971: Sell Candidates

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ ZACHERJJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachary saying in this episode nine and seventy one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. Last week on the show, I talked about some players you might want to consider buying in your dynasty league's this offseason. On today's show, we're looking at the opposite or players you might want to sell. Naturally, these guys are gonna have some bigger names than some of the ones that I talked about last week, because in order to want to trade someone away, that player will need to have some sort of value. We're not throwing darts anymore. I also want to choose a nice variety for today's show. I can make arguments for a lot of players to be on today's list, but I don't think just talking about old guy after old guy is really helpful, or only talking about the same archetype of player that's not helpful either. And for the record, I know that these shows may not be totally applicable to your dynasty teams, but I hope that they're at least helpful. You can see the process and see how I'm thinking about players and maybe apply that same thought process and same logic to a different player. But I've got some names to go through today, so let's get to them asap. But first, the twenty twenty four season is now officially over. Congrats to the Eagles and to all their fans on winning the Super Bowl. But fantasy football it never ends over. On Underdog right now, you can enter drafts for the twenty twenty five season. If you know prospects well, if you have a good grasp on free agency, you can really have an edge against your competition. If you want to check it out, head to underdog Fantasy dot com and sign up. When you do, use promo code late Round to get up to one thousand dollars in bonus cash. That's Underdog Fantasy dot Com. Also make sure you're checking out the Late Round Prospect Guide. It's currently for sale over on lateround dot com. This year's guide some enhancements, and you also get profiles for both prospects in this year's class as well as second year NFL players. It's all for fourteen to ninety nine if you preorder, but that's only if you preorder do that now before it launches on March tenth to get that price before it jumps up by five bucks. The guide is then updated the final day of the NFL Draft, so you'll get everything you need to crush your rookie drafts right away. That's all at late round dot com. So similar to last week, I compared my rankings to what we're seeing over on keeptrade cut dot com. That at least gets me an initial list of players to talk about on today's show. And one player who I'm lower on versus the market is something I talked about a couple of weeks ago on a Mailbag episode, and that's Terry McLaurin. Like I said on that show, I of course don't think McLaurin is a bad player, quite the opposite, and even though he's going to be thirty next season, he probably does have some time left to be a decent option in fantasy. But I also think we just saw a season from him that we probably won't see again, which is the kind of thing to sell in dynasty. Let's first look at the peripherals. McLaurin had a twenty three point three percent target share per game rate last year, which was pretty much in line with what he'd seen throughout his career, so there's nothing special or out of the ordinary. On the volume front, mclaurin's yards per route run was one point nine to eight and twenty twenty four according to PFF. That was better than twenty twenty three's rate, but he'd been above two yards per route run twice in his career. He's usually in like the one point eight to one point nine range, so it was an above average season, but again, it was nothing out of the ordinary, and with his target share being what it was his targets per route run that wasn't an outlier either. So why did McLaurin give us his first season ranking higher than twentieth and PPR points per game his first season with more than fifteen PPR points per contest? Touchdowns? Everything was driven by touchdowns. I mentioned this a couple weeks back, but McLaurin accounted for over forty four percent of Washington's receiving touchdowns this past year. We've only had thirty four seasons since twenty eleven where a wide receiver hit a forty percent touchdown share. McLaurin was well above that mark, and of those thirty four players. The only guys that do it more than once since twenty eleven Mike Evans, DJ Moore, DeVante Adams, DeAndre Hopkins, Des Bryant, and Brandon Marshall. Those are some historically good touchdown scorers. And then there's DJ Moore in that list while scoring seven to eight touchdowns, but his touchdown share was high because the teams that he was on were just bad. McLaurin ended up scoring thirteen times last year, when PFF's expected touchdowns had him at seven point seven, he was fifteenth among all pass catchers and expected touchdowns. Now, the obvious reason to not care too much about this, to care too much about the fact that McLaurin outpaced his touchdown expectation is Jayden Daniels. He should only get better if the quarterback situation improves even more. The McLaurin can possibly maintain high touchdown totals. Now I would agree with that to a degree, but Washington was already really good. In twenty twenty four. They were six in offensive touchdowns per game. They were top ten in passing touchdowns. Daniels can improve while also throwing a similar number of touchdowns, and with McLaurin unlikely to maintain such a large share of those scores, his fantasy total is probably gonna drop. Not only that, but look at the Washington wide receiver depth chart right now. There's a very real chance that they add to that room that has a shot to lower mclaurin's target share by a couple of percentage points. McLaurin will still score points. I'm not selling him because