555: Mailbag 10/1/21

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Speaker 1: This is the Lab podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher.

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Speaker 2: Reson What's up Everyone.

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyes and the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode five five five of the Late Round podcast the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Three things before we get to this week's questions. First, I mentioned this before the season, but I want to remind people that I won't be taking mail bag questions via email in season. Unfortunately, when I've done this in the past, people started crushing my inbox with start sick questions and things become tough to manage when that happens. I just have to be realistic about my time. I don't want to ignore people, so it's easiest to just make emails off season only, and there are places to ask those start sick questions, like on Twitter throughout the week or during my start sit show on YouTube each Sunday. So thank you for your understanding with that. It's greatly greatly appreciated. Second, for those of you who listened to the show on Spotify, I apologize for the issues with last week's mailbag episode. It just didn't go to Spotify. I just wanted to let you know that I've contacted everyone that I can contact to try and make sure that it doesn't happen again in the future. There unfortunately wasn't anything that I could have done differently to get that posted, but hopefully we don't run into that problem again. Third, don't forget about this week's listener League. Check out fandle dot com Slash League slash Listener League to join. It's a rake free contest that cost five dollars to enter and has fifteen hundred dollars in prizes. You can interrupt the three lineups in the contest again. That's fandle dot Com Slash League Slash Listener League. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandle app for more details. Now let's get to the questions. The first question this week is from at Johnny Black Underscore HS. You said to ask this again after week three? Have you come to Jesus on Tom Brady being awesome yet? And that with his supporting cast, finishing outside the top twelve would be very tough, So Johnny Black hit me up on Twitter after Week one where he said, quote, are you ready to come to Jesus? On Tom Brady and his coming fifty touchdown two thousand and seven ESQ season. Never understood your take that it was very reasonable he'd fall out of the top twelve given the absolutely elite nature of his supporting cast paired with a pass first throw deep philosophy. As you'd probably guess, this isn't the only person who's hit my Twitter mentions about Tom Brady since the start of the season, and this all stems back to my Bold Predictions article in podcast that I did before the season, where one of the bold predictions was that Tom Brady would finish outside the top twelve a quarterback.

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Speaker 2: So I want to address this, especially.

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Speaker 1: Because of last week's fifteen Transactions episode where I called Tom Brady a cell.

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Speaker 2: I stand by.

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Speaker 1: That process one hundred percent. Brady through two weeks had a ten and a half percent touchdown rate, the Buccaneers had scored nine touchdowns. All of those touchdowns were passing touchdowns. As I said on that show, if you could sell Tom Brady as a top three quarterback, you should do it. I still think that's a valid process. I still think that if you can sell Tom Brady at his current ranking, like if someone's viewing him as a top two or three fantasy quarterback, that you do it. I would rather have at least Patrick mahomes, Kyler Murray Lamar Jackson, and Josh Allen over Tom Brady. The guys who I liked more than Brady coming into the season, like Dak Prescott and Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers. I think you can definitely make the argument for Brady over those guys at this point, but I don't think he's like substantially better. I don't think he belongs in that elite tier with the other players who have great passing numbers and rushing numbers. This idea that I don't think Tom Brady was or is awesome is honestly obnoxious, Like it's just silly. In what universe would I think Tom Brady is an awesome The take on Brady in the Bold Predictions piece was or one bold, because that's what a Bold Predictions article is about. It's about being bold. But number two, it has to do with how things are scored in fantasy football and the importance of rushing and how Brady lacks that what's interesting right now, too, is that we literally just saw some of this regression hit in week three. It just so happens the Bucks were in an ultranegative game script which we can't assume happens each week, and Brady threw the ball fifty five times. He had fifty attempts in week one and thirty six in week two, and it just so happens that Brady ended up getting a rushing touchdown. But Brady had one passing touchdown last week, and it came with a minute left in the game. The Buccaneers scored three times. Two of those three touchdowns were on the ground. The things I talked about on last week's show sort of came to fruition last week. And guys, please listen to last week's mailbag episode, so you know that I'm not sitting here trying to avoid an L or take a W.

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Speaker 2: That's a dumb thing to do in season. It's irrelevant.

