617: Mailbag 2/25/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachersa j J zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zacher Eesen and this is episode six hundred and seventeen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Earlier this week, Dave Klougi from Football Guys posted a poll on Twitter. I'll read the tweet exactly as it's written. It says, who would you rather roster in fantasy football? Running back A fifteen points per game and plays all seventeen weeks, or running back B twenty five points per game but misses the second half of the season. And then the poll had the two choices, running back A or running back B. Running Back A had more than two thirds of the vote. And I don't fully agree with the public. I was actually pretty surprised to see that kind of response. I then quote tweeted that poll on Twitter on Wednesday, and I said, how are these results? Real? Now? I'll admit my initial response seemed way too harsh. I'll take in ellen how I approach this topic on Twitter on Wednesday. I'm human, and sometimes I'm a little bit too reactionary. I never really thought this was a situation where one hundred times out of one hundred, you take running back B the one who's scoring twenty five points per game for half the year. Just because I feel like that's the way that you should lean in this scenario doesn't mean I think that you choose that answer no matter what, because there are a lot of factors that go into it. But I can understand how someone would read what I said as me coming in hot. Now. I do want to say some things on this topic, especially because over the last twenty four to forty eight hours other fantasy analysts have slammed this idea of going with running back A the one giving you fifteen points per game across the entire season. I thought I had a pretty strong stance, but turns out I have a weak stance on the issue. But let's get into this. I think it's baked into our brains to not think about replacement level players in situations like this. When people see that question, they automatically go to the player who's giving you fifteen points per game across the whole season, because you're not having to take a zero for half the season. But clearly, in fantasy football, when a player goes down, you don't just ignore the position in your lineup and take zeros. You're replacing that player with someone else, whether it's a player on the waiver wire or a player on your bench. Some people actually got angry that I made the assumption that player B would be replaced when I was answering this poll. But doesn't that seem like a reasonable assumption to make. In what sort of season long league? Are you getting an injured player and taking a zero from his spot for the rest of the season, Like, yeah, obviously, if that happens, if you're forced to take a zero, you'd want player A all day long. Now, if player A scores fifteen points per game, that means he's scoring two hundred and fifty five points across the entire seventeen game season. Let's say that player B plays eight games. He'd score two hundred points in those eight games at twenty five points per game. So to match player A in points per game, player B would need to score fifty five points across the remaining nine games of the season, or six point one points per game. That's just to match in points per game across the season. And as we know, finding a running back who scores six point one points per game, that's not that difficult. But we know that not all games are equal. The fantasy football playoffs matter much more than a regular season game, and that's where people who are into player A, that's why they say the answer is player A because of the playoffs. And that's where this discussion really begins. Now, before I go on, one big flaw in that poll, and I'm sure that Dave didn't know that it would blow up the way that it did, but it didn't include scoring. And yes, that can alter the way that we view things because scoring can change how we view a replacement level player. For example, if you assumed it was standard scoring, coming up with any I think close to fifteen points per game at running back is not going to be an easy thing to do. It's much much easier when we're talking PPR formats. I made the assumption it was a PPR league because of the comparison between twenty five and fifteen. Twenty five points in the standard league just isn't happening, So why would it be the focus in this hypothetical. That was my fault when discussing this on Twitter. For the record, I should have made sure that we were all thinking under the same assumptions. But let's run with this being a PPR format. Fifteen PPR points per game is what we saw from high end RB twos this past year. I'm not making some assumption that I can match that week in and week out with some replacement level player, but it's much easier to do that when you're getting a full point per reception. Now, if we assume half PPR, I'd still probably lean the same way, but not as strongly, not nearly as strongly. It becomes a lot more difficult to come close to that fifteen points per game in half PPR league. But keep in mind you're still for going twenty five points per game across your first eight or nine games, depending on how you define half the season. You're putting yourself in an incredible spot to win those games, because just as the fifteen points per game is harder to replace in different scoring formats, twenty five points per game is also harder to come close to. It's giving you more of a difference making score. The problem is that difference making score isn't coming in the playoffs, when games really matter most. More on that in a second, though, Now, sometimes it's easier to think in terms of players rather than hypotheticals. This past year, Derrick Henry played eight games. He averaged twenty four point two PPR points per game. Ezekiel Elliott played all seventeen. He averaged fourteen point eight PPR points per game. So Elliott is closer to the fifteen point per game hypothetical than Henry is