666: Mailbag 8/26/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa j J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Esen and this is episode six six six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mailbag questions this week, I want to remind you about the Established the Run Draft Kit. Established runs rankings for any fantasy format you might be playing in, and they continuously update as news breaks. You also get access to Evan Silva's top one fifty and along with it a change log that you can read to see why players are moving up and down his draft board. It's a great way to make sure you understand why players are ranked where they are. The goals to help you make better decisions, not tell you who to pick and if you're in the best ball drafting, their strategy, rankings and insight can help you out a ton with roster construction. Established Run gives you a different perspective on fantasy football than I do, and I think the combination of my work in THEIRS can help make this draft season a success one. So head over to Established Run dot com and purchase their draft kit. When you do, use promo code JJ for a ten percent discount. That's promo code jay J. Also, just a reminder that the Week one NFL Sunday Million is officially live on fandle. Showcase your NFL knowledge and construct your best nine player roster while staying under the salary cap. Then follow along using fandel's live scoring feature to compete for your share of three million dollars in cash prizes, including a cool one million dollar first place prize, all for just four dollars. The first Sunday of the NFL season is approaching quickly, so head to fandle and submit your lineups today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandle app for more details. The first question this week is from twitters from at the Birch. It says, JJ, how do you recommend handling some of these camp in preseason darlings prior to season kickoff? I'm talking about Isaiah Pichecko, Isaiah likely, Kyle Phillips and others. The hit rates, given their profiles in draft capital, are historically pretty low. Should we be trying to get what we can or hold on? So I'm going to take this time to talk about some conversations that I've had about Isaiah Pichecko recently, because it's totally related to my approach with this question. As a lot of you know, I was into Pachecko immediately after he was drafted by the Chiefs. I talked about it on this podcast on the episode that I did directly after the draft, in the Late Round Prospect Guide, I wrote about him as a clear target in rookie drafts. All the awesome patrons in the Late Round Fantasy Football Discord, we all made a we don't talk about Pachecko meme because we didn't want our league mates to know about him. It was a very fun draft season because of that alone. Because of Isaiah Paichecko. It seemed like the Chiefs wanted explosiveness in that backfield and they got a player who can provide that. He had the best way to adjusted forty times in this running back draft class, and his top comparable in my model was Damian Williams, and Damian Williams someone who did very well in this Andy Reid offense. I'm not saying all this right now to prove to you guys that I was right. I'm setting the stage here, I try to be reasonable with my approach to fantasy football. So while I was higher than the consensus on Pacheco, it was because the consensus was just too low on him. I fully recognize that he's a seventh round running back who still didn't look great in my prospect model. It's not like he looked like Bryce Hall. He just looked better than how other people viewed him. His touchdown share, his reception share numbers, they were undervalued, which is why the model liked him more than the NFL drafted. But his total yards per team play, the third production metric that my model looks at, it wasn't great. The thing is, Pacheco's now gotten to this point and you could sit there and say that he hasn't actually done anything yet, and you're not wrong when focused strictly on what he's done on a football field. But there's talk that Ronald Jones now doesn't even make the team, and Pacheco's dynasty value has shot up. You appreciated value if you drafted Isaiah Pachecko. So things have happened the camp pipe and the fact that he's playing with the first team offense isn't some irrelevant information. There aren't many seventh round running backs who have even made it this far, So what that means is, I don't think it's reasonable to just say, oh, he's just another seventh round running back, because most seventh round running backs aren't playing consistently with the first team offense, and they're not doing so since July. This same logic can be shifted to Kyle Phillips or Isaiah Likely too. They're in a spot that others from their draft position and their situation haven't really been in, so lumping them with players from those situations doesn't really make any sense. I'm not saying that we should overadjust. I'm just saying that I don't understand the people who go out on social media and they're like, it's just training camp, it's just the preseason. This stuff doesn't matter at all. What matters is their profile and where they were drafted. Okay, well, if that's the case, does that mean that you're gonna now view Kevin Harris above Isaiah Pachecko. I loved Kevin Harris as a prospect. I thought he was totally undervalued, But Harris is now buried on a