684: Mailbag 9/30/22

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ zacher J Zacherson, what's up everyone. It's JJ zacher Eesen and this is episode six hundred and eighty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thank you for tuning in. It's been a while since I opened up a mailbag show with a good rant, but I'm starting to get a ton of questions about trading, and I think trading is something that the fantasy football world gets very, very wrong. So here's my take on trading in fantasy football. One of the most common questions that I get around trading is something like, I have this player that I want to trade away. What players should I be targeting in this trade? That way of thinking needs to leave your brain right now gone. I understand answering that question. To give someone a baseline. My rest of season rankings are over on Patreon, so I can at least say, oh, you want to trade Nick Chubb. Here are the players that I have ranked ahead of Nick Chubb from here on out. I can do that, but there are two things that are necessary here that are always missing. Number One, there's a market component. What if you say that you want to trade Nick Chubb and I happen to have Damian Pierce ranked ahead of Chubb from here on out. Now that's not the case because that wouldn't be smart. But just imagine a world where you're trying to trade away Nick Chubb and you come to me and you ask a question about who you should target for Chubb, and I say that I have Damian Pierce ranked ahead of Chubb rest of season. Does that mean that you should trade away Chubb to get Damian Pierce. Of course not. Even though I feel that way, the market doesn't feel that way at all. You can get way more for Nick Chubb than just Damian Pierce. So always keep the market in mind when you're trading. That's the first thing. The second thing, though, is more important. Trading is there to make both parties better, to make both teams better. What that means is that when you go to trade a player, let's just keep rolling with Nick Chubb here. When you go to trade Nick Chubb, your very first instinct should be to find a team who needs running back helpin to a team that would really need Nick Chubb. It shouldn't be to find a player on some random team that you'd trade Nick Chubb for What that means is that your consideration set for who you would receive it should be large, not small. You should be willing to put together some sort of package and a trade based on the needs of the team that you're trading with. That's how you get a deal done. Sometimes trading is just about selling high and not buying low. Like if you think Nick Chubb is a sell high candidate right now, it doesn't mean that you need to trade them for a player that you should be buying low on. Maybe you can trade Nick Chubb and someone else and get someone like Cooper Cup. It's not like Cooper Cup is a buy low candidate, but Cooper Cup is a very good fantasy hasset. You didn't go out seeking Cup, but you should be more than open to having someone like Cooper Cup on your fantasy roster. You're able to actually extract value when you approach trades this way because you're finding a team that needs the thing that you have, which means they'll be more willing to spend or even overspend. But all the while you're able to actually get a trade done, and you can approach us from the standpoint of buying players low too. Or just buying someone that you're targeting. If you really want to trade for Jonathan Taylor right now, you really think that Taylor is a good buy low candidate, go find the team that has Taylor and see if there's anything that you can offer to make that team better. It's such a simple concept, but literally ninety percent of the fantasy industry doesn't think this way. So please, instead of asking who should I trade player X for? Ask which team in my league could use player X. Once you answer that question, start to put a trade package together and get a deal done that benefits both sides. That's how you get a deal done in fantasy football. Now this is a mailbag show, but before getting into the questions, I want to remind you about FanDuel Faceoff. FanDuel Faceoff is where you compete in quick, fun games against other real people for real cash. It is all sorts of games that you're familiar with like Homer on Derby, Wheel, a fortune puzzle, and strategy with more on the way. Contests are action packed and lasts between two to five minutes. You can play on your couch, waiting in line during a commercial break, wherever, and on your schedule. Plus you can practice for free anytime, whether it be head to head, multiplayer or larger tournaments. Fandel Faceoff has something for you. Plus, in most contests, you'll be matched against other players of similar skill level, so you never totally overmatched even as a beginner. Faceoff is also tied to your FanDuel account and wallet, so you can easily use your daily fantasy funds or sportsbook winnings in the app. Visit fandle dot com Slash face Off or download the Fandle Faceoff app in the Apple App Store right now to get in the game. Agent location restrictions apply void where prohibited. Seefandle dot Com slash Faceoff hyphened