612: Buy Candidates

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachera JJ zacher Reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachareson and this is episode six hundred and twelve of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Not gonna lie that was a little weird. It was a little weird doing a different intro for today's show, but it's been a really fun week since launching Late Round Fantasy Football. I really appreciate all the love and support from everyone, truly, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about and why today's podcast intro was different, listen to the announcement that I put in the podcast feed last week. I moved on for my job at Number five and Fandel, I'm independent now. You can check out all the things that I'm offering over on lateround dot com. This podcast is largely going to stay the same though, and on today's show, I'm gonna talk through some of my biggest buy candidates in Dynasty this offseason. These are players who I think are undervalued by the market, who have a good chance to pay off if you make the investment right now. And I should add I didn't force any recommendations on this show. I try to never do that. I actually don't have any quarterbacks or tight ends that I specifically call out because I didn't have any obvious buyes at those positions or players that I wanted to talk about in detail. There are guys that I'd be more than willing to trade for who play quarterback and tight end, They're just not obvious enough to call out on today's show. So in total, there are six players that I talk about today. If there are other players that you're curious about, feel free to drop a question for this week's Mailback episode. I'll gladly answer it now before digging into those candidates. The big game is finally here. The twenty twenty one NFL season is down to two teams, and Fandel is giving you a chance to get in on the action with a massive daily fantasy contest. There are over three million dollars worth of prizes to be had, and all you have to do is head over to fandle dot com and create your daily fantasy lineups, compose the players from the Bengals in the rams. Then you can sit back, watch your players compete and win more with FANDLE eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandle app for more details. Okay, I've hinted a ton at this over the last month on this show, but I think that Elijah Moore is a buy in Dynasty right now. It may be crazy to say that because you're gonna have to give up a little bit to invest, but I'm very bullish on More. I've been very bullish on More. My prospect model had him as a ninety six percentile wide receiver after the draft, and he pretty much checked every box aside from having alpha size. He was an early declarer. He had high marks in each production metric that my model looks at, and his draft capital was good too. The one kind of concern that I had with More outside of the model entering last year was that he might just be a slot guy and that had a chance of limiting his ceiling. Well, that's not really a concern anymore. In twenty twenty one, More only played twenty eight percent of his snaps from the slot, according to Pro Football Focus, and he's still average twelve point six PPR points per game, including seventeen point seven PPR points per game over his final seven and then he got hurt. And I mean he was looking like a true league winning player before that injury, before he missed the Fantasy Football playoffs, he was already a really good prospect. But because of his performance in year one, he's now got a ninety seven percentile score in my year two model. That model predicts how well we expect a player to perform in year two and three. Players with that high of a percentile score end up doing very very well. Since twenty eleven, and among wide receivers who have played three seasons in the league, so through the twenty nineteen class, wide out's ranked in the percentile of ninety five to one hundred. They've absolutely crushed of the seventeen in that tier, which I understand it's not a massive massive sample, but of the seventeen in that tier, each one gave you at least one season in year two or three with twelve or more PPR points per game. Almost sixty percent of them gave you a season with eighteen or more PPR points per game. For context, eighteen PPR points per game would have ranked as the wide receiver five this past year. Sixty percent of the wide receivers who have ranked in this percentile range have hit that in year two or year three. And if you're sitting there saying that's too small of a sample size, okay, I understand that. Now let's add nineteen wide receivers who ranked in the ninetieth to ninety fifth percentile in year two model since twenty eleven. That's through twenty nineteen. The hit rates among those players, they're not as good, but about half of them gave you one season in either year two or year three with fourteen or more PPR points per game. That's a fringe wide receiver two season in points per game. But again, Elijah more ranked in the ninety seventh percentile. If you look at players who sort of went through a similar journey in my model, going from like a ninety six percent tile to a ninety seven percentile from a prospect score standpoint to a year two model standpoint, it's just littered with hits. And he's still twenty one years old. He's turning twenty two in March. So I'm very into Elijah Moore and I would