613: Mailbag 2/11/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachersa JJ Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zach Reeson and this is episode six hundred and thirteen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: As I've been mentioning where I get mailbag questions, it's a little bit different now.

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Speaker 2: I've got a Late Round.

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Speaker 1: Fantasy Football Patreon page where each week I ask patrons for questions and those questions get first priority, and judging by this week's show, my guess is that the majority of mailbag episodes are going to be filled with those questions each week, the questions from Patreon. You can still email me questions at podcast at lateround dot com, but if you're trying to get a mailbag question on here, your best bet is Patreon. And every now and again I may go to Twitter and ask for questions there, but today it's actually all patrion on. Now, before get into those questions, I wanted to let you know that Fandal is bringing Super Bowl bingo to your Super Bowl party, and it doesn't matter if you're watching the game with hardcore fans or someone who's just there to watch the commercials. Super Bowl Bingo is perfect for everyone, and it's absolutely free to play. Here's how it works. You can get your free card now at fandle dot com or on the fandele app. Then, on game day, as Super Bowl and pop culture moments on your card happen, your squares fill up automatically, and if you get five squares in a row, all you have to do is press bingo to win a share of one hundred thousand dollars in prizes. Fandel is the exclusive home for Super Bowl Bingo. Grab your free card now so you're all set for game day. Opt into fandl's Super Bowl Bingo contest today. FANDL an official partner of the NFL and Super Bowl. Fifty six. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandol dot com or download the fandle app for more details. The first question this week again and it's from Patreon. It's from Pressure Andrew Luck. Howdy JJ. Are you hesitant to make big trades in Dynasty before the NFL Draft or free agency because of possible sharp value changes. I'm not because it works both ways. I think a lot of people think with this mentality that they're hesitant to really do anything until they have more information. They're afraid that they'll make a deal, and the players that they receive all of a sudden are in worse situations, or the players they give up end up seeing a rise in value. One of those two things, but the opposite can happen too. As humans, we just focus so much on the negatives and we play it safe. Now, the other point to make here is that you can still put in research to have an edge when it comes to free agency in the draft. Last year on this show, I talked about Jacksonville drafting a running back early despite having James Robinson, and obviously Robinson's value in Dynasty took a massive hit after they drafted Travis Etn. I talked about the Falcon Now the Falcons might not get an early round running back and how Mike Davis would benefit. And yeah, Mike Davis didn't do that much in fantasy football this past year, but his Dynasty value did increase pre and post draft. Now, I'm not saying those things to say, look at how amazingly smart I am. I'm saying those things as receipts that we can look at these situations and scenarios, and yeah, we won't have a one hundred percent hit rate, but we can analyze these situations better than our league mates, and then we can find an edge. I would argue that if you're on top of things, if you understand team cap space, their needs, the current draft class, you could argue that now is a really really good time to actually do deals because the average dynasty manager doesn't see all of that. Now's the time where you can get massive values before the masses catch on. This next question is from me, Jack Burton, HIJJ is Justin Jefferson potentially losing Cousins the of his top tier ranking, could getting a lesser quarterback hyper targeting him? Even things out look. I think Kirk Cousins is a fine quarterback. I think he takes a lot of junk from people for his on field performance when he's really not nearly as bad as people think. But Kirk Cousins is not making Justin Jefferson. Justin Jefferson is making Justin Jefferson. Not only that, but you could argue that there's room for growth for Jefferson's target share, which would combat any sort of dip in effectiveness in that offense with a quarterback change. During Jefferson's rookie year, he was insanely efficient per target, and he finished with less than a twenty six percent target share. Now, don't get me wrong, that's a really, really good share, especially for a rookie, But considering he was averaging over eleven yards per target, you could have made the argument that the Vikings should have utilized him even more. This past year. That target share was just under twenty nine percent for an elite wide receiver, which justin Jefferson is. I mean, Jefferson may be the best wide receiver through two two seasons of all time, but for an elite wide receiver, that's not an abnormal target chair at all. That's a very normal target shair. In an ideal world, we want our wide receivers to be paired with good quarterbacks, and I think Cousins is good and sure in the very short term, there's a little bit of variance with Jefferson, like if the Vikings end up relying on a rookie or something, we know that's not good for pass catchers when that quarterback is a rookie. But at the core, we want good players in fantasy football It's that simple how you find those players. There's a lot of different approaches by now, a lot of you know my approach, But that's especially true at wide receiver, where talent matters more than at running back, and Justin Jefferson is not just good, but he's historically great.

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Speaker 2: The sex question is from Jeremy.

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Speaker 1: It says, hey, JJ, first timer here, was curious about your thoughts on tight ends for twenty twenty two. Specifically for tight end premium. The top guys seem to go too high. The higher end slash middle round guys don't even seem better than the wide receivers in the same area. I find myself gravitating toward a late round tight end approach, grabbing two to three tight ends to stream any late tight end guys you find yourself taking or going after for twenty twenty two. So, honestly, I haven't done enough research specifically for twenty twenty two to sit on this show right now and say this is my late round tight end. There's just been a lot going on, as I'm sure you guys can understand, But I do want to say this, generally speaking, people tend to make too big of a deal when it comes to scoring changes in their league, then they do positional changes. Tight End premium definitely makes tight ends more important to some degree. You can see that reflected in a lot of high stakes leagues and where tight ends get drafted in those leagues. And over the last three or four years, we've seen pretty good predictability at the position when looking at preseason expectation versus postseason result, meaning the tight ends who we think are going to be elite, they end up finishing at the top of their position. That's been one of the pro arguments for early round tight ends. And by early round tight ends, i'm referring to getting like the Travis Kelcey's of the world in round one, round two. I understand going that route more than I do going the middle round tight end route, because historically middle round tight ends have sucked. I talked through that on episode five hundred and twenty eight from last summer. But over the last decade there hasn't been any real difference between middle round tight ends and late round tight ends. And if you're in a tight end premium league, that doesn't really change that notion because you're still starting one tight end. Because late round tight ends often emerge, and because middle round tight ends often flop, there's just no real reason to go after most middle round tight ends. There are times where it's okay, and I lay that out in episode five hundred and twenty eight, but it's a dead zone for the position. So you either go big and you get a Travis Kelcey or one of those elite tight ends, or you just wait and wait and wait. And I would argue that you should all so do that in a tight end premium format, fade the Tyler Higbees of twenty twenty one of the World and utilize the criteria that I talked about on that episode to find a late round gem. If you're not interested in going with an early round tight end, I think what you're asking in this question, your intuition is right. You say that the opportunity cost just isn't worth it with those middle round tight ends, and that's correct. There's data that backs that up, and my approach does not change in tight end premium with regards to those middle round tight ends. In fact, I'd argue it calls for even more of an early round tight end or no investment in tight end at all strategy, because in tight end premium. You'll see a rise in average draft position among tight ends just in general, which means those middle round tight ends, those guys that we generally fade, they're now being drafted among better wide receivers in better running backs. So the opportunity cost in getting one of those tight ends, all of a sudden it is higher, and you're getting players in that range that just don't have good hit rates. So hopefully that answers your question at least a little bit. A lot of the ideas from that breakout tight end episode, I think they can help with situations like this one. This asks questions from Jeremy. It says, how are you handling Calvin Ridley? If you have him in Dynasty, are you holding what kind of return would you need to move him? I think you have to ask yourself a very basic question with Calvin Ridley. Do you think he's going to retire? If the answer to that is no, then you should probably lean by for Calvin Ridley. Now I have him ranked around the market in terms of just positional rankings, but I skew wide receiver heavy with my rankings, and I care a little bit more than most about youth and appreciation of assets. It just seems like if Calvin Ridley would have had like a wide receiver two season this year, even a lower end one, instead of sitting out most of the season, he would be ranked like ten spots higher in overall ranking than where he's currently being ranked. There are a lot of scenarios where I'd be more than willing to trade for Calvin Ridley. I understand he's already twenty seven when it feels like he should be like twenty five. But he's a proven producer who could see a positive change in scenery. Like I said earlier, we should want to buy good players, especially at a talent driven position like wide receiver, and Ridley is that it's hard to dispute that fact that Calvin Ridley's a good wide receiver. If I have Calvin Ridley, I'm holding because I don't think the market is totally right with him right now. This asked questions from Miles. It says, how are you valuing Zeke given an injury marred season and Pollard playing well? Are his best days behind him? And or will he be undervalued this coming season? The time to sell Zeke was likely Last year I bought into him in redraft, but I sold my two Dynasty shares that I had when he was producing at a true RB one level. Now, I thought when Zeke was healthy this past year, I thought he looked great. And I almost feel like I'm on an island with that take, even though Pollard is more explosive and he had insanely good efficiency numbers, especially to start the year Elliott did two. They were a great one to two punch when Ezekiel Elliott was healthy. So I missed out on some production in Dynasty after trading him, but I think it was the right move overall, because when running backs inch closer to being twenty seven years old, it starts to get scary.

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Speaker 2: And Zeke is going to be there this season.

