921: Mailbag 10/4/24

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Speaker 1: This is the Late podcast with your host JJ zacherathas Jay Jake zacher reef. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachary sin in this episode nine and twenty one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Underdog is the best place to play fantasy sports, and during October, Underdog is running a different promo every single day with Boost Tober. If you sign up now, you not only get access to those promos, but you'll also get a deposit bonus and a free copy of my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated every Tuesday through the end of the fantasy season, and with the link that Underdog provides when you sign up, you get access to those updates. All you do is head to Underdog Fantasy dot com and sign up with promo code Late Round. You can also download the app, then make a deposit and start to play, and then you're good to go. That's promo code late The first question this week is from twitters from at P two w Fantasy says, which current team RB two not in a true split committee has the best chance to take over their backfield. Now, I won't mention guys, like Nick Chubb or Jonathan Brooks, because that would be cheating. We'll just go with natural takeovers. With a question like this, you just have to look at starters who don't have Studley profiles, and you mentioned not in a true split committee, So we're looking at players who maybe have seen like a quarter of the team's running back rushes so far. I think the easy answer here is Tyrone Tracy. Devin Singletary is a fine player, but he's not a special running back, and the Giants are a team that may not be ultra competitive this year, so there's a chance that we see more and more Tyrone Tracy, who's got a lot more burst than Singletary. Tracy does things that Singletary doesn't. And Eric Gray for that matter. He was an older prospect, which knocked him down a little bit in my ZAP model, but he also had a good receiving profile because he played wide receiver in college. He can do a lot out of that backfield. Again, he brings a different element to that backfield. So I think there's a chance that we see a much bigger split between these two running backs as the season unfolds. It might start as soon as this weekend because Devin Singletary's banged up. The sess question is from Patreon. It's from Colin. It says, is there any player or players this year that you aren't giving up on even if they had a very rough start? I still see some die hard believers in Mark Andrews or Justin Herbert, even though they haven't produced well for Fantasy for the first four weeks. Now, I'm not that into those guys, but yeah, I think there are a lot of players who should be better than where they currently stand now. I wasn't massively high on Calvin Ridley this year, per se, but I did like the Titans offense overall. I thought that was an offense we should be targeting in general. They had an opportunity to be a surprise offense and that's been wrong so far. The ambiguous backfield there has largely been okay. Tony Pollard has amer Taj Spears is coming back from that injury and he could be useful though too. We saw some usability from him last week. That backfield has been okay enough, but the passing attack has been a huge problem. But like I said in the ten Trends episode, they've had it bad. Will Levis has faced the toughest quarterback schedule in the league by justin fantasy points allowed in the wideout's seen a bottom three receiver schedule. Not only that, but they're still going slow with DeAndre Hopkins. He's seen route participation rates of just fifty one, fifty and fifty seven percent over his last three Like. I know this sounds insane, but I think buying into the passing attack for bench players right now, like guys on your bench, especially with the Titans on by, that's not the dumbest thing in the world to do. Worst case, they don't turn things around. But I'm telling you, the schedule during the second half of the season is so much better than the first half of the season, and maybe we can create this narrative. There's just been growing pains with a new coaching staff. Now. Obviously Will Levis has not been that good, but better matchups might help him out a little bit, as Will experience, so Calvin Ridley, DeAndre Hopkins. I wouldn't totally give up on those guys just yet. Now. I've also seen a lot of people wanting to give up on players who are injured. I don't agree with that. Jalen Warren is one of them who comes to mind. Like Najie Harris, has not been very good this year. He's bottom ten in success rate that's according to next Gen Stats. His EPA per rush isn't very good. His rushing yards overexpected per attempt that's also bottom ten. I know we have Arthur Smith memes to deal with, but Pittsburgh's a competitive team who needs to use their best players. And if you look at that offense, the only real dynamic player, consistently dynamic player is George Pickens. We've seen Jalen Warren give us that juice in the past. If Jalen Warren is fully healthy, this backfield could look a lot different. And then if you look solely at PPR points per game, at