not be surprised if he goes nuts in twenty twenty two. At least twenty twenty three. The odds are at least in his favor. I would rather have more than a player like Terry McLaurin or Keenan Allen at this point very easily, and since I rarely trade for running backs and often build through wide receivers in Dynasty, I would take Elijah Moore over a lot of the highrish end running backs too. I hope you're ready for this next one. If you're driving, you might want to pull over Kishan Vaughn. I know, I know, I know, I know. Buying expensive running backs just is not my thing, though, and fortunately Kishan Vaughn not expensive. He's older than you'd think, though, that's for sure. Vaughn has played two years in the league now, and he's gonna be twenty five years old in May. I mean, Joe Mixon is less than one year older than Kishan Vaughn. That's not ideal, but Vaughn is not costly at all. Some people probably drop Von at some point last season, at least in shallower dynasty leagues. Here's why I would trade something very insignificant for Kishon Vaughn. Tom Brady's retirement is going to have a ripple effect. Without a quarterback, the Buccaneers are no longer in win now mode, at least at this time. Of course, anything can happen, like Aaron Rodgers going there, which I don't think is gonna happen. They're at least not in some like all in mode right now, like they don't have the most competitive team in the world without Tom Brady. Maybe that changes, but maybe that doesn't. If it doesn't, I have a hard time believing that they're going to re sign Leonard Fournette or Ronald Jones. And if the two of them are out, that means that all of a sudden, Keishon Vaughn is the Buccaneers starter. And while Vaughn ended up being a bust, relatively speaking, I didn't think he was that bad of a prospect. He ranked in the eighty sixth percentile in my model coming out, which yes, I'm openly telling you guys that my model was wrong about key Shon Vaughn. It doesn't get everything right, but he had a lot of the right actre including an underrated receiving profile, and I didn't think that he looked all that bad down the stretch when he got more opportunity in twenty twenty one, and even though his year two score was not good given his rookie season sucked. Again, that's just part of the equation. We've got to look at costs too, And depending on your source, he's being ranked below someone like Jeff Wilson right now, who's not only older, but he's a free agent who's unlikely going to get a starting gig somewhere. Vaughn at least has a shot to be the starter in Tampa Bay. He has some shot. It may not come to fruition, but it's the type of micro transaction that you can make in order to add value to your roster. Players ranked in Vaughn's range have minuscule hit rates. At least, Vaughn is someone with an interesting profile who has a better shot to be his team's lead back than other players listed around him. If I can send a bench player that's there strictly for depth for Keishan Vaughan, I'm doing it. I'd rather not send any picks. Though there have been nine wide receivers since the merger to hit ninety five receptions in more than one season before turning twenty six, Clearly, given the NFL's direction over the last decade and a half. These players are all pretty recent because of a more pass heavy league. Here's the list though, Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Marshall, Odell Beckham and Kwan Bolden, aj Green, DeAndre Hopkins, Jarvis Landry, Michael Thomas, Juju Smith Schuster. You could argue that Juju Smith Schuster is the single most undervalued player in Dynasty right now. You can get him as a mid range wide receiver four. That seems crazy to me, and it's definitely based on recency bias. Look at what Juju's done the last two seasons. Two seasons ago, he catches ninety seven passes, but he finishes with just eight hundred and thirty one yards. Now, he did score nine times. But the narrative around Juju is that he was some low aid dot, can't do anything down the field type of wide receiver. But I don't know how true that is. Is Juju a number one guy? No, not in the traditional sense, And we have some evidence that when you look at what happened when Antonio Brown left Pittsburgh, Juju didn't produce. We have evidence that he's not a number one or typical number one wide receiver, and I think that's why his free agent market looked the way that it looked last season. So let's just call it what it is. He's most comfortable in the slot, he's best there, and we've seen the Steelers utilize him there more and more through the years. Your one Jujus slot rate was fifty nine percent according to PFF. Year two, that rose to sixty one percent when he played alongside Antonio Brown, year three sixty seven percent, but over the last two years has been eighty five percent and eighty percent. It's not shocking that he's seen lower average depth of target looks in the Steelers offense in recent seasons. Over the last two years, Juju's rate of seeing a fifteen plus air yard target has been ten point seven percent and nine point four percent in years one through three. So before the last two seasons those numbers were twenty one point five percent, nineteen point three percent, and nineteen point four percent. He was seeing deep balls at twice the frequency before the Steelers went into this mode of getting the ball out quick to protect their offensive line and Ben Roethlisberger. There's not