968: Analyzing 2024's Biggest Hits

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ Zacheri, JJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode nine hundred and sixty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in late.

00:00:22
Speaker 1: Last week you heard an episode on some of the bigger things that I got wrong this past year. I talked about the item that was wrong and whether or not that item was actually predictable or not, or if I use correct process while making the decision that I ended up making as an analyst. Today's show is the opposite of that. It's the things that went right. I think a lot of times when things go your way, you just assumed that they went your way because of course they did. You were smart, you did something correctly. You don't need to go any further. You were right. But it's still really imperative to see if luck played a factor or if your process was wrong, because there were some instances this where the result definitely went my way, but I wasn't predicting the why correctly, and to me, that's just as important as predicting the end result correctly. So we'll talk through some of those bigger things that went my way this year. I tried to come with a variety of things just to cover everything. Now, before I get into the items today, do you guys know that the twenty twenty five Best Ball season is already underway over at Underdog for Real. You can join Big Board contests right now over there for all different entry prices. You could really have an edge in your competition right now if you understand prospects better than the market, and I know some of you do. That's what helped me get into the Big Board Final last year. Now, I haven't created rankings for it yet, but I will soon enough. Over in the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. To get ready for that, make sure you sign up on Underdog Fantasy dot com and use promo code Late Round when you do sign up, that'll get you a nice deposit bonus up to one thousand dollars. That's promo code Late Round and also the Late Round Prospect Guide. It's available for preorder. Just had the Lateround dot Com to make the purchase. It'll give you everything you need to crush your rookie drafts this year, but the information in it can definitely help with season long two. You can see samples of what you get over on lateround dot com. If you're still deciding the price for the Prospect Guide, it's currently fourteen ninety nine. It's going to rise to nineteen ninety nine once it launches on March tenth. Then it's going to be updated after the NFL Draft happens. You get all of that for just a fourteen to ninety nine preorder. That's all on lateround dot com.

00:02:36
Speaker 2: Check it out. A good place to start this show is probably with Brian Thomas Junior.

00:02:42
Speaker 1: For those of you who listened to Becoming a Best Ball bro that series over the summer, you might remember that Brian Thomas was my highest rostered wide receiver in Bestball last year. Anyone who listens to my friends over at the Fantasy Footballers for their MVP show, Brian Thomas was my preseason submission as this year's Fantasy Football MV. Needless to say, I was really high on him entering the season, and this is a case where the result was even better than I anticipated, but I think the process was also spot on.

00:03:11
Speaker 2: One of the.

