829: Mailbag 11/3/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Label podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas j Jae zacher reson What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight and twenty nine of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, I want to send you another reminder about the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. With the Patreon, you get live stream Q and as, rest of season rankings and tiers, weekly rankings and tears, a great discord community, and more. You can learn more about it over on lateround dot com. The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at Fantasy f Bell. It says it feels like tight end is deeper than ever this year with Hockinson, Laporta, et cetera. Does the data support this? So there are a lot of ways to answer a question like this, because the definition of deep is subjective. But I'll look at a couple of angles. I'll start by just comparing the tight end eighteen or a mid range tight end two, the tight end twelve, and the tight end six to how those players performed historically. Right now, the tight end eighteen in points per game is Hunter Henry, who's at seven point four. Last season, among tight ends with eight or more games played, the tight end eighteen was at eight point four PPR points per game, But during the four years prior to that, the tight end eighteen averages six point three points per game. So we're looking better this year than the previous five year average, except in twenty twenty two when the number was actually higher. That's for tight end eighteen. For a mid range tight end two, let's look at the tight end twelve this year. The tight end twelve is David Njoku. He's averaging eight point eight PPR points per game. Last year, the tight end twelve was at nine point two, and the five year average prior to this season has been nine point eight. So this season has been worse in the tight end twelve spot. A low end tight end one, the tight end six this season is Evan Ingram at eleven point six PPR points per game. Last year, that tight end six was at twelve point nine points per game, the five year average twelve point four, So from that perspective, the tight end position has actually been a little bit worse this year than previous years, especially the top twelve, but that definitely doesn't tell us the whole story. On top of this, there's some vorp analysis that needs to be done. Like Mark Andrews right now is the tight end two. He's averaging fifteen point four PPR points per game. Well, the tight end two over the last five years has scored almost seventeen points per game. The tight end three this season is basically at the five year average. What that means is that the whole position is essentially scoring fewer points. If the high end players were scoring fewer points and the low end players were scoring more points, then we could probably say that tight end is deeper. And maybe it is to some degree given how the tight end eighteen was performing, but I don't think the data is screaming that to us now. At that being said, you could also look at this from the perspective of hit rate or tight ends performing well after being drafted late in your fantasy drafts. For example, if the tight end one this season was drafted as the tight end fourteen and the tight end two was the tight end eighteen during the fantasy drafts, you might be thinking that the position is then deep because you got these huge difference makers late in your draft now when you look at the early round tight ends, the tight end one in ADP that's Travis Kelcey, he's currently the tight end one. The tight end two that was Mark Andrews. He's currently the tight end two. TJ Hockinson. He was the tight end three during fantasy drafts, and he's the tight end three right now. So none of that information would be good for the tight end as deep argument. But Sam Laporta has been a massive value and what you might be feeling is a Laporta effect where he was drafted late and he's giving you week in and week out production. We didn't really see that last season. When I look at my ADP database and look at expected points per game via ADP versus actual points per game, and what I mean by that is every player has some sort of points per game expectation at a particular average draft position. I then look to see which players outperform that expectation or who failed to live up to that expectation. Last season, we only had one tight end outperformed that expectation by more than three PPR points per game. That was Evan Ingram. This season, it's looking like Sam Laporta is going to be that player who really exceeds his ADP expectation, but also maybe Cole Comet, maybe Logan Thomas, Jake Ferguson, Dalton Kincaid, maybe Trey McBride. There's a chance that that happens, and I stress the word chance. Things still have to go their way, those tight ends way, but we at least have one in Sam Laporta. More than likely the depth that you're feeling right now at tight end, it might have something new with like a Dallas Goddard underperforming and Kyle Pitts underperforming, even Darren Waller. All the while, some legit dart throw tight ends are doing pretty well, so those players, those middle round tight ends, they became more replaceable, and in turn the position feels deep. So my answer is that it might be slightly deeper than what we've seen based on VORP and based on how well average draft position predicted success of the position. I don't think we're looking at some massive outlier though, unless some of these tight ends just really step it up during the second half of the season. This next question is from Abdul on Patreon, who posted that he has Kenneth Walker, David Montgomery Jordan Adison and Puka Akua on his fantasy team, and then