785: Mailbag 8/4/23

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ zachersa j J Zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in. This is episode seven hundred and eighty five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. The way I figure out who I like and don't like in fantasy football is by quickly comparing my rankings and tiers to what the market's doing. In the draft guide, I used Fantasy Pro's expert consensus rankings as the market, since a lot of your league mates might draft off of a list like that. Now, obviously I'm doing drafts as well. I generally know which players I like and don't like, but for content creation purposes, that's the route that I go now. A couple of weeks ago I talked about James Cook on this show and how I was at market with him, but that's now changed. He moved up a couple of spots in my rankings with a Nihim Heinz injury. Not that that was significant, but it was at least something. That's not really why I wanted to bring him up today, though other players in that range have also fallen. Isaiah Pacheco is someone who's been banged up, and he might have more competition than people realize. This year, Javonte Williams is looking healthier, which is sort of making the Williams p Rind split harder to navigate. Sometimes your opinion on a player can change based on those dynamics. But also, and I talked about this on the show a couple of weeks ago, Cook does fit a lot of the criteria that I look for in a breakout running back. The pass catching is particularly interesting, even if he didn't show it off in year one. I guess what I'm saying here is I wasn't thinking of the upside case enough when I talked about James Cook. Yes, he'll likely not see a ton of goal line action, and yes the pass catching stuff could go south. It's not like he had this massive target share last season. But if I'm sticking with my process, which I obviously try to do, then it's clear to see that upside case that he he does see that twelve percent thirteen percent target share this season in a high powered offense, that he's still able to score touchdowns even if he's not the goal line guy. Now, I think there are concerns, but many of those concerns are baked into his ADP. That's the entire point I look for upside. I'm looking for breakouts. So I don't think my analysis a couple of weeks ago was totally fair. I'm no longer at market value with Cook. I'm above and I felt the need to bring that up today because not everyone is consuming everything that I do. Not everyone has the Draft Guide to know that I'm looking at certain situations differently. Before I said that you can draft James Cook now, I think you probably should draft him now. Before get into this week's Mailbag episode, I want to send a reminder to go to lateround dot com and check out the Late Round Draft Guide. It's pack full of strategy related information to help you crush your drafts this year. There are updates that you get to your email inbox each week. I've been giving people up to date to target and avoid, and my rankings and tears get updated each week as well. You can read more about it and check it out on lateround dot com. Also, one more thing, I wanted to give a shout out to my friends that establish the run on the Late Round podcast, you get bite sized analytical episodes that can help you with your season long leagues. My friends at ETR have the Established the Run podcast where they cover some of the things that I might not get to on this show, whether that's related to best Ball or sports betting, so check them out too. If you're looking for another podcast to throw into your rotation as we approach the football season, just search for Established the Run anywhere you get your podcasts. Now, let's get to these questions. The first question this week is an email says JJ love the pod. Thanks, I've been listening for years. Keep up the great work. At this point of the year, what is your process to filter out some of the training camp reports. I feel like it can be somewhat helpful, but eventually clips and buzz on players can inflate draft stock and next thing we know, b Jon Robinson is the one to OH one because he can beat a linebacker in one on one drills. Thanks Mike. Yeah, this is one of the most common questions that I get this time of year. I don't think training camp buzz is just totally irrelevant, but you have to know what to look for. One of those things is just role based. Forget about how a beat reporter feels about a player. We often have tons of data on that kind of thing, real game data, not practice data. I don't need to know that player X is really running fast in practice, or that he looks like he's taken some step physically like. It can't hurt to know. Just try your best to not let it overcome your evaluation. What does matter is if a player is running a lot from the slot when he's traditionally been a perimeter receiver, or more importantly, when a player is consistently running with the first team when we thought that he might be a backup. Those are the things to pay attention to. I don't care if someone's in the best shape of their life. I care if that player is playing a role that we weren't projecting him to