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Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be completely objective to give you advice on how to approach which Tom Brady moving forward, and I think moving forward he's more of a fringe top five guy in fantasy rather than the literal QB one in fantasy football. So from the preseason to now, Yeah, I like Tom Brady Moore. It would be stupid for me to come on my show and say, nah, I still have Brady as the QB ten. I like Tom Brady more than I did a month ago in fantasy football. Now that we're seeing how things are shaking out with Dak Prescott, with Russell Wilson, with Aaron Rodgers, with Ryan Tannehill, that side of things is what's changed.

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Speaker 2: For me most.

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Speaker 1: It's not the fact that Brady has a chance to throw a lot of touchdown passes. Of course he does, look at his weapons. It's that we've filtered out some of the competition at the position so far, and that happens all the time at every position, but that's playing a role here with Brady in my shifting view. The idea though, that I thought Brady wasn't awesome or wasn't capable of doing what he's done through three weeks, that's silly, man. I even talk favorably about the Buck's passing attack on my early season Schedule analysis episode. Let's just be objective, That's all I ask for, both in how we approach the game and how we talk to each other about the game, and objectively, to me, if we look at the numbers and how this team is operating, I think it says that the other mobile quarterbacks are still better bets from here on out in standard leagues than Tom Brady. That doesn't mean that Tom Brady isn't awesome. The next question is from at Lee the Ot. Everyone is worried about Alan Robinson, and rightfully so. But with Atlanta struggling to break twenty points against a beatable Giants defense, how worried should we be about Matt Ryan's declining skills effectively derailing Calvin Ridley and Kyle Pitt's chances of having big years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we should definitely be worried. Right now.