depth chart in New England. And we don't even know if he's gonna make the team. But Harris had better college production, he had a better overall profile, and he was drafted seventy picks ahead of Pachecko. Are we to just not adjust whatsoever? Maybe some of you don't adjust, But I think reacting in some way is totally rational because again, the players who are getting this hype, a lot of guys coming from the rounds that they're coming from don't even get that kind of hype. Hype alone just isn't the reason that you should buy into a player. But the thing is, Pachecko has some interesting traits that have a chance to convert. Kyle Phillips is a technician as a route runner. That's why I loved him as a prospect. Khalil Shakier is getting a ton of love out of Buffalo. Shakier had an amazing profile. One of his top comps in my model was Cooper Cup. At the end of the day, he though, this question comes down to cost, and yeah, these day three guys, they're not going to hit it a high rate, But you know what else won't hit it a high rate. Round three Rookie Picks, Round twelve redraft picks. If you're talking first or second round rookie picks in dynasty, that's one thing. If you're talking sixth round in a season long redraft league, that's one thing. But if you're talking about a double digit round pick and redraft, who cares. I don't think fantasy gamers have enough context of how bad the hit rates are in fantasy drafts. When you get that deep, betting on a player to be somewhat of an outlier that late in a draft is totally fine. What you need to worry about is betting on an outlier when costs actually matter. And honestly, guys, it's okay to just enjoy the ride. If you drafted Pacheco and you want to see it through, see it through, have him beat your guy. If he doesn't pan out and you missed out on a third round rookie pick. Whatever. This game is supposed to be fun too, all Right, I'm gonna calm down a little bit after that one. This next question is from Patreon. It's from Bennett. It says, hey, JJ, you and some others have me on board with Ramandre Stevenson as a good value this year, especially compared to Damian Harris, but I was curious, is this an exception to the ambiguous RB one theory since Harris has a higher ADP than Stevenson, or is that a misuse of the theory. Thanks, No, it's not a misuse of the theory necessarily. But as I alluded to on the ambiguous backfields episode from June, I don't think we should use that theory as like a trump card, because there are other things that we should be looking for in a breakout running back, not just historical ADP trends. Not only that, but there are plenty of places where Ramandre Stevenson goes ahead of Harris, and I wouldn't be surprised if that flips in some spots over the next couple of weeks. My Fantasy League, for example, they currently have Harris going just around ahead of Ramandre Stevenson, and that's where my ADP analysis is based off of. Ramandre has other things going for him that Harris doesn't, mainly the past ability. That's something. Breakout running backs from the middle rounds almost always have. Maybe things flip for Harris this year, but he's just not been used that way throughout his career. So remember to not just solely focus on the ADP stuff when there are other things going on for a player's profile. I like to think of it as a puzzle, with each piece being one of those attributes that we should be looking for. This next question is also from Patreon, is from Jake. It says, if you had the number one overall pick in a draft, do you find yourself taking the number one ADP player more often than not? For example, the obvious plays to pick Jonathan Taylor, the RB one from last year, But isn't it true that these number one players almost never repeat as the top guy at their position the next year? Is it more logical to skip the number one ADP guy and grab maybe the top wide receiver or a running back further down the list? Am I thinking about this too much? So? Look, I get this question every year, and I understand why people ask it. But remember we're playing the probability game. Your expectation for taking Jonathan Taylor first overall should not be that he absolutely has to finish first overall in order to pay off his price tag. You want Taylor to give you a nice advantage over other running backs, which he objectively can do even if he's not the RB one in fantasy football, because by this logic, you're also making the assumption that you're increasing your odds of getting the RB one or the wide receiver one in fantasy football by going with an alternative player, which doesn't really make any sense. In fact, since twenty eleven, the RB two in drafts has averaged two fewer PPR points per game than the RB one has. The expected value of the RB two is not as great as the RB one. The reason we see the turnover that we see is because in order to be the wide receiver one or the RB one or the QB one, in order for a player to be the top player at his position one year, a whole lot of stuff probably went right, and it's just naturally hard to repeat that. I think the big takeaway here the is that you shouldn't assume that just because this type of trend exists, it doesn't mean that you would have even higher odds of finding that one player with your alternative pick. It's weird at wide receiver and running back this year because I think you could flip flop Taylor with Christian McCaffrey, and you can