513: Mailbag 6/4/21

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharese and the editor in chief at FANDL and at number fire dot com. In this episode five hundred and thirteen. Shout out Cincinnati of the Late Round podcast on the many shows that are put to the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. The Belmont Stakes is coming up this weekend and FanDuel Racing is helping you get in on the action. Fandel will match your first deposit dollar for dollar up to fifty bucks when you open a new racing account. That's free money you can use to turn race day into payday. There's no promo code needed, Just download the Fandle Racing app, make your first deposit, and you're off to the races. The app is super easy to use and most payouts occur in a matter of minutes. Start building our bank world today and be ready for race Day on Saturday, June fifth. Check out Racing dot Fandel dot com for more details. Today's a mailbag day. Let's get to it. The first question this week is from at ff T Mirror. Can you try to make sense of the Bengals wide receivers. I have no idea if I should be avoiding all three or targeting one based on their current ADP. I've said this before on the show, but I'm most worried about Tyler Boyd of the three wide receivers because he's likely to be most dependent on volume. I mean, all wide receivers are dependent on volume to be solid in fantasy football, but Boyd doesn't use the same way as the other receivers. He's a slot guy. He played eighty four percent of his snaps last year from the slot. His average up to target last season was eight point eight T Higgins and AJ Green were at about thirteen and fourteen. Higgins saw three more end zone targets than Tyler Boyd did as well, and Boyd's never seen more than six end zone targets in a single season. That's not a whole lot. There's nothing wrong with Tyler Boyd. I mean, I'm a pit alum on a more personal level. I Tyler Boyd, but he's naturally more volume dependent than players like Chase and Higgins will be because his depth of target is lower and the touchdown upside isn't as high. Now that being said, I don't think any of the three wide receivers are necessarily bad picks and redraft this year. All of them will project out to have decent volume because the Bengals don't use their tight ends a lot, and because the Bengals have been incredibly pass heavy since Zach Taylor became head coach, and that's in neutral game scripts, not just overall ratio. They haven't been pass heavy because they've been bad, They've chosen to be pass heavy. I wouldn't be targeting those players on the same team, but I think drafting all three guys is fine this season. I like Higgins and Chase more than Boyd because of what I just talked about. But Boyd isn't a spot in draft where he's fine to take. It's not like his volumes is going to completely disappear. It's just that the upside is harder to find with Tyler Boyd versus the other wide receivers. The best question says this offseason, I've accumulated a lot of Ronald Jones and kJ Handler shares for cheap roast me. Please, who are two players you've identified as targets and dynasty that oppose consensus. So I did a buy candidate's episode way back at the beginning of the offseason where I had some lower key buys, like I think Gerald Everett was one of them before he signed with Seattle. But I'll give you one player who I think that people are sleeping on a little bit this year and in Dynasty in general, and that's Mike Williams. He has a good quarterback. He's the number two option in that offense. The Chargers lost Hunter Henry and they've got a new coaching staff. And speaking of that coaching staff, there was an article in The Athletic this week from Daniel Popper that talked about Mike Williams' role in that Chargers offense. It had some quotes from new offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi. Lombardi said, quote, as much as the offense will resemble New Orleans, he plays the X and the ball has always kind of found the X receiver in this offense, I think that there will be some natural production that comes his way because of the nature of the offense. And then Lombard but he also said quote, I see a big role for him, him being Williams. If I were a betting man, I'd bet on nice numbers coming from him on the stat sheet, that's for sure. Now, maybe some of this as coach speak, but it certainly doesn't hurt hearing that quote from the team's offensive coordinator. Mike Williams has a wide receiver fifty eight price tag right now according to startup adp over on Dynasty League football dot com. But he's actually a top forty wide receiver for twenty twenty one according to my projections right now, and he's still just twenty six years old. I could see Williams having a career year from a yardage standpoint this season very easily, and if touchdown variants hits the right way, then he could give you more of a lower end wide receiver two campaign. This has questions from at william Haven four. What are your thoughts on Brian Edwards going into this season? He has a clear path to targets if he stays healthy and I really like his profile. Thanks love the show. Thanks Yeah, so. Edwards was another one of my by candidates this offseason as well. Lots of data backs the idea that if a player doesn't do a whole lot as a rookie, the chance that he pans out, it's pretty slim. The reason I'm still cool with being in on Edwards though, is that the cost to acquire is not very significant. This isn't a Nakiel Harry situation, where after Harry's rookie season he still had almost a wide receiver three price tag. In startups, you could still sell Nikhil Harry for a decent return. Like you said, Edwards has a good profile. He had an elite breakout age coming out of college, and my model had him as an eighty fifth percentile wide receiver. My model did like Henry Ruggs a little bit more, but that was strictly based on draft capital. So sure, throw a dart at Brian Edwards. I drafted Edwards in that MFL ten of death that I'm in with a bunch of fantasy analysts that I referenced on last week's show. The Raiders have a depth chart that Brian Edwards can overcome. He's talented, and at least you can blame some of his poor production last