378: Mailbag 5/29/20

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at Fandel and at number five dot com. And this is episode three hundred and seventy eight of the Late Round podcast with the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. As usual, We've got lots of questions to go through today, But first I want to remind you that Fandel Sportsbook is now available in Colorado. But what's a sports book with those sports you ask, Well, it's FanDuel Anything Book, Fandel's newest free game. Each day you'll pick one free prop like the Weather stocks anything. Pick it right to win five bucks in site credit, then play again tomorrow. Play Fandel Anything Book for free only on FanDuel. Sportsbook must be twenty one years or older. Max bonus of fifty dollars. Visit Fandel dot com slash audio for terms problem called one hundred five to two to two forty seven hundred. The first question this week is an email from Joel. In your podcast, you mentioned using early picks to stock up on running back and wide receiver over simplification of your point and waiting for quarterback and tight end. This makes sense, but what do you do if you miss on your late round quarterback and tight end? How do you prioritize quarterback and tight end on waiver wires each week? I have found that securing one of the top tight ends puts less stress if you're going late round quarterback, since you may not have to risk streaming two positions. I think this is also supported by your point earlier in the year that the difference between the wide receiver one to twenty four is shrinking. So in theory, you could get a top tight end early and still be okay a wide receiver, and then you'd only have to worry about quarterback if you miss on your late round pick. What are your thoughts? So my thoughts are that I think people try way too hard to create a perfect roster in most leagues when that usually comes at a cost. Like let me put it this way, going tight end or early is the path that you should take in order to get a perfect roster. Travis Kelcey and George Kittle are fairly safe bets, but going tight end early typically means that you're ignoring opportunity cost, and that's the most important thing to keep in mind when taking guys early in drafts. I'll be talking more about this on Monday's show, but on this past Monday show, I did bring up the concept when talking about Lamar Jackson. I've found that the first two and a half to three rounds are absolutely huge at the running back and wide receiver position, especially the first two. So if you're getting Kelsey in early round two, even if you're getting a lot from Kelsey, you're also losing a lot at the more in demand positions, the positions that matter more in fantasy football. But I understand your question was less about opportunity cost and more about what happens if you miss on those late round players. Well, first off, in the majority of leagues, you can effectively stream the quarterback position. I've kept track of picks on my other podcast called Living the Stream over the last six years, and we've streamed between a QB six and a CAB eight and points per game every year. And that's without the benefit of finding a quarterback and sticking with that quarterback. When ownership gets too high, we can't use those quarterbacks as picks anymore, and we're still streaming QB six's, so your worst case scenario is still a very usable quarterback tight end is not that strong. Streaming is tough at the tight end position. That's what I talked about on the tight end streaming rewind episode from last week. But this isn't the way that we should be thinking about fantasy football. I'll be honest. The name of the game isn't how can I get safety? It's how can I extract value? And the way to extract value is to generally wait on the onesie positions or the positions where you're only starting one of them in your lineup. Because while you sit there and you say, man, Hayden Hurst or Mike is SICKI they didn't pan out. You're doing that while ignoring the fact that the person who drafted Travis Kelcey is probably hurting a wide receiver or running back. That's my basic, high level answer to this question, but more will be answered on Monday show. So I'm glad that you asked it that way. I could tease that show a little bit. This last questions from at to Drink pacifico, how do you decide on keeping a player if the player is a good value, but you don't really like the player this season. For example, auction keeper, where I can keep Chubb for thirty dollars of a two hundred dollars budget. That's good value for Chubb, but don't love him for fantasy this year as Hunt caps his ceiling. It completely depends on what your alternatives are. If your choice is to just keep No One and you can get like thirty dollars worth of savings on Nick Chubb, then you should keep Nick Chubb. If you can keep someone else at a great value, then you can just keep that other player instead of Nick Chubb. So it depends on that. But this is also a good example of embracing variance and being wrong, Like you can extract value by keeping Chubb and then trading him away if you really want it to, or you could just end up being wrong about Chubb and reap the benefits if he has a good season. So generally speaking, my keeper decisions are partially influenced by the market. It's not just what I think because I'm going to be wrong, but I also have outs like trading that player. This last question says, hey, JJ, thanks for taking the time to read my question. You're welcome. I really enjoyed your recent episode about projections, and it got me interested in trying this myself this year. Awesome. I feel like I have a decent game plan as a first timer for projecting targets, carries, and yards, but I am struggling with calculating touchdowns, especially for players on new teams. Todd Gurley, for example, in a down year, still ended up with twelve touchdowns for a rate of a touchdown for every seventy one yards or twenty one carries. The per yards rate was much better than his career rate of ninety three yards per touchdown, but the carry rate was slightly lower than his eighteen carries per touchdown career rate. But the Falcons as a team last year were bottom third in the league and total rushing touchdowns and rushing touchdowns per carry. So the question is which do I give more weight to? Should I focus more on what the team has done in the past or the player? Love the show and all the work that you do, Arnaldo, Yeah, this is a great question. Do touchdowns belong to the player or do they belong to the team. I think the easiest way to think of this is that volume is what belongs to the player. If a player is good, he'll see more volume, at least in terms of market share numbers. So if Todd Gurley is good, he'll see more work on the ground and through the air. If a wide receiver is good, he'll command more targets and have a higher target shair. Meanwhile, volume correlates to touchdowns, so indirectly, touchdowns are the result of seeing that volume or being good. So I think that from that sole perspective, we can't just say that touchdowns are random. We have to at least say touchdowns are the result of talent in some way. Now, with that being said, how teams score touchdowns will change, how teams call play is close to the goal line will change, and everything, at least from my perspective, But everything from a projection building standpoint start to that team level first. And at the team level, the Falcons haven't been as run heavy as the Rams have been, and they specifically haven't been as run heavy as the Rams been close to the goal line, So that'll naturally hurt someone like Gurley in terms of touchdown upside, at least compared to where Gurley is coming from. Maybe they become more run heavy, but you can't project the Falcons to start running the way the Rams have under Sean McVay just because they added Todd Gurley. So the answer to this is that I'm weighing the team more because all of my projections stem from the team level first. But it's certainly not an easy thing to grasp, especially because it's easy for players to over and underperform in the touchdown column, which makes projections look off when they were actually completely logical. This has questions from at mister underscore k underscore teacher, how do you see Justin Jefferson as a dynasty prospect? What would you see his draft value a year from now? Being in Dino and redraft formats. I love Justin Jefferson. He came in with a similar percentile ranking in my model as Ced Lamb, and I have him in the same tier rankings wise as Jalen Rager, right after Judy and Lamb. I think I mentioned this before on the show, but he's one of the higher four wide receiver prospects in this class in my opinion, which is why it wouldn't shock me if he ends up seeing a boost in value after year one. I think there's some concern, and I think it's warranted about how rookies will perform given everything that's so up in the air right now with the NFL season. But Jefferson has the profile, he has the situation, and he has the type of role, and he's the type of player given his strong play in the slot, to be able to produce right away and see softer matchups. So I'm in on Justin Jefferson. I think that he's a good pick this year in rookie drafts. This next questions from AT Chris Vick three to three to one. Hey, JJ, love the show. Thanks. What tight ends are you looking at as a late flyer in the draft that are playable slash streamable in Week one? Thanks? So? The first thing I wanted to note here is that I don't draft tight ends to stream them. I want guys that can play each week at the positions for reasons that I talked about earlier. It's not a very predictable position. It's not as deep as quarterbacks, so it's just harder to stream. You can do it, it's just really tough get worked up about Week one matchups. I would just target guys that you want Layton drafts that you could see having season long upside. Two of those guys for me this year are Mi Kasiki and Hayden Hurst. With Kasiki, we saw him produce down the stretch last year and really find his rhythm. I know Preston Williams was out and both DeVante Parker and Mi Kasiki seem to see a bump without Preston Williams, but Kasiki still fits the mold of being an athletic tight end with volume potential that we look for in the later rounds. With Hurst, it's an offense that consistently has been pass heavy under Dirt Cutter. Guys Dirt Cutter is Falcons offensive coordinator. He's ranking the top four in neutral script pass to rush attempt ratio in all four years as coordinator. They're going to be one of the more pass heavy teams in the NFL. And if that's the case, Hayden Hurst just needs to be relatively competent to see work in that offense. The only reason he doesn't have a higher ADP is because we don't know, and that's precisely why you should be buying into him, because there's a lot of potential. Those are my top two targets right now. I don't mind John new Smith or Blake Jarwin either. This question says who are the DJ Sharks of twenty twenty as in second year wide receivers that didn't do much their rookie year that could break out, such as Harry Campbell, Isabella Butler, Boykin, and jj R Sega Whiteside. I see this type of question all the time, and I always struggle with it because DJ Sharks seasons don't happen very often at all. Players who end up breaking out usually had some production or decent production during their rookie year. That's what episode three hundred and forty three was all about. But as for the guys who didn't produce in year one last season, I think Paris Campbell is a little bit interesting, mostly because of the research that I did before on players who did very little during their rookie year. Generally, of the players who didn't do much and then broke out, they didn't do much because of injury. That was an issue for Campbell, and now he's in a pretty decent situation where he should see a high number of snaps in this new Philip Rivers led offense, and I don't mind Nikhil Harry for similar as well, But I don't think that we should expect DJ Shark like seasons to happen year over year. I understand it's fun to speculate and talk about and it's a good question, but I also want to throw it out there that Chark seasons don't happen at a high rate. This last question says people throw these metrics like breakout age and say how it is predictive. However, they only look at successful players and show how most had early breakout ages. Should they look at all early breakout guys and check how many were successful? Please shed light on predictive metrics. Okay, So look, I can't speak for people here. I can only speak for myself. My goal with scouting rookies is the fine players who are going to be good in fantasy football. My sample size that I work with consists of players who were invited to the combine along with players who were drafted. That's what I work with when it comes to my model, especially because we know players who weren't invited to the combine and didn't get drafted generally don't produce in the NFL. It's very rare, but my model uses breakout age and it becomes way more predictive when breakout age is included. And what my model is trying to predict is the first three years of fantasy output by a wide receiver. So that's not based on just successful players. I'm not only looking at successful players. That's based on every wide receiver over the last fifteen years who was either invited to the combine or was drafted. There are tons of bad players in that sample, trust me. And among that sample, players with younger breakout ages are better breakout ages. They usually were better fantasy assets in the NFL. But I also think a lot of people assume one metric is going to tell the whole story, or even half the story. Guys, Scouting is really tough, whether you're doing it with film or with numbers. It's tough look at the hit rates at the NFL level. With gms and scouting departments drafting these players, it's a hard thing for them to do. So it's going to be hard for guys in their mom's basement to do it too. Multiple metrics combined into some sort of prospect score like my model looks at and does, that's still going to have issues. It'll be better than average, but it won't be close to flawless. So to assume or to think, and I'm not saying that that's what's going on here, but to assume that one metric is going to tell you a large portion of information of a player, that's just unreasonable. And the other point to make here is that it's really, really hard to find metrics in football that are super predictive. You may work at a job where you need R squared values of point ninety five or point nine to nine to make something work effectively. Football analysts get excited when there's an R squared to point three with certain topics. To me, predictiveness should be more about what the market is doing versus what you're doing. My model, for example, is about as predictive as draft capital before draft capital is inputed. So just by using the metrics that I've talked about on this show, my model can predict first three year fantasy success at the same rate as draft capital alone, and draft capital is effectively the market. But when I input draft capital in my model, it becomes far more predictive than draft capital alone. The inputs that surround draft capital, like breakout age in my model enhance what the market is trying to say. So, breakout age does matter, Predictive metrics do matter. But in the fantasy football world, even the football world, or any world, all of these numbers are about being better than your competition. They're not about being flawless. This last question says hi jj, I appreciate the concise format of your show. Thanks. I'm curious how you evaluate trade offers received. I understand in finding a trade you have to look for a team with the need that you can fill with an excess on your roster. However, once the offer comes in, how can you tell if it's a fair deal? What is the process behind that? Ethan from California. The first part of this is asking yourself, how does my team look now versus how does my team look after this trade would be completed. Is the team getting better on paper after the trade? If so, then you should move on to the next step of the evaluation because it's not as simple as that. Like, think of a hypothetical. You have Daniel Jones at quarterback, You're loaded at wide receivers, You've got DJ Moore on your bench. Is a hypothetical someone is offering you Dak Prescott for those two players for DJ Moore and Daniel Jones, And this is a redraft trade. By the way, do you do this trade because you're starting lineup now becomes better. No, you wouldn't do that because you can still get more in return than what you're getting. DJ Moore is more valuable than Dak Prescott in a single quarterback league. So how I'm valuing trades is I'm first and foremost making sure my starting lineup is getting better. If it is, I'm then making sure that there's a decent value trade off that's happening, because I know that I can always extract more if there's not, And there's some research that goes into that. You have to try to figure out where the market is on each player involved. But it's necessary to get as much value out of that deal as possible, and you have to be cognizant of what time of year it is, too. Your depth matters a lot less. When it's week ten or eleven or twelve. You won't be using that depth as much because of bye week starting to end. You won't use it much because trade deadlines are about to pass. Depth matters less than which is why I always say not to draft handcuffs, but to pick them up later in the season. Later in the year, it's more okay to take on deals that skew more towards just making your lineup better as opposed to just extracting as much value as possible. Now, the difference between these two things might not be that great, but I wanted to at least make note of this. But hopefully all of that makes sense. It's sort of a difficult thing to break down, but maybe that helped question mark. Anyway, that's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, enjoy your weekend.