767: Mailbag 5/26/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha Ja Ja Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zach er Eesen in this episode seven hundred and sixty seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. The Late Round Draft Guide is available for pre order right now over on lateround dot com. The Draft Guy gives you everything you need to crush your fantasy drafts this year. I walk through everything that I think about when I'm approaching drafts, from why regression means everything to why you're probably overrating your scoring structures. There are tips to find breakout players and busts, and then I give a ton of players that I'm targeting and avoiding in drafts this season, and there's a top two hundred rankings and tiers list in there as well. You can pre order now for nineteen ninety nine, and when the Guide launches on June thirtieth, that price is gonna rise to twenty four to ninety nine, So check that out and all my other offerings out right now over on lateround dot com. The first question this week is an email. It says, HIJJ love the pod as always, It gives me a lot to think about. That's great. Listening to your Rushing Quarterback podcast today, I found myself thinking that you and many other analysts likely incorporate a lot of what makes a rushing quarterback bad for skill position players into your projections right. Thus, wouldn't moving those players further down the board be double counting? Relatedly, is this more useful for dynasty where player value has more of a multi year lens and we should be thinking about shifts and value when situations change e g. The Colts drafting Richardson. Thanks David, So, I do think that there are some assumptions being made here that we probably shouldn't make. The first one being that all analysts are creating projections. They're not. I know factually that they're not. The sets of rankings that you're getting from different analysts, A lot of those rankings are not based on projections. Not to be fair, mine aren't fully based on projections either. I said this on the projection shows just a couple of weeks ago, but the process of building projections is often more important than the end number that you get the projected fantasy total. I do projections to help sort out a player's range of outcomes, and to also see if there are any glaring differences between my projections and what the market's doing. They're definitely helpful when creating rankings, but the rankings are not strictly driven by projections because projections only tell you a median outcome. There are plenty of points in your fantasy draft where you don't care about the median outcome. You want the higher end outcome, so rankings help balance that. Now, projections themselves should capture a lot of the stuff that I said on the show from earlier this week. If you didn't hear that episode, the TLDR is that mobile quarterbacks are generally bad for their teammates. If a player has a mobile quarterback under center, he's going to have a tougher time scoring fantasy points. Now, since you brought up the Colts, let's talk about them. I actually talked about Jonathan Taylor on that Projections episode a couple of weeks back, noting that my projection for him didn't look as good as how the market's drafting him. And because my rankings will loosely reflect my projections, I have Jonathan Taylor ranked lower than the market right now, because as I build rankings, I'm referencing those projections. It's not like I bumped Jonathan Taylor down even more after doing more research on mobile quarterbacks and fantasy football, And it's not as though someone looking at my rankings will need to bump players down. You should know that the studies that I do for this podcast aren't there to just be informative. I want them to be applied. I myself apply them. So if you hear me say something like second year wide receivers in the middle rounds tend to hit a really high rate, then you should expect to see my rankings reflect that. But other rankings won't necessarily reflect that. Other analysts won't necessarily favor those types of trends the way that I do, just like other rankings may not care about skill position players playing alongside a mobile quarterback. At the end of the day, the audience of this podcast is not other analysts, and by analysts, I mean people who are out there in public generating rankings and creating content for people. I know plenty of analysts listen to this show, and I'm grateful and humbled by that, But the vast majority of the people listening to this podcast each week are people who work nine to five, They have families, they have lives. They see fantasy football as a hobby. They're just trying to find these little ledges to make the right decisions during their drafts and during a fantasy season. And that's what a study like the one earlier this week is for. Like, just imagine a world where Jonathan Taylor was the consensus RB one and then that study drops showing that running backs with mobile quarterbacks generally have a tougher time scoring fantasy points. Someone listening to that would then probably not draft Jonathan Taylor first. Overall, of course, there's an understanding that anything is possible. Taylor could walk into a twenty touchdown season. He's Jonathan Taylor. But looking