754: Mailbag 4/7/23

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherwitha J. J. Zacherwson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacheryesen in. This is episode seven hundred and fifty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Remember to check out the Late Round Prospect Guide. The Guide is a one hundred and thirty five page PDF that's filled with information about this year's running back and wide receiver draft classes. You get profiles for each player who went to the combine, a breakdown of my models, and so much more. You can order now over on lateround dot com for just fourteen ninety nine and once you order, the guide gets delivered immediately to your email inbox. And once the draft is over, I'll be setting an updated guide with finalized prospect scores and new profile breakdowns that'll happen just a day or two after the draft, and that comes with your fourteen ninety nine purchase, So go check it out over on lateround dot com. The first question this week is from twitters from at skull Actuary. It says, lately third round wide receivers haven't panned out. We have to go back to twenty nineteen with Deontay Johnson and Terry McLaurin to find hits. Is this just noise or is the NFL getting better at evaluating wide receivers. So with questions like this, it's always important to first see what the norm is, what the expectation is. Since twenty eleven, if you look at players drafted after pick sixty four, so after round two, and until pick one hundred, so roughly round three, you get forty nine wide receivers. Of those forty nine, seven were able to give us a PPR point per game season of fifteen or more during one of their first three seasons in the league, and nine wide receivers gave us a twelve plus point per game season. If we focus on that seven out of forty nine number that hit fifteen points per game, that means that since twenty eleven, fewer than one third round wide receiver per year is hitting a high end wide receiver two season and one of his first three years in the l That's just some rough math for you to get going with a baseline. Now, you mention that we haven't seen hits since twenty nineteen, and that's not wrong. No player in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, or twenty twenty two has hit fifteen pper points per game, and every single one of the wide receivers have ended up being mediocre for the most part. I think Nico Collins and Josh Palmer might be the best players from the group. No one would consider them hits or at least big hits. I also don't think there have just been bad prospects drafted in that range. Diamy Brown was fine, David Bell was volatile, but he had upside. Brian Edwards had a good analytical profile. There were some very obvious bad picks, like a Mari Rodgers and Vayalis Jones. But it seems like there's just been some bad variants there because it's really hard to look at an eleven player grouping that's being taken from a low hit sample to begin with, Right like seven of forty nine third round wide receivers have been hits. Even if you want to raise that number to nine, that's eighteen percent of your sample, eighteen percent of eleven players over the last few years. That means we would have expected two of these guys to have hit. The fact that zero of them have hit doesn't necessarily tell us that anything has changed with NFL evaluation. I think there's just a lot of noise and variants there. And keep in mind some of these guys. A lot of these guys haven't even played three years in the league, so there's still some time for them to bounce back. I don't really anticipate any of them doing that, but you never know. But given historical hit rates in the third round, I don't think this is anything that we need to focus on now. You should be caring a lot more about round two wide receivers than round three wide receivers, if that's not clear, because the better the draft capital, the better hit rates you're gonna see, especially when paired with a good profile. This nast question is an email. It says, hey, JJ, which matters more when evaluating rookies early declare status or a player's actual age? And does early declared slash age matter more for running backs or wide receivers? Thanks Ale from Houston. So I really think this sort of just goes back to what I talked about on episode seven hundred and forty seven on taking metrics too far, because no matter what I answer here, it's human nature to take it and run with it. To look at this in some sort of binary way, if I say that early declare status matters more than age, then people will ignore age and focus on early declare status. Or if I say age is more important, there's going to be more of a focus on age than early declare status. The truth is, though everything works together, but I do think that breakout age matters more than raw age and early declare status. If I were to focus in on one age related metric, breakout age would be that metric. And you can look at breakout age in a lot of different ways. But if you have some way to show the age of a player when he did really well in college, that's gonna be valuable. Draft day age typically isn't that big of a deal when you're using it alongside other things, though it is one of the inputs in my running back model. A lot of that is because it's rare for super old players to get drafted early, just as an example, and then with early declare status, yes it's better than not. You would rather have a wide receiver declare early than not declare early. But it's not everything, and I do worry about it