1094: Mailbag - Stacking, Drafting for Upside, and More

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ ZACHERI, JJ Zachers. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode ten ninety four of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: So, as you guys know, I published the Late Round Prospect Guide last month, and if you read that guide, then you know that I changed up the ZAP score scaling. I even talked about that on a recent mailbag episode. The new scale works a whole lot better to give you an idea of where gaps occur from prospect to prospect. However, I'm getting a lot of feedback from people about interpreting the scores from before and then now, as in, if a player has a score of eighty right now, what would that score have been in the older guides in the ZAP one point zero scoring? Because I get it, you want some comparison. It's interesting content, so I figured i'd put it out there at the top of this episode. In the post draft version of the guide, there's going to be a chart, a conversion chart. It's at the end of the guide, and it shows you the approximate scores for each player in the ZAP two point zero scoring system versus the old Zapp scoring system, which was based more on percentiles. So that's my way of letting you guys know that it's coming, while also telling you to check out that prospect guide over on Lateround dot com. Do that now, all right, let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Cody. It says you've spoken many times in the past about how we should be shooting for upside in fantasy football. How does that change with format redraft, Dynasty, best ball and lineup size start seven versus start twelve or does it change at all? Is there an instance where floor begins to matter more? Is that something dynasty managers should consider in rookie drafts or should those picks still be shooting mostly for upside? So this is something I try to talk about in the Late Round Draft guide each year because it's fundamentally one of the most important things to know in fantasy football. Your individual league, the size of your league, the number of starters that you have in your lineup at each position. It matters more than arguably anything else. It matters more than the different scoring changes that you might see from league to league. I care far more about the number of wide receivers and running backs that I'm starting compared to whether it's full or half PPR, because the number of players in your starting lineup completely shifts the supply and demand equation. Before I get into that, though, I do want to take a second to talk about floor and ceiling. There are a lot of ways to interpret that. Someone's floor and ceiling or their range of outcomes can come in the form of how they score points. Right Like, someone might look at Wandel Robinson and say that he's a floor player and not a ceiling player.

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Speaker 2: This is just an example.

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Speaker 1: Someone might look at Xavier Worthy and say that he's a ceiling player that you're just looking for the big.

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Speaker 2: Play with that archetype.

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Speaker 1: Now, you can look at things that way, but I wouldn't go too far with that because it forces you to put these players in these buckets when only a handful of players should actually be placed in those buckets. Wandel Robinson can have big games. Xavier Worthy, even if you consider him a big play threat, can hypothetically give you consistency, even if it's bad.

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Speaker 2: Consistency.

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Speaker 1: Where I think about floor and ceiling is with the talent level of the player as a whole, and what we know about that player, the information that we have on that player. Someone who's been in the league for seven years, we generally know what kind of player that is. Terry McLaurin. We understand what McLaurin does on an NFL field. Compare that to a rookie, and there's an obvious difference. What that means is that from a projection standpoint, from a forecasting standpoint, we can probably confidently project like the tenth percentile outcome to the ninetieth percentile outcome for a player like Terry McLaurin. Every once in a while, situation's great, the player beats regression, they fall out of that range. But Carnell Tit in the NFL, on some NFL team, we have less of an idea right now, we might be better at projecting just like the fortieth to sixtieth percentile outcomes for someone like Carnell Tait. Ambiguity is often what's driving our floor and ceiling conversations. Archetype does too, and play style all that stuff. But to me, so much of the discussion starts with how much information we have on this player. When we have little information on a player, I found that it's often advantageous to draft that player in fantasy football because the market reflects the lack of that information. It's why historically, even though it hasn't been the case quite as much recently, but historically rookies have been good bets in fantasy football, not bad ones. That's because the market is afraid they don't want to draft the unknown. Another good example of this is with middle round running backs. Guys who go in that like round six to round nine range. Middle round running backs who have good previous season production, they actually perform worse than middle round running backs who had bad previous season production.

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Speaker 2: Now why would that be the case, Well, because think about it.

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Speaker 1: If a middle round running back is coming off of a good season but he's still being drafted in the middle rounds, the market is telling you that something is off.

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Speaker 2: Meanwhile, a player who didn't have a.

