week in and week out. That's one of the reasons that stacking can be worthwhile in any format, because if that offense does well, you're gonna get production across the entire season, good production. All of the players are going to outperform their expectation, and they're all linked together. Now that obviously then comes with a risk, and when we're talking about a twelve team home league, a regular managed, season long league, that risk isn't as necessary to take on because in a season long league, you're just looking at a basic fifty to fifty matchup each week. Having players outperform expectation will definitely increase your odds of winning in a given week, but at its core, it's a fifty to fifty matchup. You don't need to force stacking the same way that you do in a best ball tournament.

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Speaker 2: Not at all.

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Speaker 1: Now, you can definitely still do it, and I think doing it when your lineup is a little bit heftier, when there are more spots in your starting lineup, that makes more sense because that team isn't taking up as big of a portion of your starting lineup. You're not living and dying by that team. So when it comes to stacking in season long, you shouldn't horse it. In bestball, you actually should be forcing it a little bit in season long, just let it fall into place. If it happens, great, there's probably a slight advantage for you because we should still be looking for upside in our season long leagues. But if you don't get that stack. If you draft Jalen Hurts and you don't get AJ Brown or DeVante Smith, it's not the end of the world because it's still a matchup driven game. It's a one v one game. In best ball, it's one v thousands. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Make sure you're subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. I've been doing live streams over there. Make sure you're subscribe. You get notified when I'm live. It's YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening, everyone, enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you next week.