just production, you're probably not very pleased with Lad mcconkey's output. He's wide receiver forty two right now in points per game, nothing special. He hasn't had a very good year production wise, but his peripherals have been really good, especially for a rookie wide receiver, and they're trending in the right direction. His route participation has been above eighty five percent over his last two games. His target shairs have consistently been good pretty much all year long, but the last two weeks they've been at thirty two percent and twenty seven percent. He's also top twenty across the league in yards per route run. We know that rookies typically perform better during the second half of the season, so I would not be getting rid of Lad McConkey. He might even be a by candidate on next week's fifteen Transactions episode, and that's pretty much true of any rookie at this point. You have to be patient with a lot of them. But there are a lot of players who fall into this bucket. But I wanted to give you three kind of different examples. One of them's due to schedule, one of them is due to injury, and then one of them due to experience. The next question is from Twitter is from rob Ison Law. It says are we overvaluing Dantavian Wicks. His Week four production was due in part to the down twenty eight to zero game script the Packers typically won a balanced attack. So I've heard this multiple times from people this week, and I want to get this out of the way. This is exactly why we look at things like target share and rat participation and snapshare. Why we're looking at things that aren't simply raw production. Because it's true the Packers won't have fifty four pass attempts every game, absolutely, but that's not the reason that you're adding Dontavian Wicks. You didn't go after him on the waiver wire this week simply because he had a big Week four. There have been other wide receivers who had big games this year, but we didn't aggressively go after them. So why are we going after Dontavian Wicks. Well, last year as a rookie, Wicks was over the two point zero yards per route run mark. We generally only see that from really good players, and his peripherals last week those were really strong when you take out the game script element, and without Christian Watson, he's going to be on the field more. He had his highest route participation of the season in Week four, which is not surprising at all, but that's what happens when a guy like Christian Watson is no longer available. The overall idea here is that if he's a good player, which I think he is, and he ends up performing well without Christian Watson, then that means that he could simply see a bigger role even when Christian Watson's back. Now, do I think that there are people out there who are overreacting to this? Yeah, sure, that happens with everything in fantasy football. We see that every single week with every big waiver wire move, and I do think we need to recognize that there are other players in this offense, like a Romeo Dobbs for instance. That's what I talked about on the Sleeper Show. But the difference is we're talking about wicksmore because he's the one who's benefiting most from this Christian Watson injury. He's the one that's gonna see the field more. Romeo Dobbs was already running a lot of routes. There was a reason that Wis was on my Late Round Dart Throws list this year. There's a reason he was a relatively popular sleeper because he had contingent upside, which is what we're seeing right now, and that contingent upside was attached to what could be a good player. We're not guaranteeing anything. We don't know for sure that Dontavian Wicks is gonna be special, but he's a second year wide receiver who had a really underrated rookie year, and he's in a Jordan Love led offense. That's a good combination. So I think people will overrate anything. I do think that Wis is someone that you should have been aggressive with this week, because this goes beyond his Week four production, his week four stat line. It may not amount to anything significant, but it's the right kind of bet to make this nast questions from Patreon, it's from Matt. It says, with the news at Tua tongue of Ailoa is symptom free and could be back week eight, are you holding Tyreek Hill in anticipation of Tua's return or would you maybe look to sell for a wide receiver with a lower variance quarterback situation. I guess this applies the entire Miami offense as well. So I got a ton of questions this week about this Miami offense asking what I would do if I had those players. And I have those players a lot of you know, I like Jalen Waddle this offseason, and I like Devon a Chan and things were going fine before this Tua injury. Clearly, Tua means a whole lot to this offense. But there's not a blanket answer for this. I think at this point there's a pretty good chance that we do see to a comeback when he's done with his ir stretch, and when he does come back, I'm expecting good production again from this Miami offense. So if you're four and zero right now, if you're sitting pretty you might want to consider taking on an a Chan or a Jalen Waddle or a Tyreek Hill because you can get them