905: Mailbag 9/6/24

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherathas j J Zachers. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode nine and five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:24
Speaker 1: Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, this is your final reminder about the Underdog offer that I've been talking about all summer long. If you sign up an Underdog Fantasy with promo code Late Round, when you make a deposit, you'll get a free copy of the Late Round Draft Guide. Some of you are still drafting this weekend, so make sure you're taking advantage of this offer. Signing up also gets you a free pick and a first time deposit offer up to one thousand dollars in bonus cash. Underdog Fantasy is the easiest place to play fantasy sports. It's also the fastest growing fantasy app in the industry. It's a great place to play. Check it all out at Underdog Fantasy dot com, and remember when you sign up, use promo code Late Round. The first question this week is from Twitter's from at Lloyd Rage. It says, what are your thoughts on Perdy now that Williams and Ayuk got paid. Your email was talking about no Trent, but that has changed.

00:01:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:01:18
Speaker 1: So I want to clear this up because after that fifteen Transactions article was emailed to you guys, after you guys listened to that episode earlier this week, Trent Williams got his contract. So Trent Williams is part of the San Francisco forty nine ers this season. I didn't really expect that not to be the case, and honestly, I almost wish that I wouldn't have talked about Williams when talking about Perty on the fifteen Transactions episode because it took the focus off of the most important thing, which is just general regression.

00:01:45
Speaker 2: I had some comments this week saying how it doesn't make any sense.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: That Perdy would regress because he's got another year in this system. His weapons are essentially the same, if not better. Why would he be worse this year. Well, that's just not how regression works. Purdy himself can be just as good of a player as he was last year, maybe even a better player, but his numbers can still take a step back. I mentioned on fifteen Transactions that he had a seven percent touchdown rate last year. That's something that no quarterback in the history of the NFL has maintained. The other thing I didn't talk about was how Purty finished last year with a yards per attempt rate of nine point six Among three hundred plus attempt quarterbacks. Ever, in NFL history, that number has been hit a grand total of three times. Kurt Warner did it in two thousand, Chris Chandler he did in nineteen ninety eight, and then Brock Purdy did it in twenty twenty three. Now Perty may seem more volume, he should see more volume this year, but volume generally doesn't offset those numbers enough. Let me just run through an example. This is just straight math, and it's where this entire take really stems from. Let's say that Perdy sees his touchdown rate fall to six percent, which is still really high. And let's say his yards per attempt rate goes to eight, which is also still quite high. Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback of this era, has a career yards per attempt of seven point nine. He has a career touchdown rate of six point one percent. So we're basically saying that Brock Perty will be Patrick Mahomes in this hypothetical, which is obviously not a given. Now, last year, Purty averaged eighteen and a half points per game through the air when you count only his yards, his passing yards, and his touchdowns. So I'm ignoring the variance of interceptions. I'm ignoring what he might do via rushing, because that's going to have a little bit of volatility given he's not a mobile quarterback.

00:03:46
Speaker 2: Let's just look at.

00:03:47
Speaker 1: His passing touchdowns and his passing yards. If Perty has a yards per attempt rate of eight instead of nine point six and a touchdown rate of six percent instead of seven percent, in order for him to maintain that eighteen half points per game mark, he's gonna need to see his pass attempts increase by over five attempts per game across the season. We're talking eighty five more pass attempts with this team and the fact that they're likely gonna win a lot of games, it's gonna be very hard to see that high of a total. That's almost five hundred and eighty pass attempts. The forty nine ers have been at four hundred and ninety one, five hundred and twelve, and five hundred and fourteen pass attempts over the last three years, and remember that's with a good yards per attempt and a good touchdown rate, and guys, that's still just to get to low end QB one numbers. Anything is obviously possible. But my point was selling Perty and not drafting him at costs this year is that there are other pocket passing quarterbacks who can match his ceiling. This is exactly what I mean when I say that I would much rather throw a dart laide at some of those guys than pay up at the top of a tier for a player like Perty. And this has nothing to do with how I feel about Perdy the player. I actually like Perdy, and I think that he's unfairly scrutinized. This is strictly math. This is strictly about how the game of fantasy football is played and how it scored. This last question is from at Stevens zero one two eight. It says, can you expound on why White is a cell because he's RB twenty two that can finish his RB eighteen and that still doesn't help you. But Yosie Bosh is a buye who is wide receiver ninety but probably can't be even better than wide receiver fifty and also won't help you win a championship. Well, first off, Yo Si Vosh wasn't a buye. He was an ad which is obviously different because you're not needing to make a trade to acquire him. But there's a huge difference between adding someone off the waiver wire or even trading a random bench asset versus dealing with the player who's ranked at RB twenty two who is drafted relatively high in your draft. As many of you know, with my analysis, I think in terms of range of outcomes. I try to recognize the good and the bad for a player, and then I place bets, if you will, I place bets based on the optimistic and pessimistic outcomes. My point about Zamir White is that in a relatively decent outcome for him, I still don't see how he's going to return a huge value. There's still a pessimistic side to things though, there's still a way for things to go south. Like if I were to guarantee Zamir White would be the RB eighteen, I wouldn't have the same stance. He'd be a better pick than he is, but that's not a guarantee. I'm just telling people that I think a relatively high end outcome, maybe like an eightieth percentile outcome.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: That kind of outcome.

