312: Mailbag 11/8/19

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Speaker 1: This is the latest with your host, JJ Zachertha, JJ Zacherisa. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharesen, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at Number five dot com. And this is episode three hundred and twelve of the Late Round podcast and one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Where are you airhorn haters at? You see how bad the intro to of this podcast could be. This show without airhorns is like The Office without Steve Carell, though I will say Robert California's character is kind of underrated. That's my hot take of the day. But I was inspired to change up the intro for the Mailbag show this week because on Twitter this week someone hit me up and said, love the podcast, but bro, you have to change the intro. It's so so bad. The great people out there then entered my mentions with some airhorn praise, so I know that while the haters are out there, we've also got a lot of lovers. We've got more lovers than haters. But I thought it would be good to show everyone how important the airhorns actually are to this intro. It can be a lot worse as you heard today, so eat it haters, all jokes aside. Today is a mailbag day. But before get into your great questions, We've got another FANDUL free role for all FanDuel podcast network listeners. Go to fandle dot com slash League slash JJ. That's my name, JJ, make a lineup, Submit that lineup and have a shot to win free number five ore premium in a little bit of cash. It's free to enter. That's fandel dot Com slash League slash JJ. This first question is from at Bethany L. Peters. Why do we focus so much on target share versus raw number of targets? A ten percent target share out of one hundred targets is greater than a thirty percent target share out of twenty targets. No, of course, love the show, JJ, Thanks Bethany. So the reason to focus on target shairs because passing volume can fluctuate week to week for teams. I look at most things in fantasy football from the top down, like my projections, look at the team level first before the individual player level. And you guys know that during the season, I'm looking at team level things just as much as individual player statistics. Because everything starts at the team level, so as a result, target share numbers are important since we're putting them in team context. It's true that a twenty percent target share on one team can yield more targets than a thirty percent target shair on another. But the reason we're looking at target shair is because it allows you to be more stable with your projections each week, because things like gamescript and matchup can dictate how often a team throws in previous weeks. But yes, we need context for everything. It's why I'm never all that high on players like Corey Davis despite a decent enough target share, their teams just don't throw the ball enough. So the point is very, very valid. But instead of looking at raw targets, I look more at team philosophy in conjunction with target share because it allows me to not be swayed by the week to week fluctuations of gamescript. This next question is from at Tampa two Tone. How do you view Josh Gordon's floor and ceiling in Seattle? I think his floor is frightening, like his floor could be that he's completely not usable in fantasy football, and I do worry about his ceiling to a degree as well. Seattle's efficient thanks to Russell Wilson, but they're still averaging the tenth fewest pass attempts per game this year. And of course the fit makes sense because Wilson can throw the deep ball well. But I do think that there's some redundancy with DK Metcalf and Josh Gordon. I mean, DK Metcalf was comped to Josh Gordon when he was coming out. So unfortunately, here's my fear with the situation. I'm fearful that this simply hurts DK Metcalf as a fantasy asset more than it gives Josh Gordon standalone value. So while I love the move from a real football standpoint, I'm not going hard trying to buy DK Metcalf or Josh Gordon right now. So hopefully that helps answer that question. This next question is from at Mike Hanho. Can you touch on the Jags passing game with Nick Foles coming back? Yeah, so, I'm not all that concerned about how this will impact players like DJ Shark all that much. INDEEDE Westbrook could actually get a little bit of a bump given how he was used in the preseason with Nick Foles. But You can also think of it this way. If Foles isn't good, then they can always go to Minshew. But the target distribution for that team is pretty shallow. And while the whole Minshew thing was a lot of fun, it's not like he was this lights out passer for fantasy purposes. We've had thirty four quarterbacks throw the ball one hundred more times this year when strictly looking at their passing numbers and the fantasy points accumulated through the air alone, So no rushing numbers here. Minshew ranks nineteenth and fantasy points per attempt. I don't think it's ridiculous to think that Nick Foles can maintain that rate and down the stretch. As I talked about on the fifteen Transaction Show this week, the Jags get Oakland in Atlanta in weeks fifteen and sixteen, they should hypothetically put up some good passing numbers in those two games. This next qu from at Z fades underscore ff is there any interest in Miles Gaskin since Kaylan Blage is hashtag bad at football? Yeah? Look, I didn't like Bolage that much coming out because it's always a red flag when a running back can't play ahead of another player in his college offense who is a