he's bad. I'm selling him because he's a regression candidate. He's going to be thirty years old next year, and he's fluctuated in the market. He's been a low end wide receiver two at times this offseason, and that seems too rich for an older wide receiver coming up of a season he's gonna have a hard time repeating. Naji Harris is gonna be twenty seven years old in less than a month. He's no longer under contract with the Steelers. The NFL draft class looks really strong at running back, and yet Harris is ranked one spot below Tank Bigsby over on keep Trade cut. He's ranked above JK. Dobbins, who's coming off a much better year and who's younger than him. There are other running backs he's ranked above that I have ranked above him. I just don't get it. Harris proved to be totally touchdown dependent last year. He's been arguably the most volume dependent Fantasy relevant running back since he entered the league. Now, yards per carry is far from a good statistic, but it's more helpful across huge samples, and Harris has a yards per carry that's below four. In his career, his rate of gaining ten or more yards per rush has been below average in three or four seasons. Now, he doesn't have the volume side of things locked up, and we're gonna value him at the RB two twenty seven. I have him eight spots lower than that, And look, maybe he's gonna surprise us next year, but I think his likely outcome is that he finds a team where he's part of a committee and not their lead back. So if that's the case, he'll be a flex play at best with handcuff upside. Why is that any different than Tank Bigsby, who's ranked right next to him, and he's more than three years younger. Now I'm not even high on him, but why wouldn't we just chase the potential with JK. Dobbins who's ranked below Harris. I just don't see the upside with a player like Harris, especially with him now finished with his rookie deal. If you can really flip him at that RB twenty seven price point, I would do it. Now. Another player in that range of running backs is Trey Benson. This one may seem a little weird. He's coming off his rookie season. James Connor's another year older, but hear me out. First part of this recommendation is based on the fact that the ZAP model it wasn't the biggest Benson fan. His year two score is also nothing spec In fact, Benson's year two score it's below eighty that labels him as a flex play. Now, this is something that I've added to the models this year to give you guys more context on what these scores actually mean. Flex plays in the running back year two model, they're not bad, but they're definitely not great. About thirteen percent of them will finish with fourteen or more PPR points per game in either year two or year three. That's what the minimum eight games played. Now, we do sometimes get big hits from that group, but those big hits come at a sub five percent rate, So yes, Benson hitting is possible. The thing is that the flex plays who have hit, they've gotten down a much different journey, a much different path. Now. In the year two model database, there have been twelve flex plays who went on to have a season in year two or year three with fourteen or more PPR points per game. Of those twelve, a solid eight of them saw their prospects score drop when looking at ZAP score to year two score. In other words, they were looked at as ex as a prospect, and after their rookie year they're looking at X minus y they got worse. That's what we saw with Trey Benson too well. The vast majority of those players they dropped in scored because of injury, like Traves Etn or Dalvin Cook. There were really only two guys who played in year one or weren't scratches throughout their first year who then popped off. One of them was Carlos Hyde, who wasn't even that great of an asset. The other was, funny enough, James Connor. The difference between Benson and Connor, though, is that Connor stepped in for Le'Veon Bell as a second year player. It was a pretty unique circumstance. As of right now, James Connor is still an Arizona Cardinal. He's under contract through at least twenty twenty five. Now, I think the jury is still out on whether or not Trey Benson is a higher end running back or not. It wouldn't be fair to just definitively say that he's good or bad at the moment, but we can use context clues. We saw him a little bit this past year where he did look explosive at times in his Prospect Scorer. It was okay even if the ZAP model liked him a little bit less than where he was drafted. But what's gonna happen if James Connor stays healthy again in twenty twenty five? To me, Benson's something that you could either sell this offseason, maybe even closer to the season, when James Connor's redraft type is there, and if you want to buy into him, do it during the twenty twenty five season, if and when Connor is the lead back, because we could see Connor off the team hypothetically in twenty twenty six. But I'm not one to wait around with running backs, especially when that running back didn't profile as an elite one, like if Trey Benson had a really awesome prospect scorer, like a can't miss player, that's totally different. We can be a little bit more patient with that. But we're being patient with a profile that doesn't have that high of a hit rate, at least compared to like a first round running back. And so what we're waiting for is this year three breakout. Year three breakouts don't really happened that often at running back, at least the really good running backs in fantasy football. So I don't think this transaction can really burn you from that perspective. I think what could burn you is if James Connor does get hurt this year, which is very very possible, but you could make that same argument for a lot of other running backs. I think his positioning is just a little bit inflated right now, and I wanted to use him as an example that you don't have to just