825: Mailbag 10/27/23

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas j Jake zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode eight hundred and twenty five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. One of the most frequent questions that I got this week surrounded selling Bjon Robinson trading him away. One person even told me that they were aggressively trying to trade them away after his three yard performance in Week seven. Now, by now we know why Robinson only had three yards this past week. We didn't know it before the game started, but he was dealing with a headache, and as someone who suffered with migraines for parts of my life, I totally feel that no one should be bashing Robinson for feeling ill. That's silly. I'm just not sure why this would be the week that you'd want to trade away Bjon Robinson. I've been trying to think of about the logic behind this, and I think the only reason you might want to bail right now is because Arthur Smith openly just doesn't care about having a bell cow back. He doesn't not want a bell cow back, but he's clearly not going to force the issue. But didn't we already know that given what we saw from Week one through week six. The reason Robinson is so attractive in fantasy, and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago, but it's because he's still a productive fantasy asset that has plenty of room for growth on the volume front, Like you could look at someone like Josh Jacobs, who's a regression candidate, to be clear, but someone like Jacobs, his upside has to come from that regression hitting, which is very possible. This is not an anti Josh Jacobs take, it's just an example, but Jacobs is basically maxed out on the volume front. He's not gonna see more volume in his offense. That's nearly impossible for him to do. Robinson was averaging fifteen point eight PPIERO points per game prior to Week seven. On the season, only ten running backs have averaged more points per contest, and that was on just a fifty two percent running back rush are per game rate, meaning he was barely seeing over half of his team's running back rushes, and he was still averaging fifteen point eight PPR points per game. Compared to the other players on that top ten list, Robinson's backfield share was by far the lowest. In other words, there's upside. There's potential for the Falcons to give him more work, and that gives him a legit top three running back ceiling. All that change from that stance to where we are today is that he had a headache and he didn't play. Now, maybe Arthur Smith's attitude is turning you off, but I don't anticipate Robinson's workload to get worse compared to what it was between weeks one through six, unless the headache thing is chronic. But it doesn't sound like that's the case now. I wanted to kick off the show with that because I got a lot of questions surrounding Robinson's still relatively high on him rest of season, despite the way that the Falcons are divvying up that workload. Like, I get it, trust me, I get it. Last week was beyond frustrating. Arthur Smith's comments since then also frustrating, But assuming Robinson's healthy, that frustration really doesn't have anything to do with what's gonna happen from now through the end of the fantasy season. It's all done. We can't assume that we're gonna have a situation like that happen again, So I'd hold on to Robinson right now, not trade them away now. Before we get into the other mailbag questions this week, I'm just gonna send another reminder to check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. You get weekly rankings and tears, rest of season rankings and tears, livestream q and as data dumpson more. Head to Lateround dot com to learn more. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Daniel. It says, how do we value DeVante Smith, T Higgins and Jalen Waddle rest of season? I drafted them at what I felt was a discount, but my worst fears came true. These three seem like they're in similar situations, being talented but not getting wide receiver one looks slash volume. Do we still hold flip them for an RB two like Madison or Remandre? So I also got a lot of questions about these guys this week, so let's discuss it. First off, A very quick and easy way to see if players are over or underperforming versus expectation is by looking at expected fantasy points. I personally don't have an expected points formula of my own, but other spots do, like Pro Football Focus. PFF's expected points model shows that DeVante Smith is the wide receiver twenty six and overall expected points a wide receiver, and he's underperformed versus that expectation. Jalen Waddles wide receiver twenty seven. We know that he's been banged up at times this year, and the T Higgins, who's also been unhealthy. He's at wide receiver forty five. So none of those guys have gotten the kind of looks to generate a top fifteen season at the position right now. A year ago, DeVante Smith was run the wide receiver seventeen range. He's gone from averaging thirteen point two expected points per game to twelve point two. That's driven by a lot of factors, but one obvious one is that his target chair per game rate last year was twenty seven percent and now it's twenty two percent. Like straight up, he's not seeing as much volume now. Part of that is aj Brown going through this stretch of dominance, but I also credit this to the fact that they're throwing to their running backs more. Philly's running back target share is now a little above average last year, ranked thirty second in the league. There's a seven percent difference in running back target share year over year for Philadelphia, so those targets are going to running backs and not somewhere else in the offense. Now. I do think the gap between AJ Brown and DeVante Smith from a target shair perspective, that's gonna shrink a little bit from here on out. Right now, the difference in target shair per game between AJ Brown and DeVante Smith is eleven point three percent. Last season it was about two percent. Brown's just running hot right now, and Smith does have some regression coming just naturally. He also has some value to his profile and fantasy because if AJ Brown gets hurt, Davante Smith gets a big boost, so expects Smith to be better. But that's why we're seeing what we're seeing now. Jalen Waddle on an expected points per game basis, is closer to wide receiver twenty, and he's performed over a point per game below that expectation. I would consider him more of a regression candidate than even Davante Smith. The problem, though, is something I talked about on the fifteen Transaction show. Earlier this week. Miami's passing schedule not great from now through the end of the year, so he's probably more of a buy than a cell Jalen Wattle is. But I still think that there are environmental things that we have to worry about a little bit. And then with T Higgins, I mean, I think Higgins is just vastly underperformed to start the year, and so of the Bengals. They started