really evidence pointing to the fact that Juju l like got worse at catching deeper passes. They just didn't happen as frequently because of the offense he was playing in and the slot role that he was pushed to. So let's put this together. Smith Schuster has done things on the volume front, on the reception front that only studs have done. He's still just twenty five years old, and he doesn't turn twenty six until November. And while he's played more of a slot role in recent history, we shouldn't let that overshadow his actual skill set. He's a bruising wide receiver who can generate a ton of yards after the catch, and just because he wasn't seeing down the field targets at the same rate over the last two years doesn't mean that he's incapable of catching down the field targets. I think that Jarvis Landry comp on that list is actually a pretty good one. We all may think of Jarvis Landry right now today, but Landry is also not in the greatest situation. He's also twenty nine years old, so things are a lot different. At twenty five, Landry hit one hundred and twelve receptions. Then over the three years after that, his reception totals were eighty one, eighty three, and seventy two. Let's not bury Juju Smith Schuster just yet. He's a free agent, and he could easily find himself in a more desirable situation than the one that he had in Pittsburgh, at least in Pittsburgh over the last two seasons. He's a really good wide receiver, so you should be buying him right now if you want sort of an edgy or buy candidate. How about Curtis Samuel. Now, I thought Diami Brown was a decent prospect coming out last year, but his odds of hitting took a big hit after his rookie season. He's got a year two model score that ranks in the seventy second percentile. Historically, players in that tier have failed to hit ten or more PPR points per game in either year two or year three ninety percent of the time. I don't think it means Brown is doomed as a piece of this Washington offense. It just means I doubt that he sees the volume to be a high volume contributor at the position and a fantasy contributor. So enter Curtis Samuel. We know Terry McLaurin is that team's number one wide out. But Samuel's intriguing given that he's still only twenty five years old, and like Juju Smith Schuster, Samuel missed the majority of the twenty twenty one season because of injury. Now, unlike Juju, and this is logical, but Samuel's not nearly as costly. Dynasty League football dot COM's January eightp they have Samuel at wide receiver sixty four, after Robbie Anderson and Russell Gage, and right before Devonte Parker. The question I have for you, guys is why not Samuel has not gone down the traditional path for a wide receiver. He was listed as a running back during his three years in college. Despite this, and despite entering the league at a pretty young age, Samuel had one hundred and five targets and ninety seven targets back in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, respectively. He had eighteen percent target chairs in both seasons, with one of those seasons pro rating to almost a twenty percent share. That season, he averaged over fourteen PPR points per game. He just was injured in twenty twenty one. The lack of playing time really dropped his Dynasty stock. But again, he's still just twenty five, and it's a twenty five year old wide out who didn't have the same experience as ninety nine percent wide receivers who entered the league. We don't know what the quarterback situation looks like in Washington or is gonna look like. We don't know exactly what the pass catching situation is gonna look like. And yeah, chances are Samuel doesn't amount to anything. We have to keep that in mind. You might be sitting there right now saying to yourself, Curtis, Samuel, are you serious. There's no way he gives you a difference making season, And I wouldn't even disagree with you. It's highly unlikely that Samuel gives you some Stutley wide receiver one season. Maybe that means that you don't want to go after him. That's totally fine, that's reasonable. But there are plenty of dynasty leagues with deep starting rosters. He's intriguing in those, and above all else, this is a costplay. All of these are costplays. We have evidence of Samuel being productive. We know he's still young, and then he was a raw prospect coming out that ambiguity seems like the right type of bet in that range. So no, I'm not some like Curtis Samuel stan This is merely a costplay. I'm actually a little bit surprised that Khalil Herbert is as cheap as he is. Again, this isn't me saying that Herbert is going to be some stud. Our expectations should not be high, but our expectations collectively clearly aren't high. He's being ranked as a low end RB four, high end RB five in Dynasty when there's a lot more going for him than I think people realize. Number One, David Montgomery is a free agent in twenty twenty three. His rookie deal is going to be up then, So that's a plus for Herbert. The Bears backup. Number two, We've got a new coaching staff in Chicago. We can project Montgomery to be a bellcal in that offense next year, but we can't just lock it in. New coaching staffs naturally bring a little bit more variance. Number three, and probably the most important, Herbert was good this year when he got a shot. We can look at yards per carry where Herbert beats Montgomery, but yards Perkrey is not that good of a statistic, so I won't even get into that. But