he asked how worried he should be about those players, and my answer is I wouldn't panic, but I think there's some reason to be concerned with each of these guys. With Kenneth Walker, we saw Zach Sharbone get a nice spike and snapshare this past week. That's something I talked about earlier in the week. Now, Walker was banged up at one point, we didn't even know if he was going to play last week. Maybe that played a role, but Pete Carroll after the fact, after that game, he said that they also just wanted to get Sharboney involvedmore. Now, I still don't think it's time to totally panic about Walker, especially because others saw what happened last week. But I do think there's a possibility that Sharbonay sees this kind of work moving forward. He's a great compliment to Kenneth Walker, and as good as Kenneth Walker's been, Zach Sharbonay also looks good now with David Montgomery, I'm actually optimistic about both Detroit Backs. Jamior Gibbs looked awesome on Monday Night. It's gonna be really hard for Detroit to just go back to how they were divvying up that backfield. When Montgomery's been healthy, gives his average like a twenty five percent running back rush are per game. My guess is with a healthy Montgomery that number shoots back up to like thirty five percent and maybe even forty percent. The target share pieces where things get interesting. Gibbs, his target share projection with David Montgomery is honestly like close to that twenty percent range, like it's elite. When Montgomery returns, I'd expect that to drop down to maybe thirteen to fifteen percent. Montgomery has not seen a lot of looks through the air when Jamiir Gibbs has been healthy. Now the reason I still like both of them moving forward, though, there's three reasons. One, there's contingent upside. We've already seen that contingent upside when one of the other running backs is hurt. The running back who's healthy is a legit RB one in fantasy. Number two, even when both guys are healthy, they can still be usable in this backfield. They can still have decent backfield shares, And that leads to number three. The Lions actually have the third best running back schedule by Justin Fantasy points allowed from here on out. So honestly, if someone's low on Montgomery because of how Jamir Gibbs is performed, I think that Montgomery might be a by candidate in that case if you can get them for a lower cost, because I think that both of these guys can be relevant in fantasy. And with Pook and Akua, everything's really tied to Matthew Stafford's health, and his health at the time of this recording is still up in the air, so that's more of a monitor situation. If Stafford's good, I'm fine with pookin Akula, and then there's Jordan Andison, and yeah, without Kirk Cousins, Jordan Andison takes a hit. I would imagine the Vikings are not going to be as pass heavy. That's the first problem. So far this season, the Vikings are first in total dropbacks and second in pass rate. Kirk Cousins was also having a very good year. He was top five and completion percentage over expected, and right now he ranks fifth in PFF passing grade. Quarterbacks are going to naturally impact their pass catchers, and then with Addison you have Justin Jefferson returning eventually. Now, Look, I love Jordan Andison. He was one of my highest drafted players this year. I thought that he was a really solid prospect, but environment matters him. Without Kirk Cousins, that's a downgrade. He went from a potential wide receiver too, even when Justin Jefferson returns to probably more of a low end wide receiver three into that wide receiver four range. This last question from Patreon is from Ballgame four. It says, what's your take on the Donovan Peoples Jones acquisition for the Lions. I see many reacting as a bad reflection on Jamison Williams and saying Williams is droppable? Are you buying the dip? No. I don't think it was necessarily a move because of Jamison Williams, But I'm definitely not buying the dip. I said it during the offseason, and I think it's just continued. Thus far. The vibes around Jamison Williams have not been good. Not only is it rough when players miss their rookie season the way that he did, we don't see bounce backs happen very often when that's the case. Regardless of circumstance, but when he's played, he hasn't been very good. Williams currently has a one point one yards per route run rate that's worse than Jamiir Gibbs. It's not good when a wide receiver has a worse yards per route run rate than a running back. Williams is the worst yards per route run among active Lions wide receivers, and people are saying that DPJ is a replacement for Williams. I mean, in order to be a replacement, the guy you're replacing needs to be seeing the field. Williams played less than forty percent of Detroit snaps last week. His route participation isn't steadily increasing like we typically see from a good first round wide receiver. It actually peaked during his first game back, when he ran a route on half the team's dropbacks. Now, I'm not gonna say that he's a must drop or anything, because league size matters. Here, your particular league matters, and there's obviously still potential with a profile like Jamison Williams profile, But at this point I don't see why it's drastically different between Jamison Williams and like a Quinton Johnston. They're sort of in the same bucket. But to me, this Donovan Peoples Jones move, it was more about the Lions wide receiver depth and needing a little bit more on the perimeter, and yes, so potentially stretch the field a little bit, which people want Jamison Williams to do. This is a good playoff team that we're talking about. They couldn't get it with Marvin Jones he ended up retiring, and Josh Reynolds he's just fine. He's not a super