477: Mailbag 1/29/21

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha J J. Zacher reson what's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and seventy seven of the Late Round podcast. So the mini shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network, Thanks for tuning in. The Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are set to battle in the big Game, and FanDuel's Sportsbook is giving you a chance to get in on the action with some can't miss odds. Right now, new users can wager up to five dollars on either Kansas City or Tampa Bay to win at plus fifty five hundred odds. That's right, a five dollars bet on either team can win you two hundred and seventy five dollars. The biggest Sunday of the year will be here before you know it, so download the FanDuel's Sportsbook app and make your first deposit to see the enhanced odds today. Must be twenty one years or older in president New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia, Iowa, over Jinia, Michigan, Tennessee, or Indiana. New users only must wager on designated boost market deposit required max bonus two hundred and seventy five dollars. See full terms at sportsbook dot fanel dot com. Gambling problem called one hundred gambler in Colorado called one hundred five to two forty seven hundred and West Virginia visit one hundred gambler dot net. In Indiana call one hundred nine with it, or in Tennessee called Tennessee Redline one one hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine. I did it. Now let's get to these questions. The first question is from at Myron isaacs JJ. Have you any historical analysis on the wide receiver success of such slim body types like Devonte Smith. I'm not convinced he should be a top three wide receiver selection in the draft. Okay, so we don't know exactly how big DeVante Smith is, but I've got him at one hundred and seventy five pounds in my database. I know player Profiler they also have him met one hundred and seventy five. But for the sake of argument, let's say that he's one hundred and seventy. There have been one hundred and seventy pound wide receivers who have been drafted before jakeem Grant was one hundred and sixty five coming out. The difference, of course, is what you call body type or what we just say as BMI. Smith's BMI at one hundred and seventy pounds would be twenty two point four. That's pretty freaking low for a wide receiver. Across a large sample, I haven't found that BMI is that huge of a deal in general for wide receivers. Running back is a different story, but BMI actually has seemed to matter less a wide receiver, at least in my model. So first off, probably a good idea to not overstate this. Would it be better if he was six three two twenty and he could move the way that he does, of course, but I doubt he could do what he does without the frame that he has. We haven't had many wide receivers with that low of a BMI historically, which means you're not going to find anything statistically significant about players with that low of a BMI and how they translate a wide receiver in the NFL. But then more specifically, we generally don't have first round wide receivers with low BMIs. The lowest I have in my database, which goes back to two thousand and six, is Marquise Brow. He had a BMI of twenty four and a half versus Smith's twenty two ish and a half. Only Brown and Calvin Ridley had BMIs under twenty five at the draft among first round wide receivers. What I'm saying here, guys, we just need to accept the fact that Devonte Smith is unlike any other wide receiver prospect that we've really ever seen, at least analytically. You can't fit him into a box. The good news is that his production profile is incredible, and that's what matters most to me. He's a top three wide receiver in this class, and you could argue that he's the wide receiver one. I don't think I'm gonna have him there, but I understand why people do this. Last question says, hey, JJ, thanks for reading this note. I'll try to keep this short. Twelve team, one quarterback, six points per touchdown pass, six bench spots. I drafted to Shaun Watson at a very reasonable eight dollars of a two hundred dollars budget. I picked up Aaron Rodgers as a free agent after being dropped in waivers Week two rationale. I personally would have played aarin over my Week four opponents quarterback, so I played defense there. Week four Rogers goes Ham. Week six trade deadline, I tried to upgrade my starting lineup with package deals to teams I believed needed a quarterback upgrade. No dice. So the question do you think it's a suboptimal strategy slash process to use a bench spot to hold on to a stud quarterback and play matchups. Keep up the good work and thanks for the distraction in the time of COVID best Dan. I think there's this idea out there that quarterbacks aren't valuable at all in fantasy football, and maybe I'm part of the problem as to why that's the case, But that's not true. They can have value. A lot of quarterbacks had value this year, and Aaron Rodgers was one of them. Just because you can get away with holding one quarterback on your roster doesn't mean that you have to hold one quarterback or that you should. Your goal should be to acquire as much value as you can, and even though