the twenty five. But we'll still run with this example because it's close. Which player would you have rather had last year? Derrick Henry or Ezekiel Elliott. A lot of you are probably sitting there saying Henry, and that's what Twitter said too. I posted the poll with the exact same question, and about eighty three percent of people responded saying that they'd take Derrick Henry. And to me, that's pretty interesting because in the nameless example, fewer than thirty three percent of people were on the hypothetical Derrick Henry side. Now, maybe my tweeting about this skewed those results a little bit, but that's an insane difference in result, and maybe there's some bias with Ezekiel Elliott. So I posted the same question about Derrick Henry versus Josh Jacobs and Derrick Henry versus Aaron Jones. In both cases, people sided with Derrick Henry pretty dramatically. When I saw those results, I actually thought that they were way too lopsided on the Derrick Henry side. But again, let's move forward. I think anytime fantasy managers see a poll like this, they equated to their personal experience, because I'd say, quite easily the argument for running back B in this scenario, the most pro argument is that by having that player, you're in a really good spot to make the Fantasy playoffs. But think about your league. What if your league allows every single team to make the playoffs, then all of a sudden, the way that Derrick Henry was performing or running back Bee was performing from weeks one through eight, one through nine, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. So league structure does matter a lot. A lot of things matter, even cost of acquisition matters. We have to make some assumptions when we try to answer this question. But the one assumption that we should be making together that shouldn't be argued is that you're not taking a zero from a replacement level player. If your running back goes down, there's a player that steps into your starting lineup. Now, the other big question with all of this is how do you weigh the importance of the playoffs. Is a playoff matchup twice as important as a regular season one? Is it four times as important? Fantasy analyst Adam Harstad did a little analysis on this top the whole importance of playoff games thing. He found that the break even point for a replacement level player was about ten and a half points per game, Meaning if you could find a player or have a player to score more than that, we should favor the twenty five points per game. Running back, under that, we favored the fifteen points per game back. Now, if we assume all of that to be true, if we assume that Adams analysis is completely factual, then I think anyone listening to this is going to have a different risk tolerance with their ability to get to that point. For reference, in twenty twenty one thirty seven running backs, we're at ten point four more PPR points per game. The kind of replacement level player that we're talking about, it's ironically Deontay Foreman. Even if there's some disagreement with how to weigh the importance of playoff matchups, Adam's logic at least made me see my own flaw and not weighing playoff performance enough. And I think a lot of fantasy analysts are doing that on Twitter right now. I mean, I clearly understood that the playoffs were important, but I probably should have wigh that even more. I don't think it necessarily changes my opinion, because again, there's a lot of nuance to this discussion. There are a lot of details that we have to fill in when we're trying to figure something like this out for our league. I lean the Henry side of this discussion. Or the player getting twenty five points per game across his first eight I would rather have him across those games, have a higher chance to get in the playoffs and let Varians do its thing. At least in PPR formats we're coming up with that point differential isn't going to be as difficult. But in half PPR we're moving towards the other player. In standard, I think you definitely go with the other player. Fifteen points per game in a standard league is not easy to match. Now, this whole scenario is pretty irrelevant because you're never actively choosing to take a player for half the season versus a lesser player for the full one, unless there's a suspension or something, but usually suspensions happen at the start of seasons. Overall, though, I think this is a good exercise that uncovers two things, and that's why I wanted to bring it up on today's show. Number one, always remember that replacement level players exist. When we do analysis of players who got hurt, we can't assume a fantasy team is taking a zero from that player's spot when he's out. This is why cumulative season long numbers aren't always that helpful, especially a running back. Number two. Whether it's fair or not, the playoffs do need to be weighed extremely heavily, but you can't necessarily do anything with that information on the predictive front. But when we look back at how strong a season was, even though it's often just dumb luck in variance that a player blew up in the playoffs, that performance is more valuable. It does count a lot more than a regular season matchup. Now, I try to give advice on players who have strong playoff schedules and all that, but it's probably even more important than analysts make it seem. Seriously, though, thanks to that Twitter discussion, I now think about things a little bit differently, aside from the people who said things like are you sure you do fantasy football? Lmao? From those exhausting people. It was a good discussion on Wednesday, and hopefully you learn something from it too. Before we get into questions this week, golf fans, FANDAL is giving you the opportunity to get in on the action by playing Daily Fantasy Golf. All you have to do is go to fandle dot com and create your lineup of golfers for the PGA Eagle Contest. Then sit back, watch the action and root for your guys. Head over to fandol dot com or download the fandal app today to participate in Daily Fantasy Golf. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the FANDL app for more details. This is a mailbag show, so there are some questions. Let's get to them. The first question this week is from Patreon from Ben says, Hi JJ, out of curiosity, what player do you consider to be your model's biggest victory of the past few years? Was there any guy I believe you were into James Robinson? If I remember correctly, that got little to no buzz, and you were banging the table for him. So I think the way I approach scouting in general, there aren't going to be many players I'm just really really right or really really wrong about. Because I talk about variants and how this stuff is just really hard all the time. It doesn't mean I won't have big hits or misses, though I think that gets lost sometimes when I talk about my process. There's this assumption that because I'm more of a gray area thinker with this stuff, there's no way I can have these high variance hits. Let me just give you an example. I can sit here and say that we generally don't see undrafted running backs become relevant fantasy football very often. Someone who watches film and doesn't look at data, they may not have that idea in their head. We're probably gonna draw the same conclusion because someone watching film of an undrafted running back, that running back's probably not gonna look very good, just like he doesn't look good in my model. But here's the thing, someone who goes undrafted, it's tough for anyone to buy into that at a high cost, right, they're gonna be a Round four round five rookie draft pick if they're drafted at all. So just because I have a role that says undrafted running backs usually suck doesn't mean I never draft an undrafted running back because once you get into rounds four or five of rookie drafts, everyone has a ton of red flags. That's where the James Robinson example comes into play. I really like James Robinson pre draft, and then he went undrafted. My model isn't gonna love an undrafted player, but it can like him enough to the point where I then roster that player a lot across my leagues, and that's what happened with James Robinson. Aaron Jones is another big hit from the model. He had an insanely good production profile, and the model saw him as really undervalued given where he was drafted. But here's the thing. I think the model's done a good job for me in spotting flaws and higher end prospects too. I revamped the model after the twenty nineteen season, but I can look back and utilize what I call draft capital delta, which is basically the difference between where my prospect model scored a player versus where that player was drafted so one example is with Henry Ruggs. Ruggs had a ninetieth percentile score in my model. Having such good draft capital, his draft capital percentile was about seven to eight percentile spots ahead of where his prospect score was, so his draft capital delta was minus seven percent. One of the bigger differences that I've seen over the last five years, especially among higher end players. I think what the model does is it allows me to just be rational. Like a lot of analytically minded people were completely off of Jalen Waddle last year, and while I did see there being some variance to his profile, my model still saw him as a worthy enough prospect, especially with draft capital, so I was able to rely on that and still place him in a tier with Devonte Smith post draft, even if some numbers driven analysts were just completely turned off. It's not an answer that people always want to hear. They often want to listen to analysts that say, absolutely draft this guy or absolutely avoid this player at all costs. My brain doesn't think that way. Everything is about value and understanding variants. You have to make smart bets, and that's what the model has allowed me to do. This sess question says Hey, JJ, congrats on the new gig and looking forward to all the new things you're going to be putting out there. Thanks. I have a question about when to move off of players who have high draft capital and dynasty. How or when do you decide that a player just doesn't have it even though he has a good prospect profile. I'm thinking of guys like Jerry Judy, Jalen Reger, Ceh Miles Sanders, et cetera. Love the podcast and all the work you do, Brad Tea, so you know my answer is going to be it depends, and it does depend. You have to take all of these things on a player by player basis, but we can at least ask ourselves some questions to help answer this. If a player is underperforming, the easiest thing to ask yourself is if there's a reason he's underperforming, can you at least make some excuse? With Jalen Reger, it's harder to come up with excuses than someone like Jerry Judy. With CECH, when you ask that question, you then wonder why he's not seeing more pass catching work. So you go down this path of asking more questions and digging into that player. The second piece of this is the market, and I'd argue this is the most important piece. We know that players who don't produce early in their careers and I'm talking like baseline production here, we know if they don't produce early in their careers, chances are they're not gonna be high end fantasy producers late in their career or ever. And I could make a strong argument for every single one of the players that you named in this question. I could argue that they're not going to be studs in fantasy football. I think Judy is the one that you could maybe find reasons to buy into, but even he's iffy. If the market is still high enough on those players, you can generally trade them away. Like if the market sees them as top fifteen or top twenty players at their position, you know the likelihood of them becoming that after a slow start to their career it's pretty slim. I always go back to Nakill Harry with this stuff. I liked Nikil Harry as a prospect, though I will say had I had the revamped model for that twenty nine nineteen class, I wouldn't have pounded the table for Harry like I did. I