super reliable wide receiver. So it has a chance to impact not just Jamison Williams, but any secondary wide receiver on that roster. Not to be fair, DPJ has not been very good this year, but he's flashed in the past. I think that he's an interesting flyer in deeper formats. But to me, this is not just a reflection on Jamison Williams, He's just part of it. This is a reflection on the entire group. This nest questions from twitters from at justin White VA. It says, how has this strong rookie class made you feel better or worse about your tight end model? It obviously nailed Sam Laporta, Thanks for that. Yeah, So I wrote a lot about my tight End Model this offseason because it's brand new and I like sharing things. I feel like that we can all learn a lot when I'm just discussing my process as opposed to just waiting and you guys seeing the results of that model. The thing with using any sort of model, though, is that you shouldn't let one season overshadow things. I can at least say that the results this year they've been great that Prospect model. That tight End model loves Sam Laporta, it loved Dalton Kincaid, and then it had Luke Musgrave ranked ahead of Michael Mayer. But yeah, this was a good rookie class, and the model recognized that. That's all that I can ask for. But just so everyone knows, I have plans for my Prospect models this offseason. I've got some ideas to revamp them and make them better and more consumable for everyone, So stay tuned. The last question this week is from at Jacob Deal Underscore film. It says, how often do we see guys like Chris Olave regress in their second season but still go on to break out even further in subsequent seasons. I want to start by saying this I think we need to be a little bit careful with how we talk about Chris A Lave. He has a one point seventy four yards per route run rate this year, He's seen a twenty six and a half percent target share per game rate. His PPR points per game is just twelve point seven. Yes, but he's also only scored one touchdown and we're only halfway through the season. Those numbers are not bad. I know that they're not amazing, and we had high hopes for Chris a Lave after his rookie season. But these numbers and these peripherals are not bad at all. I would anticipate, just based on his usage, for that average points per game to get better. That's the reason that he was a bye on the fifteen Transactions episode. Now, as I just alluded to, I have this wide receiver prospect model, I also have what I call a year two model, which looks at how well a player did during his rookie season in the NFL. It combines some of those rookie season numbers with how they looked as prospects, and it spits out a year two score, and that ye or two score tells us how well that player is going to perform in year two and year three. Chris Alave, Garrett Wilson, and Drake London each had a year two percentile score above the ninety fifth percentile. Historically, players in that group give us a higher end wide receiver one season, either year two or year three at about a fifty percent clip, which is pretty crazy but also probably a little bit unsustainable. But regardless, a ninety fifth percentile score better has captured a lot of the high end wide receivers in fantasy football. This is since twenty eleven. Now I decided to look at all the wide outs since twenty eleven who hit that ninety fifth percentile mark, and these are wide receivers who were either drafted or who went to the NFL Combine. And for the record, like I just said, some of this is going to change this offseason, not a ton. I just want to make things better. But it's not like this is irrelevant information. But I looked back at all of the wide outs since twenty eleven who had a Year two scorer, and the ninety fifth percentile are better. And I took out players who were drafted after twenty twenty because they haven't played three full NFL seasons. Yet that left me with twenty three wide receivers. Of those twenty three, twenty one ended up playing seven or more games in year two during their second season in the NFL. I'm using seven games as a cutoff just to give us a big enough sample. We don't want to look at points per game numbers when a player played four games. Now, of those twenty one wide receivers, only four of them scored fewer than fourteen point four PPR points per game during that second season. So basically the Krisi Lave bucket right now. Remember the season is not over for a Lave, but right now he is under that fourteen PPR point mark. Those four players who are in the Krisi Lave bucket if he were to sustain what he's doing right now were Keenan Allen, Deebo, Samuel, Jerry Judy, and Brandon Ayuk. We know that Keenan Allen has had an amazingly productive career. We saw the big breakout from Deebo in year three and Dayuk. Even though it's come a little bit, he's starting to break out. He's a very very good player of that group. Jerry Judy looks like the worst case scenario, but I would argue that Chris Alave during his rookie season and so far this year, already better than Jerry Judy. To answer your question or talking this caliber player, A player as good as Chris A Lave his year two performance and it being where it's at right now does not mean that he's dust. It's not a huge sample, but there's not a huge sample of players who are as good as Chris A Lave. I think there's some reason to be concerned about the lack of connection with Derek Carr this year, but I'm still not overly concerned long term. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and remember to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. I'll have a Late Round Perspectives episode dropping later today. Hope you guys enjoy that. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you next week.