terms for terms and conditions. The first question this week, well, there's kind of two questions, but the first one's from Tomer from Patreon. It says, heyjj I was wondering if you had a chance to look at how first and second round running backs fared compared to their expected points per game through three weeks. Without looking at data, it feels like they have disappointed more than previous years, while the running backs from the dead zone are not doing as bad. And then there's other question is from Twitter it's loosely related to this, and it's from at TG design. It says, do you see any data to support CMC ranked first overall by some getting improved usage? Or is what we've gotten so far the ceiling and floor. So one of the big topics in fantasy right now is the underperforming of early round running backs. So let's dig into this. Just so everyone's aware, I'm recording this on Thursday, so the Thursday night game has not happened, And obviously Joe Mixon was an early round running back pick, so just know that I have no idea how he performed on Thursday night right now, and I don't plan on editing this after Thursday night's game because I want this in your podcast feed on Friday morning. And it doesn't really matter that much because it's only one data point. But that's now out of the way. Okay, we're all on the same page. In the Late Round Draft guide, I created a chart that shows the frequency in which a running back hits at certain points per game threshold by round. For example, front half round one running backs have historically awards sixteen or more PPR points per game at a seventy one point four percent rate. So top six picks that were running backs, they're getting you sixteen PPR points per game seventy one percent of the time. That goes back to twenty eleven. Now that obviously then decreases with each half round. There's some variance here and there, but the general trend is that it decreases. Better running backs come from the early rounds. This year, according to My Fantasy League's ADP data, we had Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey, Austin Eckler, and Derrick Henry in the top six. Keep in mind, this is not how I had these guys ranked. This is just mfl's ADP. This is average draft position. Now, of those four players, none of them have hit that sixteen points per game mark. Their average is under sixteen, so that's obviously way different than the historical average. Okay, let's look at the next group or players in the back half of Round one, players who are ranked seventh to twelfth. According to mfl's ADP, that was Dalvin Cook, Najee Harris, Joe Mixon, and Alvin Kamara. Typically about fifty two percent of players in this grouping hit sixteen points per game. None of them are at that mark so far, so yes, it appears as though these stud running backs have underperformed. We could keep going. Aaron Jones and Saquon Barkley have been fine, but you get the overall idea. Now, let's look at Pro Football Focus as expected Fantasy points model. What this model does is it tells us how many fantasy points of players should be at right now based on his usage and where he's getting his touches, so you can compare that to his actual points to see if he's over or underperforming. Generally, we should expect good players to probably outperform expectation by a little bit, and the running backs that we're talking about are good players their early round picks. But get this, According to the ADP data that I'm working with, we had fourteen first and second round running backs in fantasy this year. Of those fourteen, nine of them are playing under expectation. The only players that have played above expectation and fantasy points scored are Dalvin Cook, which is kind of surprising, Saquon Barkley, Aaron Joe Owns, Nick Chubb, and DeAndre Swift, and remember Swift is banged up, so he's been a frustrating pick. Because of that, but based on where he's seeing his touches, he's overperformed because of his big plays and such. But that's pretty crazy, right. Nine of fourteen are underperforming. The good news is that their overall expected fantasy points have actually been pretty awesome. In fact, of the top thirteen running backs and expected fantasy points, ten of them are top two round picks. And that makes sense because usage isn't really awful for a lot of these players. That's why I wanted to keep the Christian McCaffrey question on the show. CMC's usage hasn't been that bad. He's seen a seventeen percent target share and he's seen an eighty six percent running back rush share. Now, the target share isn't quite as high as what we typically see from him, but let's not pretend that this is bad usage. It's still very good usage. Some of these offenses just have not been good and that's resulted in fewer blow up games. I talked about that a little bit with Jonathan Taylor earlier this week on the ten Trends EPISOD. So to me, looking at this, it seems as though a lot of the underperformers should be expected to perform better moving forward. I'm not overly concerned, but one thing I do want to add, I do think there's a chance that we see lower scores from running backs this season overall, unless things