621: Mailbag 3/11/22

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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 twenty one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. We had a big week in the NFL. Naturally, A lot of the questions for this week's Mailbag episode surround some of the things that happened. I'll get to those questions in a second. First, I want to send another reminder to sign up for fandul Fantasy. For users who have yet to make a deposit on fandul Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you have to do is deposit a minimum of ten dollars into your FanDuel DFS account and you'll be instantly rewarded with two free vouchers. This is a limited time offer, so be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head over to fandel dot com or download the Fandle Fantasy app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandel app for more details, and then don't forget to get yourself prepared for March Madness. My friend and trusted analyst Ed Fang wrote the book on How to Win Your Pool, and his daily podcast series, Bracket Wisdom, will get you ready to crush your poll. Check out the Bracket Wisdom series, which appears on The Football Analytics Show podcast. I mentioned this earlier in the week, but Ed's insights have been huge for me in the past, and I know they'll be really helpful again this year. So go check out his March Madness podcast series Bracket Wisdom, which appears on The Football Analytics Show. Now, let's get to these questions now. As a lot of you know, Russell Wilson is now a Denver Bronco, so of course I got a lot of questions from Twitter and Patreon this week about that Russell Wilson trade. One of them says, what is the new ceiling for Javonte Williams with Russ? How high is too high? And how do we keep the hype in check slash capitalize on managers that are too high. I'm thinking this blockbuster trade could carry Javonte hype all the way until week one. I got another one from Alex on Patreon that says hi JJ. How does the Russell Wilson trade effect DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett specifically? We know the Denver skill position players get a bump with Russ. And then there was one from Twitter from at NEPJX three that says, I feel like Noah Fant is the most polarizing player post trade. How would you value him in Seattle? Now? I think it's roughly the same, but lots of people think he's worthless. Now, Okay, so let's keep this simple and high level players who are on Denver and are still on Denver, they get an obvious bump. We know that wide receiver talent can win out regardless of situation, more so than running back even but situation can still help. This could be exactly what Courtland Sutton needs to get going again. He's got a quarterback now who can hit him on those deep perimeter throws. Jerry Judy gets a boost. kJ Hamler, who should be healthy he gets a boost, and don't sleep on Tim Patrick either, and then without no offense since he was dealta Seattle, Alberto gets a boost. I mean, all of these players get boosted from this deal. They're going from an extreme question market quarterback to one of the best in the league. It's hard to answer if any of these players are buys or sells right now because we don't exactly know the market. But I would probably just hold on to Sutton and Judy and the rest of those guys right now. You'd be buying at more of a premium. But I wouldn't want to sell because Sutton and Judy in particular are talented wide receivers. It's not like they're bad wide receivers who are getting boosted by Russell Wilson. They were already good, and the other guys on this team, they don't really have high price tags that you should just automatically sell now. On the flip side, it's a big hit for DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. I do think that there's a buying opportunity for Metcalf in Dynasty, though it's really easy to think that Russ made Metcalf or it's easy to overstate the impact that Russell Wilson had on DK Metcalf. Metcalf himself is a monster. During his three games without Wilson last year, he averaged a target chair per game over twenty five percent. He scored three touchdowns. He averaged over seventeen PPR points per game. Now, some of that is definitely touchdown fortune and it's a small sample size, but Metcalf isn't toast. He's still one of the best wide receiver assets that you can find in fantasy football. And I've already seen managers in my leagues with Metcalf try to sell them because they're nervous, they're scared, So I would be looking to see if I can get him cheap. And then there's the Noah Fan thing. This is where I think things are a little bit weird. I was already lower than the consensus on Noah Fan, but people are now saying that Fan is someone that you absolutely shouldn't won on your fantasy roster or someone to sell. But ask yourself, what changed. Yes, he's missing out on the opportunity to play with Russell Wilson, but it wasn't a lock that Dever was going to get a quarterback like Wilson this offseason. If you were pricing that into his value, then I think that that was just poor process. Fans currently the number three option in a not so attractive offense. Yes, but