know that sounds like hindsight analysis. I know, it sounds like I'm just making up for a mistake. That's not really the case. He's a ninety first percentile prospect in the model right now. That's good, but it's not special. But after his rookie season he was still like wide receiver thirty in dynasty rankings, and given how poor rookie seasons correlate the players not being good in fantasy football, he was a clear cell based on the market. It's just a case by case thing, though. Ask the right questions and you'll figure out how to properly evaluate a player and then from there check how people are valuing them. And by the way, this is why the year two model can be really helpful. I put a bunch of year two profiles in the Late Round Prospect Guide, which again you can go purchase on Late round dot com. This last question is from Marco. It says, hey, JJ, what is your general approach to dynasty team building? Not from startup but moving forward with existing teams we have now? So if you took over an orphan, how would you assess the team and what moves you would make? For example, build through which positions, balancing youth versus production, et cetera. I think you can look at a team and generally see if it's going to be competitive right away or if it's not going to be, And the way you do that is no different than how you do like a redraft team, because you're just looking at the current ear so you can get an idea right away if it's competitive or not. From there, you should look at the rest of the league. I think this goes overlooked a lot. See if there are any powerhouses or teams in that league that you have no chance against or a very slim chance. If it's a pretty flat distribution and you know that you can win right now, then you can lean into that a little bit. You can make riskier moves that hurt your future a little bit. But I do want to stress right now that there's enough variance in the playoffs. People typically make too big of a deal out of rebuilding versus going all in. You don't have to think of it in such an extreme way. It shouldn't have to take you years and years to rebuild a team. I mean it can because you might make some bad moves, but it doesn't have to be that way. But if my team is not ready number one, I'm gonna do what I can to trade away my running back assets, and then from there, I'll look at any aging, depreciating assets and trade them away and I'll try to get picks. Running Back is almost always the last piece of the puzzle for me, because teams are going to be willing to get rid of them in a rebuild, so they'll be available for trade. But also they're generally more productive assets in year one than wide receivers are, So if you have a good foundation everywhere, you can PLoP in some running backs from a rookie draft and then you're good to go. Now, I could spend an entire episode talking about this, but that's at least the high level approach. This last question is from Jeremy h. It says, Hey, JJ, do you think trading out of the first round for multiple second round picks is sound strategy given this year's draft isn't top heavy. Thanks, It depends a lot on the type of format that you're referring to, but I happen to think that there are some really good wide receivers at the top this year, and Drake London, Garrett Wilson, and Treylon Berks. There are other great wideouts in this class, but I would want one of those three at least at this point, over any other wide receiver. They're in their own tier. The running back class is definitely lacking, and I like some of the guys who could go on Day three, but to me, Brees Hall and Isaiah Spiller are currently in a tier of their own. It may be less top heavy than like last year's draft, but I at least still see those guys separating themselves from the pack. I at least wanted to get that out of the way and say that to me, there are some elite players versus their position in this class. But if you're in a superflex rookie draft, if you're in a super flex league, I can definitely make the argument to trade back because I'm worried about this quarterback class. Others who are quarterback needy may end up wanting to reach on those players, which means trading back is a lot more viable. So hopefully that makes sense. I think we've seen flatter distribution and rookie drafts in the past. Personally, this is probably an average class for that you're in a super flex league, trading back to acquire more picks makes a lot of sense. This last question is an email that says, hi, jj, I've heard you before say you generally look at dynasty in three year windows. Yet you said you wanted the top wide receivers over the running backs because they'll be there in six years thoughts. Thanks Randy. Yes, so this just plays into what I said earlier. Players who crushed in years one to three, they're the players that are still crushing it six years into their career. And for my model, I'm looking at years one to three because you should want production right away from your players. Not only is it giving you points for your fantasy team, but it's also allowing that player to appreciate in value without any question marks. Like let's just go back to Jerry Judy. You may really like Jerry Judy, and I think he's good. I've got nothing against him, but you can't tell me that you'd view Jerry Judy the exact same right now if he averaged seventeen points per game last year when he was healthy, even if he was the exact same player, in your eyes, you want that production immediately because it brings value to your team. So That's why I care about years one to three, because we usually get a very very good idea of how good that player is during that timeframe, and the players who do well during that timeframe are usually the ones who do well later in their careers as well. That's going to do 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 it. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. Be sure to check out lateround dot com for all the things that I'm offering. Other than that, Enjoy your weekend.