664: Mailbag 8/17/22

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Esen and this is episode six hundred and sixty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. We've got an early mailbag episode this week because of my schedule. There's an earlier Draft Guide update coming as well. But before getting these mailbag questions, I want to remind you about the established The Run Draft Kit established run as rankings for any fantasy format you might be playing in, and they continuously update as news breaks. You also get access to Evan Silva's top one fifty and along with it a change log that you can read to see why players are moving up and down his draft board. It's a great way to make sure you understand why players are ranked where they are, and the goal is to help you make better decisions, not tell you who to pick. And if you're in a best ball drafting, their strategy, rankings and insight can help you out a ton with roster construction. I know that I've personally learned a lot from their analysis. Establshtrung gives you a different perspective on fantasy football than I do. I think the combination of my work in THEIRS can help make this draft season a successful one. So head over to Established run dot com and purchase their draft kit, and when you do, use promo code JJ for a ten percent discount. That's promo code jay J. Also, there are some big news at Fandel Vandal has an all new mobile gaming app, FanDuel Faceoff. With Fandel Faceoff, you compete in quick fun games against other real people for real cash and as all sorts of games that you're familiar with, like a home run, Derby, Wheel of Fortune, puzzle and strategy games and more on the way. Contests are action packed and last between two to five minutes, so you can play on your couch, waiting in line during a commercial break wherever, and you can do it on your schedule. Plus, you can practice for free anytime, whether it be head to head, multiplayer or larger tournaments. Fandel Faceoff has something for you. Plus in most contests will be matched against players of a similar skill level, so you're never totally overmatched even as a beginner. Face Off is also tied to your FanDuel accountant wallet so you can easily use your daily fantasy funds or sportsbook winnings in the app. Visit fandle dot com slash faceoff, or download the Fandle Faceoff app in the Apple App Store today to get in the game. Agent location restrictions apply void where prohibited. Seefandle dot Com slash faceoff hyphen terms for terms and conditions. The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at al STOCKO. It says, is there a reason to feel confident about any of the first round running backs this year? They all seem to have serious availability concerns. Are star wide receivers less likely to get injured? You'll see less injury to wide receivers than running backs. Yeah, but I don't see how this season is necessarily any different for running backs than previous seasons. The fact of the matter is the hit rates for running backs in rounds one and two of fantasy drafts. It's way, way better than any other round of the position. You're inherently taking on an injury risk. It's the nature of the running back position. It's unfortunate, but it's how it is. So I would feel confident in early round running backs because early round running backs have historically been way better bets than how backs perform at later parts in your draft. The dropoff at wide receiver is there as well, but it's not as steep. That's what this is about. There's a very, very big drop off after the first couple of rounds. This is a huge reason why a hero RB approach can be really impactful in fantasy football. There are charts in the Late Round Draft guide that really show this too. You can see how often a player hits at different points per game threshold by ADP, and those charts really show the drop off that I'm talking about at running back. The next question this week is from Patreon. It's from Chris. It says, Hey, JJ, wondering how pre draft stud Khalil Shakir and the evolving Bill's depth chart have you feeling. Is he still above a riser like Pacheco in your mind? Thanks? So, this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's been reading or following my work this offseason, but my three highest rostered players this year from this year's rookie class, and this is across my dynasty teams, Kyle Phillips, Isaiah Pacheco, Khalil Shakir. I'm generally gonna have a higher percent rostered number for players who are drafted later, and I always gravitated to those three later in drafts, So I like Khalil Shakir quite a bit. One of the comps in my model was actually Cooper Cup and that's one of the reasons I was on in pre draft. And then he felt a Buffalo and it's a team that sort of has a vacancy in the slot, and I figured Shakira slot guy, could play in the slot. But the Bills seem to be trying him out everywhere, and that's great, that's smart. Get them reps all over the field. The fears that they're doing that because they feel comfortable enough with what they already have, and we've seen them take it slow with younger