at history, looking at logic, we know that he's probably not the best pick at RB one. When you know those little things, you can start to craft your own rankings and your draft strategies to be more accurate, so there's no double counting happening. I didn't finish up that study and start bumping players down when I already had them lower in my rankings. But studies like that get people to think twice about a decision, and that means everything. In my opinion, if we want to win at this game, we need that deeper thinking. It helps us win in the long run. And regarding the question about dynasty, Yes, if you know a mobile quarterback is going to be around for years and you know a player on that team will be there for the same duration, that's not a good thing for that player because we know year after year that mobile quarterbacks limit their teammates ability to score fantasy points. This best question is from at MTN Garrett. It says you just talked about how a mobile quarterback supports only one skill group. In regards to Baltimore, that seems to be the tight end position with Mark Andrews. Would you expect them to buck the trend with their wide receiver core temper expectations for what Bateman and Flowers can do. I think what's important is that the conclusion that I made on that episode earlier this week was not that they can only support one skill group. It's that only one skill group will rank in the top ten. They can have multiple skill groups be above average. We just shouldn't expect multiple skill groups to be great. I think a comparison between two teams might be pretty helpful here. Let's use Baltimore as one because you're already talking about them, and let's use Tom Brady's Buccaneers as another. We'll start with Lamar Jackson's MVP season in twenty nineteen. That year, the Ravens went nuts offensively. They scored three point six to three touchdowns per game on offense during Tom Brady's two good years in Tampa Bay, so we'll just ignore last year. The Bucks average three point five to nine and three point six to three touchdowns per game, so it's a pretty good apples to Apple's comparison here. These offenses were scoring almost identical number of touchdowns per game that season. For Baltimore, though, they were second and tight end points score their running backs were eleventh, so they were close to the top ten, and then the wide receivers were dead last. They were thirty second in point scored, So right away you can sort of see how all this works together. How when one positional group does well the other one doesn't. There's only so many fantasy points to go around, and you're gonna see that happen for any team, no matter if the quarterback is mobile or not. Like I said, only so many points can go around, but it's not as dramatic as it is for teams with mobile quarterbacks. Hence the data from earlier this week. So Baltimore has that twenty nineteen where the offense was absurdly good and they still didn't have multiple top ten positional groups. In twenty twenty, for the Ravens, tight ends ranked seventeenth in point scored, running backs were fourteenth, wide receivers were thirty first. In twenty twenty one, tight ends ranked first back on track, wide receiver was twenty sixth, running back was nineteenth, and then last year tight ends were second in points scored, wide outs were thirty second and running backs were thirtieth. But you see how a team with a mobile quarterback needs to have a special, special offensive season for two positional groups to rank pretty high, and even then you're not getting multiple top ten seasons from positional groups. Now, let's compare that to the Bucks with Tom Brady. Again, they're twenty twenty and twenty twenty one seasons. They saw an identical touchdowns per game rate as the twenty nineteen Ravens. They were very good offenses. The difference is that Tom Brady isn't stealing production from a skill position players. In twenty twenty, the Bucks ring sixteenth and running back scoring fourth, and wide receiver scoring and sixth and tight end scoring. In twenty twenty one, they were seventh in running back scoring, they were second in wide receiver scoring, and they were third in tight end scoring. That would never happen on a team with a mobile quarterback. If someone like Rashod Bateman or Ze Flowers or roebj end up seeing a high target share in that offense, like a really really massive one, it's possible for them to individually do well. I think the Ravens is shuit World likely finish in the top ten and tight end scoring. We'd probably all agree with that. But I also think that JK. Dobbins can still outproduce his ADP. But I also do a ton of fantasy drafts where I can get exposure to a lot of these different outcomes. I think what's important is to just know that if you've got someone like Mark Andrews on your team, you shouldn't be drafting a ton of other Ravens, Whereas you can get away with that more on teams with pocket passers having Leonard Fournette and Chris Godwin and Mike Evans in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. Was absolutely fine having Mark Andrews and JK. Dobbins and Zave Flowers this year, even with more pass attempts in that Baltimore offense. I would not advise you do that. So it's a give and take type of thing. We know it's harder for players with mobile