740: Mailbag 2/17/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacheras j J zacherwefon what's up everyone? It's JJ zacheryesen in this episode seven and forty of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we getting the mail back questions this week, I want to send another reminder about the Late Round Prospect Guy, which you can pre order right now over on lateround dot com. The guide features profiles of every running back and wide receiver who will be at the combine, as well as a breakdown of what goes into my prospect model. And then there's an entire section on my Year two model, which profiles relevant running backs and receivers from the twenty twenty two class. You can pre order right now on lateround dot com for just eleven ninety nine. It's a pdf. They'll get emailed to you when it launches on March thirteenth, and once March thirteenth hits, that price will rise to fourteen ninety nine. So again at the lateround dot com and pre order it now. The first question this week is from at Bob Forrest three. It says, Hey, JJ, love the show as always. Thanks this is a note from your cell high pod earlier this week, question what's the split on Pickens pre impost Chase Claypole trade yards per route run, target share, et cetera. Is he better than his season long numbers suggest so? Chase Claypole played the first eight weeks the twenty twenty two season with the Steelers, so during that time Pickens had more competition in that offense. But he actually had a target share per game rate that was better than his second half splits. His splits with Claypole saw sixteen point four percent target chair per game. His splits without him were sixteen percent. He averaged three fewer PPR points per game, but the Steelers offense wasn't performing as well, so we shouldn't be surprised by that now. Cording to Pro Football Focus, pickens yards per route run rate was one point one to four with Claypole. It was one point six y three without him, So it's a pretty big jump. But I don't think this is solely a Chase Claypool thing, because if you look at Deontay Johnson, the exact same thing happened. Like I said, the Steelers' offense just became a lot more efficient, it was a lot better, and numbers are going to look better when the offensive situation is better. And yeah, it's a good sign that pickens On increased during the second half of the season when things fell more into place, But the target share component is still somewhat of a red flag. And remember we're not giving the benefit of the doubt to other rookies, other rookie wide receivers who may have started off slow and finished stronger. We just look at their season long numbers. I'll say what I said on The Cell Candidate's episode once again, I think George Pickens is going to have a good career. My fear is him becoming some stud in fantasy football, especially with my models, like other players more like a Christian Watson who often get drafted after Pickens. This is always the hardest part of my job. It sounds like I'm completely arguing against George Pickens, but I'm really doing is I'm showing the negative side to his profile. Of course, there are positive sides too. Something that I found pretty interesting when working on my prospect guide, though, is Pickens' journey comparables. For those of you who don't know, journey comparables are players historically who went through a similar journey of prospect score to year two model score as the player that we're analyzing. So Pickens had a prospect score of eighty two and a half percent, his year two score is a little over ninety percent. One player who had an almost identical journey was Tory Smith, and that comp to me, actually makes a lot of sense as like a median outcome. And then another journey comparable for Pickens is DK Metcalf. Metcalf represents sort of the Bolish ninety fifth percentile outcome. So it's not that Pickens is doomed. You're just playing probability in the market. And there were some things during his rookie season that definitely makes you question this ceiling. The sas question is from at NKOTF underscore ff It says, last year we saw some offenses have a very narrow touch tree, such as the Raiders with Jacobs and Adams and the Dolphins with Waddle and Tyreek Hill. Are there any ways to predict which teams will have narrow touch trees or is it too hard to tell before the season. No, look, you're not going to one hundred percent nail things, but Yeah, there are definitely ways to predict this. We predicted the Dolphins narrow target tree just last year, didn't We We generally know which players are going to have elite target chairs entering the season because volume is earned through talent, So the most talented players in the league are going to see the highest target shairs. Just look at the target chair per game leaders from twenty twenty two. A wide receiver DeVante Adams, a top two round pick, Cooper Cup a first round pick, Tyreek Hill a top two round pick, Jamar Chase a first round pick, Cedee Lamb, a top two round pick, aj Brown, sometimes a second round pick. The list goes on and on. It just so happens that Waddle and Tyreek are on the same team. Similar to like A. T. Higgins and Jamar Chase, we're drafting those players early still because they're talented. The case with running back is just a little bit different. Running Back volume comes from talent because a coach needs to put a player on the field in order for him to see touches, and hopefully he's putting the most talented player on the field. But coaches are still dividing up their backfields based on their own preferences. Josh Jacobs went years without seeing the work that he saw this past year, and it was all because his coaching staff chose to give him that workload. The bottom line here is something that's incredibly important with projecting fantasy football, especially a wide receiver, when you have a very good wide receiver. Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle are very good wide receivers, and we knew that going into the season. When you have a very good wide receiver, they're going to give you some baseline target share. We tend to see elite guys hit that twenty five percent mark year over year. Really good wide outs we'll get to twenty two to twenty three percent, strong ones eighteen to twenty percent, and then good wide receivers will get around the fifteen percent range. The teams that these guys are playing for largely doesn't matter unless there's just stud after stud after stud on a team, because clearly there's only one hundred percent of a pie to give up if you have six studs on a team, If you have like Justin Jefferson, Jamar Chase, DeVante Adams, Tyreek Hill all on the same team, then yeah, not every stud is gonna see a twenty five percent target chair. But in the case like Miami, we knew there wasn't that much depth outside of Tyreek and Waddle, so both players could get to that twenty percent target chair mark without a problem. It just so happens that Tyreek Hill was the one who blew up he got to the thirty percent mark. Waddle was more in that twenty twenty one percent range. So to answer your question directly, yes, we definitely can find teams with narrow touch trees. Running Back is harder than wide receiver to do that with because coaches are driving those touch choices. But even still, we have a general idea of which running