737: Mailbag 2/3/23

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zachera, JJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zach er Esen in this episode seven hundred and thirty seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the mailback questions this week, I want to send another reminder about the Late Round Prospect Guide, which you can pre order right now over on lateround dot com. In the guide, I break down what goes into my running back and wide receiver prospect models. I then profile every running back and wide receiver who will be at the NFL combine, and my model spits out a pre draft percentile score for each player. Then, when the draft is over, I'll send an updated version of the guide with post draft scores and post draft breakdowns. But that's not all. I also have an entire section dedicated to my year two model. I'll talk about that model a bit on today's show, but the year two model helps predict how well a player is going to perform and year two and year three in the NFL. So I profile all relevant running backs and wide receivers from last year's draft class and let you know what to do with them in Dynasty. Last year's gide was one hundred and forty pages of pure nerdiness. I'd anticipate the guide being almost the same this year and just as nerdy. You can pre order right now on lateround dot com for just eleven ninety nine. It's a PDF that'll get emailed to you when it launches on March thirteenth. Once March thirteenth hits, that price will rise to fourteen ninety nine. So again, head to lateround dot com and get ready for another fun Prospect season. Now, let's get to these questions. This first question is from Twitter. It's from at connor Shears. It says, where do you stand on Isaiah Pachecko heading into twenty twenty three and beyond with clear roles between him and McKinnon. In the likelihood they bring in a rookie running back and bring in a veteran to fill that role, it feels like his ceiling is pretty limited moving forward. Yeah, so this one's tough for me. I have Pachecko on a ton of my Dynasty rosters. Anyone who's listened to this show over the last year, you're not surprised to hear that my model liked him more than consensus, and so I was gobbling him up in every rookie draft that I could get him in without being said, I need to be objective. As much as I would love for Pacheco to be the lead back, I still need to be objective. And if I'm being objective, I have to say that this type of profile typically doesn't pan out at a super super high rate, at least in terms of ceiling. Like, just for a second, ignore what the market's saying, ignore what you could trade Pachecko for. Right now. As a prospect, Pachecko was a forty eighth percentile prospect in my running back model. That isn't a very high score, but we shouldn't expect a seventh round player to have a high score. It was actually a pretty high score for his draft slot, which is part of the reason that I was in on him last year. But let's look at running back since twenty eleven who have played three seasons in the league, or at least who have had a chance to be in the league for three years, aka running backs who were drafted or went the NFL combine from twenty eleven through twenty twenty and let's look at running backs who had similar prospect scores to Pachecko. Again, Pachecko is in the forty eighth percentile, so let's look at running backs in the fortieth to fifty fifth percentile as prospects. So twenty eleven through twenty twenty running backs would a similar prospect scorer as Pachecko. And this is among running backs who went to the combine or who were drafted. That gives us forty two different running backs. Among those forty two, only six were able to have a season during their first three years of their career with ten or more PPR points per game, and only two of those players were able to do that twice. Those two were Miles Gaskin and James Robinson. Essentially, we haven't had a true ceiling player come from this group. We've had solid players. Latavius Murray is one of the guys who actually hit a double digit PPR points season. He's had a great career. But the chance that Pachecko becomes a true stud is pretty slim just based on his prospect score. Now, you can look at my year two model here too. Pacheco saw his prospect score to year two model score rise pretty dramatically, which is to be expected. He had a good rookie season, especially for a seventh round pick. Now this will be highlighted in the Prospect Guide, but Pachecko now has a seventy third percentile Year two model score. There are about two hundred and fifty running backs in my database since twenty eleven who have had a chance to play three NFL seasons and who had a Year two model score in the seventy fifth percentile or lower. So they were drafted between twenty eleven and twenty twenty, and they had a year two percentile score in the seventy fifth percentile or worse, which is a little bit higher than where Pachecko's at. Of those two hundred and fifty ish running backs, there have been five players with one season in year two or three with fifteen or more points per game Chris Carson, James Connor, C. J Anderson, Shane Vereen, Miles Gaskin. That's about a two percent chance, probably higher for Pacheco since he's closer to that seventy fifth percentile mark, but we rarely see RB one seasons from these players. With that being said, I'm just really focused here on ceiling. We've seen RB two seasons from these types of players, maybe not super consistently, but they definitely happen. Nineteen percent of the year two model running backs who are in the seventieth to seventy fifth percentile hit fourteen plus pper points per game in either year two or year three. So about nineteen percent of players in Isaiah Pachecko's percentile tier give us basically an RB two season, and that's