year on injury. If his price was higher, I would not be buying the chansity it works out is not very high, but at least he has a baseline profile to work off of this, as questions from at Evan Fantasy, I'm gravitating towards Philip Lindsay as a player who fits your breakout running back mold? Is that a proper conclusion to come to? So if you guys remember from last year, almost exactly one year ago, I looked at traits that breakout running backs seemed to share in fantasy football. I did a whole study on it. You can scroll back and listen to episode three hundred and eighty one that talks through it. The four things that I found were that breakout running backs were rarely handcuffs. They also came from ambiguous backfields. They were typically pass catchers if they had a disproportionate amount of targets versus rushes, and they were of all ages. Philip Lindsay definitely hits on the ambiguous backfield piece, and he's not a handcuff. My hesitation with dubbing him a go to breakout guy is that he's not the best pass catcher in the world, and he's not even the best pass catcher in his own backfield. I'm not fully again drafting Philip Lindsay, especially at cost, but considering how bad that offense could be this season. I don't think he's the most likely breakout running back candidate. This best question from at Dada war Uk. Is there a situation where you see a trade increasing Julio Jones's value in fantasy? And would the Falcons wide receiver two be worth targeting or is this going to be the Pitts and Calvin Ridley's show. So, I predictably and understandably got a lot of Julio Jones questions this week. I thought this one was the most interesting because we're essentially talking about whether we should be raising or lowering Julio Jones's range of outcomes, and I think we should be lowering them. There are some spots where I think that he would be fine enough, Like if he went to Tennessee, he could capture a twenty five to thirty percent target shair, maybe hit like one hundred and forty targets, and again that's across seventeen games. But those would likely be efficient targets, and Julio is an alpha who's going to command a high target share no matter where he goes. But I think Atlanta is pretty much the best realistic spot for him. It's at least one of the best spots for him. The Falcons defense is going to force the offense to be pretty pass heavy, and why wouldn't they want to be pass heavy with the weapons that they currently have on that team. I love Julio. I think he still got a little bit left in the tank, but I'm not sure his price should increase in a new location. As for the Falcons wide receiver too, I'd be betting on Russell Gage. Gage had probably the quietest seventy two catch season in NFL history last year. Seriously, he caught seventy two balls. When Julio missed time last year, we didn't necessarily see Gage go off. But when Atlanta started using Russell Gage more down the stretch without Julio Jones in the lineup, so the final four weeks of the season, things changed a bit. If we assume no Julio, that means Gage could hypothetically be playing more snaps. Well. Gage played seventy percent or more of Atlanta snaps in eight games last year. In those games, he averaged a twenty two and a half percent target year per game and almost fifteen PPR points per game. Outside of those contests, that target chair dropped nine percentage points to thirteen and a half percent, and the points per game dropped to seven point eight. So if Russell Gage is on the field more I like his chances to be Fantasy relevant in some way. He won't be able to hit that target chair that he hit last year more than likely in that split because Kyle Pitts is around. But I don't think a twenty percent shares out of the question if Julio Jones is indeed gone. This beast question is from at Jewel Miracle. Everybody is always robust RB or zero RB or anchor RB or modified zero RB. Is it not optimal to have a balanced team? What's optimals Having the best team balance doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. You can be balanced with a bunch of average players. That's not gonna win you a Fantasy championship. Strategies like the ones that you listed. They exist for a bunch of reasons, but the main reason they exist is to increase your probability of winning. When you can approach draft with general guidelines, and when those general guidelines have proven to be successful in the past, you're able to enhance the chances of putting together an optimal roster. That roster does not have to be balanced, it just has to be optimal. I think the episode from earlier this week with Mike Leoni really shed light to this. It's not always about the individual players that you're drafting. Roster construction and how you approach your draft in order to get the right players that matters just as much, if not more, in a lot of cases. One of my least favorite phrases in the fantasy football space is when analysts say that strategy doesn't matter if you just draft the right players. Yeah, no, crap. Do you know what helps you pick the right players at the right time? What helps you formulate a roster construction that's best to handle the weekly fantasy football injury storm throughout the fall. Strategy? Strategy is what helps you do that. Now, Joel, I'm not saying that you don't believe in strategy. I know I went off in a little bit of a tangent there, but I do think it's important to think about optimizing your roster before balancing your roster, because those are two very, very different things. The Beast questions from at Micah underscore bed soul, what's the strategy for handcuffs this year with having an eighteen week schedule, is it smart to draft handcuffs higher this year? So I'm gonna take this answer in a pretty different direction than you might think, Micah. A handful of years ago, I did a study on handcuffing and fantasy football, or the art of taking a worthless backup running back who would only become relevant with an injury to a starting teammate. There are lots and lots of ways to define what a handcuff is, which is why this study was kind of hard to do. But what I found with that study is that handcuffs are tough to predict. I mean, we don't