wide receivers in the past, look at Gabe Davis. So I don't think Shakier necessarily has to be on your season long fantasy draft radar. I think he's someone that if you see some positive signs, if he starts seeing more snaps in season than you can immediately snatch him up off your waiver wire. You'll be ahead of your league mates. And knowing that he's a really good player. That's why a lot of prospect work can still be really good for season long, because you understand these players, You understand who they are as players, and so when they start to do a little bit more in their offense, you know whether or not to snatch them up. If you're in a super deep league, fine, I'm just speaking to what's going on in most leagues here. He's almost always going to go undrafted. It's just a different dynamic and fantasy at wide receiver versus running back. That's why Pacheco is a more important piece right now to your redraft puzzle. The next question this week is from Twitter. It says any thoughts on mid round handcuffs slash handcuffing ambiguous backfields. Personally, I'm loving getting Damien Harris in the fifth and then Romandre Stevenson in the seventh or eighth. It feels like a locked in RB two with upside the rest of the season at relatively little cost. So I would advise against this wrongly. I wouldn't say that the cost here is relatively little. If you're spending a fifth rounder on Damien Harris and then a seventh or and eighth rounder on Ramandre Stevenson. There's still a pretty significant opportunity cost there, and it's a decent cost when you know that you're not even gonna be starting either of those guys together this year more than likely, at least, your goal in fantasy football is to squeeze out as many points out of one lineup slot as you possibly can, because there are always going to be replacement level players. This is why fantasy analysts like myself, we're very into two for one traits where you're getting the one because that one is often the best player in the deal, and that means that you can optimize your starting lineup more by getting more points in one singular spot. I also don't really understand the idea of focusing in on New England in that backfield and hopes to get an RB two with upside. You can do that with singular backs in the middle rounds if you want to, and those singular backs are coming from teams that may not split their backfield up. A lot of evidence showing that Bill Belichick's teams split up their backfields. Maybe that won't happen this year, maybe that changes, But no player since twenty eleven on New England has had a forty five percent running back rush air and a four percent target shair. Twenty four different running backs did that last year alone. The team may score a good number of running back points in fantasy, but the chance that that's coming from one back is pretty small. That's why their priced were their priced. Basically what I'm saying here, if you want upside from that backfield, just draft for Andre Stevenson. We've seen Damien Harris not be deployed as a pass catching back so far in his career, whereas Stevenson flashed some of that upside last season, and he did that in college too. He's a bigger back who can catch passes out of the backfield. I actually prefer Ramandre Stevenson this year straight up more than Damian Harris. That's been reflected in my rankings for weeks now. You mentioned in the question that it feels like you'd lock in an RB two with upside, but using two decently high draft picks on running backs the exact same team inherently lowers your team's upside. It's a floor play, it's not a ceiling play. So I would not do something like this. The next question this week is from Patreon, is from Zubaz and Blue Cheese. Ready to pump late round fantasy football advice into my veins this season. Every year there seems to be an offense that is bigly overrated and super duper underrated by consensus analysts and media. Any offenses that fall under each of those categories as you did your projections. So for the underrated offense, I'm gonna go with Jacksonville. I think there's a decent chance that Urban Meyer was that bad. The weapons aren't amazing in Jacksonville, but the wide receivers are fine. I think Christian Kirk is actually a value right now, and they've got threats out of the backfield. Trevor Lawrence was one of the best quarterback prospects of the last decade. Teams who did as poorly as Jacksonville did last year offensively tend to rebound. There is some nice regression there, so I'd expect them to be better offensively this year. And then as for a team that's overrated, I think the market is generally being reasonable with offenses on that side of things. I may go with Pittsburgh, though I think there's this idea that with a different quarterback, the Seilers will definitely be better offensively because there's no Ben Roethlisberger. Ben Roethlisberger's been holding them back, and he has He wasn't great the last few seasons in Pittsburgh, but it's been kind of a fantasy friendly offense. They've been second in passing volume over the last couple of seasons, and