752: Mailbag 3/31/23

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host jaj zacher Retha j J zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's jj zachar esen in. This is episode seven hundred and fifty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, I just wanted to send another reminder about the Late Round Prospect Guide. The guide has profiles for every running back and wide receiver in this year's draft class who went to the combine, and you get analytical breakdowns for each player along with the score they received in my prospect model. There's also an entire section dedicated to second year players. It'll help you know what to do with guys like Tyler al Jeer or Alec Pierce in your dynasty league. And if you're nerdy like me, there's a breakdown of what actually goes into all of these models. The Late Round Prospect Guide is available right now for fourteen ninety nine, and the day after the draft, you'll get an update version of the guide directly to your email inbox with new scores and new analysis. Check it out now over on Lateround dot com. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Brian. It says, could you explain a little more about your thought process when it comes to talent versus situation in relation to Dynasty. Thanks. Yeah, So, people including myself will say that talent is more important than situation in Dynasty is because we're looking to keep these players over a long period of time, and talent is something that can change. Yes, but generally speaking, a player either has a lot of it or doesn't have a lot of it. It's something that changes far less than situation because with situation, teams get new coaching staffs all the time, they get new players all the time. Things are changing year over year like crazy, within a team or within a situation. Now, I don't think situation is irrelevant, especially when you consider how a player might appreciate in value from year one to year two. He finds himself in a good spot during his rookie season and he ends up performing well as a result, that can boost his value from year one to year two. Some players may be talented, but they fall to a team where a coaching staff likes to develop their rookies or where there's just a lot of talented players playing that exact same position. Like, if you really like a certain running backs talent and then he gets paired with an even more talented running back already in the NFL, that's not good for both his short or long term value. Landing spot matters, but it's definitely not good for his short term value. He's going to have a hard time seeing his value increase year over year. I just worry more about talent because it's something that's easier to predict long term. It's something that doesn't change as much long term, whereas with situation, a player's competition can shift instantly, his offensive line situation can shift, his coaching staff can change. All of that can completely change the way that he produces. And a lot of those things just aren't nearly as predictable as your value of the player himself. And not only that, but talent leads to opportunity. If a player is good enough, he's gonna find the field. If a player is elite, he's gonna have a great target chair and a great backfield chair, no matter the circumstance, no matter the situation. Over the long run, if you bet on talent and if you have a good process for talent evaluation. You're gonna win more than you lose. This s's questions from Patreon from sam It says, what is your process for drafting tight ends in a start two tight end league tight end premium? There isn't a whole lot of market related data on tight end premium leagues or two tight end leagues, so I'll just get very high level with this. First off, it's really easy to overstate what a tight end premium league does the tight end position. Remember that tight end premium is solely focused on receptions. You're getting that extra half point per reception. I think oftentimes our brains think about this the wrong way. People are often like, wow, that could really be a whole lot of points, considering my tight end is going to catch like fifty passes, that's an extra twenty five points. But really it's a bigger deal for the elite guys. They just become even better because they're the ones who are actually separating themselves in the receptions category. In other words, it's more about the delta between what one tight end is doing versus another, just like anything else in fantasy football, So elite tight ends definitely perform better. Guys with high projectable receptions, but so many tight ends catch a similar number of passes. Once you get into that like mid tight end one range, you're not going to feel that difference in tight end premium on a week to week basis when you're talking mid level tight end ones versus a lower end one. We're good at projecting the elite ones, and we've been generally pretty bad at projecting the middle round tight ends. This is all related to redraft. Late round tight ends have outperformed middle round tight ends pretty frequently over the last decade. Now, with that being said, when you're starting two tight ends, the value replacement formula shifts. They become more important because your baseline is much worse. I care more when there's two tight ends starting versus tight end premium. They're not the same thing. When you're forced to start two tight ends, the tight end position becomes a lot more valuable. When it's a tight end premium league, it's not really the same shift. And how you approach that in your draft is that you tier your players and react to what the market is doing what your draft is doing. I would have a general idea of where I'd be willing to select a higher end tight end because you might be the first manager to draft a tight end your draft, but then you can be reactive as the draft goes on. There's nothing wrong with that. You're extracting value. I talked about this a ton in last year's Draft guide, and I'll do the same this year. When you tier players, your goal is to get the last player in that tier, always the cheapest guy in that tier, because tiers are groups of players who are interchangeable in rank generally speak. So as your draft goes on and these more unique scenarios in league settings, you're learning how your league is valuing these players, and you can then react to that and extract the proper value based on your tiers. Now, I'm not saying that you just totally ignore what a projection might be, saying you can look at a simple vort formula to guide you as well. I'm just noting that value based drafting needs that market component because it allows you to extract value from a pick. Now, I could do an entire episode on something like this, so I'll just leave it at that. I hope that at least makes some sense. There will definitely be talk about something like this in the late round Draft guide this year because I think people want this to be more mathematical than it actually needs to be. You can't build the most optimal roster in fantasy football without recognizing what your league mates are doing and how they're drafting. That's why tiers are so important. This ask questions from Bennett. It says on your last podcast, you talked about the downside of drafting rookie tight ends, particularly their lack of sealing. As you were talking, I thought about trying to go trade for Chickaconquo, as I think second half of his rookie year is being overlooked by many, partially because I don't think a lot of people realize how low the bar is for what qualifies is a good rookie season from a tight end. Then your