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Speaker 1: Great previous season but he's still being drafted in the middle rounds, that's also telling you that the market is bullish about something. This is a generalization too, there's a lot more nuanced to this, but you get the idea. Drafters like comfort, they like what's known, and sometimes it's a great idea. Sometimes it's not, and that leads me to this question, when is it a good idea to draft for that comfort. I'd argue when leagues are larger and when lineup sizes are larger, because in a shallow league, let's say it's a twelve team league where you start one quarterback, one running back, two wide receivers, and one end, no flex spot. You need that upside. Your fantasy lineup is dependent on five players. That's it, just five guys. You absolutely need some league winning players in there. You can't have a bunch of Terry McLawrence more than likely, which means you have to take shots in some of those ambiguous range of outcome players, the rookies, the guys who maybe switch teams. We don't know what they're gonna look like on their new team. The mobile quarterbacks who maybe have questionable passing profiles. Now, I'd argue that in most leagues that's the direction that you should go in because there's only one winner in fantasy football. But it's also a preference.

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Speaker 2: I don't think it's the only way to win.

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Speaker 1: No. On the flip side, pretend you're in a league where you start three quarterbacks. I always like going to these extreme hypotheticals to drive home a point. But imagine it's a ten team league with three quarterbacks being started per team. Not only is that gonna drive the price for quarterback way up, but because you need more, you're probably not gonna risk taking on more of those questionable players because it's going to be much more difficult to make up for that mistake. In a shallow league with five starting lineup spots, if you miss, you can fix that mistake. In a league where demand for those positions is so high, it's a lot harder to make up for that mistake. So instead you might go after the boring quarterbacks, the ones I always tell you guys to avoid in single quarterback leagues, the Jared Goffs of the world. In a single quarterback league, he's not really that valuable when you can fall back on something like streaming, especially with shallower benches, But his value increases in a three quarterback league because there's comfort in understanding his range of outcomes.

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Speaker 2: You know that Jared Goff is going to get you something.

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Speaker 1: So yes, your league size, the type of league that you're in, best ball versus season long, for instance, it all matters when we're describing the ambiguity of a player's range of outcomes, and this is something I'm going to be writing about in detail in the Late Round Draft Guide again this shar year. That should be available for pre orders sometime in May, so be on the lookout. The next question says, hey, JJ really enjoyed this year's Prospect Guide.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

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Speaker 1: It feels like deja vous with a quarterback taking out one oh one in the NFL draft who doesn't necessarily profile as someone with Fantasy football domination and their range of outcomes. However, quarterbacks and superflex leagues notoriously hold their value going into year two of their careers. How do you approach comparing that floor of the stable value quarterbacks to players of potentially higher stealing but lower year two floor value like a Jordan Tyson or Casey Concepcione. Best Henry So, I think this is one of the hardest things for me. In the rookie rankings this year and the Prospect Guide, I thought, yeah, Mendoza is definitely the one oh two, But the more I've thought about it, the more I'm like the market for earlier first round wide receivers is also fairly forgiving two. Let's just use recent examples of wide receivers who were selected in the top half of the first round who didn't necessarily die dominate as rookies, which I don't think Casey Concepcion is going to fit this post draft. I don't think he's gonna be a top half the first round player, but Jordan Tyson very easily could. This is not super scientific, but since twenty twenty, we'll say we had Henry Ruggs, maybe Jerry Judy, Johan Dotson, Jamison Williams, Marvin Harrison, Junior Romadonze, and Travis Hunter as top sixteen picks who didn't give us a ton of juice in year one. From August twenty twenty to August twenty twenty one, according to Dynasty League Football startup ADP, Henry Ruggs went from wide receiver thirty six to wide receiver fifty two, which isn't that much of a surprise because people really did not like Henry Ruggs. He was probably overdrafted to begin with, so people were naturally going to be more reactive to a bad Henry Ruggs rookie season. But Judy went from wide receiver twenty three to wide receiver twenty year over year, despite rookies entering the picture for startup ADP purposes and Judy going for fifty two for eight fifty six three scores. It was a good rookie season. Maybe not elite, so maybe Jerry Judy doesn't exactly fit this mold. John Dotson in August twenty twenty two, before his rookie season, he was wide receiver forty four in startup ADP. After a rookie season where yes, he scored seven times, he had thirty five catches for five hundred and twenty three yards, nothing overly special. Entering year two, he went from wide receiver forty four to wide receiver thirty two. Jamison Williams, he had a college injury that derailed his rookie season. He went from wide receiver thirty five to then wide receiver forty two, so he was in a relatively similar spot year over year despite really not having a rookie season. Marvin Harrison Junior, he was the wide receiver five going into his rookie season, and he had a disappointing rookie season. He can also only go down from wide receiver five. Wide receiver five is very very high, but he was still wide receiver fourteen entering last season. He's still maintain pretty good value Romadounze wide receiver sixteen to wide receiver twenty one, and he had a really mediocre rookie season. Travis Hunter, I think is just a one of one, very unique situation. But not only that, he didn't have that bad a rookie value when I did the Cell Candidate's episode back in January, and yes, for all of these cases, you can pinpoint some story as to why the market stayed with that player.

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Speaker 2: I get it.

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Speaker 1: Like I said, this isn't overly scientific. But number one, we're looking at basically all the top half of the first round player since twenty twenty who didn't give us something during their rookie season or something significant, which tells you that all the other guys did. All the other players who were drafted in the top half of the first round were pretty good as rookies, which tells you that having that kind of draft capital is probably gonna yield pretty decent results. If you look at the back half of the first round, it's kind of a different story, like where Ricky Piersoll and Xavier Lguet were drafted. But if Tate and Tyson all get really good draft capital, chances are even with a bad rookie season, they're going to maintain some value because fantasy gamers they all like those wide receivers. This is not a Matthew Golden situation where a lot of people were off of him, where he had very clear red flags to his analytical profile. It's hard to find people who are super super against one of those big three wide receivers this year. Maybe they don't like Tyson's injury history, so sure, maybe his value won't maintain, But I also think that Tyson has the best analytical profile in this class, so it's hard for me to discount the good side of his profile too. What I'm getting at here is that number one. Those three wideouts in particular, in my opinion, have a legit shot to be top twenty assets at wide receiver entering year two, and in most formats, even in superflex, that can be just as usable as non huge stealing quarterbacks like Mendoza. Now, in the end, I'm probably gonna have all of them in one giant tier post as long as draft capital is there, and also I think it's really important if you're playing the value game in dynasty, make sure you're doing so in a league that's pretty active that you know you can flip that player and actually get something for him. Otherwise you should be looking for production first and foremost. But then I'll let landing spot and team needs sort of guide me with where I need to rank them and how I draft them. You're right that super flex quarterbacks tend to maintain value, but the super high end wide receivers they do a pretty good job of that too, all while giving us that upside of being a true fantasy football staple. This next question says Hi JJ love the show.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

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Speaker 1: You mentioned this year's Prospect Guy that the running back ZAP model uses a mix of actual and projected draft capital, but that projected draft capital matters less for wide receivers and tight ends.

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Speaker 2: This is the opposite of what I would have expected.

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Speaker 1: Wide receivers need to get open and earn targets, while running backs just need to be put on the field by the team who drafted them, and they're or like them. If we assume that the consensus in the form of projected draft capital gets us closer to the true talent level for these players. The logic would follow that it matters more for pass catchers. Do you have any idea why this isn't the case? Keep up the good work, thanks, Charlie. I had the exact same reaction to this, so I'm glad that you're bringing it up for anyone who doesn't know. When it comes to the draft capital inputs in the ZAP models, I use raw draft capital for wide receiver and tight end or where they were actually drafted. But at running back, I use a ninety percent weight for actual draft capital and a ten percent weight for projected draft capital, and that's via NFL mock draft database. And you're right, it feels like this would matter more for wide receiver than for running back. If you think about what projected draft capital is saying, it's telling us what the wisdom of the crowds thinks about a player's talent. Actual draft capital it tells us player talent, but is doing so from just one single team's PERSPECTI when thinking about consensus mock draft data, it's gonna center around just the players that analysts like best. Like individual mocks, they're gonna prefer one guy in one landing spot or another guy in another landing spot, But when it's compiled together, you don't get that much nuance.

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Speaker 2: You just get a set of talent rankings, essentially, And at.