while they weren't great at scoring touchdowns last year, they were thirteenth and twenty twenty. I talked about my feelings surrounding Deontay Johnson on Monday Show, and I'm generally below the market on Najie Harris this year too, and a lot of that is driven by the situation there in Pittsburgh. This nice question from Patreon is from Lee. It says hijj as someone who owns the first overall pick in two super flex leagues, I was terrified to see Josh Allen appear in your players to Avoid list this week. I know that's geared towards his cost in a normal redraft league, but you have any new concerns that would impact when you'd take him in a super flex draft. I'm considering taking him in both leagues. But wondering if I should diversify. Thanks, and as always, love the show. Now remember the entire argument against Josh Allen on Monday's episode, in particular, isn't really about Josh Allen. It's about his cost in relation to other quarterbacks in fantasy football. That all changes in Superflex because the gap and cost between Allen and those other quarterbacks it shrinks dramatically. And for the record, my super Flex redraft rankings, they're on the late round Fantasy Football Patreon. Like the other quarterbacks though, who have QB one overall upside the Jalen Hurts and the Kyler Murrays of the world, they're gonna be first round picks in super flex leagues, or at the very least early second round picks, so you don't have this luxury of just waiting around for them a few rounds later like you do in a single quarterback league. If you'd rather go CMC or Jonathan Taylor, that's fine, But I have Josh Allen as the one oh one in super Flex this year. If you're we're in a super flex league in general, especially in the back half, I think going quarterback quarterback does make a lot of sense. We've seen a lot better predictability at the position over the last couple of years, and the dropoff has occurred around that QB twelve spot or so, and that seems pretty similar here in twenty twenty two when we look at projections, so I think locking in those spots it's totally reasonable. I've been building superflex rosters that way so far during this draft season. If you want to check out one of my most recent ones, it's on my Twitter account. You can hit me up at late round QB. But I've been a fan of those kinds of builds. There's a lot more to all of this, and I don't want to get too far off topic here, but Josh Allen is absolutely fine as the one to oho one in superflex. The last question this week is from twitters from at manwidth Takes. We've all seen the glowing reports about aj Brown and camp. We know the talent is there, and then he has great chemistry with quarterback and finally this weekend we saw friendlier past to run ratio for Philly in the first preseason game. Why are people aj Brown into round three? So, first off, I wouldn't necessarily look too far into the pass rate for Philly in this past week's preseason game. They probably want to test some things out and see what the passing game is all about. With that being said, I absolutely expect them to be more pass heavy, so I'm with you there. I'm also with you on AJ Brown being an awesome player. The reason he's usually a round three guy, though, is twofold number one. There's some good competition in general in the first two rounds of fantasy drafts that naturally pushes him down number two. Dallas Goddard and DeVante Smith are really good players. Davante Smith had a really underrated rookie season. Among all of the fifty target rookie wide receivers since twenty eleven, Smith's yards per route run rate was in the top thirty, and the players ahead of him were almost all very good at football like objectively like, they were very productive after their rookie season. Dallas Goddard last season was tied for first among tight ends in yards per rout run. His two point three to four our yards per route run rate was fifteenth best among all fifty plus target tight ends since twenty eleven. And there's still some concern that Philly isn't like a top half team in terms of pass rate, in terms of passing volume, and then you bring on the concerns of Hurts as a passer this competition, and then the fact that there are some really good options in that late second round of drafts, it's easier to see why Brown is being drafted where he is. But let me be clear here, I have no problem if you want to draft AJ Brown this year. I'm just showing you the other side and answering this question. If you want to go after AJ Brown, go for it. I love the Eagles offense this season. That's gonna know 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 forward pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't for to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Make sure to check out Lateround dot com, especially if you have a draft coming up, which I know a lot of you guys do. The Late Round Draft Guide can help you out tremendously with that, but the Patreon can too. There's also the free newsletter where I send all my written content. Take care, everyone, really appreciate you listening. I'll catch you next week.