more at wide receiver than I do running back. I just wanted to throw this one on the show this week because I don't think that this is necessarily how we should think about these things. Some metrics are undoubtedly better than others, but very rarely are you looking at metrics by themselves and only themselves, or at least you shouldn't do that. You should want to build a story around a player by looking at their overall profile, and sometimes something like early declare status is going to matter a lot less if you have that context. Sometimes something like age is gonna matter more depending on the player, depending on the situation, certain production metrics are going to matter more or less. That's just my honest answer. The last question is from at stags too. It says, what's your outlook for TJ Howkinson this year? So earlier this offseason, I did a sell candidate's episode, and on that episode I talked about TJ Hockinson. It's really not that easy to talk about players like this because I don't think Hawkinson is bad. My beef with him from a fantasy perspective is that I just don't see him maintaining his target share year over year when he went to Minnesota he didn't all of a sudden become a better player. His yards per rout run numbers weren't dramatically different there. What was different was that he started seeing more volume in an offense that lacked alternatives. And it's still right now today does lack those alternatives. But Hackinson hit almost a twenty four percent target share per game rate in relevant games for the Vikings last year. Twenty four percent at tight end. That's not a normal number across multiple seasons from a non elite tight end. And I call Hockinson non elite because he's never had a yards per route run season like a Mark Andrews or a George Kittle. I mean Kittle hasn't had below a one point seventy to three yards per route run rate since his rookie season. Hawkinson's never been above one point six. We've seen twenty twenty seven tight end seasons with eight or more games played and a target share per game rate above twenty three percent since twenty eleven. This is essentially Hockinson on the Vikings. That may seem like a lot, but really it's been done by just thirteen tight ends. Travis Kelcey has done it five times Mark Andrews has done it four times, Darren Waller and George Kittle three times. Hawkinson has not been that type of tight end historically. Each of those guys consistently gave us better yards per route run rates than TJ. Hockinson has given us. Next on that list is Greg Olsen, who gave us three of those seasons, three seasons with a twenty three percent target share per game rate, and that, to me is probably the better comp for Hockinson, which isn't bad. Olsen was fine in that twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen range, but he wasn't winning you leagues the way a player like Travis Kelcey or Mark andrew wins leagues. Zach Ertz is another one who's similar to that. That's why this is really hard for me to talk through, because it's not that I'm saying that TJ. Hockinson is bad or can't be useful in fantasy. I think that he's gonna be useful. I think he can match ADP expectation. I just am always aiming for those elite guys at tight end, and at this moment in April, I don't know if he has that kind of ceiling because he hasn't been as good as the typical elite guys. He's more like a zach Ertz or a Greg Olsen, and for those types of players to do very very well in fantasy, they need super super high target chairs more so than one of Travis Kelcey, Mark Andrews or George Kittle needs. Honestly, it's pretty similar to how I viewed Dalton Schultz entering last season. It's just that Hawkinson's a better player, so fading Schultz was a lot easier to do. And maybe this is all something that you're okay with. Totally fine. I probably won't completely fade TJ. Howkinson, But I do think there's a lot of people out there who believe that he got substantially better in Minnesota. That's not really the case. He was fed more in a better environment for it, and that could keep up to some degree, but he wasn't some transformed and new tight end. And I know I can already hear you saying this. I thought targets were a talent statistic. I thought they were earned. They are. Hawkinson is going to see a solid target share floor because he's a talented player, but because He's not this uber efficient player per target or per route. He needs that volume to stick more than some other elite tight ends would and it's gonna be hard for that to happen. This last question from at LWOS Underscore Mike cash It says, can you rank these three prospects Sean Tucker, is He Abanacanada, Dwayne McBride. Yeah, I think it's in that order. There are a lot of running backs can bounce up and down after the draft depending on draft capital, like a Shawn Tucker or An Izzy or someone like Tank Bigsby. I really like all of those players. Tucker someone who I think is a very wide range of outcomes, but that's a good thing when you're talking potential Day two or early day three running backs. He's got one of the best production profiles in the class. He does compare favorably to collegiate productive busts like Jeremy McNichols, Eno Benjamin, but Dalvin Cook was a conference in my model too, and then with i Isiabana Kanda, one of his top comps in the Prospect Guide was and still is Isaiah Pacheco. He's got the size to handle a big workload, he's got the size speed combo that's not easy to find. He just doesn't have the best receiving profile in the world. And speaking of