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Speaker 1: Running back that's likely going to be compiled in a way where the top running backs by projected draft capital are more of the every down potential bellcal backs. But NFL teams don't necessarily operate that way when they pick running backs. Sometimes they just want the pass catcher who can play special teams, not on day one or day two, but more on day three. You see that as well at wide receiver, but we get a lot more day one and day two picks at wide receiver, where teams are just gonna try their best to get the most productive guys they can possibly get, even if they're mostly slot or mostly outside or mostly deep threats. And that's really the key difference here at wide receiver. When a team drafts a player early, they're usually just trying to get a good wide receiver. Draft capital there ends up being pretty clean from a signal perspective of both talent and expected opportunity. So when we use actual draft capital in the model, we're already capturing most of what we care about. At running back, it's not quite the same. Teams aren't always drafting running backs to find the best running back. They're often drafting for a role, for a roster need, or because of how that board fell, So actual draft capital at running back can be a little bit noisier when it comes to what we're trying to actually predict, which is fantasy production over the first few seasons. That's where projected draft capital can help. It's not replacing what teams are telling us. It's just adding a small layer of what the broader market thought about the player before team specific decisions got involved. And the fact that it only matters at like a ten percent weight kind of says it all. Draft capital is still driving the bus, but at running back, that little bit of consensus it helps clean things up just enough to improve the signal. At wide receiver, draft capital is already doing that job, so there's really nothing to fix. That's how I'd explain it. At least, I don't think it's amazingly intuitive, and it could just come down to the fact that the wisdom of the crowds is just better at evaluating the position compared to wide receiver versus how the NFL does things. But I also think it's important to not overstate that importance of projected draft capital. And there are things like looking at reaches at wide receiver that also get signal, they're just not in the model. I'll be talking about that in the guide post draft. The last question this week is from twitters from at Darren underscore Feather. It says this may be the most novice question ever and I'm embarrassed to ask it, but can you explain stacking for me? I genuinely don't understand how or why it's so valuable. What statistical advantages do you get from stacking a quarterback with a wide receiver or tight end, and how does that work look I think it's important to bring up topics like this every once in a while on the show because everyone's at a different part of their fantasy football journey.

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Speaker 2: Some people are newer.

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Speaker 1: I think with a question like this one, it can't hurt to talk about it, especially this time of year where things are a little bit slower. But stacking is a strategy that people use to reach a ceiling outcome when a quarterback throws a touchdown to a wide receiver, and you have both of those players. You're benefiting from that outcome. You're scoring points for that throw and the catch and all the yards that go along with it. Now, obviously that can also not happen. A quarterback has a terrible game and you have that quarterback and wide receiver. That wide receiver is going to struggle to be relevant if the quarterback only throws for one hundred and twenty yards.

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Speaker 2: That's why it's a more volatile approach.

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Speaker 1: But people use it for ceiling purposes because obviously the ceiling would be there too. When it comes to a game like daily Fantasy, stack is necessary because you're really shooting for more of those ceiling outcomes. It's not a one versus one game. You're trying to beat thousands of lineups in a tournament. You want that upside when it comes to best ball. Stacking is important because you still want that single week upside, yes, but there's also yearly upside.

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Speaker 2: Two.

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Speaker 1: If you draft a quarterback and you pair him with a wide receiver or his wide receiver, if that quarterback is a really good season, chances are his wide receiver he can have a pretty good season. Two, So they're both beating their average draft position, expectation, their average cost. That goes a long way to gaining value with that lineup and then winning in your regular redraft league. Stacking is fine, but it's not as necessary because regular managed season long leagues is a one versus one game. You have a fifty percent chance to win in a single matchup. You don't need to necessarily shoot for that upside in the exact same way. Now, people sometimes like to stack because it gives them a little bit more season long upside and they like that higher very approach, but compared to other structures, it's not as necessary in regular season long. So you can stack a quarterback with any position, most of it with wide receivers and tight ends, but there's validity to doing it with running back too, especially from the standpoint of capturing an offense and hoping that that's the offense that really outperforms expectation this year. But don't think that stacking is an absolutely necessary thing to do in your typical fantasy league. It's not because when you do that, and when you think that it's the thing that you have to do, that can lead to suboptimal choices because you're just forcing it at that point, that's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are but stretching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week everyone, I greatly appreciate it. It feels good to be back after that week long vacation. But we got the NFL Draft next week. There's lots of new content coming your way, including that updated.

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Speaker 2: Prospect Guide next Saturday. I'll talk to you guys early in the week.