he was the number three option and not so attractive offense before this move, maybe you bump him down a little bit, but we still could see movement with Tyler Lockett too. If there's someone who's really low on Noah fan right now, then I would consider buying him if you could find him pretty cheap and I'm not that big of a Noah fant guy. That just goes to show how I think some people are viewing this. And then regarding the Javante question, Javonte getting Russ is a huge boost to his outlook. I'm a huge, huge fan of Javonte Williams the player. I think he's a stud. The biggest question mark to his twenty twenty two outlook is whether or not Melvin Gordon signs there. I think we all know that at this time it really seems like a fifty to fifty thing. And I can't sit on here and pretend like I know one way or another, but I would highly doubt that we see a total fifty to fifty backfield split like we did this past year if Gordon is back, so I wouldn't think about Davante as his worst case scenario being some fifty to fifty split. I think his word first case scenario is some sort of split, but he'd still be the lead back. That's what's rational. At least, I'm not trading Javonte away where I have him. I don't think you can really buy him right now because he's at such a high but he's very, very good, so I'm not selling the hype. Another big story this week was with Calvin Ridley. He's going to be suspended for at least a year for gambling on NFL games, and I got a question from Lloyd that says, what are you selling slash buying Calvin Ridley foreign dynasty? And then one from Josh that says, would you sell Ridley for Juju in a standard league as a rebuild? I think at this point we have to assume this suspension is actually going to be a year. And remember the language was at least a year. His suspension was indefinitely. But that means that when Ridley returns, he's going to be out of football for almost two years, and he'll be twenty eight years old going on twenty nine. He's talented, but it's not going to be easy to come back from that dynasty. League football dot Com has a trade finder tool where you can see recent trades involving any player that you search for. It's a tool that I like using to see a general price check on players, especially when crazy things like this go down. And looking at that DLFT trade finder, you can see a lot of trades that have gone down recently where teams are sending Ridley away for a second round rookie pick, which is basically where I think we have to value him. If you can get a second round pick for Calvin Ridley, especially in superflex, I think that makes sense. On the flip side, if you don't mind holding him on your roster, I wouldn't mind sending a late third for him, or even a couple of fourths or something. Just depends on your roster construction. And then the question with Juju versus Ridley, I'm going Juju all day long, especially in a rebuild. Like I said, we can't assume that Ridley even comes back, and when he does come back, that he's nearly the same kind of player, because it's going to be like a two year hiatus. I mean, we don't even know if he's going to come back. Juju is a bye for me this offseason, So that deal I would absolutely do this. As questions from Ben, it says, what are the sorts of players you think are a fair trade for the one oh one this season in one quarterback and or superflex. So I had a question on Patreon from Chris that asked if I had Breee Hall or Malik Willis as the one oh one in super flex this year. So I'll answer both of those questions. I think right now pre draft, Breece is the one oh one. There's a lot of volatility with the quarterback class here in early to mid March, we don't have a lot of answers. It's safer to go with a player like Hall, in my opinion, who's starting to separate himself as the best player in this class. Last month that was all about the big three wide receivers, but I'm more nervous about Berk's in London now. Garrett Wilson is my wide receiver one. Hall is my RB one. But Hall is really really looking like a stud. So I'm leaning Hall as my one oh one just based on how he tested and what is draft capital might look like. I think in superflex that might be controversial, but the way I'm sort of approaching the quarterback position this year is that draft capital and landing spot is going to go a really really long way, like more than usual, because usually we have a general idea of where quarterback prospects are going to go in drafts, like we have a quarterback or two who are bound to go in the top five. We just have no freaking idea right now. So I would rather play it a little safer pre draft, at least right now, go with the player who's like just outside that Naji Harris, Javonte Williams, Traves ETN tier from last year in Breece Hall, and move on and then understand that this could change post draft and that most of my leagues have rookie drafts after the draft anyway. Now, as for who I would trade the one oh one for or what players we're looking at, I can tell you that Dynasty League Football's ADP has Breece Hall listed around Josh Jacobs and Michael Pittman and Mike Evans, and I would trade any of those players for the one oh one instantly. I