fringe NFL player. Bilage played behind to Mario Richard, he's list as a free agent, but Richard couldn't even make the Arizona hot Shots in the AAF. That's who Bilage was losing snaps to at Arizona State. So yes, I'm not the biggest Bilage fan in the world. He's definitely athletic and he has a chance to make some big plays. But I wasn't aggressive in going after him this week on the waiver wire, partially because Miami's best running back performance this year in PPR formats resulted in an RB twenty one finish. We know the situation sucks, but also because we sort of know what we're getting out of kaylen Blage. I still prioritized him over the other running backs on Miami though. Just to be clear, but to your point about Gaskin, I do think he's the most intriguing back currently on that roster. I stashed him in deeper leagues. I highly doubt that we're looking at a league winner, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he ends up being the best running back in Miami from here on out, or at least once they start giving him some opportunity. But like I said, Belage is still the guy that I would want most only because I think he gets immediate opportunity. But Gaskin might be the value play. This next question says love the Pod hashtag save the air Horns. That's what I'm talking about. I'm in a ten team league with only three bench spots. In small leagues like this, how do you value your bench when in first place? Do you go with your cuffs so high floor, low ceiling, others cuffs low floor, high ceiling, hopeful stashes or other players. I have CMC and Carson for what it's worth. So generally speaking, I don't utilize my bench as players who I'm likely to play in a given week in leagues like this, only because I know that the waiver wire is going to be filled with a lot of usable players. So I go strictly with upside guys, and I try my best to leave one spot on my bench. I leave one spot with someone I'm okay with dropping, just because I know that there will be weeks where I need players off the waiver wire. In your case, given that you're in first. I think it's fine to stash handcuffs for your running backs, but it all depends on who's available. But if I'm in first, I generally will play it a little bit safer. This next question says, what's your take on the Arizona backfield moving forward? Everyone was surprised by their ability to run against San Francisco? Is that a one off? Will we see a running back by committee when DJ and Edmunds are healthy? Yeah? There were people who gave me a hard time for selling Kenyan Drake on the fifteen Transaction Show a couple of weeks ago, since Drake went off against the forty nine ers, and fair enough, I was wrong given what Drake did against San Francisco. That performance alone made me wrong. But it does sound like DJ could be back this week while Chase Edmonds is still a few weeks away. My thoughts are that they're gonna use both running backs, with DJ being more of the pass catcher between the two backs. To be honest with you, guys, I haven't been all that impressed by Johnson the runner this year. He's been a great receiver because that's where he excels. But it makes sense to split the backfield's early down work with Kenyan Drake there, so Drake might be more of a flex in PPR formats, while DJ is an RB two. Moving forward, and for the record, Arizona's been good at running the football this year. Cliff Kingsbury has done a good job. It was a surprise that they were able to be that good against San Francisco last week. But it's not like we're talking about the Bengals. This last question is from at Kenny D one one zero three zero one to nine to one. I have Dalvin Cook and Chris Carson. Which handcuff should I hold? If I can only hold one? Also, out of all the handcuffs, which handcuff is most valuable overall? The answer to both of these questions is Alexander Madison. I think he's the best handcuff in fantasy. Maybe Tony Pollard is there as well, but Madison looks the part of someone who can handle a full workload. He's in a run heavy offense that allows for touchdowns to skew that way. And while this is partially because of Dalvin Cook, the Vikings have also targeted running backs this year at one of the highest rates in football, So you want Madison. This ask questions from at FOB not fab five Freddy. I've always accepted as gospel that we should strongly prefer defenses at home, but is there any analysis that proves this other than the general feel goodness of playing at home. I never understood why this matters that much for an entire defensive unit scoring potential. Thanks. A really simple way to look at this is to look at point differential. We know that logically we want defenses that will be in positive game scripts, meaning we want defenses that'll be on teams that are winning. There are so many other factors when choosing a defense to play, but playing ahead in order to get sacks and turnovers is very, very important. If you look at data over the last five years, twenty one NFL teams have a positive point differential at home. That's well more than half the league, and then only ten NFL teams have a positive point differential over the last five years on the road. And if you go back all the way to twenty twelve, so twenty twelve through the twenty eighteen season, so this excludes this year since this season is not over, but over this time period, twenty three NFL defenses have averaged more Fantasy points at home per game than on the road. The average difference between road fantasy points to home fantasy points is point eight zero per game. That may