do the same with Cooper Cup and Justin Jefferson. So if you'd rather go CMC or something like that, that's totally fine. He's in the same tier as Jonathan Taylor for me. But I wouldn't do that solely because players have a hard time repeating as the top player at their position. This best question from Patreon. It says, Hi, JJ love all of your content. Thanks. I have a question regarding quarterback streaming. I know it shouldn't be the preferred strategy, but strange things happen On Draft Day last year, I struggle with the streaming approach. I missed almost every targeted matchup, which were recommended by experts and analysts, despite a record number of forty nine quarterbacks finishing inside the top twelve over the season. I also heard from other managers that they struggled too. Was this just bad luck or is there a statistic that shows that it was a weird year for streaming quarterbacks. Thank you, keep on with your great work. So I do another show during the season called Living the Stream another podcast my co host Denny Carter, who is at NBC Sports. We track our streaming picks and we have for years. We give streaming picks at quarterback, defense and tight end back Like five or six years ago, we'd put together a quarterback Franken sign up like QB six each year in points per game, And these are players who are rostered in very few leagues, and we didn't have the benefit of just keeping a player when his percent rostered number rose, So like if we streamed a breakout quarterback one week, we couldn't just keep streaming him. The last couple of years, though, that streaming QB has been more in the QB ten or QB eleven range. It's been tougher as the position has become more predictable. Fantasy managers understand the position better and they're highlighting and focusing on the right things like rushing, so it's gotten objectively harder to stream. And I talk about this predictability concept a good bit in the Late Round Draft Guide. That's going to explain things a lot more than I can on a mailbag show. But that's the gist of it, and that's why you're probably struggling streaming the position. It hasn't been just you, everyone has. The next question is from Arnaldo. It says, hey, JJ, how do you adjust your draft approach if at all in keeper leagues. Do you force the running back pick in the first because you already kept two wide receivers, or do you stick to best player available in the early rounds regardless of who is already on your roster. So it's really hard to answer a question like this without knowing what the player pool looks like, right Like, I have no idea how many players are being kepped, who's available, all that. But let's just run through a hypothetical. Let's say that you kept only wide receivers and the only running backs available right away in your draft are running back dead zone running backs. They're the players that you traditionally see in that area of the draft who get pushed up because of need and not because of talent and bell cow potential. You should not force the issue. You're still going to get an over valued asset. It doesn't change just because there are keepers. You should still prefer running backs a little bit later, for reasons that I talked about on a show a couple of weeks ago on one of these mailbag shows. Players who go after them still have just as high of a ceiling. They're just not as expensive. But it all depends on your individual circumstance. I just want to note that with questions like this, all of the things that I've talked about strategically in season long leagues, it still applies. The last question this week is from at not Gump three. It says, are there any touted rookies your model hated this year? So my model doesn't care that much about athleticism. So two wide receivers really come to mind, one being Christian Watson, who I still don't feel great about, and the other one is Alec Pierce. I've been touting Pierce all summer, though as a player to target in redraft leagues. Sometimes athleticism does translate. It's just that his production profile was lacking, and MOD didn't like that. It saw more as like a Chris Conley type. But he's been getting a lot of love out of Indian. His ADP has just been way too low given the situation and the draft capital used on him. I'm afraid that he's someone that the model is going to be wrong about, which obviously happens, but I've more subjectively corrected it. He looks like a really crisp routrunner and he's got the athletic ability to make some insane catches. My prospect guy is still out there, by the way, if anyone wants to see how my model viewed things immediately after the draft. Some takes have changed, but it's still good to sort of have that baseline on how things looked right after the draft. But Alec Pierce is my answer, and I think he's a great redraft pick this year. That's gonna know 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 by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found. You know, to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Make sure to check out Lateround dot com, join the Patreon, check out the draft guide. Remember to subscribe to the newsletter too. My fifteen Transactions article and podcast is starting very very soon and that article is gonna be sent via the newsletter, so definitely sign up for that. But thanks everyone, really appreciate you listening. Enjoy your weekend. I'll talk to you next week.