sell old guys and buy young ones. You can sell young players too. Now here's another young player that you might want to consider trading away, Jalen McMillan. Now this one's tough for me because I liked McMillan more than the market as a prospect, and I was kind of annoyingly relentless with him throughout the twenty twenty four season. He finally came through at the end of the year, but it definitely was looking like an l at first. But now I think things have got a little bit too far in the opposite direction. Over on keep Trade Cut, McMillan has a wide receiver thirty price tag. He's one spot below Brandon Ayuk. He's two below George Pickens. Pickens is barely older than them two. I just am kind of surprised to see this ranking. I thought i'd be higher than the market at wide receiver thirty three. But clearly people are valuing youth here and a strong finish because McMillan he did finish the year strong, there's no doubt, but this is clearly being driven by that. His final five games saw him with nineteen point eight PPR points per game. His yards per route run was one point nine zero during that timeframe, but he also averaged a target share per game rate below twenty percent. During that stretch, he scored seven touchdowns. According to PFF's expected Fantasy Points model, McMillan played seven and a half PPR points per game above expectation to close out the season. He's a huge regression candidate if everything stays the same, and your response might be but it won't stay the same. He's a rookie. He's gonna get better in twenty twenty five and hope that he would. Yes. The issue that I have is that Chris Godwin was sidelined throughout that time, and Godwin, despite being a free agent, he still was a very real chance to go back to Tampa Bay. And even if he doesn't, we can't just ignore the rest of McMillan's rookie season. He finished the year with a yards per route run rate of just one point one eight among the wide receivers in the year two models that since twenty eleven with at least fifty routes run as a rookie who were under that one point three zero yards per out run mark. Remember McMillan was at one point one eight. We're talking about hundreds of wideouts here. Only DeAndre Hopkins and Nico Collins were able to score sixteen or more PPO points per game, and year two or year three only Hopkins, DeVante Adams, Tyler Boyd, DJ Shark Michael Gallup, Nico Collins, and Jamison Williams hit fourteen or more PPR points per game. Now, I will say, if you purchase the Prospect Guide and you see Jalen McMillan's year two profile in there, you're gonna look at his journey comparables and you're not gonna want to sell him because one of his comps is Devonte Adams. I think McMillan is good, obviously, I've been backing him since last year's draft, but I didn't like the fact that the Bucks only use him in the slot on twenty six and a half percent of his routes run, when that, to me, is his more natural position. And if Godwin does return, and yeah, it might take some time for him to come back from that injury, but if he's back, we're probably not gonna see that number, that slot number for McMillan get that much better. I think the likelihood of McMillan bucking these trends and being a wide receiver two or better is not super great. Players in his year two model range get to that point and basically one of five instances, so it's possible, but I'd much rather buy into him if his rank was like ten wide receiver spots lower. Like I said, I haven't met wide receiver thirty three Keep Trade cut wide receiver thirty. Maybe that's not a massive difference to call out on today's show, but I think it's deserving because it's an interesting kind of play to sell. Like at the end of the day, it's fine to hold and to see what you can get out of him. Maybe he does really hit. I just think it's a good example to use because just because he's young, just because he's a year two guy, does not mean that you have to hold him, because it's still important to not fall victim to over performance and recency bias. Sometimes when I do rankings, I do a little bit more research after the fact, and I realize, Man, I probably had that guy a little bit too high. That's where I'm at with James Cook. I have him ranked at the same spot as Keep Trade Cut, but there should have been more movement on my end because I think he's pretty much a sell candidate. Just straight up. Again, none of the players on today's lists are necessarily bad, and that applies to James Cook. But we probably just saw James Cook's best season of his NFL career, the dude scored eighteen times. He had six touchdowns. In twenty twenty three. He tripled his touchdown count and yes, he outperformed touchdown expectation in a PFF only Jamiir Gibbs outplayed his touchdown expectation more than James Cook last year, and that includes pass catchers as well. Cook was between six and seven touchdowns above expected in twenty twenty four. Like, think of it this way, it's pretty wild that James Cook scored eighteen touchdowns and he was still the RB eleven and PPR points per game. It's because he still only saw a forty five percent total rush share per game. That's a number that was actually lower than his twenty twenty three total. His target share was barely over eight percent per game. We now have multiple seasons where James Cook was not seeing a bell cow workload. I mean, his twenty twenty three usage, the usage itself was actually better than his twenty twenty four usage. When you're looking at backfield share. In order to combat the inevitable touchdown regression that's coming James Cook's way, he's gonna need to see more volume. But he's consistently been seeing this type of volume in the Bills off. I'm just not sure with the other backs playing as solidly as they did in twenty twenty four, I'm not sure we should expect those numbers, those volume numbers, to all of a sudden increase by