play. This as question is from Twitter or from X It's from at Lucky Dice. It says multiple reports on Eagles running backs running routes, getting out in space. Sirianni also stating that the player's skills dictate the offense. I think the running back passing involvement will be significant this year. Are we looking at another evolution in Philadelphia? So I talked about the Eagles backfield on last week's Mailbag episode, but I didn't get this specific I didn't talk about this specific question and this specific thing. The Eagles have a new running back group, and I think it's only natural to believe they're gonna use their running backs more in the passing game. They got DeAndre Swift, and they were dead last and running back target share last season as a team. My thing is regarding this question, how are you defining significant? Do you think significant is like a top ten target share at the position, because I don't see that happening without an injury to one of their wide receivers. The fact is, when you have two and three in the Eagles case, because Dallas Goddard's very good two, but when you have three very good players at pass catcher, it hurts the other players target shairs on that team. Every team has a one hundred percent target share. You can't go any higher than that. So when you have top players who will command high target shairs like we have with aj Brown, Deavonte Smith, and Dallas Goddard, that leaves lower target share numbers for other players. Now keep in mind, I'm not using targets here, vacated targets the raw number, that's not really a thing because good players are earning those targets and teams have totally different philosophies and raw totals from one year to the next. But target share remains the same. It's always one hundred percent, and we have evidence of AJ Brown, DeVante Smith, and Dallas Goddard commanding a relatively high share. Now, this doesn't mean that DeAndre Swift can't have a high target share. It just means that we're not looking at an offense that's likely going to rank, let's say, in the top five and running back target share this year. Just based on competition alone, a target to DeAndre Swift will not be more valuable than a target to AJ Brown or Devonte Smith. And the Eagles know this. Why do you think they built their team the way they built their team? Just look at what happened from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty one, Philadelphia ranked eighth in the NFL and running back target share. What was the big thing that happened to that offense from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two. They added one of the best wide receivers in the game, and their running back target share dropped to dead last in the league. Now, personnel absolutely dictates some of this, as does something like game script to some degree. This is just a very high level look at how target share shifts and moves when good players are added, it changes the equation. Mobile quarterbacks are also usually not targeting running backs at a super high rate, and same with RPO heavy offenses. That's another reason that I don't see this team being this extremely high running back target share team. But with that being said, this all comes down to your expectation. Can they be an average team in running back target share? Sure, I just don't read that as significant. There's no doubt they'll target their running backs more than last year, But I almost feel like some people are ignoring the Eagles pass catchers and the rest of this team when projecting the target shairs for their backs. This year, Swift can get to a ten eleven percent target share, that wouldn't be weird at all, But I highly doubt that we're going to see him at that fifteen percent target share per game mark that he was at last year at Detroit, not without some injuries. Now, this doesn't mean that Swift is a fade. I've mostly got him ranked where he gets drafted right now. He's just not something that I'm aggressively targeting. And as I said last week, I'd rather have her Shodpenny at his ADP than DeAndre Swift at his. This asked questions from David on Patreon. It says, Hey, JJ, I'm curious why you think the market is so much higher on Tony Pollard than Alexander Madison. To be more specific, I'm mostly focused on why Alexander Madison is viewed so much lower. They both had similar draft capital weight and speed metrics coming into the NFL, They've had similar roles for their respective teams until this point. Both also had similar production when their starters Zeke or Dalvin Cook were injured, and I think both have similarly good offensive ecosystems and both their pass catchers. What am I missing as to why the market is so much lower on Alexander Madison. I know your ADP analysis views Madison as a bad bet to take because he's a dead zone running back, but what other efficiency and usage metrics support this? Help me see what everyone else seems to think they see, or maybe uncover why Madison may be undervalued per the market. Yeah. So I talked about Madison on the show last month and why I think he's sort of a traditional dead zone back. But I want to focus on the Pollard versus Madison thing here really quick, because I think it can help you sort through some of this. I found that people who play fantasy listeners patrons, the people I interact with on a daily basis, I found that they tend to generalize things, and this example of Pollard versus Madison is a really good example of generalizing. You say in this question that they've had similar roles for their respective teams up until this point. That's the type of generalization that I'm talking about that can really get you into trouble. Through four years in the NFL, Tony Pollard as five hundred and ten rush attempts and one hundred and twenty one receptions. Even with Ezekiel Elliott in that backfield with him, he was always seeing work in his offense. He's averaged a thirty three percent running back rush share per game rate across his first four seasons in the league. His target share per game average each season has been almost seven and a half percent. Alexander Madison has seen over one hundred fewer rush attempts than Pollard, and he's caught fifty one fewer balls. His target share is about three and a half percentage points lower, his running back rush share about six percentage points lower. And this is all happening while his RB one Dalvin Cook, over the last four years, has played five fewer games than Tony Pollard's RB one, meaning Madison had more opportunity to be a workhorse and see more volume than Tony Pollard has. But even still, Pollard has seen more work than Madison because he's better. He's a better player. Even when his starter's active, He's got a bigger role than Madison ever had. But then on top of that, Pollard has been superior and basically any metric, I mean, you could look literally anywhere and you can see that Pollard's been better per touch, per target, per route run than Alexander Madison. We shouldn't generalize situations like that. Tony Pollard has been more of a one B in his offense throughout his career. Ezekiel Elliott has been the one A. Maybe aside from last year, Alexander Madison has essentially been a backup Madison when called upon. Has done well in fantasy, yes, but he's also beat up on some pretty bad teams during those splits. And his per rush numbers, his per target numbers, they've never been impressive. Just as an example for you, across his four years in the NFL, Madison hasn't had a yards per route run rate above one point three. He's been okay in that department, but okay is just average. Tony Pollard has multiple seasons above one point five. And we also have evidence of Pollard being a good fantasy asset. He was a top ten running back last year in points per game across the entirety of the season. We don't have that evidence for a player like Madison. The truth is, and I sent a newsletter blast about this about a week and a half ago, but Alexander Madison has really if he comps. I looked at running back since twenty eleven who were past their third year in the NFL, who were being drafted between picks forty and seventy, and who never had two more rush attempts in the season. That list what was spit back out at me, which is what Alexander Madison is part of, basically didn't have any good players on it. It was the Toby Gerharts, the Rashad Jennings, the Mike Davises of the world, the very standard running back dead zone backs. The reason people weren't pushing Madison higher up draft boards is because there are usually reasons as to why players don't see a ton of work in their offenses, even when there are alternatives who are really good. Yes, Madison has dealt with Dalvin Cook, but if a player is good enough, he can see a decent amount of work himself, as we've seen with Tony Pollard. Pollard has seen much better workloads than Alexander Madison thus far. And not only that, they can still show off on a per target or per route run basis or a per rush basis, and Madison hasn't really done that. I actually do think there are worse picks to make this year. A running back. Madison's not the typical guy that I go after, but I do understand it to some degree. He's not someone I'm just aggressively targeting, though. He just has the type of player profile that we should always be cautious with. The SST question says, hey, JJ, thanks so much for all the great analysis. Since I started listening to your content, I've gotten so much better at understanding macro factors in fantasy. Thanks question for the mailbag. What are your thoughts on AJ Dillon as a possible mid round breakout? He seems to fit two of three criteria we look for. He's a year four player, and he has a teammate being drafted in the dead zone. He also had an eight percent target share last year, so he's not too far off that ten percent mark. Is it purely for target share reasons we should be viewing him more as having a moderate breakout potential rather than true breakout potential. Thanks for tuning into my question, Mitch, So, I actually got emails about AJ Dillon within an hour of one another. It was really, really weird, and I've had people hit me up over the last month or so saying, JJ, why isn't he an obvious target if he has a dead zone running back teammate, don't those guys hit at a high rate? So let me just talk about this, the whole middle round running back with a dead