that'll usually come in the form of running backs and wide receivers. It can be a quarterback too. Now it sucks that you couldn't really capitalize on having that value since quarterbacks are tough to trade because they do hold less value than other positions. I would also bet that if your trade deadline was later in the season, you could have gotten a deal done. But just because you can get by with one quarterback on your roster, it doesn't mean that you have to roster just one quarterback. Aaron Rodgers was still a valuable piece. You wouldn't want your opponents, especially to have Aaron Rodgers. And it's especially easier to hold onto that second quarterback if you weren't passing up on opportunities for good running backs and wide receivers on the waiver wire each week. To the bottom line, don't be afraid to roster two quarterbacks even if you have a stud now, don't do it if you don't have to. But too many people think they absolutely shouldn't and they can't do it. That's not true. This best questions from at stags too. Since offensive production was way up this past year in regression is coming, what type of players are you targeting? Does that shift your focus to guys that have more of a steady or high floor, or do you think that this production is sustainable or close to repeatable next year? So, first off, I don't think regression is absolutely inevitable. There were reasons for this offensive spike that do seem sustainable, But I do think there are reasons as to why it might not be super sustainable, like the lack of prep or the lack of fans that helped opposing teams dictate more offensively. But really, I'm not going to approach twenty twenty one any different from a regression standpoint. I don't know why you'd necessarily have to. You're still looking for the same things. You're looking for quarterbacks who threw touchdowns at a super high rate, like Aaron Rodgers, and you're seeing where they're being drafted, and you're usually fading them after seeing their high cost, and you're doing that for player after player after player. So the type of player that I'm targeting isn't changing. This next question says, do you think the pro day versus combine measurements and workouts will have a bias in data for this year's class? If so, will the effect be negligible? Pro days have notoriously been favorable for players, so you have to take these numbers with a grain of salt. There are ways to adjust those numbers, though, which is what I'm going to do. But as I've said before on this show, I use athletic measurables more as a threshold for players to hit, as opposed to them really really mattering, like, is there a massive difference between a running back hitting a one hundred and ten speed score versus a one hundred speed score. Not really. Production other factors are going to be more important, but we have to make sure players hit certain thresholds. It's very rare for me to drastically change my view on a player because of how he worked out, because of how he looked in shorts. It can change my view, but not drastically. It's not to say that these numbers don't matter. There's just a lot more about prospecting through data than those numbers. I had to shorten this next one a bit, but it's a question about the running back dead zone in drafts. It says, hey, JJ, thanks for all the work on the show. Definitely combines informative and listenable like nothing else out there. I appreciate that. My question is whether this concept the running back dead zone, is likely to apply twenty twenty one, and if so, whether it will cover the same range of rounds as it did in twenty twenty. Looking at some very early mocks, it's not all that uncommon to see young running backs with some pretty major upside going in rounds three to four from twenty twenty rookies like Swift, Acres and especially Gibson and Dobbins to last year's first rounders coming off down years Sanders and Mixon, as well as Etn and Harris from the upcoming class. Obviously, that may all change by summer, but just suppose for the sake of argument that it doesn't. Might it be more legitimate this year than most to opt in the early middle rounds for running backs who have already had good NFL results and have RB one upside, or even top shelf rookies who could be this year's smash in the Fantasy football playoffs like Taylor this year over really solid wide receivers in the same range. I'd love to hear any thoughts that you might have. Thanks again, Griffin. Yeah, So, look, anytime we talk strategy or anytime that you guys hear about strategy, it should never be a set in stone type thing. Strategy is there to not be some defined thing that you should should absolutely do no matter what you have to adjust during a fantasy football draft. The best players at fantasy football are the ones who can read the room and adjust on the fly. Strategy is there to help you increase your probability of winning. And historically, and this is across many, many years, but historically RB twos in fantasy football they've kind of sucked. And by RB twos, I'm talking about players who were drafted as RB twos, not how they finished, although you can make the same argument for how they finish too. Hence the dead zone that people talk about when I talked about over the