quarterbacks to crush it in fantasy football. That's a fact, so you should draft accordingly. And yes, that means that it's gonna be harder for Ravens wide receivers to give you week in, week out production. They need to make up for having a mobile quarterback by seeing a higher target shair versus their counter parts across the league. A twenty five percent target chair and a mobile quarterbacks offense is not the same as a twenty five percent target chair in a pocket passer's offense as a general rule of thumb, So in turn, the more crowded it is in a mobile quarterbacks offense, the tougher it's going to be for an individual to perform. The next question is from at the Profs seven to two. It says I'm finding Nase Harris to be one of the more difficult running backs to rank. Here's the bowl case. If he returns to anything close to his rookie year volume in receptions and becomes more efficient running behind an improved offensive line, He's a top five running back. Here's the bear case. Jalen Warren will press him for touches, especially on third down. He's not replicating anything close to his rookie level touches or receptions. He's never shown game breaking talent, and his yak is weak for a first round talent at two hundred and thirty to two hundred and forty pounds. So I was not on Naji Harris last year, not because I think that he's a bad running back or anything, but I was worried about what could happen about the Steelers offense without Roethlisberger and also Harris's target shair because Harris was seeing a ton of looks during his rookie year behind the line of scrimmage. So without Ben Roethlisberger, maybe those would disappear. And that was on top of the Steelers likely being more run heavy, a lot more run heavy now, the Steelers target chair running back actually didn't change that much year over year, but Naji Harris's share dropped by almost five percentage points. That was largely because of Jalen Warren. And then on top of that happening, Pittsburgh ended up seeing about one hundred fewer pass attempts. So the logic with Naji Harris was right at a high level. The team became more run heavy and the team wasn't as good offensively, but it was wrong at the individual level. Harris could have seen the same target chair year over year because I was not out there predicting that Jalen Warren was going to see a six percent target shair. Now, I think it seems reasonable that we'd see a similar split in target share between those two backs this year, and that could be somewhat of a problem for Harris. During his rookie SAE, he had a fourteen point four percent target shair. I'd be pretty surprised if he hit a fourteen percent target share this year. I think he's far more likely to be closer to like ten percent. The good news is that Harris is playing in an offense that should be better. The Steelers went from being the worst offense in football last year during the front half of the season to a pretty decent one during the second half. I mentioned that on the show about a week or two ago, and when teams are better offensively, it lifts every one in that offense, and we saw that help Najie Harris last year. Maybe it was his health. He started the season banged up, but during the second half of the year, so after the teams by Harris averaged fifteen point two PPR points per game. He was at ten point nine during the first half. It wasn't like his backfield share got better during the second half of the season. His rush share actually dropped, his target chair remained pretty steady. The Steelers were just better as a team, and that's what we're hoping for in twenty twenty three. So I actually think the case with Harris is fairly straight forward. He should be more efficient at scoring fantasy points. Jalen Warren should still be involved. I mean, Warren was arguably better per touch than Naji Harris last year. So given that Harris probably needs a Warren injury to really hit a top five ceiling in fantasy football, my projections have Naji Harris at RB sixteen right now, So I've got him very slightly below his best ball ADP. To me, he's just a really solid RB two with a good floor and an average ceiling. Not really the guy I typically go for, but I understand if people like that safety. But honestly, he's not that much different than he was last year entering the season. The difference is we know that his receiving sealing is probably a little bit capped. The next question is from EBJ on Patreon. It says, question on opportunity cost. Is there a point in the draft where opportunity costs becomes negligible? Can we basically ignore ADP after a certain round and just go after upside players? So opportunity costs will always be there to some degree. When you make a decision, all the other things that you didn't choose, that's your opportunity cost. So no matter where you are in the draft, there's some cost. Now, as you're asking, though, where does opportunity cost matter less? Obviously in the first round your opportunity cost is very high, as is the case in the second round. What you're really asking here, though, is something that I talk about in the Draft guide. I talked about it last year and I'm going to talk about it again this year. I take every player to every position since twenty eleven, and I plot their performance. On the X axis, you've got