zone teammate thing. Historical trends do tell us that those players do better than other middle roundbacks. Just to reiterate some of the stuff that I've said on the show. It's likely because if there's a running back getting drafted in the dead zone and that running back still has a teammate going in the middle rounds, it's probably because that teammate has something to offer, and since that RB two teammate isn't playing alongside a stud, because if the RB one was a stud, he'd be an early round back, not a dead zone back. But since the RB one isn't a stud, the RB two can overtake that backfield and exceed expectation of all the middle round groupings that grouping does best in terms of breaking out. Not to be clear, not all players like this end up breaking out. There have been bus Trey Sermon in twenty twenty one, CJ. Spiller in twenty fifteen, Rex Burkhead in twenty eighteen. It's just that this group produces huge, huge wins Tony Pollard last year, James Conner a couple of years before that when he was sharing that back to what Chase Edmonds Austin Eckler during his breakout season. But naturally a lot of this still correlates to target share. Most of these breakouts also had good target share numbers. Pass catching is just so important. Target share is definitely more important than those market related trends. Now, I think AJ Dillon's a totally reasonable draft pick, but do we really see the target chare ceiling? Is it there? Without an Aaron Jones injury? He's never been above an eight percent target chair per game bright in his three NFL seasons. It's just hard to bet on that compared to a profile like Tony Pollard's last season when that target chare ceiling was evident. So I'm directly in line with the market when it comes to AJ Dillon. He's fine and there is contingent upside with an injury to Aaron Jones, But I'm not convinced the target chair ceiling is there, and that's a problem in fantasy. The last question this week is from Threads. It says is an elite tight end more valuable in a ten or twelve team format? So I get asked this type of question. I'm not even joking literally every single week, and I usually link people to episode four hundred and two where I answered this question. I answered the question on how strategy changes with different league sizes, and I talk about this in my draft guide too, But in my opinion, people get this wrong all the time, So I'm bringing it up right now so I can link to this episode when people inevitably bring it up in the future. Supply and demand is huge in fantasy football. When the demand for a position increases, the price for that position also increases. It's why in super flex leagues quarterbacks become more expensive because there's higher demand for them, you need more of them. When this question was asked on Threads, someone actually responded saying that it's more valuable in a twelve team five format to get an elite tight end, and people say this all the time. That response was not unique because think about it. Logically, you go from ten to twelve teams, more teams are now involved, so they're starting more tight ends. Therefore, the advantage that you'd have by selecting an elite tight end, by having that elite tight end, it's greater, right because two additional tight ends are being started across your league. If there were six teams in your league, the tight end advantage wouldn't be as big because that six team would be starting someone like George Kittle. But the problem with that thinking is that you're completely ignoring what happens to every other position when you add and subtract teams. When you add teams to a league, your league isn't just seeing more tight ends being started. They're seeing more running backs and wide receivers too, at a much higher rate, because each of those teams is starting more running backs and wide receivers than tight ends. When you're in a shallow league, a small league, every team is good. You need your team to have every advantage you can get. Eight team leagues have loaded rosters. Every roster in an eight team league, a normal eight team league is good. That's not the case when you double that number into a sixteen team league. In a smaller league, getting an elite quarterback or an elite tight end is a lot easier to do because the opportunity cost in doing so isn't that great. You're gonna pick again sooner. You aren't losing out as heavily at running back and wide receiver. But in a sixteen team league, if you take Travis Kelcey fourth overall, you're gonna lag behind at the positions that are higher in demand way more than you would in a twelve team league or a ten team league. The smaller the league, the more likely outdraft an elite player at quarterback or tight end. You may think the opposite makes more sense, but when leagues get really big, your opportunity cost becomes bigger too. It becomes more costly to pass on those higher end demand positions. 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 searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter on x at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening. Everyone greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend. I'll talk to you next week.