00:03:12
Speaker 1: Reasons I love having my Prospect Guide my Draft Guide is that I can look back and easily see how I was feeling about a player or a situation before the season started. I of course enjoy spreading research and getting my thoughts out there to the masses, but I selfishly love having these almost like journals of my thoughts entering a season. Brian Thomas was a volatile prospect because he didn't have multiple huge seasons in college. But the ZAP model liked him more than most did. But what's important for today's discussion is what I said about him in the Draft Guide. In this year's guide, Brian Thomas was a player to target, obviously, and in his blurb I wrote the following quote. Thomas's prospect score was ninety four point five, a number that typically yields good fantasy results, which, by the way, with some adjustments that I made to the model this offseason or over the last few weeks, that score actually now looks even better. More on that in the Prospect Guide, though, But I continue, and I say, since twenty fourteen, we've had twenty three rookie wide receivers get selected in the wide receiver forty to wide receiver sixty range with a prospect score above ninety. Those players, on average, outperformed ADP expectation by one point four PPR points per game and a crazy high thirty nine percent of them finishes a moderate breakout. And remember rookies will typically perform better during the back half of the season compared to the front one. I then went on to write and say what you want about Calvin Ridley playing that role last year. Not only did he have some unfortunate touchdown luck, but he still maintained a twenty two point four percent target share. According to PFF's modeling, Ridley finishes the wide receiver fourteen and expected fantasy points last season. And Ridley wasn't getting drafted as the wide receiver fifty last year, So essentially eightyp trends pointed to Brian Thomas being an obvious pick. The market undervalued this type of player in the past, that player being a talented player, and then on top of that, the potential workload was there. He would take on that Calvin Ridley role, which wasn't amazing for Ridley from a results standpoint, but Ridley underperformed. When you can get a middle round wide receiver who's this good of a prospect, you should want to take on that risk. You want to take on that variance and when that player also has a path to volume same exact deal. Now, Brian Thomas ended up performing better than even I expected. But in fantasy football, it's not simply about being precise. It's not about predicting the outlier. It's about liking the outlier more than your league mates. And that's what happened with me when it came to Brian Thomas. Now, someone who was in a similar boat as Thomas was Lad McConkie. But number one, my prospect model didn't like McConkie as much as it like Thomas, so he didn't fit that criteria as well. That resulted in me not calling him out as a player to target, which was a mistake because mconkee balled out. But I don't think I was totally wrong with McConkey this year. I was more or less a round market with him entering the season, but I adjusted that stance quickly with new information within the fifteen Transactions newsletter and podcast that went out before week six. So through five weeks of the season, I had Lad mconkee as a bye and it wasn't because he was bawling out. Quite the opposite. After five weeks, he was averaging eleven point two PPR points per game. Nothing special, but the peripherals were there, and sometimes even if the environment doesn't look super attractive, that's enough to pounce. McConkie had a twenty seven percent target share through that point in time, his lowest share in a single game twenty one percent. His yards per outrun at that time was just outside the top twenty across the entire league for a rookie wide receiver who had only played a month of football. You then take that and you layer on top the fact that my research has pointed to rookies performing better during the second half of the year versus the first, and you had yourself a great by candidate. Remember, at that time, LA was a pretty run heavy team because Justin Herbert was banged up and McConkie's upcoming schedule wasn't that great either. But from that transaction onward, even though it took a few weeks, McConkie averaged sixteen point four PPR points per game, and then he obviously had that blow up game in the wildcard round. He now has the third best year two score in my year two model, behind myleak Neighbors and Brian Thomas Junior. McConkey is legit, and we saw that pretty early on in the season by looking at his peripherals. Anytime there's a first year player showing out like that, you need to be aggressive. It won't work every time, but the cost benefit is usually there. Anyone who listens to this show knows my style. I don't talk in absolutes because there are no absolutes in fantasy football. We should live in the gray area and not just think in a black and white way.

00:08:10
Speaker 2: But one of my key.

00:08:11
Speaker 1: Players to avoid this year, one where I did feel pretty strongly was with Zamir White. The running back dead zone was indeed different this year, and that's something I had written about before the season, but there were still traditional dead zone backs in the lower end RB two range of drafts, and the most glaringly obvious one to me was Zamir White. White was being drafted for two main reasons. Number One, he finished the twenty twenty three season off strong. Number Two, who else was going to touch the ball in the Raiders backfield?

00:08:42
Speaker 2: Now?

00:08:42
Speaker 1: I need that second item to be stuck in your brain for the rest of the time that you play fantasy football, which is, hopefully the rest of your life. Never draft players high in your fantasy drafts because of a lack of competition around them. Draft players because they're good at the game. Because a players, they're replaceable, even if you can't foresee who that replacement's gonna be. Maybe you felt Zamir White was good, but I'd argue there were a lot of red flags through his overall profile. White was never a pass catcher, not at Georgia and not really in the NFL either. Even when you look at how he performed during his strong final month of twenty twenty three, he was averaging a target chair per game rate below ten percent. Not only is pass catching important for fantasy scoring, but it's a talent.

00:09:30
Speaker 2: Marker as well.

00:09:32
Speaker 1: A more well rounded running back sees those looks. White also hadn't done that much in the NFL up until that point. Now you can say it's because Josh Jacobs was there. Okay, fine, but White also wasn't some high end draft selection. The reason the Raiders had him in the first place, despite already having Josh Jacobs on their roster was because they didn't have to spend a lot of draft capital to get Zamir White like even down the stretch the previous season in twenty twenty three, when Zamir or White was playing at his best, he averaged fourteen point one PPR points per game. That was fine, but it was nowhere near special. It just seemed obvious that things had a chance to go south this year. Now did I project this? Not necessarily, but of all the running backs in fantasy football to not live up to the hype, he seemed like the easy go to because people were drafting him for the wrong reasons. And that's definitely a process that I'm going to continue to implement moving forward.

00:10:30
Speaker 2: Draft the player first situation. Second.