only in years two and three. Now, none of them hit sixteen points, but some of them did at least something. What I'm getting at here is that I think your expectation matters a ton. I don't think anyone should expect Pa Checko would be an RB one in fantasy football, given the offensive he's in and the usage that he saw in the AFC Championship game. He could definitely have some spiked weeks though, But where we are right now, now, with the draft still upcoming, and with them having the ability to shift some bodies in that backfield, let's just be reasonable. We can hope for an RB one season, we can hope that that happens, but let's just not expect it. The thing is, when you look at the market, No one's expecting that. That's where the market component comes into play. According to my most recent Dynasty rankings that dropped in the late round Fantasy Football Patreon this week, I've got Pacheco at RB thirty two, and he's really not far off from the mid twenties. There's some variance in those rankings that's slightly lower than where the market seems to have him, or a place like Dynasty League Football and their ADP. But I wouldn't consider him a sell because of that. I think he's in hold territory. I'm only selling younger players aggressively when there's a very clear difference in how I'm viewing them and how the market's viewing them. I don't think that's the case for Pachecko, So don't expect RB one output. But Pachecko's good. I'm a definite believer in the talent and what he brings to that Chiefs offense. They need that physicality, and I don't think they're going to try to replicate something like that in the draft at this point, which means the early down work at least in twenty twenty three can still be his. The ceiling is where i'd have plenty of questions, but that's not enough to trade them away at his current market value. This question is from at in the dugout. It says sky Moore's dynasty value. We drafted him in the first round of rookie drafts. Now what by every metric we should move on? But that's hard. So we go from one Kansas City chief to another. And when I'm analyzing this stuff, I go through a really similar process. I look and see what the year two model is saying. I try to find some comparables, and I go from there. With sky Moore, my model had him as an eighty fifth to eighty six percentile prospect last year, and his year two model score is now in the seventy six percentile. Something I do with the year two model and inn the prospect guide is developed journey comparables. They're players who went on similar journey from prospect scorer to year two model score, and sky Moore's journey comparables are not great. His best case among that group is probably DJ Shark. Chark was a Day two pick who struggled as a rookie, but he ended up turning things around. But as we know, Chark isn't some stud player right now. In that Journey comparables group, you have productive players in college who we had some hope for who just didn't pan out. And I got to say, the one player who scares me the most on that list is Andy Isabella, because Isabella was one of sky Moore's three comparables in last year's Prospect Guide. But once again, the market is everything here. I don't have high hopes, but according to my rankings, I've got him at about ADP. Because most people recognize that profiles like this they typically don't work out, So I don't think it's absolutely necessary to just move on. You're not gonna get a whole lot for sky Moore right now. At least you know that he's got something going for him situationally, he has Patrick Mahomes and maybe his small program profile just needs some time before a true breakout happens. That's at least the optimistic way to view sky Moore. But like Isaiah Pacheco, I think he's a hold. This next one's from at Will McKenzie, and it will be the last time that I reference my year two model this week on the show, I promise it says Hey, JJ first time caller, which is your favorite of the twenty twenty two rookie wide receivers projecting forward two to three years? Dynasty mindset perhaps feels like most need a better quarterback, But who do you like most from your model? Plus a year's production? Thanks and keep up the great work. So, like I've been saying, the year two model helps predict how a guy's going to perform in year two and year three in his NFL career. So it looks at his prospect score, it looks at some production metrics from his rookie season, and it says, this is where this guy ranks moving forward. Last season, the top wide receivers in the prospect model were Drake London, then Chris Alave, and then Garrett Wilson. London was a ninety eighth percentile guy, and then a Lave was high in the ninety sevens, with Wilson very very close to Chris a Lave, and then Burke's and Jamison Williams were a couple percentile spots behind them. Those three players are still at the top of my list. Technically, the year two model likes a Lave the most right now and then Wilson's after that, and then London. But I think all three are gonna have great careers. I sort of got a Lave and Wilson in a similar tier in Dynasty, and then London is a tier below that, but I think all three of them are pretty special. I'm pretty surprised by the fact that Garrett Wilson has such an advantage over a Lave and a lot of Dynasty ADP, Like they're basically back to back in my rankings. So I absolutely understand if you know Wilson over a Lave, that makes plenty of sense. That's not a big deal. But a Lave's nineteenth overall in Dynasty League Football January ADP, when Garrett Wilson is fourteenth overall over on keep trade cut, that difference is even greater. Wilson's tenth a Lave's seventeenth. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but in the early rounds that's a lot. That's a big difference. Now I've tweeted about this, so you might have seen it, but a Lave was better than Garrett Wilson in points per game last year. He had a yards per target rate that was almost one point three yards better. He had a better yards per reception rate. His yards per route run was two point four versus Wilson's one point eighty five. Now, I understand competition was different and circumstances were different. I understand that Garrett Wilson is also a stud, But just given how people seem to view these two players, let's just not forget about Chris Alave. They're both studs in my opinion, but a Lave is the one who's clearly cheaper and not getting as much love. Just look at Rookie of the Year odds throughout the season. So this is no shade to Garrett Wilson whatsoever. He's awesome. I just think a Lave deserves a lot more love for finishing with a top five rookie wide receiver yards per route run rate since twenty eleven. The only rookie wide receivers with better yards per route run rates since twenty eleven have been Odell Beckham, AJ Brown, Justin Jefferson, and Jamar Chase. That's it. That's how good Chris Olave was as a rookie. But the Ohio State guys Wilson and Lave, they're currently year two Model favorites. Then it's Drake London. They looked like the studs from last year's class. The best question is from Patreon. It's from Zachary. It says, is it totally unreasonable to think DeAndre Swift returns to his usage in twenty twenty one. His inclusion on injury reports and chatter from coaches and teammates lead me to believe his injury was a major cause of his limited touches in twenty twenty two, even when he returned. I don't think this is unreasonable at all. This is a strong take. Swift had really similar receiving usage per game last year when you look year over year, but what really dropped off was his per game rushing numbers. He averaged a twenty eight percent running back rush year per game last season. That number had been fifty one percent and forty five percent over his first two seasons. Twenty eight percent is a really low number for a player like DeAndre Swift. We're talking like fifty fourth in the league at running back among backs who played eight or more games games, like fifty other running backs across the league. More than fifty. We're seeing more work on the ground for his team than DeAndre Swift. That's crazy, so I definitely think the injuries played a role there, given how low that ranked. Even if they keep Jamal Williams around, Swift should see more work next year. This says question from at f F underscore Jacob White. It says, what are the odds in your rough estimate that Bjeon Robinson becomes a consensus first round pick and redraft leagues at some point? Thanks JJ? At some point, I think the odds are extremely extremely high. But if we're talking about twenty twenty three, let's dig into this. I think redraft ADP data for rookies is really interesting. But maybe I'm just a nerd, but we've seen rookie running backs with first round ADP over the last ten or so years. It's happened. We've had three of them. According to my Fantasy league's data. Saquon Barkley was the seventh to eighth overall pick when he was a rookie. Clyde Edwards Hilaire was a round pick nine, and so is Ezekiel Elliott, and then there was Najie Harris next on the list to his eighth teenth overall. So this isn't something that's totally uncommon. And Saquon Barkley and Ezekiel Elliott they both really exceeded expectation that season. Clyde Edwards, a layer, didn't, and CEH was the inferior prospect to Barkley and Zeke. And we know Robinson is sort of in that Barkley type tier at running back. He's that good. So I actually think that Robinson has a pretty good chance to get into the first round this year, obviously depending on landing spot, but considering my model currently has Robinson as a ninety eighth ninety ninth percentile running back, he fits the mold. The last question this week is from at steven zero one two eight. It says it's been about a year since going out on your own. What are the best and worst parts? Yeah, so the one year anniversary of Late Round Fantasy Football was earlier this week. That's pretty cool. I've made it a full year running a business. But I'll be totally honest with you guys. There aren't many bad parts to this, and I don't lose sight of how fortunate I am for that. The worst part is probably the fact that if I ever need to take some time Pops up, or if I have some other obligation. There's no one I can necessarily lean on, so I've just got to get stuff done. Fortunately, though, I enjoy the work, but as we know, stuff just pops up. That's life. But the good far far outweighs the bad, it's not even close. The freedom to really do the kind of content that I want to do is awesome, and for it to be directly tied to how much money I make that's awesome too. That might make some people nervous, and understandably so, but I really love it. It's just another motivating factor to keep publishing good content, and honestly, by doing this, I've been able to make more meaningful connections with my audience. The Patreon, the Discord community is really awesome, and everyone's just been so freaking supportive. It's not one of those things where people are just complaining about stuff and expecting the world from me. You guys just want me to do my thing. I love you for that. I'm so appreciative of that. So it's been a truly awesome year and I'm really excited, even more optimistic for twenty twenty three. Now I know what to expect, so I can try to take things to another level. That's 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 searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found in don't fret to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. We're gonna check out lateround dot com to pre order the Prospect Guide. But thanks for listening to everyone. I'll talk to you next week.