newsletter highlighted a con Quo and Dolcitch as potential by candidates. This makes me wonder, do you think trading for young, promising, non rookie tight ends is a viable strategy for the foreseeable future, at least until the market corrects. So let's recap some of this so everyone's on the same page. I do have a tight end model. Now, it's not something I'm ready to publish in the Prospect Guide or anything like that, because the sample size that I'm working with is not super big, but it's pretty promising. I've been emailing Late Round newsletter subscribers, which, by the way, it's free to subscribe, just go to Lateround dot com. But I've been emailing subscribers some updates on that model, and the update this week was that I've got a year two model for tight ends, and in that year two model, Greg Dolcich looks really good and Chicka Konquo looks pretty good too. Chick was actually something I called out in January as a bye on the by Candidate's episode. So yes, I think they're both buys. I like both players more than the market. And I know that factually now because I just updated my rankings for patrons and those guys were above market value. And those rankings, by the way, they include rookies. If you're looking for rankings like that. Now your question about trading for young non rookie tight ends, yes, I think that's fine. Tight Ends don't necessarily appreciate a whole lot better from year two to year three as they do from year one to year two. My math shows that it's pretty similar, but you're gonna get more production from the position in year two versus year one. I've done deep dives in the tight end position, and year two and year three tight ends tend to break out at a higher rate than any other year, so you'd want those players before that happens. You can think of it this way. Appreciation is roughly the same when looking at top one hundred, top one hundred and fifty tight ends in ADP when looking at year one to year two or year two to year three, meaning a similar proportion of players from those buckets are gaining value in startup ADP from one year to the next. But we know rookie tight ends aren't generally producing. You're just holding that guy and hoping that he appreciates in value and hoping that in year two he does really well. So it makes sense to get a tight end after that rookie season, have a similar rate of appreciation than from year two to year three, but also get more production from your dynasty squad. And here's the thing. If you have a backbone from a process standpoint in identifying those guys, you should have a better hit rate with those deals when you're trading for one of those year two year three guys. My tight end model looks good for prospects, but it's more predictive for year two players, as is the case for running back and wide receiver because we have actual NFL data. But at the same time, those year two tight ends, they don't have a very high ADP ceiling. You're not gonna have to give up a whole lot to get some of these tight ends, so go for it. I wouldn't necessarily be sending unbelievable rookie picks for those players, because again, the ceiling from tight ends is limited in terms of value, but buying them is totally reasonable. The nice questions from Josh that says, are you concerned about Nick Chubb with all this talk about Cleveland being more pass heavy? No, I'm not at all. The Browns actually aren't super deep at running back right now. Behind Nick Chubb. I think Jerome Ford is actually an interesting piece to keep an eye on, but that could lead to Chubb being a little bit more involved in the passing game. But even if he's not more involved in the passing game, generally speaking, I like when running backs are in more pass friendly offenses. Even when the running back is like Nick Chubb, who hasn't been used a ton as a pass catcher, but he still had a seven point three percent target share last year. It's not like he's been strictly in early down back and when teams become more pass heavy, there's more of a chance they score more points. Passing is more efficient than rushing, so that could create more scoring opportunities in general for the Browns offense. And that's on top of Nick Chubb potentially seeing more targets. Yeah, his rushing volume may drop, but even if he maintains his target share, his targets are gonna rise, and targets are more valuable at running back than rush attempts are. So because of the current depth chart and then the possibility that they will be more pass heavy, I'm relatively bullish on Nick Chubb this year. He at least is a very safe early round option. The last question this week is from Robert and it says redraft question is twenty twenty three Chris Godwin setting up to be twenty twenty two DK Metcalf. Godwin is currently sitting at wide receiver thirty and adp and it seems we should bet on his talent. I realize pass volume is going to dip quite a bit, but maybe we get a surprise quarterback outcome like what we saw from Geno Smith. You've said quarterback ADP doesn't necessarily negatively impact wide receiver like it does tight end. Yeah. I found that where a quarterback gets drafted in fantasy doesn't generally have a huge impact on the outcome of middle round wide receivers. That's true, So that's a plus for someone like Godwin because Baker Mayfield is not going to be drafted high. Of course, I'd rather have a quarterback who's really good throwing him the ball. But people probably overstate that side of a situation because good wide receivers can see high target shaars no matter the offense, and we're really chasing volume here. But with that being said, Gino Smith did something last year that we didn't see coming at all, and it was amazing. I don't think we can just bank on that from someone like Baker Mayfield. But even with that awesome season from Gino, let's not overstate what DK Metcalf and even Tyler Lockett did. Metcalf average is a little over thirteen p puero points per game last year. He really wasn't that special. He wasn't a league winning player. He barely exceeded ADP expectation. Now, I think Godwin's a talented dude, but I do have my concerns about him in a Baker Mayfield led offense. Not only are the Bucks probably not going to be nearly as pass heavy, because even when they were leading with Tom Brady often over the last couple of years, they were still a pass heavy team. But Godwin hasn't been a target hog the same way that DK Metcalf has. Godwin's highest target share per game rate throughout his entire career is under twenty three percent. That's per game. Metcalf entered last season coming off a year with a twenty seven point two percent target share per game rate, and it was twenty four percent the year before that. So Metcalf made more sense, whether this is hindsight or not, because he had that more sustainable floor in terms of target share, and then Gino Smith played well and it allowed Metcalf and Tyler Lockett to perform well in that offense. My fear with Chris Godwin is that he continues to not be able to get over that twenty two percent target shair mark. That kind of target shair is fine in a Tom Brady led offense. In a Baker Mayfield led offense, it needs to be higher. Now. I haven't done my Redra Frankings to say whether or not Chris Godwin is a bye at his price tag, but I can tell you that I don't think these situations are totally similar, especially in hindsight. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found a different to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. Again, go check out the Late Round Prospect Guide. Otherwise, enjoy your weekend and I will talk to you next week