Herbert looks better, or is at least on par analytically versus Montgomery. Across the board, Herbert had one hundred and three carries this past year. Montgomery had two hundred and twenty five. And Herbert was better at gaining positive yards, he was better at gaining two or more yards. He was far better at gaining twenty or more yards. And the court to number fiveers expected points model, Herbert had a forty one percent success rate. Montgomery was at thirty nine percent. Now, they're not massive differences, but I think it's important that we recognize that Herbert was pretty good as a rookie, at the very least in the short term. And this assumes the coaching staff wants to utilize Montgomery the same way they did last year. You're looking at a strong handcuff. But then in a best case scenario, this backfield is split for a little while, Montgomery leaves next year and this becomes Herbert's backfield. I don't think it's that crazy to think that's possible given how well Herbert played in year one. So to me, given his cost, he's a clearby now. The last player I want to talk about today is more high profile, and it's DK Metcalf. I'm seeing some ADP data from January that has DK Metcalf ranked below DeVante Adams, and I cannot comprehend it. Metcalf is twenty four years old and won't be twenty five until December. DeVante Adams, while a brilliant wide receiver, is almost exactly five years older. If the fear with Metcalf is that he's gonna lose Russell Wilson, do we not have the exact same fear with DeVante Adams and Aaron Rodgers. I also think that's a little bit overblown because DK Metcalf is a good wide receiver. Did he have a down year? I mean kind of? I guess. Metcalf finished with a twenty seven percent target share that was highest on Seattle. Tyler Lockett's pro rated share was four percentage points lower. Metcalf has now done through his three years, He's now done exactly what you want to see from a target share standpoint. Year one he had a twenty percent share, Year two, twenty four percent, year three twenty seven percent. Targets are a talent statistic. He's being targeted because he's good, and he's been targeted at a higher rate year over year over year. Now, he saw his points per game drop from twenty twenty to twenty twenty one, from almost seventeen to fourteen point four, and he didn't have the most consistent season in the world, especially when you look at how he finished things well. That drop in points per game production is gonna happen when you go from converting almost forty four percent of your fifteen plus airyard targets to thirty two percent. On those types of targets, Metcalf lost two hundred and twenty one yards year over year. Metcalf's catch rate on fifteen plus airyard throws during his rookie year was forty three percent. In twenty twenty, it was forty four percent this past year thirty two percent. Those numbers tend to regress. Now. The touchdowns were still there in twenty twenty one thanks to his strong red zone presence, and I think we can feel confident that that's not going to go away. He's now seen eighteen, sixteen and twenty red zone targets over his first three years in the league. He's just a massive red zone threat. He gets utilized. There what made him appear worse this year, And he was worse this year production wise, but it was a lot of his catch rate related statistics. They were just down. So his yardage number was down pretty dramatically, and obviously his yards per target rate as well. But given what we saw in year one and year two, it seems unlikely that this is the new norm, and I just disagree with where people are ranking him. I have him at wide receiver four, and I have him as the fifth best player overall in dynasty. In single quarterback leagues, ADP hasn't closer to wide receiver seven in a fringe first rounder. In single quarterback formats, it may seem like a small difference, but that early in the draft, it's actually pretty signal. I'm way more on the by side than the cell side with DK Metcalf, even if the quarterback situation is a little bit up in the air. Now, again, just to reiterate what I said at the top, there are plenty of players that I'd be willing to trade for this offseason. These six just seem like these six that my tiers and rankings disagreed with. Most which, by the way, you can get my dynasty tiers and rankings over in the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon page. To get that link, just head to Lateround dot com. It's right there, and while you're there, don't forget to pre order the Late Round Prospect Guide. That prospect guide launches March fourteenth and includes a detailed breakdown on my prospect model profiles for this year's classes running backs and wide receivers, and then also all kinds of information on my year two model. So again, go to lateround dot com check them all out. Otherwise, it's going to do it for today's show. 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 forward pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter a Lateround QB. Like I said earlier, I'm gonna be dropping the mailbag episode on Friday. You can hit me up on Twitter for those mailbag questions like you do each week, but you can also ask them on Patreon. I'll have a thread for patrons where you get priority access, or you can also ask that question via a new email address, which is podcast at lateround dot com. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you then