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Speaker 1: For Zamir White, he's going to be like the RB eighteen and he was drafted just below that mark.

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Speaker 2: That gap, in my opinion, is not worth buying into.

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Speaker 1: So the difference between a guy like White to a guy like Yosi Vash is cost to acquire. It actually matters if Zamir White is a dud because you're spending capital to get him. It doesn't matter if Yosi Vash is. There's an alternative with za Mere White right now, that's significant. With White, it was all the potential running backs and wide receivers that you could have drafted instead of him or now traded instead of him. With Yosi Vash, sure his probable ceiling is not that high, but you're not paying for that ceiling. Comparing White to Yosibash is like comparing apples to chewed up gum that you found on the bottom of a bench. You can actually do something with the apples. Okay, that was a dumb analogy, but you get the point.

00:07:32
Speaker 2: Let's move on.

00:07:35
Speaker 1: This.

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Speaker 2: That's question is from Patreon, is from dread Pirate Roberts. It says hi JJ.

00:07:39
Speaker 1: In years past, my post draft bench would consist of recognizable names on the downslope of their careers with limited upside. I can see how and why that strategy plagued my teams in the past. My question is how much of your bench should be high upside players. It makes me nervous looking at a bench of backups and hopefuls like Jalen Wright, Bucky Irving, Todd Spears, and Rashid sha heat Thanks Now, I get a lot of questions about bench management this time of year. I know I've answered some of them in the past, but I think it's worth bringing up once again, especially right before Week one really begins. I don't think fantasy managers think enough about the waiver wire is sort of an extension of your bench.

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Speaker 2: Now. Obviously, depending on your.

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Speaker 1: League size, your league's activity, you can think about this differently. Like if you're in a ten team league that as managers who don't even put in waiver claims each week, then you know that the waiver wire is largely yours. You can get a lot of players off the waiver wire easily. If you're in a league that's super competitive, then you can't lean on the waiver wire as much.

00:08:41
Speaker 2: Now, another thing to point.

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Speaker 1: Out is that your bench it should reflect your starting lineup, as in, wherever your weak in your starting lineup, your bench should then be strong. If you have good wide receivers, then don't lean into wide receiver on your bench.

00:08:54
Speaker 2: If you have good.

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Speaker 1: Running backs, then maybe you'll want more wide receiver flyers. But bench management is largely league dependent. Sometimes the boring veterans like a Brandon Cooks is gonna be more valuable in your league than a legitimate flyer because maybe your league is a ton of starting roster slots, but a player like Cooks in a league that starts two wide receivers, he's not nearly as attractive. This is actually something that you're gonna hear me talk about on the Late Round Perspectives episode today about one of my favorites this season, Julia McLoughlin. So really lean into your league settings in your league requirements. But generally speaking, given the majority of people who are listening to this right now, you're not in like super super deep formats, I'd continue to roster high upside players on my bench as opposed to those boring veterans You're playing for first place, not fourth place. This est question is from at s Jessup one to one zero five on Twitter. It says, what's your view on the Bears backfield throughout the season? Surprise at the fantasy community's outlook on DeAndre Swift between Bears camp reports of their hyper focus sing on his pass catching and Herbert and Rochan being below average. I think he's got a higher ceiling than most, so I would disagree that Herbert and Rochchan are below average. At least Khalil Herbert on the ground, He's been one of the most efficient running backs in football since he entered the league. Now, he's not a huge threat as a receiver, but he's not super easy competition. Honestly, though, I think this is where we just need to be realistic with coach speak and the reports that we're seeing. I have no doubt that DeAndre Swift is going to see work as a pass catcher. And when we see reports saying that they are going to use him more as a receiver or that they targeted him a lot, you have to ask yourself how feasible that is, because there's only a one hundred percent target chair to go around in that offense, and the Bears have some really really good pass catchers, so my general worry would be the ceiling. I do think a ten eleven percent target share is absolutely possible, but how much higher can that get without an injury? Like a DeAndre Swift target is not going to be more reliable or better than a DJ Moore target or a keenan Allen target or a Roma Dunese target more than likely at least, So that's one thing to think about. The other is that there's a very real chance he's not the goal line back for them. He saw a lot of work at the goal line last year for Philly. Despite the toush push, he converted just twenty eight point six percent of those rushes. Usually that numbers closer to forty percent. And we never saw him as a full time goal line guy in Detroit. And for what it's worth, Shane Waldron's offenses in Seattle, they didn't target the running back that much during his time there. Seattle backs ranked thirtieth, twenty seventh, and twenty fourth in running back target share. Now, clearly personnel is going to dictate that, but it's something to note. So I've actually found myself underweight on DeAndre Swift this year, I thought he should be ranked closer to like RB thirty RB thirty one. I was taking a shot on some of the true ambiguous backfields because to me, those players just have more upside. But I obviously can see how this could be wrong. If the Bears make him a bell cow or give him more work of the goal line than I'm expecting, then all of a sudden he was a great pick. We're just playing probability at the end of the day. But that's where I stand, and that's the downside case.

00:12:15
Speaker 2: Because you asked.

00:12:18
Speaker 1: The last question this week, it's actually a set of questions. The first one's from Bobby on Patreon. It says, what's up, JJ.

00:12:23
Speaker 2: Appreciate all your hard work during.

00:12:25
Speaker 1: The season and the offseason. Thanks besides the obvious big performance. How do you determine someone you want to target off the waiver wire after Week one's games? Basically, what do you look for when creating your fifteen transactions for the week? Along the same lines, I got this one from at Bronton twenty one on Twitter says, JJ, how do you decide what is a Week one overreaction versus what is the potential all in free agent budget breakout. Everyone now wishes they would have grabbed Puca last year, but we've all been burnt by one hit wonders. Okay, so obviously we're gonna take things case by case, and no two players are going to be exactly alike. But the two things that we should always be focused on with our evaluation here is usage and pedigree. On the usage front, we're looking at the things that we're always looking for, snap's target share, backfield chair for running backs. Was this guy on the field and was he seeing looks when he was on the field. You can then take that one step further to look at the type of touches that he was seeing or where on the field he was being deployed, all that good stuff. With pedigree I'm referring to, based on our evidence, is this player good or not? And yeah, that's gonna be a little bit more subjective, But to me, if there's an older player who's done nothing in his career and then all of a sudden he has a big game, sure we can add him off the waiver wire, but what are the odds that he's actually going to be a weekly starter for us On the other hand, look at Pukinakua last year. I talked through the Nakua stuff at length on this podcast last season, and it's a good example of this. What Nakua did in Week one was historic for a rookie wide receiver. It wasn't like a Kevin Ogletree situation. Some of you might remember in Week one of twenty twelve Kevin Ogletree, who had done very very little during the first three years of his NFL career, so it was year four for Ogletree. He went out and he caught eight of eleven targets for one hundred and fourteen yards and two scores in Week one. That's a situation where sure, you can go and add him, maybe some crazy thing is going to happen for him that year, but the odds that he'd break fantasy football were so slim. Not only had he never gotten past fifty receiving yards in an NFL game prior to that, but he was an undrafted receiver. He didn't have that pedigree. There was no reason to spend up on that performance. Nakua, meanwhile, not only had some interesting marks to his prospect profile, but what he did, the usage that he saw. Like I said, it was historic. You had to lean into that, and you had to lean into that more than your league mates. And that's what I talked about last year. This is not some hindsight take. This has been my process for the last handful of years on this show because I say this every single year and I'm gonna say it again. When a young player who has a good backbone, who has a pretty good profile, when that young player breaks out, you have to be aggressive. You're not always gonna be right. Sometimes it burns you, but when you are right, you're gonna get a massive, massive win.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening.

00:15:39
Speaker 1: If you yet subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and Jeff to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB and make sure you're subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel that's YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone. Don't forget there's a Late Round Perspectives episode that's dropping later today, so I hope you enjoyed that.

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Speaker 2: Otherwise, have a great week one