to pick it up a little bit of late, but T Higgins was banged up when the Bengals offense started to look better, so he underperformed partially due to environment, and then he was hurt. He didn't play his regular snaps the last time we saw this Bengals offense. Higgins is someone who's played well below his points per game expectation according to PFF's model. We're talking five to six points per game. Just given that and given who he is as a player, I think he's an obvious by candidate. So each player is playing below expectation right now, and for one reason or another, there's some belief that they should all be better moving forward. This next question is also from Patreon. It's from Jesse. It says, how do you think the Carolina Panthers will handle the running back committee when Miles Sanders is back. Yeah. So I talked about Chew but Hubbard a couple of weeks ago in the fifteen Transaction Show, noting that he's basically been better than Miles Sanders within any rushing metric that you can find, and that's still true. Hubbard has been the better player this year. And now you have a new play caller for Carolina, and you also have Frank Reich saying the fun following this week. This is courtesy of The Charlotte Observer. Reich said, Cuba's looked good. Obviously, we love Miles, and Miles has continued to make good progress. It's always going to be a little bit by committee. That's typically our approach. So the actual mix that could vary week to week. So we'll see how things play out this week. Now. I don't think taking a quote from a coach and running with it is the right way to analyze fantasy football. That's honestly what got a lot of Miles Sanders Drafters in trouble in the first place. What I do think is important is giving everything proper context. The fact that Hubbard has been objectively better, and maybe you disagree, but it's kind of hard to disagree. But the fact that Hubbard has been better than Sanders this season and then this quote comes out, I think that's telling. It's not like Frank Wright came out and said Miles is our guy when Tuba's been out performing him. He makes note that Cuba's looked good because he has looked good, and then he talks about a committee. So I am expecting a committee moving forward. But for multiple weeks now, I've had Hubbard ranked ahead of Miles Sanders in my rest of season rankings because I think that he's been the better player and things have been trending in his direction. This next question is from Dan. It says, what do we do with Christian Watson and Dynasty? Is he a holder a sell given Jordan Love's recent play. Look, my stance on Watson has been that he was a volatile Dynasty asset, but he was a good redraft target and that often seems backwards to a lot of people. Why would a young player be a better target in redraft than in dynasty? But it all comes down to investment in redraft, if you spend a fourth or fifth round pick on Watson. It's not gonna sink your team. You can still be okay, you can still win a championship, you can be fine in dynasty. If you're dishing out multiple first for Christian Watson before the season, that you're putting a lot more eggs in that basket. And he's always been a very volatile player. In the Late Round Prospect Guide over the off season, in the year two model section where I talk about second year players and I profile them, I wrote the following I said quote, So, in essence, we're close to where we were last offseason. Christian Watson is a high ceiling pass catcher who comes with a big reward. And I said that within the context that is three comps entering year two where DK Metcalf, which is a good one, and then Greg Little and Chase Claypole. Now I'm prefacing with all of this because I don't think anything's really changed, aside from the fact that he's trended towards his floor rather than his ceiling. He hasn't shown up yet, But like I said in the fifteen Transaction Show, I think he's still a buy and redraft. I won't say what I said on Tuesday, But you can hit pause if you haven't listened to that, and you can go listen to that fifteen transactions episode. Now, as for Dynasty, I'm not ready to take on Christian Watson unless I can get a price under market. But if I have him, this is not the time to sell. Jordan Love can still be okay enough for him this year, and Love is in a lock to be Watson's quarterback long term. So Watson's a buy and redraft because the market hates him in that format. He's a hold in Dynasty because he continues to be a very volatile asset. It really comes down to your own risk tolerance. The last question this week is from at Jacob deal Underscore film. It says, at what point do touchdowns go from a stat we cling to versus one we regress. Ceh was a huge cell last year because of his touchdowns early in the season. Yet Jordan Addison has had unreal touchdown success this season, and we're all aboard the Addison train. Not saying I don't buy into him, just seems like everyone's overlooking the seemingly unsustainable touchdown look. So let's first look at Addison himself. Here on the season, he has six touchdowns on forty four targets, which is pretty absurd. But according to that same PFF expected points model that I talked about earlier, Atison is outperformed touchdown expectation by one point nine touchdowns this year. He's lower than Tyreek Kill, DJ Moore, and Courtland Sutton. So he's definitely a regression candidate. But he's not the biggest regression candidate in the league. But he is a regression candidate. I wanted to get that out there. We're all on the same page now, but I think the disconnect here is talent evaluation and career trajectory. Clyde Edwards a Laire was a huge regression candidate to start last season. He was a bigger one than what we're seeing with Addison right now. But then on top of that, and this is very, very important, we had no reason to truly believe that Clyde Edwards a Laire was going to be a very good player at his position. We had two years of evidence that he was not that great. Meanwhile, Jordan Addison has played seven career NFL games and he's already doing what he's doing. And I would also argue that I don't think the fantasy industry has been super irrational with Jordan Addison, at least from what I've seen. I think some are naturally going to argue that he's not ranked as something like a mid range wide receiver too when he should be. But most takes on Addison they seem pretty reasonable that he probably won't keep up this touchdown pace. But what he's shown in the NFL so far, what he's shown is very, very promising, and when you have that promise, when you flash this early in your career, that's usually a very good sign for future production. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found in follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week, everyone greatly appreciate it. I got a Late Round Perspectives episode hitting later today. Hope you listen to that, Hope you enjoy it, and I hope you enjoy your weekend. I'll talk to you next week.