not seem like a lot, but over that large of a sample, it tells us that teams perform better at home than on the road. It's not everything, though, You shouldn't just ignore defenses because they're playing on the road, but it's an additional edge. Teams play better at home, and in turn, the defenses do as well. This last question is from at Steve underscore Lister. I know you said stock up on running backs and wide receivers, but I have Lamar Jackson and use Stafford over the bye week. A few dangerous teams I would rather not make the playoffs need a quarterback badly. In this case, isn't it more valuable to play keep away rather than pick up a handcuff running back. So here's what I'll say to this one. If Stafford was on your waiver wire, that means there are a lot of quarterbacks available, which means the position is replaceable in your league. So in that case, I wouldn't be holding on to Stafford to block other teams. But even if quarterbacks are hoarded in your league, I probably still wouldn't try to block a group of teams. If you're going head to head against someone and you want to block them, sure, go right ahead. I do that all the time. But you said that there are a few dangerous teams that need a quarterback badly, which makes it harder to block them because you're blocking a lot of different teams. But then you're also trying to be the hero in your league, and you're not just benefiting your team by doing this, but you're also benefiting the other teams in your league who are also going up against these few dangerous teams who need a quarterback. Let's use one of my stupid analogies to get this point across. Let's say you and eleven other people are about to run a race. Everyone has running shoes except for three people who are barefoot. But you have an extra pair of running shoes that you can give one of those people, but you also want to win the race. The problem is by not giving them a pair of running shoes, you have to hold those shoes while running the race, and that's annoying as hell. Let's say that you choose to not give anyone the pair of shoes. That means three people are going shoeless. Even though they're fast, they'll be slowed down, and we should be assuming that these barefoot runners are really really fast. Meanwhile, since you didn't give those shoes away, you have to hold them. That makes you slower. So the seven other people involved in this race who have running shoes, they're really benefiting. Because you decided to hurt the three fastest people in the race. By holding Stafford and not trying to at least trade him, you're choosing to make your team worse. You're actually benefiting the other teams in your league, who may not appear as dangerous. Your goal in fantasy football should almost always be to have the best team possible. There are some circumstances is where you want to do something like this, but in general it should be to run your fastest race. This next question says playoffs locked in. Can you provide some recommendations from the high stream positions like kicker defense and tight end with good playoff schedules? So I'm not gonna have kicker takes on this show since you can easily play them week to week. Since teams aren't hoarding kickers, and with tight ends, you're chasing volume more than you're chasing matchups. So I'm going to focus on defenses with this question, since that's what people would and should care about most. Baltimore has the best playoff schedule this year. They get the Bills, the Jets, and the Browns from weeks fourteen through sixteen. If Houston's available in your leagues and say a bye this week, they get Denver, Tennessee, and Tampa Bay, so they're not in a bad spot either. And Pittsburgh also gets Arizona Buffalo in the New York Jets, so they're good to go too. Those three teams jumped out the most when looking at the entirety of the playoffs. If you look at just weeks fifteen and sixteen, add the Giants to the list, they get Miami and Washington in those two games. That's literally the best schedule that you could ask for. That's who the most traditional streaming defense would probably be. This last question is from at FF whisperer. How do you distinguish between regression candidates and true outliers? You don't really, because you should assume that outliers are going to regress. Now, if you're looking at this from the perspective of this guy has really outperformed in the touchdown column based on X, Y, and Z. The players who are going to outperform there are players who are in good offenses. True season long outliers are generally coming from good offenses, or they're playing with good quarterbacks, or they are good quarterbacks. Like let's look at touchdown rate. It's a metric that generally regresses for quarterbacks. But there are a handful of quarterbacks that will year in and year out perform better than the average and touchdown rate. We should expect them to perform well above average, but they'll be better than average. But the bottom line here is that outliers regress. We just have small samp and random parameters around these players, so it just appears that outliers don't regress, but outliers regress. We should never be trying to predict outliers. We can try to predict how far a player will regress or the degree of regression, but we should never sit back and say this player will always be a massive outlier no matter what. That's not how this stuff works. That's going to do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get to 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, enjoy your weekend, and best of luck in week ten.