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Speaker 1: The Cowboys have to deal with his contract situation, but the fact that Pollard has been effective and that he still has another season there. If Zeke slips and has even more of a split backfield, that's going to turn off any other team or even the Cowboys with Zeke's future, But not only that, at that point in time, after this season, Elliott's going to be twenty eight years old and Tony Pollard is going to be a free agent. So he's just getting up there in age, and that's a little bit scary. I'm lower than the consensus on Zeke in my rankings. I'm down to flip him right now. But keep in mind that there's definitely a perception out there that he's just no longer good because of how he finished the season. So you need to find a trading partner who's willing to buy into the injury idea. If they don't buy into that, you may have to wait and hope that Zeke produces early in twenty twenty two so you can then maximize his value. That's just a little bit riskier of a route to take. The last question this week is from Kirby. It says, can you talk a little bit about how you use your prospect model to value players who are late breakouts like Rashad Penny this year. You've mentioned how he graded high in your model coming out of college, but obviously in years two and even year three, your model had to have him lower based on his production.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

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Speaker 1: So, just so everyone's on the same page, I don't consider projections as a model. When I talk about my models, I'm not referring to my projections. The projections I build are for the upcoming season only. The models I have are the prospect model that I utilize for players coming out of college, and then the year two model that I recently built. The year two model looks at how a player performed as a rookie and adds in his prospect score to help us predict how that player is going to do in years two and three. The prospect model looks to predict how well a player performs in years one, two, and three. The year two model, like I just said, it's only looking at years two and three. So the models I'm working with are only concerned with the first three years of a player's career. That means they're not predicting what someone might do in year four, five, six, or seven. Now, obviously there's an insane correlation between how well a player does early in his career versus how well he does late in his career. That's part of the reason why I don't take things further. That and we care about appreciation of our assets and dynasty. We want players to do well right away or in the short term. So the bottom line is that I just reference my prospect model for later breakouts because I'm interested in seeing if there was any sort of backbone for that player to begin with. We have to remember that late breakouts, like real, genuine breakouts, not just one off seasons of strong production. They're rare, like really rare. We don't really see them happen often at all. And to be honest with you, because they're so rare, I haven't sat down to try to solve the late breakout equation because, let's be honest here, we haven't completely solved the regular breakout equation, and that one is far far more important. So when I reference my model for these players like a Rashad Penny or like a Mike Davis, let's say, I'm just seeing if they were ever really good, if we ever looked at them and said, that's a really good player. Because intuition tells me that if a player was once good and maybe suffered some bad injuries to start his career, that player is going to work out later in his career more than someone who has just averaged the whole way through. I think that's very logical. Penny is also a much much different case than a lot of players who have been in his position in the past, like Damian Williams. Damian Williams had a late career breakout after being a relatively average r back statistically, But Williams didn't suffer the injuries that Rashad Penny has suffered. There wasn't something obvious just sitting there telling us the reason for the lack of breakout. And on top of that, Penny was looked at highly as a prospect. I mean, he was a first round pick with an absurd college production profile. Damian Williams went undrafted. Now, I'll be the first to tell you that there are a lot of things that I have not studied in fantasy football, a lot of super specific topics just like this one. But it's because I think it's hugely, hugely important that we focus our energy on being really good at the things that objectively matter most. We know general trends. We know that when a player doesn't do well his rookie year, it's not a good sign. We know that when a player then doesn't do well in his second year, things are even worse. So instead of focusing our energy on being able to predict or find the one player every year or two who sort of squeaks through and becomes relevant, fantasy just so we can sell him high in Dynasty. I'm trying to figure out how to increase my hit rate earlier on in a player's career, and all the while I can still hit on some of those players. It's not like my ignoring that side of the equation means I'm never rostering that late breakout. But honestly, this is a great question. I know that I took it in a slightly different direction than what the question was asking. I just don't have an answer where I can say, go check out this episode where I break this all down. But I think there's a reason for that in this instance. The bottom line here is that it seems logical to at least have some care about a player's journey in his backstory, because it tells us that at least at some point that player was really really good or he was never very good. And maybe if he was really really good at some point or we thought he was good, maybe something clicked, or maybe he finally got over a two or three year injury.

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Speaker 2: That's why I'm still looking at my models for those guys. That's gonna do it for today's show, though.

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Speaker 1: Thanks to all of you for listening If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found it. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Remember to check out everything going on with Lateround Fantasy Football by going to Lateround dot com. You can pre order the Prospect Guide for just twelve dollars. Remember it's going to go up to fifteen dollars when it launches on March fourteenth, and there's a lot of cool information in that Prospect Guide. I promise I'm not only breaking down this year's class, but I'm breaking down last year's class based on the year two model. Thanks everyone, really appreciate you listening this week. Have a great weekend and enjoy the Super Bowl.