00:10:36
Speaker 1: A little bit later in the draft after Zamir White came a group of my favorite running backs to target, and those are the running backs and ambiguous backfields. But this isn't about ambiguous backfields being okay once again in twenty twenty four. This is about patience with those ambiguous backfields, specifically with Chase Brown. Now, I went on a journey with Brown last year. I at first of the off season thinking that he was more of a cell. Then I changed my two in a month or two later after doing more research, because that's how I operate. When I get new information, when I discover new things, I might change my mind. Brown then ended up being a player that I was heavily targeting both in Best ball and season long leagues all summer long. Now, I didn't think that Zack Moss, who was also part of that backfield, I didn't think that he was a bad choice either, But I moved Chase Brown ahead of Moss in my rankings when that wasn't that popular of a thing to do. Now, obviously that end result ended up being the right move. Zach Moss was hurt and Chase Brown took over that backfield. He became an RB one in Fantasy football. But I think the path to getting to that point, that's what's important here. After two weeks in the season, I had a fifteen transactions item that was to hold Chase Brown. People were contemplating dropping him with Zach Moss taking on more work in that Bengals backfield. In weeks one and two, Chase Brown had a twenty five percent running back rush here Zach Moss he had the other seventy five percent. But ambiguous backfield targeting is all about patience. It's not unlike zero RB the idea behind targeting ambiguous backfields is that drafters tend to push down running backs are in a projected split backfield because they say to themselves, he's not going to see a full workload, why should I draft him? But that fails to recognize is the paths that a running back can take in order to see a larger workload. Our projections are not going to be one hundred percent correct. Now, one of those paths is via talent. The running back is just undeniably better than his teammate. That gives him more work. The other path is an injury path. If his teammate gets hurt, then the other running back will likely see more work. Now, ambiguous backfields don't work out one hundred percent of the time, not even close. But the hit rates for running backs in these backfields and the delay rounds, they're a whole lot better than the hit rates for running backs in those same rounds who appear to have their backfield to themselves, like Zamir White this past year, Ramandre Stevenson. Now you may not immediately understand why that'd be the case, So just think of it this way. Why were Remandre Stevenson and Zamir White drafted as lower end RB twos in twenty twenty four. If they had their backfields themselves, why wouldn't drafters want them even more? Well, it's likely due to their situation or maybe a talent issue. For White, it was kind of both. For Stevenson, it was probably a little bit of both two, but it was more of a situational one. For players in ambiguous backfields, the market is telling you that that backfield has so much potential. It has so much potential that they're willing to draft multiple running backs from that same backfield with relatively high end picks despite a split backfield. That tells you that Situationally, it's it's probably a good place to be. And that's exactly what we had with the Bengals and with Chase Brown. After two weeks, it was pretty evident that he was the better running back versus Zach Moss. Every rushing metric, and I mentioned this when talking about Brown as a hold, but every rushing metric painted a favorable picture for Brown over Moss. The Bengals just hadn't gotten to that point yet, probably due to pass protection. Now, I finished off the blurb by stating the following about Chase Brown.

00:14:30
Speaker 2: I said quote.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: At the very least Brown serves as a handcuff stash on your bench. There's still time for him to create a larger role for himself, though Moss has not run away with a job yet, even if his peripherals are far far better. So we led with the talent. We led with Chase Brown being good, and as the weeks went on, even before the Zach Moss injury, Brown did get more and more work because of that talent, And then the upside really hit when Zach Moss was hurt. Now I can sit here and say that the injury piece was lucky, and it was to some degree. Anytime an injury occurs, there's some randomness to it. But some players benefit from injury more than others, like players and ambiguous backfields. So no, I wasn't totally right with Chase Brown all year long, but I'm really pleased with how I adapted to new information and how I leaned in on the talent when things weren't going well to start the year. That patience really really paid off. Now, another player who was in an ambiguous backfield this past year was Najie Harris, and for a chunk of the season. He was actually looking decent for Drafters. The season kind of started rough with Justin Fields under center, but when Russell Wilson became starter, things changed. Harris was averaging fifteen point six PPURO points per game during a seven game stretch from Week six to Week thirteen.

00:15:57
Speaker 2: He seemed to.

00:15:57
Speaker 1: Score every week. But during that stretch, I had multiple transactions of Naji Harris being a cell. In the short term, those looked pretty bad because one of them happened after Week six, right before this big stretch. Another after Week ten, which was only a few weeks before his biggest outing of the season, where he scored almost twenty five PPR points. Part of the reason I had Harris as a cell was because of Jalen Warren. Not only did Warren pass the eye test more, but he was starting to carve out a bigger role in that offense. But another key reason was the schedule component. Pittsburgh had a brutal playoff schedule for running backs. Even if Harris helped you get there, you weren't gonna be able to rely on him during that timeframe. And honestly, you could say the same thing about Joe Mixon and me talking about Mixon as a cell. Now, I definitely screwed up that transaction because when I made it, I was actually higher than the market on Mixon with my rest of season rankings. But I warned about his playoff schedule too. Harris, though, was facing the Eagles, Ravens, and Chief in the Fantasy playoffs. It was a brutal stretch. He ended up scoring three, four, and ten PPR points in those three games. Now, I wanted to call this one out today because a good example of why those playoff matchups can matter. We won't always get them right, but it's typically a little bit easier to get it right at running back, and it's easier to get it right when it's such an extreme. With Harris, it was at a massive extreme given those really tough matchups. And look, we don't want playoff matchups to dictate everything. Remember always lead with the player first, with his talent. But it's a lot easier to let those playoff matchups influence how you feel about a player's value when that player is not a special talent, and also when they've gotten by just by touchdowns. It just wasn't sustainable for Harris to do that against teams like Baltimore and Kansas City. I did an entire episode last summer on the pocket passer trap, and the quintessential trap in twenty twenty four was CJ.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: Stroud.

00:18:01
Speaker 1: Now I don't need to spend a lot of time on this because everything was said on episode eight hundred and eighty seven.

00:18:06
Speaker 2: But the TLDR is that.

00:18:08
Speaker 1: We've seen really poor hit rates from earlier round quarterbacks who don't bring any rushing juice to the table. And that's because passing numbers, specifically passing touchdowns are touchdown rate. Passing numbers are more volatile than rushing ones are, pocket passers are generally more replaceable. It's not to say that a pocket passer can't have a great season. In fact, I even said that CJ. Stroud still had really good odds of being on the higher side and touchdown passes this year. But that's one part where this process was good. But the result was even worse than I anticipated. Right, I saw CJ. Stroud as a fade, but I didn't think he was going to be this bad. After Stroud's rookie season, I wasn't prepared for him to throw just twenty touchdowns and have a touchdown rate of three point eight percent, not with the weapons that he had. But I do think the market made a lot of assumptions about CJ. Stroud and his inevitable progression from year one to year two, and obviously there were assumptions made about the wide receiver room when that wide receiver room couldn't stay healthy.

00:19:10
Speaker 2: The thing is, though, this is less about c. J.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: Stroud and his evaluation and more about how the game of fantasy football is played. Take a look at the top quarterbacks in fantasy football from twenty twenty four. Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Joe Burrow, Baker Mayfield, Jalen Hurts, Jaden Daniels. Those were the guys who were giving you an actual edge for the most part week to week. Jackson, Allen, Hearns, and Daniels all got there because of their mobility. You can even argue that Baker Mayfield did to a degree as well, but Mayfield was a late round pick if he was drafted at all. The only guy who sort of bucked the pocket passer trend was Joe Burrow, but he needed six hundred and fifty two pass attempts to get there, and one of the worst defenses that our eyes have ever seen. He needed those ultra favorable game scrip And of course Joe Burrow is a boss. He's very, very good at quarterback, but situationally, things really lined up for him, and that's really hard to predict. Now. I thought about calling out Jayden Daniels here as a win, and he was because he was a go to target for me. But I think it's more insightful to talk about the pocket passer trap because we saw in action once again this year. If you're gonna get a pocket passer, wait until the double digit rounds is select that pocket passer. At least don't get him in the top six when the opportunity cost includes some legitimate mobile quarterbacks, because the upside is rarely there. I talked about Jalen Waddle last week as one of my biggest misses of the season, but I didn't get everything wrong in Miami because Devon A. Chan and John new Smith they were both on my target list in twenty twenty four. This is a classic case, though, where the results were good but the process was not perfect. My stance on drafting Achan was that we he figured he'd be efficient even though his numbers were bound to regress, but even with regress numbers, there was so much potential for him to see more work in general, both through the air and on the ground. And that was correct the last part definitely there. But Chan went from being the most efficient running back in the history of the league to dropping his yards per attempt rate to just above average. Chan took massive hits across the board. His rate of gaining ten or more yards were from over twenty one percent in twenty twenty three to ten percent this past year. His twenty plus yard run rate dropped by more than half. He was gaining positive yards at a lower rate any way you look at it. He regressed as a runner. But this is a really good example of why we need to look at volume over efficiency and fantasy football. Even when we're talking about one of the most efficient seasons that we've ever seen in the history of the league. A Chance saw his running back rush are per game rise by thirteen percentage points year over year. Most important, his target share per game went from ten point four percent to fifteen point three percent. He cut seventy eight passes this past year. That really was the key difference for him year over year. HM was able to mitigate all regression by simply seeing more volume across the board, and there was a lot of regression on the efficiency front.