back will be a bellcow in which one won't at a very very high level entering the season. The next one's from Blake on Patreon. It sort of related to the previous question. It says when studying wide receiver stats, you often see advanced metrics like air yards, yards after the catch, average up, the target yards per route run, true catch rate, et cetera. While a great proficiency in all of these likely leads to being identified as a stud breakout wide receiver, we know not every wide receiver can master all of the skills needed to lead all metrics. That said, have you found one specific metric that outshines the others in your eyes or a small combination of metrics that you believe to show more value present or future than others. Keep up the great work, and thanks for all that you do. Thanks Now, Look, analysts have been searching for this golden key for years, this key that unlocks the answers to predicting fantasy football, and I'm here to tell you that it does not exist, and it will never exist. Some metrics are definitely better than others. But a huge reason I love this game so much is that there's so much nuance. You're like a detective putting pieces together to formulate the most probable story, and people hate that. The answer to this question is so simple. The answer is volume. Volume is what's most predictive year over year. Volume is what you should care about most. And if you notice, I reference things like yards per route run on this show all the time, and while yards per route run seems like an efficiency statistic, it's actually a volume one. The numerator of that metric, the top number of the fraction is yards yards per route run. What are yards. They're a cumulative statistic. They add up over and over again as you get what more volume. The denominator then is routes run. A starting wide receiver in an offense is going to run a similarist number of routes is another starting wide receiver in that same offense. For instance, Justin Jefferson ran just sixteen more routes last year than Adam Thielen in the regular seat. But Justin Jefferson gets more volume because he's more talented, and when you get more volume, you get more yards. So Jefferson's yards per route run is dramatically better than Adam Thielenz, but their denominator is pretty similar. Yards per route run is fun, though, because a player can somewhat overcome a lack of volume if they're seeing targets down the field and converting big plays with each target. If they're accumulating a lot of yards despite the lack of volume, they can still look good in yards per route run because they're very, very efficient. That's why it's a fun statistic. It sort of combines everything, but there's still a volume component to it, which is why it's a metric that I care about, but I care about average depth of target too. I care about how these players are being used because it helps me understand the type of player that they are. The more you know about a player, the easier they are to project. But at the end of the day, volume is what matters most. It's a really boring answer, but it's the right answer. This next one's from at doc keV. It says, does the hiring of Gannon ruin the fantasy value of Cardinals players next season? Or should we wait to see the offensive coordinator higher Now. I won't get super specific about Gannon with this answer because there's a broader point that I need to make. Don't overestimate your ability to know how a coach is going to impact a team in fantasy football. There's so much variance with this stuff. Head coaching ability is really really hard to predict. Back in like the twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen year range. I tried to do that, and it was really really hard, especially when a coach has no history of being a head coach. Not only that, but as your question notes, we should be waiting to see the staff that he puts together because he's a defensive minded coach. His history is coaching that side of the ball. It's good to understand what coaches and coordinators want to do. That's not what I'm saying here. Just don't let it take you to the point of thinking that players are ruined in fantasy because of a certain hire. We just have no idea. The last question this week is from at Todd Zillah won three to three seven. It says Ramandre Stevenson was out snapped and out touched in Week eighteen by Damian Harris with the playoffs on the line. His ADP is currently RB eleven in early Best Ball drafts was twenty twenty two. Ramandre Stevenson just a product of backfield mate injuries or is there something more that warrants the RB eleven average draft position. Okay, so first off, I haven't done projections or rankings for the twenty twenty three season yet, so I have no actual take about whether Ramandre Stevenson should be the RB eleven. Maybe that invalidates my answer here, but I at least think that I can analyze Stevenson the player to help you out a little bit. Now, keep in mind that Stevenson was dealing with an ankle injury down the stretch last season, which could easily play into all of this. But yes, his splits with and without Damian Harris last year were fairly dramatic. In games with Harris, Stevenson average of fifty nine percent running back rush share per game. Without him in game Stevenson completed that jumped up to seventy eight percent. Target share wise, the splits were seventeen percent with Harris and twenty one point seven percent without him. Stevenson was very, very good, though he ranked only behind Breesall and Tony Pollard in yards after contact per attempt last year. That's according to Pro Football Focus, only Christian McCaffrey, Alvin Kamara, and Austin Neckler had higher target share per game rates. Last year at the running back position, Stevenson had a running back rush share per game of almost sixty percent and a target share per game rate over seventeen percent. If you push those filters down a bit to fifty five percent and sixteen percent, you get a list of thirty other running back seasons since twenty eleven of running backs hitting those marks. Literally every single one of those players was a stud. I mean, the worst player on that list is probably Devonte Freeman. Maybe he's not a stud, but he had some really good seasons. In other it's literally fantasy stud after fantasy stud. And Damien Harris is a free agent if he's not around next year. While I do think there's some chance the Patriots changed things up in that backfield, we've now seen the ceiling. We've seen what's possible, and that ceiling for Ramandre Stevenson is an RB one. There's risk involved with Stevenson because the Patriots usually don't deploy their running backs this way. But even if you look at Stevenson with Harris last year, when Harris was active, Stevenson's backfield share numbers were basically the best that we've ever seen from a New England running back over the last decade when you look at rush share and target share. So, no, I haven't done my projections. I don't have rankings, but that's definitely the optimistic side for Ramandre Stevenson. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found in ever to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Again, remember to check out lateround dot com to pre order the Prospect Guide. Otherwise, thanks for listening. Everyone greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend.