837: Mailbag 11/17/23

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha je Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and thirty seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. If you've gotten something out of this podcast through the years, I'd really appreciate it if you left a rating and review. Doing so can really help the podcast grow, and that's obviously super helpful to me. That's all I got for you at the top today. Let's dig into these mail bag questions. The first question this week is an email that says, JJ love the pod and discovered living the stream this year and loving the different flavor. Great to learn that you're not, in fact a robot and just another dorky dad. Thanks for my all. JJ team I have b Jean Robinson, Devon a Chan, Jamir Gibbs, and Breeze Hall. That's a very JJ team. I'd like to offload one of those running backs for a top three quarterback since I can only start three of them, two running backs, two wide receivers, and one flex. I drafted Richardson and haven't been able to find a good replacement. Currently have Gino Smith. I also have CD Lamb, Pukinakua, Tyler Lockett, Drake London, and Trey McBride. So I'm feeling pretty good everywhere except for quarterback. Would you overpay for a second tier quarterback if I can't get a top three to one or keep the running back depth in case of an injury? Doug in Los Angeles. So I'm gonna use this question to talk through a few things this week. First, one of the most frequent questions that I get every single week is people coming to me saying, should you overpay for X Y Z? And I just got to say that, as a fantasy football analyst who's giving advice, it's very hard for me to sit here and say, yeah, take a lesser deal. There are definitely some instances where you need to do that from the standpoint of taking on more variants, let's say, But don't take a lesser deal just because you can. And this leads me to the second thing that I want to talk about. When fantasy managers construct trades, they usually construct them in a one for one manner. I'll give you this player for that player. And I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but they'll often do same position for same position deals. Now, I've talked about this plenty of times in the past, but I hate those kinds of trades because the vast majority of the time you're dealing with two players who have a very similar outlook, and in the end, someone's gonna lose that deal. Trades are about making both teams better. The best trades are the ones that even in hindsight, both teams became better from. But at a high level, people often think in a one for one way with their trades, and Doug, I'm not saying that you're doing that with this question. I'm just using this as an example. In your case, you're sitting pretty at running back. Your wide receivers are pretty solid, your tight end solid, but your running backs are really really good. So because you have this excess of good running backs, you feel this urge and understandably so, to get rid of one of those running backs in order to maximize your starting roster. And that's definitely not a bad call. That's what I would be doing too. But just because you feel good enough at wide receiver and tight end, for example, it doesn't mean you can't upgrade those positions. Still, let's run through an example with your current situation. I know your question is about a second tier quarterback, but let's just focus on the top tier one, like Josh Allen. Let's say you've got a potential trade partner who has Allen. Right now, the market likely values all of those running backs ahead of Josh Allen. I won't even reference my own rest of season rankings here. I'll look at Fantasy Pro's expert consensus rest of season rankings. Josh Allen right now is ranked forty second overall. A Chan is forty first, B Jon Robinson his fifteenth, Breese Hall is tenth, Jamier Gibbs his twenty sixth. They're all ranked ahead of Josh Allen. You might say to yourself, well, I really need this quarterback to make my team well rounded, so I can trade maybe Gibbs for Josh Allen straight up. But I wouldn't start with that, even if you might accept that trade, which I wouldn't. This is just a hypothetical here, But even if you might accept that Jamier Gibbs for Josh Allen trade, you shouldn't start with that. Instead, look at the rest of your roster. And say where can I upgrade? Where else can I upgrade? For you, there's still some room for growth at wide receiver. Even if your wide receivers look pretty good you have Drake London as your wide receiver for for example, what if the Josh Allen manager has Christian Kirk. Kirk is the better asset rest of season. It's while you're upgrading at quarterback, you can also upgrade at wide receiver and equal out this trade value a little bit better. So you can throw Drake London into that trade and then add Christian Kirk to it as well, because there's going to be times moving forward rest of season where you might use Christian Kirk in your starting lineup possible. He also gives you a little bit of safety with your wide receivers. Now this is all hypothetical. You could do the same thing with someone like Pookin Akua. I just think that pookin Akua is currently undervalued by the market still, but you get the point. This is just what I mean when I say to not just think in terms of one for one deals. You should be adding players to trades until you feel like a deal is equal and then go from there with your trade partner and start negotiating. But to your original question, I don't know what your trade really looks like here. If you're giving up one of those really good running backs for a second tier quarterback, definitely do not do that. If you're giving up one of the backs for a high end quarterback, you can approach it the way that I just talked about. This next question is from Patreon and it's from Travis. It says, hey, JJ, does the Doshaun Watson news have any effect of Jerome Ford rest of season? Thanks for all of your advice throughout the season and all you do. Now. I know that Deshaun Watson hasn't been very good this season, but the backups for Cleveland have been worse, pretty