average draft position. On the Y axis, you have points per game in PPR. So a quarterback who has taken fiftieth overall one year may have scored sixteen points per game. That's one data point. One drafted sixtieth overall one year might have scored seventeen points per game. That's another data point. You do that over and over again until you get some trend lines for each position, and what those trend lines show us is expectation, the number of points we'd expect a player to score at a certain ADP. Now, when looking at those trend lines, the steeper the curve, the larger the opportunity cost, and where things start to flatten is where opportunity costs starts to drop. Because the difference from one pick to another is not as significant. You could make the argument that the drop occurs sooner than you think, like a round pick fifty or so at running back and wide receiver, So maybe you can get a little bit more wild in like the fifth or the sixth round range and stray away from ADP. But that's also something I want to bring up when we say things like ignore ADP, that's different than drafting. Differently than ADP, chances are you're still going to take a player who belongs relatively close to that draft pick. Like if you're in round five and you take a player who's typically a seventh round pick because you're ignoring ADP, I don't think that's the biggest deal in the world at all. If you're in round five and you're taking a player who's typically a fourteenth round pick because you're ignoring ADP, I would not only question why because you can get them later, but I would question your evaluation skills. ADP is not the worst indicator of success, so you should ask yourself why you're making the decision that you're making before you actually do it. But yeah, overall, there are plenty of spots in a draft where opportunity cost matters less and less. It's always present, though. The last question this week is from Twitter, and it's from at Wesley A. Johnson. It says, JJ, longtime fan of your show. Thanks, where do you slash your model rank? Isaiah Hodgens his ADP has him at the bottom of drafts, and he screams value by he had an Acres esque finish to twenty twenty two, and he doesn't face a ton of roster competition. He's trending to be my most rostered player. So a few people seem to want this one answered, So let's just dig in. Looking back at Hodgens prospect profile was actually quite good. He came out in twenty twenty and his prospect scores in the sixty fifth percentile. He had a plus eighteen percent draft capital delta, which is one of the better marks you're gonna find in the meaning the NFL seemed to undervalue him. The reason his prospect scorer was a lot better than his draft scorer or where he was drafted was because he was an early declare wide receiver with pretty good marks. In college. He had pretty good production. His breakout age was around twenty years old, nothing wrong with that. His best season yards per team pass attempt was two point seventy nine. That's above average. Now, he wasn't an SEC wide receiver or anything, but everything pointed to him being an undervalued player at the very least, and that's not just some hindsight take even though I know people can take it that way. To be honest with you, that should give you more confidence in him being the real deal now. He wasn't able to play his rookie year with Buffalo, and then he mostly played the practice squad during his second season in the league. It wasn't until last year with New York where he started to see some work. The problem is that he wasn't necessarily anything special within that New York offense. Last year. He actually gained targets at a worse rate per route than Darius Slayton, Wandel Robinson, Richie James, and Sterling Shepard. And he wasn't as good in yards per route run than all those guys too. But here's the good news. The Giants have a whole bunch of slot receivers and Hodgens played just thirteen percent of his snaps from that area of the field last year, so there's an opportunity for him to find the field immediately as the team's X receiver. I think that Jalen Hyatt is a bigger deal to Darius Slayton than he is Isaiah Hodgins, and I think that, combined with his prospect profile, is what's most important. He got off to a slow start to his career with his health, and later round picks aren't going to get a ton of opportunity right away anyway, so his slow rise is not that concerning to me. Now, do I think that he's going to like ball out in fantasy football? Probably not. Matt Harmon's reception perception sees him as a solid player, but not this like game wrecker, And I don't know that i'd say that he was as good as Cam Akers was down the stretch last year. He had one wide receiver one performance all year long. He had a few solid games, but again, I'm not sure he's going to be someone who you're relying on each week now in a best ball format in that type of setting, sure, but I would say that Hodgens is unlikely to be like a wide receiver too or better this year, and that's only reinforced by the fact that he's playing alongside you guessed it, a mobile quarterback. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Felt friend to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening this week. Everyone greatly appreciate it. I'll talk to you next week.