always know who the handcuff is going to be for a particular running back. I also found that when a handcuff got an opportunity, they generally didn't perform very well. We just remember the ones that did perform well. And then running back injuries also so don't occur right away. The average injury that allowed a handcuff to step in happen in like week nine, according to the study. So you're holding onto that asset all season long for something that may not even happen, or that may not happen for a little while, you're sort of wasting a roster spot, and that handcuff is usually the first player that you drop. Anyway, Now, there are some running back handcuffs that are worthwhile or who we have a pretty good idea would step in and handle a big workload. There just aren't that many of them realistically. When we talk handcuffs, we're talking about like two players. What I've found to be more worthwhile is what I talked about earlier with the Philip Lindsay question. Breakout running backs come from ambiguous backfields and aren't typically handcuffs. I know that's not always the case. I'm just talking about what generally happens. So instead of drafting handcuffs in your traditional redraft league, and I'm not talking about best ball here. I talked about that with Mike Leoni earlier in the week on the show. But instead of getting handcuffs, throw some darts at backfields that are more up in the air. Your chance of hitting on those players is higher than hitting on a random handcuff. But again, so much of this comes down to how you're really defining handcuff. The last question this week is from at YZR underscore fantasy. Why would anyone take Aj Brown as a top three wide receiver in redraft? To be honest, I think it's pretty easy to see a path to where Aj Brown is a top three wide receiver and redraft, and even if he doesn't hit that high of a mark, I can understand why someone would want to draft him as a top three wide receiver. My projections have DeVante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Stefan Diggs, and Tyreek Hill ahead of AJ Brown, but the gap isn't anything Brown can overcome. He's actually almost identical to Tyreek Hill on a points per game basis. A lot of people will say it's obvious that Brown has a high ceiling because of vacated targets. John who Smith is gone, Corey Davis is gone. Who else is Ryan Tannehill going to throw to? Now? I don't believe vacated targets are really a thing because team pass rates change every season, so it's not a one to one relationship with the amount of volume going around in an offense. Not only that, but vacated targets don't just go to one player. With that being said, thinking in terms of vacated target share, that's not a terrible way to approach things because that's not dependent on pass rates and team philosophy. Now, to be clear, targets are earned. A player leaving a team doesn't automatically mean another player will gobble up that player's volume. If that existing player sucks, then he won't see volume. He needs to get open to earn a target. But we know AJ Brown is extremely good. He's one of the best wide receivers in football. He had about a twenty percent target share during his rookie season, and in fourteen games last year, his target share was close to twenty three percent. If you look at that on a per game basis, because he did miss time, his target share per game was twenty seven point three percent. Projecting AJ Brown for a twenty eight percent target share given this current team could honestly be considered conservative. He was basically at that share on a per game basis last year and now there's no Corey Davison, John hus Smith. And like I said, Brown is good. He can earn those extra targets. With that type of target chair, you can easily get to one hundred and forty plus targets for AJ Brown. And remember this is across seventeen games. Given how efficient Brown is thanks to his ability after the catch and what he's been able to do already for multiple seasons on a per target basis, one hundred and forty targets can go a very long way for aj Brown, and then there's even room for growth there. I say this all the time on the show, but if you look at the players who have historically seen insanely high target chairs, most of those seasons came as a result of not having a lot of competition. You can think of it this way. Elite players will see good target shairs because they're good at the game. Those same elite players can then see obscenely high target shairs when there are not alternatives in their offense. I could go down a list of all wide receivers since twenty eleven that hit a thirty percent target share in a single season, and majority of them did so without sincere competition on their team. Brandon Marshall in twenty two twelve, he had a forty percent target chair. His top wide receiver competition was Earl Bennett. Alshon Jeffery was a rookie and Alshon Jeffery only played ten games. Michael Thomas in twenty nineteen, Ted Ginn was his top wide receiver competition DeAndre Hopkins in twenty seventeen. Bruce Ellington was number two on the Texans that year in targets. That's generally how things go. But all the while, those players, those elite players are still locked into high target chairs because they're elite. So with AJ Brown, he still locked into a target share of twenty five twenty six percent as long as he's healthy. He's shown us no reason to believe otherwise. But that number can rise significantly because of the competition on that team and the fact that he's good. And if the Titans end up seeing more negative game scripts than some expect, then we could see better than projected volume in Tennessee. And that's where a crazy, crazy wide receiver one type ceiling could really hit for AJ Brown. Considering he he's close to Tyree killing my projections, and considering DeVante Adams may not have Aaron Rodgers, I can see why someone would take AJ Brown as a top three wide receiver this year in redraft. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed, to Late Round podcast. Make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found in order to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I really appreciate it. Have a great weekend.