dramatically worse, to be honest. Now PJ Walker's not starting for them. They're going with Thompson Robinson instead, and I really agree with that decision. The Browns need more of that ambiguous upside for this roster to actually make a run. PJ Walker has been horrible this year. Like I said, Watson's been really rough this season as well. But PJ Walker's completion rate over expected is nine percentage points lower than Deshaun Watson's His EPA per dropback is point one to one points lower. His success rate is seven percentage points lower. When a team gets a downgrade at quarterback, it's generally bad news for everyone on that roster. I've seen takes out there saying that this won't impact Jerome Ford. I disagree. When we project we're looking at things from the top down, starting at the team level and working our way down. When that team level looks objectively worse, and again this is from a projection median outcome standpoint, but when that looks it impacts the entire team. So yeah, there's an effect. I think everyone in that offense gets a downgrade, unless some magic really happens. From Thompson Robinson. This nice question is also from Patreon, and it's from Mark. It says, Okay, I'm looking at which defense to stash for the playoffs, holding onto the Jets at the moment, should I keep them or target another defense? Thanks? So this is another question that pops up almost every week, And while this is very league dependent, I think people overrate the idea of stashing a defense for the playoffs this early in the season, like we're still four weeks away from the first round of the fantasy playoffs. That roster spot can be used on a handcuff for something who's gonna have a much greater impact than your fantasy roster if things break their way. Now, I'm not saying to ignore the playoffs. You should plan ahead. It's a good idea to know what's coming. That's why I talk about playoff related transactions on the fifteen Transaction show each week. But there's a big difference between saying that Tu a tongue of Iiloa has a tough playoff schedule versus the Rams having an awesome one. Not only that, but I don't understand this idea of needing to start the exact same defense every single week. Three weeks with the same defense brings a lot of risk. There's volatility at the position, but chances are a good defense won't have three super clean and easy matchups in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. And this is yet another reason why holding a defense this early isn't the most optimal decision in my opinion, unless you're in a league where you know that there'll be zero defenses available in just a couple of weeks, like Week thirteen, or fourteen. The Jets are actually a pretty good example of this. I love the Jets schedule in week sixteen and seventeen, they get the Commanders in the Browns. But if you don't have a buy in your playoffs, you won't confidently play them in Week fifteen against Miami. That game is in Miami too. Now every week on Patreon and mark you're a patron, you can take advance this. But every week on Patreon, I send a data dump spreadsheet, and one of the tabs in that spreadsheet is a playoff tab. It rates the matchups for every position. It gives you a rank for the three playoff weeks. A ranking of one means they have a great playoff schedule. A ranking of thirty two means they don't have a good one. The defense with the top playoff schedule right now is the La Rams. That's because they get the Commanders, the Saints, and the Giants during those three weeks. Chances are, though, no one's really stashing the Rams because the Rams defense hasn't been that great and there's still variants involved here. You can use that table though, to mix and match some defenses. For example, right now, Kansas City's probably on a lot of waiver wires because they get the Eagles this week. But I've actually scooped them up in a couple of leagues because first off, they're a good unit, so that's always a plus, but second they get the Raiders and the Packers over their next two games. It might be a tough one after that. Again Buffalo right before the fantasy playoffs. But once the fantasy playoffs hit, you have the Chiefs facing the Patriots and the Raiders. Those are two great matchups. In Week seventeen, though, they get Cincinnati, so you might want to drop them before Championship Week and instead maybe around Week fifteen week sixteen, you look for a defense with a good Week seventeen matchup, go back to the Rams they have the Giants, or maybe the Colts the Colts get the Raiders, or maybe just hold on to the Browns who get the Jets. The bottom line here is that we shouldn't be thinking about defenses in three week windows because very rarely we'll good to elite defenses have three straight cake matchups that conveniently fall during the Fantasy football playoffs. There are a lot of iterations to this too, and you can use that chart that I update and publish each week to mix and match and for the record, the data dump information that I'm talking about, it's part of the five dollars tier on Patreon. So if you want just that, if you're intrigued by this, yes, you can do it at a price for a nice cup of coffee. This next question is from Twitter is from at b Savage ten. It says, Hey, jj, I love to hear about your process for the data dump thread. Are you zooming out after the games and seeing what jumps out or do you have some hunches slash trends that you're monitoring throughout the weeks. Thanks. So, not only do I have that data dump spreadsheet that I post on Patreon each week, but I do that Sunday night data dump on Twitter each week too, and people seem to like it. Here's my process for that though. Throughout each week during football season, I'm looking at data because of my job. I'm a fantasy football analyst. I'm making episodes like this one, I'm creating content. I'm looking at that stuff all day long. The trends that I discover and the things that I see when I'm digging through data are always in the back of my head. So when I'm watching games on Sunday, I'm monitoring volume for players to see what sticks out, and I have that reference point for each player