719: Mailbag 12/2/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha, j J Zacher Reason. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode seven hundred and nineteen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Fandel and GMC are back to bring you the GMC Sierra Mountain Climber Pick them, a free to play contest series. It gives you a chance to win a share of ten thousand dollars in Fandle site credit every Sunday courtesy of GMC. Here's how it works. Every Sunday during the NFL season, you'll have a chance to answer questions based on the day's one PM and four twenty five PM games. The more questions you answer correctly, the higher up the mountain you'll move. If during any week you answer every question correctly for a perfect score, you'll reach the summit and you'll win your share of ten thousand dollars in site credit. The contest series is live, so head Tofandel dot com slash free Slash Contest slash GMC to start climbing the mountain. It's a mail bag day. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Cornhole God. It says Damian Pierce rest of season outcome. So this was easily the most requested topic this week. What should we be doing with Damian Pierce? And as someone who has Pierce everywhere, I'm asking myself that exact same question. He's had back to back stinkers and the Houston offense is just not good enough to give him a high floor each week, So what should we expect? Let me give you both sides of the argument here, the good and the bad. The bad side for Pierce is that Houston's offense is bad. It hasn't been good all year. They're tied for second to last in offensive touchdowns and they rank dead last in number fires expect a points model, which is adjusted for strength of opponent. The Texans are also putting themselves in worst positions offensively. From weeks one through nine, which is when Damian Pierce did a lot of his damna. The Texans trailed by ten plus points on roughly twenty three percent of their offensive snaps. Over their last three games, that number is shot up from twenty three percent to seventy three percent. The vast majority of their plays of late have been run while trailing by ten or more points. And what happens when teams trail by a lot of points they throw the ball, they abandon the run, and Pierce isn't irrelevant in the passing game. It's just that when games get that far out of hand, you run the risk of what happened last week where the Texans just stopped playing him. Dara Gumbawallee was getting run in that offense. That's a serious issue, especially when the Texans get the Browns this week as seven point underdogs. Then it's the Cowboys, then it's the Chiefs. Those are two more games with blowout potential, and then there's the Titans, who have been good against running backs for most of the season. And then finally in week seventeen, you get some relief against Jacksonville. Now, if you want the good side to this, his matchup against Cleveland this week is pretty good. It's good on paper. The Browns are actually the top matchup and adjusted fantasy points allowed running backs the matchup against the Chiefs. That's not that bad either on paper. And just because we think games are gonna go a certain way doesn't mean that they will and then once again, there's that juicy game in week seventeen, And if you want to pinpoint the last couple of games where he's been really bad, the Texans faced Washington, the second toughest team for running backs in fantasy, and then they had that game against Miami. In that game, the Dolphins got out to a super big lead early. Yes, that can happen in the future, of course, but at least consider this. Eighty eight percent of Houston's offensive plays last week came while trailing by double digit points. That was by far a season high. In other words, that was not the norm. Things have been trending the wrong direction, yes, but it's not likely we see that rate continue through the end of the year. So overall, my nervous about Damian Pierce one million percent. Yes, he's a very volatile fantasy asset right now because of how bad the Texans are, But I'm not a believer that things will be as miserable as they've been the last couple of weeks. To me, Week thirteen is a really important game to see how things might go rest of season. This next question from Twitter's from at Mountain Man MT. Can you dig deeper into Jilannie Woods breakout. Seems like every pass in the second half of the Monday night game went to him. Is this a sign of increased usage moving forward? So, first off, Jelannie Woods is a complete monster. You want to always go after the freak athletes a tight end in fantasy football, and he is absolutely that. And you can stash Woods if you want to. You can leave your friends behind. Sorry that was a terrible dad joke, but sometimes these games happen and teams then say to themselves, oh man, we've got to get this guy more involved. But something to keep in mind is that Kylan Granson was out in that game. The Colts have sort of cycled through their tight ends all year, but Grantson tied Moali Cox for routes run back in week eleven. In Week ten, he was seeing almost half of Indianapolis as snaps. I also think the matchup itself was pretty decent for Jelanni Woods too, because Pittsburgh's scheme doesn't do that well against the slot. That area of the field. That's where we'll see these athletic tight ends line up. In that game, Jelanie Woods lined up in the slot on over forty one percent of his snaps according to PFF, but if you can stash him, I don't think it's a horrible idea as long as he's healthy. I've done it in a couple of leagues myself. Like I said, sometimes teams start to use these breakout players more after the breakout happens, and the Colts are trending in the wrong direction as a team, so it would make sense for them to want to get Woods more reps. This last questions from Patreon. It's from Andre. It says, what do you think are some of the main reasons for AJ Dillon's disappointing season? So you might remember some of the breakout running backs stuff that I talked through over the offseason and the ambiguous backfield information that I consistently threw at you. If you don't remember that, or if you didn't read the Late Round Draft Guide this offseason, I want to talk about an average draft position trend that's pretty bonkers and it relates directly to AJ Dillon. In that draft guide and on those shows, I would reference average draft position expectation ADP expectation, or how many points per game we'd expect a player to score based on where that player was being drafted in fantasy football. You can find this by plotting average draft position on one axis and then points per game on the other axis, and then the trend line that's created is expectation how many points we'd expect these players to score given where they're drafted. You can then look at how much a player exceeded or failed to exceed expectation. I refer to breakout players as guys who exceeded that expectation by three or more PPR points per game, and then true breakouts or when they exceed it by six or more points. Since twenty eleven and before