pretty cheap right now. But if your team's struggling, you can't take that on because you're going to give up relatively decent assets in order to do so, and you need wins immediately. So my advice would be that if you know that you can take a hit in the short term and still be okay, go for some of these Miami players. Go for that upside. If you need a win immediately, then obviously don't because this Miami offense is not very good without Tua. It's as simple as that. This last questions from at Frank sixty five mirror, it says, what should we do with George Pickens? Feels like he should be an alpha wide receiver, but it seems like Pittsburgh not having anyone else is leading to defenses to take him out of the games. Is his talent good enough to keep the faith? Look, if I'm gonna be totally honest, I feel like a lot of fantasy managers just have unrealistic expectations. Like someone asked me on Patreon this week, what's going on with Chris Alave? Why hasn't he performed? Guys, Chris A Lave had a weird week one. Yes, I talked about that on the show. There was a weird game script and he wasn't the one producing the big plays. But he's seen target shairs of forty percent, twenty six percent, and twenty eight percent over his last three games. He's seen at least eighty one receiving yards in every contest. Now he has a tough matchup this week, but over the last three weeks, Chris Alave has been fine. I know he's not giving you top ten wide receiver production, but he's been solid. And the same is generally true for George Pickens. His yards totals this year eighty five, twenty nine, fifty seven, and one hundred and thirteen. That game where he had twenty nine yards that was against Denver that's the best team in football against wide receivers. Pickens has a twenty eight percent target share this year in this Pittsburgh offense. Defenses can do what they want, but they're not taking George Pickens out of these games. He has a twenty eight percent target share. The thing that's ruined him is touchdowns. Like I said in the ten Trends episode, Pickens has the most receiving yards at wide receiver in the league without a touchdown according to PFFS Expected Touchdowns formula. Given Pickens usage where he's seeing targets, he should have closer to two touchdowns right now. If Pickens had twelve more Fantasy points, he'd go from the wide receiver thirty five and PPR points per game that's among wideouts who have played three or more games this year. He'd go from wide receiver thirty five to wide receiver eighteen, which is above where you drafted him. Honestly, his current rank right now isn't that far off from where you drafted him. We're still working with small sample sizes. So someone like Trey Tucker who has multiple scores, he's ranked ahead of Pickens or Alan Lazard or Juwan Jennings. But over the long run, things will normalize and you can benefit from that normalization if you follow usage, which is what George Pickens is getting. The last question this week is from Patreon. It's from Brandon. It says, Hey, JJ, I know you have talked a little bit about the tight ends, but are there any that have been struggling that you would consider a buy? So as bad as tight end has been this year, like I talked about a couple of weeks ago, it hasn't been so dramatically worse than other seasons to start the year. Within context, and all the numbers that I discussed, they tend to regress. So I've been anticipating and we've seen it to some degree, but I've been anticipating tight end numbers to get better than where they were a couple of weeks ago. Now, obviously, someone like Mark Andrews some individual tight ends they're not going to pan out. But I do feel like people are sort of lumping all of them together and just assuming that none of them can be good. And because of that sentiment, what I would do right now, it's probably not a bad time to try to buy into some of those injured tight ends because people are sort of lumping in David and Joko and Evan Ingram, the two injured tight ends that I'm referring to right now. They're lumping them in with the rest of the position, but they haven't been active, and Joko was a monster during the second half of twenty twenty three. Evan Ingram had a twenty one percent target share in Week one, and we know that both of those teams need a lot of help offensively. So when you ask this question, those are the two who pop into mind mind because at the end of the day, both of them have top five tight end upside very easily, especially within this landscape right now, so it's not a bad idea to try to just trade for even Ingram and David Njoku as they're coming back from these injuries. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. 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. You know, to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB and make sure you're checking out the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. That's YouTube dot com. Slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone. There's a Late Round Perspectives episode coming your way today as well. I hope you give that a listen, but otherwise, good luck in week five. I'll talk to you next week.