trade ETN for Hall two and probably even someone like JK. Dobbins or Saquon Barkley, But I think around there around that saquon JK. Dobbins range. That's where his market value should be, not around Jacobs. Now, I don't typically like doing the hypothetical trades thing because it all depends on what your opponent needs first and foremost. That's how you should approach trades. But I think Hall is a high end RB two in Dynasty. Immediately this ask questions from at Elliott underscore Metzker on Twitter. It says, how do you parse production profiles for prospects from schools with loaded depth charts? So I talk about this in the Late Round Prospect guide that drops on Monday. You can still pre order that on lateround dot com. But my model has something called a teammate factor, a wide receiver that does look and see if a player played with quality teammates for whatever reason. It gets more signal at wide receiver than a running back. But the answer to that question is that you can do it subjectively. When I utilize my model, I'm not simply taking what the model says and translating that to rankings. I've gotten the model to a very good place. It's more predictive than rookie average draft position by a decent margin. I know it can bring forth an edge. I know the model itself will give you an edge. With that being said, I'm a believer that you should go through every prospect and understand their journey and what they've worked with. When a backfield has multiple early round picks in it, then of course we shouldn't fully ding a player for not seeing great production. Like Sony Michelle and Nick Chubb when they came out, it wouldn't make sense to say Nick Chubb had an incomplete production profile when he was sharing a backfield with a first round pick. I mean they had DeAndre Swift in that backfield too. You can use this on the flip side as well, when there are players who played with good teammates but still balled out, you can use it as a good sign. Garrett Wilson is a great example of that. Justin Jefferson and Jamar Chase were good examples of that. Jarvis Landry and Obj were examples of that. I think a lot of people assume that I'm just looking at spreadsheets with these guys, but I dig into each one of their profiles to really understand what we're working with, or I at least try to, because that journey is important. Context is important. Numbers without context they're not very helpful, and I think that shows in the Late Round Prospect Guide because I profile all seventy six running backs and wide receivers who were at the combine, and I try to explain those journeys so that you don't have to do it yourself. The last question this week is from Lefty Joe f on Patreon and says, what might we expect from Michael Carter going forward? Had some good games last year, but seem to be mostly with Mike White. Look, I think Carter is totally fine, but it's tough to look at him and think that he's going to be an RB one in fantasy football. I've got my year two model, and that year two model helps project how a player is going to perform in year two or year three. In that model, Michael Carter ranks just outside the ninetieth percentile, and the ninetieth percentile is when you start to see pretty decent hit rates. For example, since twenty eleven running backs in the ninetieth to ninety fifth percentile in the year two model, only fourteen percent of them failed to give you a season in year two or three, with ten or more PPR points per game, But again, Carter is technically outside of that range. In the eighty fifth to ninetieth percentile range, fifty seven percent of running backs failed to give you a double digit PPR point per game season in years two or three, so there's a huge, huge drop off after that ninetieth percentile, and Michael Carter is right on the fringe from the standpoint of what he does well and what he can do. I think you're looking at someone who can handle one hundred and fifty carries a season with a high target share, and that's great. I don't think that outlook has really changed for me that much since his rookie season. To me, though, it just comes down to price, Like I'd rather throw a dart at someone like Kenneth Gainwell who's really cheap right now, than spend up for Michael Carter. I also recognize that Michael Carter's floor is a lot better than Kenneth Gainwells, So it depends on what you're looking for with your team. But Michael Carter's a good player. I would just be surprised if he's consistently giving you RB one production, especially because that does not happen with his year two model score very often, but I would also be surprised if he's not consistently an RB three or so in PPR formats. So he's just one of those players that's going to 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 for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and over it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Again, my guide will drop on Monday. You have a couple of days to pre order that for eleven ninety nine and then it goes to fourteen ninety nine. You can get all that information over on lateround dot com. Otherwise, thanks for listening everyone. I hope you have a great weekend and I'll talk to you next week