change across the league. According to Michael Lopez are at stats by Lopez on Twitter through three weeks, the NFL is at a ten year low in scoring. Now, it seems like everything would be relative then, right, Like if all NFL teams are scoring less than all players would be scoring less. Well, here's the argument against that. When there's a ton of scoring, a lot of that scoring will end up going to the best players on a team, and that allows players like Jonathan Taylor to separate themselves from the pack. Like take Miles Sanders. Sanders is the lead back on his team and his team scoring a lot, but there are other threats to score at the goal line in that offense. Or does his score in general? Jalen hurts himself other running backs in that rotation. It's not just Sanders. Elite running backs see a higher percentage of their team's overall touchdowns, and so if their team's touchdowns were greater, then they'd see a whole lot more scorers than they're currently seeing, they would separate themselves a little bit more so. I do think the overall trend of this being a down year scoring wise so far, that's impacted the elite players in fantasy football. There's less room for them to truly separate. And then of the offenses that are doing really, really well, those guys are separating themselves even more because it's rare for an offense to be doing that well. That's why we're seeing such huge, huge gaps between guys like Lamar Jackson, Jalen Hurts, and Josh Allen versus the rest of their position because there's just a wider gap in how these teams are scoring. I don't know if that's going to keep up either, Like it's still very early, it's only been three games, but I do think it's kind of interesting to think about. And to the point about dead zone running backs, I totally totally disagree dead zone running backs have been horrible this year. According to mfl's ADP, dead zone backs this year included Ezekiel Elliott, Traves, Etn cam Akers, David Montgomery, Josh Jacobs, Breeshall, and Elijah Mitchell. Now, obviously different data sources will show differently, and how you define the dead zone matters too. But there are a lot of underperformers on that list, and the one that probably has the most intrigued moving forward is Brece Hall. When we know that rookies tend to beat the dead zone at a much higher rate than any other subset. So the dead zone has actually been really bad this year, but I would be patient with the elite guys. Better days should be ahead, even if scoring across the league doesn't change much. The next question is from at BTTJ three to three. What is Brice Hall's ceiling this year? If Michael Carter is healthy all year? Is it higher than what we've seen from Javante last year and so far this year. Yeah. Of course with Javonte he hasn't totally overtaken his backfield. Brece Hall still has a chance to do that. We saw Hall take a step forward this past week in terms of usage that may not can continue. We don't know for sure, but there's at least a decent possibility of it happening based on what we've seen historically from rookie running backs, especially high end rookie running backs. I did my rest of season rankings this week, which are on the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon, and someone asked me why I had a decent gap between Hall and Michael Carter, and I think this is the difference between a median projection and looking at a range of outcomes. A projection might show those two being pretty close. That would be logical given how they've deployed that backfield so far this year. But there's a much higher chance of Breece Hall taking over that backfield than Michael Carter without an injury, just given his pedigree. Give them the types of backs they are given all of that, so I still like Breece Hall rest of season. I think what's happened so far was kind of to be expected, though I do have some fear about Zach Wilson returning and that hurting the running back target share in that offense, so definitely keep an eye on that. Thus questions from at Pascal Glavine, it says do you trade DJ Moore or avoid him? So I got an absurd amount of questions about DJ Moore this week, but I had more as a cell after Week two on the fifteen Transaction Show. It wasn't that his peripherals were bad. It's that the Panthers offense was bad. Baker Mayfield has not been good and that's impacted DJ Moore. But I sort of feel the same about More as they do about Alan Robinson right now, at least from the standpoint of how I view them versus the market. If someone in your league is just totally sick of those players, I don't think it's a bad idea to send a low ball offer like a bench ass set. Moore is still seeing a pretty good target chair in that offense. He ranks around the top twenty five and target chair per game at wide receiver this year, and Alan Robinson at least isn't seeing the horrible usage that he saw in Week one, So technically things are trending up for Alan Robinson. Now there's a very real chance that both of those guys are going to be bust this year in fantasy football, but they've both shown talent and usefulness in the past. When fantasy managers are frustrated, they sometimes do