00:22:22
Speaker 2: That's what we were hoping to have happen.

00:22:24
Speaker 1: That's why he was the RB six and PPR points per game, and he was even better when Tua was healthy. Now with John hus Smith, I mean, I look back at my blurb about him, and I was right to point out that Miami didn't have a player like John hus Smith playing tight end for them under Mike McDaniel. But never in a million years did I expect him to basically outpaced Tyreek Hill during the second portion of the season. I do think I did right by leading with talent, as I've been talking about all podcasts long. But anyone trying to say that they knew that John hus Smith would do this, they're lying to you. The lesson here, though, is that talent can indeed create opportunity. I think we saw that to a degree with both Devon Chan and John news Smith. Now, there were two items that I was thinking about talking about on today's show, but realize it's probably a little bit too much. One was sticking with Jalen McMillan despite the poor performances when Chris Godwin went down, and the other one was with Malik Neighbors and being higher on him than the market entering the year. But both kind of fall into that rookie wide receiver bucket that I talked about earlier. Whether it's drafting an elite player like Neighbors because the talents there are being patient as a less elite player learns the NFL game a little bit better, the second half of the year is great for those guys. Instead, I want to finish today's show with one of my favorite calls of the season. Now, I don't know if it was the most impactful. The Chase brown will is probably the most impactful, but it's just one of my favorites. There was a mailbag question that I received earlier in the season asking for a running back who could just naturally take over his back without an injury and without any real workload from this player up until that point. The guy that I pointed to was Tyrone Tracy. I'm just really happy about my process with Tyrone Tracy and the Giants backfield this past year. Now, this one really wasn't ambiguous. Everyone assumed that Devin Singletary would be the lead guy, and that's how the season started. But by leaning towards Tyrone Tracy.

00:24:24
Speaker 2: Was due to a few things.

00:24:26
Speaker 1: First, Singletary clearly wasn't a can't miss player. I know he had a history with Brian Dable, but it wasn't like Singletary was Christian McCaffrey.

00:24:34
Speaker 2: AKA.

00:24:35
Speaker 1: It was a climbable depth chart. Second, when you looked at that depth chart, you had Singletary and Eric Gray, two players who didn't have the best size speed profiles. They weren't super dynamic running backs. Tyrone Tracy was at least that's how he was in college and that's how he tested athletically. Now, the third thing is that Tyrone Tracy had a really intriguing receiving profile, given he was a converted wide receip in college. That's something that wasn't obviously there for the other Giants running backs. So this was strictly a talent evaluation thing, and it was a talent evaluation thing layered on top of situation.

00:25:13
Speaker 2: Now, I'm always going.

00:25:14
Speaker 1: To gravitate towards backs who bring a different dynamic to an offense when the existing running backs are pretty ordinary in general, that's all this was. Tracy had to hit as a player, but there were marks showing that he would, and with some of the tweaks that I made with the prospect model over the last few weeks, it just so happened that Tyrone Tracy looks even better now as a prospect. But Tracy was a big w for me, and it was probably my favorite process win of the entire season, and really it was all driven by talent evaluation and knowing what the running back brought to the table versus the other guys in his backfield. Now, like I said, there were other things that I could have gotten to today, but I wanted to focus on a range of things for us to all think about as we get into the twenty twenty five season. Hopefully the ones that I chose were helpful. 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 by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't for it to follow me on Blue Sky and on Twitter at Late Round QB. Remember to pre order that Prospect Guide right noowover on lateround dot com. Otherwise, I'll talk to you guys on Friday with a brand new Mailbag episode