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Speaker 1: Matt Ryan is playing a little bit worse than he did last year. He's actually been pressured at almost an identical rate according to Pro Football Focus when looking at twenty twenty to twenty twenty one, but he's been worse in a clean pocket. Now, maybe that's just sample size driven, but it's at least something to analyze after three games. We've got to keep in mind that this is a new offense schematically, and because Julio Jones is gone and the target distribution is much different as a result. So far the season, over thirty one percent of Atlanta's targets have gone to running backs. That was fourteen percentage points lower last season. Atlanta's never been close to that high over the last decade. On top of that, Ryan just isn't pushing the ball down the field. This could partially be due to a bad offensive line or the lack of Julio in that offense, but Ryan's rate of throwing at fifteen or more air yards over the last ten seasons has been seventeen point two percent. That's his average per season so far this year eight point six percent. Now, combine that with just a generally ineffective offense. That means you're not getting those chunk plays very often, and you're also not scoring a lot of points. That's a combination for a fantasy football disaster. And that's why Calvin Ridley looks the way that he does. Right now, Ridley has a twenty five percent target share in this offense, and he's averaging nine point seven targets per game. Last year, he had a target share of about twenty five percent. When you pro rate that sixteen games, and he was averaging nine point five targets per game. He had almost identical usage. But Number one, the offense isn't scoring a lot. Atlanta's averaging one point seven offensive touchdowns per game this year. That number was two and a half over the last two years. Number Two, the quality of those targets have not been as good as I just said. Matt Ryan's not throwing a deep very often, and Calvin Ridley is feeling that he has six targets this year of fifteen plus air yards, He's caught just one of them. Last year, through Week three, Ridley had fifteen of those targets. He had seven receptions on those targets. Last season, on those fifteen plus air yard targets, he had one hundred and ninety five receiving yards and two touchdowns. This year he has sixteen yards. His average up to target last year was over fifteen. Now, it's not any player that's as good as Calvin Ridley is and who's getting a twenty five percent target chair they're gonna end up being relevant in fantasy football. I think Ridley's gonna bounce back, maybe not to the expectations that we thought entering the season, but I think he's gonna still be fine from here on out. The usage is at least there. The same sort of goes for Kyle Pitts. The difference with Pitts is that his target share is currently under fifteen percent, So you've got a sub fifteen percent target chair and an ineffective offense that's not throwing the ball down the field. Again, that's a recipe for mediocre fantasy output. I would just naturally expect Pits to get better as a player as the season goes on, but I'm much much more willing to buy Ridley low than Pitt's low, though I think that both of them are mostly holds at this point. This last question is from at Dodgers Colts. Is there a difference between Antonio Gibson and Chase Edmonds? Thinking about trading Gibson for a package that includes Edmonds. Thanks for all your hard work. So yeah, there's a difference between the two for sure. When we think about players in fantasy football, we shouldn't just think about how many points they're gonna score. We should always be cognizant of how they score their points, because that allows us to see their floor. Ceiling combo a little bit better. Chase Edmonds is more or less doing what we expected him to do entering the season, at least what I expected. He hasn't given us that big performance, but he's been super super stable. In PPR formats, he has an RB seventeen twenty and twenty four performance. His target share is seventeen percent, his running back rush are forty seven percent. Edmonds has won goal line rush James Connor has two, Kyler Murray has two. That's what we get with Chase Edmonds, a super solid option who we hope can find the end zone from further out because he's likely not going to see that much goal line work. Antonio Gibson is not that. Gibson has seen over eighty one percent of his team's running back rushes and over ten percent of his team's targets. He hasn't found the end zone on the ground this year, and he actually hasn't had a goal line rush, but we can probably expect him to be the goal line back. I would then argue pretty strongling that from an upside standpoint, Antonio Gibson has it over Chase Edmonds. The offense isn't nearly as good, but the backfield share is there and there's room for growth. It's a lot easier to see a higher target chair for Antonio Gibson than a higher running back rush share for Chase Edmonds. Now, in a full PPR format, do I think Gibson is gonna finish dramatically higher than Chase Edmonds. I mean, given the information that we have right now, the fact that Arizona's offense is just better, Edmunds is seeing a healthy target Shair Edmonds actually has more expected fantasy points and Gibson right now, I don't think Gibson is necessarily so dramatically better than Chase Edmonds. So if you want to make a trade of Gibson for Edmunds plus, that's fine. I still think from an upside standpoint though Gibson has it, which is why I like to break down how players are scoring points and seeing volume. But if you want to do a deal of Gibson for Edmunds plus, I'm not gonna stop you. As long as it's a PPR format. Just know that I think that Edmunds is much more of that floor type play than the ceiling play. Sometimes that's more than enough. The sas questions from at kit underscore color seven was Week three and anomaly for Moss over Singletary due to the blowout scorer or was there more to it and will apply going forward? Things definitely flipped in week three in Zach Moss's favor. Obviously, Moss was an active in week one, but in week two, Singletary still saw sixty two percent of the team's running back rushes and three targets to Moss's two. In Week three, though, Moss saw a couple more rush attempts and he had an additional target, and Moss played more snaps in week three. Honestly, both players have flashed this year. I think Moss makes more sense in a game script like they just had, and he's also the goal line back, or we should project them to be the goal lineback. Considering the Bills are a good team, that makes Moss attractive to roster moving forward. He's more of a flex play, but we can feel confident that he's going to see some high leverage touches and if he's able to maintain a six to ten percent target chair, then he's got a shot to be an RB two. I think we should just expect that, though it's a two headed monster in that backfield. I'm just saying I think Moss has more upside than Devin Singletary has now that the backfield is split again. The Sash questions from at reed H.

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Speaker 2: Smetzer.

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Speaker 1: When Jeff Wilson Junior returns from injury, do you believe he'll be Shanny's guy and make Sermon and Mitchell take a back seat. I don't think Jeff Wilson will be a bellcow, but I think he's worth a roster spot just in case. We've seen Wilson be a goal line guy for them in the past, and that's my fear that Elijah Mitchell sees some early down stuff and Wilson steps.