a whole lot. And if they don't, then aren't we kind of back to twenty twenty three James Cook, but a couple of years older. Twenty twenty three Cook was absolutely fine, But that type of performance is more like a mid to low end RB two, not a full blown RB one. So to me, he's a pretty clear cell candidate. I don't think the Bills are gonna necessarily draft competition for him, but I do think that Cook is coming off a season he's likely never gonna repeat. Okay, this next cell candidate, it's a little bit spicy. It really comes down to the fact that I'm not sure we see a huge rise from him from twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six given the team circumstances, and at this moment he's ranked as a fringe wide receiver one. No, it's not Jackson Smith and Jigba, it's Garrett Wilson. Wilson is very obviously good at the game. But it's been three years now, and in three years, Wilson's never reached fifteen PPR points per game. He's never seen a yards per out run rate above one point eighty five, which he hit his rookie year. He was solid last year. He caught over one hundred balls, but that's still resulted in sub fifteen PPR points per game. He's been wide receiver nineteen thirty two and twenty nine and PPR points per contest across his three years in the league. In a good situation, there's no doubt that Garrett Wilson could thrive. And I know a lot of you were thinking right now, JJ, how can you say to buy Chris Alave last week but sell Garrett Wilson this week? The market it's all about cost. A Lave's posted comparable per game numbers aside from this past year compared to Garrett Wilson, but this past year was filled with concussion problems. That's quite literally the only difference in performance. You could even argue that a Lave's been better per route run. His yards per route run has certainly been better than Garrett Wilson's. Now, this is a comparison I've been talking about basically since these dudes were drafted. The Zap Model loved both of these guys, and they're both really, really good talents. And it's fine. If you think that Garrett Wilson is better, I would probably agree. I just don't understand why the difference in their wide receiver rank is always as large as it is, and it's only getting larger. And this isn't about a lave versus Wilson. It's just an example. It's an example of me saying that I could argue other wide receivers who would also thrive in better situations. Why is it impacting those wide receivers more than Garrett Wilson in the market. That's what this comes down to. It's strictly cost. Despite never finishing higher than wide receiver nineteen in his three years in the league, Garrett Wilson is still the wide receiver thirteen over on keep trade cut. I could understand that rank if we were staring at an objectively better situation twenty twenty five, but we currently have no idea who's going to be quarterbacking the Jets. To assume it's going to be an upgrade is probably a little bit foolish. Maybe they make a big trade, maybe they surprise. I have to at least be open to that. But even if it is an upgrade talent wise, we can't just ignore the fact that the Jets were fifth and pass attempts this past year. A more conservative offensive approach with better efficiency does not automatically mean better fantasy numbers. My guess is that Wilson doesn't gain a ton of value in twenty twenty five, especially in season, which is probably the crux of why he's sitting on today's list. He's a great player in a not so great situation. It's a good example of selling a player despite that player not really coming off of a monster season. Now, the last guy I want to talk about on today's show is a tight end. I've only talked running back in wide receiver so far. Let's change things up a bit. Tucker Craft is currently the tight ends over on Keep Trade Cut, and I'm not vibing with that. Not to be fair, there's a decent gap between the tight end five. Who's George Kittle to Tucker Craft? But I think there's a lot of favorable projecting going on with him here. First off, Kraft played well above expected this past year. He scored nine point six PPR points per game, which isn't even that elite, but that was two and a half points above expected according to PFF his expected points per game. That's based on where he's seeing his targets and how much volume he's seeing. His expected points per game ranked outside the top twenty a tight end, he was really helped by outperforming the touchdown column by about three scorers. Had Crafts peripherals been extra good, maybe I could see the reasoning behind him being ranked out of tight ends who have more locked in production. But his target share per game rate last year was fifteen point one percent. His yards per out run rate was good, but it was like seventy fifth percentile good. It was by no means elite. Craft himself was a pretty solid prospect in my prospect model, and he seems to have the right yards after the catch profile to be super usable in fantasy. I'm just having a hard time being as optimistic as other people are in the market because he wasn't some elite prospect. He hasn't shown us elite numbers yet, at least within the metrics that we should care about in fantasy and if Green Bay does address pass catcher more of this offseason, that's not gonna help his cause either. Now, like I said at the top, there are tons of players that could have gotten to today, But I hope the guys that I chose at least gave you a nice variety, and I hope that it can help you with your own process in deciding who you're cool with trading away. That's what's most important at the end of the day. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are best shooting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Remember to pre order that prospect guide over on Lateround dot com. Other guys, I'll talk to you on Friday with a brand new Mailbag episode m