receiving profiles, that's why the model hates Dwayne McBride. McBride caught five passes in college. Across three years, he caught five balls. That's a problem. He had the seventh worst best season reception chair of any prospect who was drafted or at the combine dating back to twenty eleven. It's just really hard for me to buy into that. We know that backs who catch passes in college are not locks to do that at the next level, but we don't see receiving profiles like this translate very often at all. We actually haven't seen one this bad translate at all since twenty eleven. Now, I could see McBride being an early down guy who maybe can be used as a goal line back. Definitely more of a best ball player than a managed league player. But I'm definitely worried about where the upside's gonna come from, more so than the other two backs. Within this question the sess questions from Zach from Patreon. It says, how is Zay Flowers ranked with the fourth highest wide receiver score in your model, but has weak comps. Will comps help you decide where you ultimately rank a player. So when the Prospect Guide, each player page has information that includes their top three comparables, and those are based on the things that are in the model, so size, breakout age, best season, yards per team, pass attempt, and so on. Zay Flowers doesn't have the most attractive comps in the world. Zach is right. His top one was Philip dor Set that, it's Randall Cobb, and then it's Marcus Wheaton. I don't think his play style is necessarily captured there, but those are the objective comps that came back given the inputs that I just talked about. Now, this doesn't mean that he's bound to bust. One of those comps actually had a great career. All that means is that historically we haven't seen a lot of great production come from players with flowers profile. Within the context of this model, we also have to keep in mind that those are just three players. You're not going to capture a player by looking at three comps. To me, the comps are there to just give you a general idea of the type of player. That we're working with and if we've seen that in the past, and in some cases those comps are less of a match than others. I don't have that piece listed in the Prospect Guide, but flowers comps are not as strong as matches as someone like Jalen Hyatt or Quentin Johnston. To me, comps are more about storytelling and helping people understand more about a player. They shouldn't be the focus of any analysis, and I can speak for myself and say that they shouldn't be the focus of my analysis, but they're interesting. When comps are strong, we can feel a little bit better about a prospect knowing that the same type of profile hit in the past. But Zay Flowers is kind of a unique player. I said as much in the Prospect Guide. The more unique a player is, the more difficult it's going to be to find perfect comps for him. But to give you an idea of how much I use comps to rank players, Flowers has mediocre comps, but he could easily be my wide receiver three post draft. Right now, he's wide receiver four, but there's a real chance he makes the jump depending on draft capital. The comp piece is just an added bonus as opposed to being a true part of my process. Those last question is from at Mozamec. It says, all other inputs being equal, what impact does Chickaconquo's day three draft capital have in him potentially breaking out in your tight end model? So again, if this is your first episode of the podcast this offseason, you may not be aware that I've been working on a tight end model. Finally, it's in a really good spot too. You could read more about it in the newsletter archives over on late round dot com. The model actually isn't very tied to draft capital, at least in the same way as running back in wide receiver, which is a little bit surprising, but it's mostly because it's trying to capture and predict the elite tight ends, the real difference makers, and a lot of those players weren't drafted in Round one one. The year two model for tight ends does use a player's prospect score, though in a player's prospect score does still use draft capital, so naturally Chickakonquo's year two score has some input of draft capital. I wouldn't say it's super dramatic, though. The impact of draft capital in the year two model not super super impactful. I don't really know how to answer the one impact does his Day three draft capital have exactly? But I can tell you that if he would have balled out last year like been absolutely amazing, his draft capital wouldn't have mattered at all. He's currently in the eighty nine point six percentile, so he's almost a ninetieth percentile player in that model, which is very very good. Now, keep in mind this model isn't working off of a huge sample because there just aren't as many tight ends as there are wide receivers and running backs. It also goes back to twenty fifteen and not twenty eleven because of available data. But if the fourteen players who have been in the eighty eighth percentile are higher in the model, there have been three Day three picks. Those three are Chig, albert Oh and George Kittle. Both Kittle and Alberta looked better as prospects than Chigg did in the model. But it looks like things could go really really well here or they could really really go south. But since it's tight end, I want to take a shot at the upside. That's it for today's show, though 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 for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend and I'll talk to you next week