this season, we've had thirteen running backs get drafted in the middle rounds so round six through nine, who had a teammate get selected in rounds one or two. So what does that tell you? It tells you that thirteen running backs were the RB two on their own NFL team while having what we would consider a stud running back as their teammate RB one because their teammates are getting drafted in the first or second round of fantasy drafts. Of those thirteen, you know how many were breakout running backs that year who exceeded ADP expectation by three or more points. None of them, and one of the players this year who fit that mold was AJ Dillon. This makes total sense as to why there is some logic here. Since twenty eleven, we've averaged point one sets of running back teammates per season finishing as top twelve running backs and points per game. It's happened one since twenty eleven where teammate running backs have been top twelve running backs and points per game. When it comes to teammates finishing in the top twenty four, that number is one point three per season. It's not a super common occurrence. It's way more common at wide receiver because there's not enough love to go around in a backfield and an NFL offense, you can see more wide receivers get to that point because hypothetically your offense can focus in and hyper target one or two wide receivers, which is exactly what we're seeing in Miami. It's a lot harder to do that at running back. So that's one of the reasons that AJ Dillon has failed this year. Aaron Jones. Dylan's upside was going to hit if Jones got hurt, But he's yet another data point of a player not breaking out with a stud in his backfield. But obviously the Packers offense isn't nearly as good either. They've scored twenty seven offensive touchdowns, or two point twenty five touchdowns per game. That number was three point one last year and four the previous year. They're also scoring their touchdowns through the air quite frequently. Green Bay being a worst team overall has led to more negative game scripts, and AJ Dillon's a grinder, he's a closer. Green Bay's pass rate the last two seasons were ranked sixteenth and twenty sixth in the league. This year they're thirteenth and almost eighty two percent of their touchdowns have come through the air this year. That's by far the highest rate in the league. So I would argue a lot of things hit that did not favor AJ Dillon, Aaron Jones being there and not getting injured, that's one of them. Dylan's upside came in the form of a Jones injury. The Packers are also not that good of a football team. You know, they generally do throw for a lot of their touchdowns versus the norm, but they're doing it at a really high rate this year. In fact, it's a ninety fifth percentile passed a rush touchdown ratio at least versus what we've seen over the last decade. And then I think entering the season, there was a lot of optimism surrounding Dylan's receiving role without DeVante Adams there, but he's seen a target share south of eight percent this year. Dylan had some things working against him entering the season, and then things got even worse in season. That's questions from twitters from at Isaac Baumgartle. It says, what's the long term value of Pachecko in Dynasty? I view him as a sell high before the playoffs. By the way, love your content. Thanks. So I know this is a Dynasty question, but this is one that I'm sure a lot of people are wondering because you know that I've been a Pachecko guy since April or May. I liked him during the draft process and he ended up doing well. It was a w for me. Let's take this in steps, though. The only reason I would sell him high right now or before the Fantasy playoffs would be because I feared Melvin Gordon, which is reasonable if you feel that way, if you want to go that direction, if you do feel that way. I get it. I don't totally feel that way, like I talked about on the fifteen Transaction show, so I personally can move past that and say, Okay, maybe he's at least a hold. The Chiefs have a really good schedule for Pachecko in the Fantasy playoffs. If you can sell the schedule to someone, sure, I get that, but I doubt that you can really do that easily in Dynasty, but the Chiefs had the second best running back schedule in weeks fifteen through seventeen this year. That's according to my adjusted fantasy points allowed numbers. Hypothetically, Isaiah Pachecko could do really well in the Fantasy playoffs, so there's still a chance his value increases because think of it this way too. If he overcomes Melvin Gordon, then fantasy managers are gonna think, oh man, the Chiefs are really committed to Isaiah Pachecko. But Gordon, to me, it's just as much about pass catching insurance as he is about Pachecko. Pachecko has been good on the ground this year. His success rate is above forty five percent. So if you're gonna sell, if that's your plan, I think it might be best to do that during the offseason. The last question this week is from Twitter's from at our Markowitz. It says, how much faith should I keep in Christian Watson? Is he an every week starter? I mean, it always depends on who you're starting over him. But Christian Watson is not some fluke. I mean he's kind of doing some fluky things. Yes, if there was a reason I called him out over a month ago when I was asked about my picks for this year's Amina Saint Brown, because the profile was there. He's a freak athlete, and as I always say, sometimes that translates, and it's been translating into this boom or bust production where there's been far more boom than bust. And the nice part is that the target chairs have been relatively consistent. Now, he was pretty fortunate to have that big touchdown last week, Yes, but he still walked away from that game with a twenty four percent target chair. Over his last three games, he's seen target shares of forty two percent, sixteen percent, and twenty four percent. Now, of course, we can't expect this touchdown pace to keep up. According to Pro Football Focuses Expected Touchdowns formula, over his last three games, he would have been expected to score two point three touchdowns, which is still really good, but he's scored six. He may be better than normal at scoring touchdowns. He probably is, but we can't expect him to be almost three times better than expectation. He can do this in small samples though. That's how this works. He's got that kind of slate breaking upside each week, sort of like Gabriel Davis, but without a stud in Stefan Diggs on his team. And by the way, I'm recording this before the Thursday night game, and Watson was a better prospect than Davis objectively. So is he an every week starter? I think in a lot of leagues. Probably yes. His peripherals have been very strong. Even though the touchdown scoring is likely to calm down, he can still be pretty productive. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by streaching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out lateround dot com. Otherwise, thanks for listening this week. Everyone greatly appreciate it. Good luck in Week thirteen. I'll talk to you next week.