offseason and on the show earlier this week. If market prices start to change dramatically in the player landscape changes, then we should adjust. I'd see it as no different as what I was feeling last season. At the quarterback position, you adjust with more information. But for the record, you mentioned round three in your question. I actually have found that the big dropoff occurs in twelve team leagues around round four. Round three. Backs haven't been nearly as bad as round four backs, especially at the front end. And my guess is that we see some of those running backs getting drafted in round three, where it's typically not as bad. ADP is going to be different depending on source, though, and I really do think that we need to talk about this in terms of RB twos instead of the rounds that they're being drafted in because of that, because ADP is going to fluctuate depending on where you're getting it from. Just generally speaking, RB twos don't give you a great ROI but I can't answer this question really without knowing where players will land. I can just say that strategy is there to guide you and to help you increase your probability in winning, that you should always be flexible. And then I do bet that we still generally get a group of running backs that pans out similarly to what we've seen in the past. Maybe the position is a little bit deeper, and will feel good about running backs through round three, but round four and five is still likely to be an area of drafts that you want to avoid, with running backs more than likely at least. It's just hard to say anything definitively without knowing which running backs are even going to be there? The best question, says Hi JJ love the show. Thanks. I keep hearing analysts encouraging leagues to add more flex spots for the benefit of managers who draft well. My response is, why not just use best ball scoring? Just be clear, I mean your highest scoring players as your starters mechanic, not other aspects of best ball leagues like no in season management. I think this would help good drafters, and it would also benefit managers who drafted sleepers who might emerge later in the season, which more flex spots won't necessarily help. I run a league that uses best ball scoring and has in season roster management, and everyone loves the lower maintenance and best of all, for fantasy analysts, no start sick questions. Thanks for all the advice and information. Best Luke. So, I don't have anything against this at all. I love Best Ball, but I'm not sure it solves what analysts are saying. You mentioned that analysts are encouraging leagues to add more flex spots. That's totally true. I do it all the time, and you also correctly mention that it's for the benefit of managers who draft well. But that doesn't mean that we want to eliminate start decisions. We just want rosters to be deeper. Maybe that means that you have a shallower bench. I'm not sure, but I don't think it's necessary to go all the way to best ball for something like that. Like sure, best ball would allow teams who drafted some great values late. Best Ball formats would allow them to benefit because they're getting much more use out of those players, But you're also changing the game pretty drastically and doing that there's a slightly different approach that you would want to take to your draft, and then you're missing out on start sit decisions, which to me, I don't want to just eliminate that. So I do agree with you. You could go to best ball formats to alleviate some of this. I just don't think it's fully necessary, since that changes more than just simply benefiting the teams who drafted well and got a lot of depth. The last question this week is from at Ts underscore Werner Montgomery is a sell high guy. Right, No way the Bears don't bring on a running back this offseason? Right? Well, I think there's a way the Bears don't bring on a running back, So I wouldn't necessarily bank on that, but I do think Montgomery is someone that I would be looking to sell. Yes, not only did he surge down the stretch through a cakewalk schedule in pretty unsustainable touchdown production, but he did what he did this year without literally any competition. To reak Cohen went down early this season, Montgomery's year one to year two target share ended up rising from six percent to eleven percent at the very least to wreak Cohen's return is going to change David Montgomery's outlook, and then yeah, maybe something happens this offseason where they add a body to that backfield. If that happens, then Montgomery looks even worse. But look, I think Montgomery's fine. He's not something that I would build around, though, And looking at Dynasty League Football dot COM's January startup ADP, he's listened at RB twenty. He comes in at thirty sixth overall. I don't necessarily think the running back ranking is that far off, though. I would rather have a guy like Joe Mixon, but there's no way I'd take Montgomery over guys like T Higgins, Mike Evans, or Amari Cooper. And really the list goes on and on. There that's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by starting forward pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I appreciate you listening. Have a great weekend, and I will talk to you next week.