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Speaker 2: In ato the goal line.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a very real possibility. So Jeff Wilson right now is worth a roster spot if you have an IR spot. The Sash questions from at mister Davey Ross. What are the most important statistics that you look at to identify players to stash ahead of their breakouts? Calls you made like Jefferson and Higgins last year and Sanders this year. Thank you for your thoughtful words you shared about tags. Yeah, so it's really just the thing that I look at With every single player in fantasy, it's all about usage. I'm constantly monitoring wide receiver snaps, their routes, run, their target share. I'm watching how those things trend. Sometimes we'll see big jumps from one week to the next, but a lot of times it's just more gradual and sometimes it's just bad luck. Like Emmanuel Sanders to start the year as a perfect example. His usage was great all around, it just didn't connect. A lot of fantasy managers are gonna look at that end result. They're gonna look at fantasy points scored, but that doesn't tell you the whole story at all. You gotta peel that back and look at what went into that fantasy total. People are going to be more inclined to add players off the waiver wire who are scoring a lot of points. I'm more inclined to add players off the waiver wire who are seeing better and better usage. This ask questions from at Jacob Joe three six, six, two, four, seven oh eight. With you getting ninety percent of the snaps and seven targets in week three, do you think he's back to the player we drafted or are are we still nervous season long. It was dumb of me to not bring up Ayyuk on the ten Trend Show this week, So let's talk about him right here. I'm bullish right now. As you know, to Jacob, things looked a lot better in week three. He's now seen his snap right increase week over week, playing the majority of the snaps in week three, and he was much closer to Deebo Samuel and routes run. This past week he ran just three fewer routes that resulted in a sixteen percent target share against Green Bay. So yes, the peripherals are getting better and better. He's someone that if you can still buy lo on, go for it. I'm not sure he's going to live up to the expectations that some people had for him entering the season, but he's talented and he flashed serious potential in year one. He's someone that I would love to have on my bench right now. This last questions from at Obreger fifty six, what do we do with the Jets offense Corey Davis specifically, is he droppable or a hold? So I mentioned now the Jets were tough to trust on the ten Trend Show this week but I do think I want to amend that a little bit. I do think they're tough to try trust, and Corey Davis isn't like some obvious slam dunk play. But if you've got him this week, he's not a terrible start, giving the matchup and the Elijah Moore concussion. But the matchup piece is important here. So far, the Jets of Face of Panthers, Patriots and Broncos, those aren't the cakeiest matchups in the world.

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Speaker 2: So if there's some sort of silver.

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Speaker 1: Lining with how the Jets have performed so far this year, I'd say it's that they haven't had easy matchups. Week four should be a little bit easier against Tennessee. I'm not like guaranteeing that they do really well.

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Speaker 2: That would be stupid.

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Speaker 1: I'm just noting that this is the best matchup that they faced all season long. At least hold a player like Corey Davis. He still has a twenty one point six percent target share in that offense, and he hasn't dipped below a fifteen percent share in a single game this year. The last question this week is from at Eraser w is the Pollard is superior to Zeke Thing? A reality or more like a meme. As a Zeke manager, do I need to try and trade for Pollard? Well, it depends did you like Tony Pollard entering the season or did you like Zeke Moore? Because I feel like that's how people are viewing the situation. If you like Zeke going into the season, you probably like Zeke a lot right now. If you didn't like Tony Pollard, you're probably finding reasons to not like Tony Pollard. Let me just break this down, because both players are doing really well. According number fires Expected Points model, among running backs with twenty or more carries this year, Tony Pollard is first in success rate, Ezekiel Elliott is fourth. Next Gen Stats has Pollard first and Zeke and third. The Cowboys are using them in different ways, and they're using them in effective ways. I don't think that we can just assume that Pollard is superior to Zeke because he's not doing the same things that Zeke is doing. Zeke is facing more eight plus man boxes, and only Clyde Edwards Hilaire has seen a higher percentage of his rushes come against less than seven men in the box than Tony Pollard. Zeke is closer to average there. That's all according to next gen stats. So let's just sit back and realize they've both been good, and they both are good. Ezekiel Elliott has looked much much better than he did in twenty twenty, and Tony Pollard has been the perfect compliment. And I don't think that Pollard is just gonna take over Zeke's role. And if you're someone with Zeke, you don't need to trade for Pollard. In a scenario with Zeke, Pollard then serves more like a handcuff because you're probably not gonna start both guys at the same time unless you're in a pinch. So you having Zeke or not having Zeke doesn't necessarily change my mind on whether or not you should trade for Pollard. Like I'd say, anyone without Zeke could trade for Pollard if they want to. I think in those scenarios it's actually easier to do something like that when you don't have the RB one, which is Zeke in this case, because that way you're not putting all of your eggs into that one backfield basket, and we know there's a cap ceiling to backfields. It limits your upside. Hence the reason Pollard becomes more of a handcuff and doesn't have the same value when he's on the same fantasy team.

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Speaker 2: As Ezekiel Elliott.

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Speaker 1: But overall, even though Pollard's been electric and he looks awesome, Zeke's been playing really well too. It's okay to say they've both been good, and honestly, I would be pretty surprised if Zeke ends up losing his role in this offense without an injury. That's gonna know for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. I know to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week everyone, I really really appreciate it. Hope you enjoy football this weekend, and I will talk to you next week