irrational things. This next questions from at Justin Jaden and says, how do you recognize when an early star is a sell high candidate? The first thing you should always ask yourself with any player, is is this sustainable? If the answer to that is no, then you start asking questions about the player himself. Does he have a history of being good, is his workload strong? What part of his career is he in? Then you have to see what the market thinks about that player. Like we're gonna go back to Nick Chubb. Nick Chubb is playing above expectation right now, a good bit above expectation. But Nick Chubb is also one of the best running backs in football. He's not automatically a sell candidate because he's gonna regress in some way. He likely will regress in some way, but regression could still put him in a good spot for fantasy purposes. But if you're talking about some random part time player who's really exceeding expectation, that's different. It's easier to sell non elite players. It's easier to trade them away because chances are what they're doing is a little bit fluky. So it's first seeing if they're playing over their head. It's then seeing if the peripherals are there and if they're a good player, and then it's seeing what the market thinks. Sometimes you get a player who's playing way over his head and isn't that great of a player or prospect. But then the market also sees that, so it means that he's not really a sell candidate because you're not actually gaining anything by selling him. So in that scenario, you might have to risk it and say, well, maybe my evaluation of him as a player is just wrong. Let's hope for that. There's just a lot that goes into something like this, but hopefully that does make some sense. The last question this week is from at mister McLaughlin four. It says, tired of the randomness of fantasy football. It's why I prefer fantasy baseball. It's more indicative of manager prowess. My question is there a way to reduce the randomness of fantasy football? Or is that the beauty of it? I love the second game against the median idea. Now. I sort of ranted about this on a recent mailbag show when talking about how some people think fantasy football is just all luck, and I totally disagree with that. Is their variance, Yes, of course, is there some luck, yes, of course, But I think people this concept of randomness way too far. Just because mac Hollins had a career day in Week three doesn't mean fantasy football is all luck. I see that all the time on Twitter. Every single week. It happens every week someone tweets out a list of the highest scoring players at their position in a given week, and there are just tons of out of nowhere players on that list, And then everyone's like, this is why fantasy football is too random. Well, first off, that's one week across an entire season. You're still going to get bigger weeks out of your better players. Second, just because you didn't predict exactly what would happen doesn't mean you can't predict anything. I talked about Mac Hollins on my Sleeper show last week. I liked mac Hollins in week three. I certainly didn't expect him to be the wide receiver too. But the goal here is to be better than your league mates. If you can consistently find players who outperform expectation, you're going to win in the long run. It's not about accurately predicting a blow up game from mac Collins. It's about being higher on Mac Hollins than the rest of your league. It's about being a week ahead on your waiver wire. Everyone wants perfection. You don't need perfection, You just need to be better than the other humans who are also playing this game. And honestly, if you want to fix the randomness factor, there are ways to do that within your league if you want to. You could do an all play format where you play every single team each week, or you can play two games, one against your opponent and one against a league median like you talked about in the question. That way, if you're getting unlucky with a schedule that was randomly assigned to you at the beginning of the season, if your team is putting up points, it doesn't matter as much. And honestly, not everyone wants to hear this. But you could also join more leagues treat it like a portfolio. I understand that that might not be fun for some. I totally totally get that, but I love it. I have a ton of fun having different exposures to different players. But it evens things out much more than playing in one or two leagues and dealing with the variants in those two leagues. There are ways to combat the randomness in fantasy football if that's something that really really frustrates you. But I also would say that fantasy football is a lot less random than you think. You can consistently be better than your league mates, and that's all that matters. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. To follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out lateround dot com, join the free newsletter from my fifteen transactions column, and join the Patreon. The Patriot has rest of season rankings, weekly rankings, and awesome discord community and much more. Thanks everyone, good luck and week four. I'll talk to you next week,