because I'm looking at this stuff all day long, every day throughout the week, and while I'm watching games, I'm taking some notes, so we have this giant slate of early games. Once those games are over, I keep watching the later games, but I head to my computer and I start looking at player usage and see if anything sticks out. I have data that I can quickly update in order to see some trends, and then I can start doing some analysis while I watch the late afternoon games. It really gives me a head start of my week. So really it's just all of the above. I go game by game once the early slate games are over and I see if anything jumps out. But I also have hunches, and that's based on what I'm watching during the early games, alongside what I've researched all week long. And really, to me, anything that's analysis related is just about asking questions. I have a sincere passion for this stuff, and I think that when you have a passion for something, you're more than willing to try to find answers to questions about that something. So during those late afternoon games, as I'm watching, I'm researching. It's a lot easier to do that when there are only three or four games on as opposed to nine, And then once those three or four games are up, once they're over, I do my best to quickly get some nuggets from those games to send those out as well in that thread. But a lot of the tweets that you see in that data dump every week, they're just me answering my own questions. So hopefully that gives you an idea of how that threads formulated every week. The last question this week is from Patreon. It's from monat. It says, why do a lot of mainstream analysts not penalized receivers for being inefficient? For example, earlier in the season, dk Metcalf had a four for thirteen game and a lot of people talked about how encouraging the volume was without mentioning that he didn't catch nine of his targets. So I think you might be referring to his game against Cleveland where he caught five or fourteen targets. He scored eleven point seven pper points as you noted, he was inefficient, but his target show was almost thirty nine percent. To answer your question, the entire year, an analysts like myself focus on volume over production in a single game like this is because regression is inevitable. When I get on the podcast next week and I talk about DK Metcalf, my goal isn't to be descriptive. It's to give you predictive information, to talk about what DK Metcalf is going to do, not what he's already done. That's over. Anything that's already happened has happened. You're not gonna get more points from a player in a given week when the week is over. What you're concerned about is what's gonna happen moving forward. So ask yourself after that game, were you more concerned with DK Metcalf? Maybe to some degree, Maybe you thought, oh Man Metcalf isn't as good this season, or something along those lines. But he had a thirty nine percent target share. That's an elite number. If they're fantasy football managers who only look at the bottom line finishes for these players, you can take advantage of that because you know that if DK Metcalf hits even a thirty percent target share. Again, better out are gonna happen. He's gonna be better than eleven point seven PPR points. And we know that based on history. We've had many, many games since twenty eleven where a wide receiver hit a thirty percent target chair in a given week, and that's thirty percent. Dk Metcalf was well ahead of that that week. In the many games where a wide out has hit a thirty percent target chair since twenty eleven, guess what the average PPR points per game was among all of those wide receivers. It was twenty point two. Dk Metcalf scored eleven point seven. Now, let's increase that threshold to thirty five percent, a thirty five percent target shair. What do you think the average PPR points per game among all wide receivers since twenty eleven who hit a thirty five percent target chair is. It's twenty two point one. Dk Metcalf scored eleven point seven. You can probably see where I'm going with this. When a player has one bad game or one inefficient game, we can't simply assume he's gonna perform that way moving forward. What's encouraging in those instances is when the player is still being fed, still seeing volume. Because volume drives fantasy football, it drives fantasy football production. And here's the other point to make people like myself who sit in front of a microphone and talk about this stuff. We're gonna bring that kind of thing up about DK Metcalf because it's interesting. Usually when a player sees a lot of volume, that player produces. When players don't see a lot of volume, they don't produce. So when a player sees a lot of volume and doesn't produce, that's something to talk about. And the same can be said when a player has his monster outing but barely saw touches in his own offense, because if that workload continues, that same player likely won't see as much production. Now, if I'm being honest, right now, this is probably the most important concept to wrap your head around with fantasy football. Production absolutely matters. It's everything, not saying that it doesn't, but how players perform in small sample sizes is gonna fluctuate and eventually regress. The reason we care so much about volume is because when you're dealing with a good player like a DK Metcalf, that volume is gonna be sticky, and if Metcalf were to consistently see a lot of volume moving forward, and that's key moving forward. If you kept seeing a lot of work moving forward, we'd expect him to produce more. This is precisely why I focus so much on peripherals every single week on this show. 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 podcast can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. And remember there's the Late Round Fantasy Football Instagram account at late Round FF. And there's a YouTube channel which can be found at YouTube dot com slash at LATEROUNDFF. Thanks for listening everyone. Hope you enjoy the Late Round Perspectives episode later today. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend and good luck in Week eleven two.