563: Mailbag 10/15/21

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Label podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa JYJ zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at FANDL and at Number five dot com. And this is episode five hundred and sixty three of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the fandel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget about this week's FanDuel Podcast Network Listener League. Check out fandle dot com Slash League slash Listener League to join. It's a rake free contest that costs five dollars to enter and has fifteen hundred dollars in prizes. You can interrupt to three lineups to the contest. Again. That's fandle dot com Slash League Slash Listener League. To join. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandle app for more details. The first question this week is from at Big Money forty eight. HEYJJ love thepod. Thanks. Should we be worried about Stefan Diggs? His catch rate has gone down this year and it seems like they're spreading the ball out more with Knox and Sanders in the mix. Thanks, I'm not really worried about Stefan Diggs, which is why he was a by candidate on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. His target share is just two percentage points lower than last year's rate. His rate of seeing a fifteen plus air yard target this year has actually increased, and that could be playing a role in why we're seeing a significantly lower catch rate. But his current catch rate, which is receptions divided by targets, is going to get better. It's less than sixty percent right now. Diggs has never finished the season with that low over rate. His career catch rate heading into twenty twenty one was over seventy percent. So maybe it ends up being a slightly below average year and catch rate for Stefan Diggs, but I would expect things to get better there. A big difference between this year and last year is that last year he had a twenty percent touchdown share in the offense. This year it's eight percent. Again, maybe he doesn't get to twenty twenty percent this season, but his career low and touchdown share is fifteen percent, and that was during a season where he played fourteen games. Things are going to get better for Stefan Diggs. The question is from at Fantasy Attics seventeen. You said that Kareem Hunts production should drop and the Browns should have more receiving touchdowns going forward. Why can't Chubb slash Hunt replicate Ingram slash Camara. In twenty seventeen they totaled twenty five touchdowns with Breeze throwing twenty three, and Mayfield isn't exactly Breeze. So I actually think this question is answered within the question. You mentioned that I said, quote Kareem Hunts production should drop and that the Browns should have more receiving touchdowns moving forward. The keyword there is should, Yes, they should. Based on history, based on the things that we should bet on, that's what should happen. The way I do analysis is that I look at what's most probable, not simply what's possible. What's possible is just part of that range of outcomes. Is it possible that the Browns end up with fifty touchdowns this year and that thirty of those touchdowns are rushing touchdowns? Yeah, that's possible. Am I trying to bank on something like that? Not really? Why? Because of what's probable the current pace for the Browns would put them at over thirty eight rushing touchdowns across a sixteen game season. I'm doing it across a sixteen game season because it allows us to compare to other seasons that have happened in recent history. But they have twelve rushing touchdowns right now through five games. That's two point four rushing touchdowns per game. So thirty eight point four rushing touchdowns in a sixteen game season. Guess what's been the best rushing touchdown season over the last ten years in the NFL. Guess how many touchdowns. The answer is thirty and it happened last season by the New Orleans Saints. So yeah, I'm gonna sit on my podcast and say that this is likely not sustainable. And this is also why I said it does mean a player like Hunt will become a relevant fantasy That's not the point, of course, I understand the context. Of course, I understand that Cleveland's a run friendly team to the point where they'll be closer to the top of the rushing touchdowns list in the bottom. I'm stupid sometimes, but I'm not that stupid. The point with Kareem Hunt is that some people view him as a full blown RB one and because of touchdown regression, and because of his workload, and because of how the Browns are scoring their touchdowns, he shouldn't be viewed that way. He's scoring almost nineteen PPR points per game. Based on his usage in the environment that he's in, we should expect it to be closer to fifteen or sixteen. But I think the higher level point here is to never confuse what's probable with what's possible. Plenty of things are possible, but if you bet against the possible in favor of probable, more often than not the majority of the time, you're going to win out. And that doesn't mean that you miss on those outlier seasons either. I think people will get confused at that sometimes. Just because we're thinking in terms of most likely outcome doesn't mean that we should never take shots at that higher range of outcomes. It doesn't mean that players we draft or acquire are incapable of having a ceiling. We're looking at the most probable outcomes because it can help us know when to buy and sell and have a more sustainable, high scoring fantasy lineup. My recommendations that I make aren't totally ignoring what's possible, but they definitely are focused on what's probable. This es course is from at Jiggy underscore j Do you change your tactics when you're scoring almost the most points in the league but still somehow losing multiple weeks? Is that just bad luck? Generally speaking, you should ignore your head to head record when you're trying to judge how good your fantasy team is. If you're three and two right now but bottom two or three in your league in points, you got to ask yourself why, and you probably need to make some moves. Look beyond your record when you're evaluating your teams. Questions from at TM two six one four eight four one. You mentioned Henry's pace is record breaking so far, so there's possible regression and usage. You've also mentioned Tennessee passing at a higher rate than before, maybe not as efficient with maybe Julio coming back. Does Tannehill have a chance of turning it around for the second half? Things point to Tannehill being better than he's actually been in my opinion. At least he's played around expectation. But I'm not convinced that Tennessee is going to keep up this pace of scoring touchdowns. How they're scoring touchdowns where over fifty seven percent of their touchdowns have come on the ground, and Tannehill hasn't been part of that. Like seasons past. The Tennessee defense is also quite bad, and over their next four games they get Buffalo, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and then the Rams. So those are tough teams where they may not be fortunate to see a positive game script or even a neutral game script. Derrick Henry will still be fine, and the match up against the Bills and the Rams is not necessarily ideal for Ryan Tannehill, Like, you can't confidently play Ryan Tannehill this weekend, but it wouldn't surprise me if we start to see the touchdown ratio start to move the other direction over the next month. And Tannehill's a good option for Week seven if he was dropped in your league because they get Kansas City. This as questions from at BGT Evan, do you see trading in fantasy football as more of a competitive endeavor or a collaborative one? In other words, should managers be finding ways to scam their trade partners or should they be working together to find a trade that benefits both teams? I think the obvious answer here is working together. A scam of a trade might work once in every fifty sixty seventy tries. If you're in a more competitive league, a trade that's lopsided will rarely work. So what's the point. All you're doing is insulting the intelligence of the other person, and that's gonna make them not want to make a trade with you. I try my best to make all of my initial offers fair. I don't want the other league manager to just think that I'm out to get them. In the end, a trade should benefit both teams. It's possible for that to happen. So be collaborative, don't be selfish. This best questions from at TLW Travis. How do you see the Giants wide receiver corps moving forward once everyone is healthy? Would you still envision Shepherd to continue to get the bulk of the target share? Has that changed now with the emergence of Kadarius Tony. I don't know how you keep Tony sidelined after what he's done the last couple of weeks. He's not just playing in the slot and thriving in the slot either, which is where Sterling Shepherd plays. Tony's playing everywhere and with a better weapon there, I think Shepherd's target share dips. I'm sort of expecting Tony, Sheppard, and Galladay to see the most snaps in eleven personnel when they're all healthy, and then maybe slate and seeing somewhat of a rotation. But I think the nice part with a player like Tony and even Shepherd is that both guys can actually play outside. Just because they may be better in the slot doesn't mean they're in capable of playing on the perimeter. And remember when we refer to slot players, a lot of slot wide outs are playing like fifty or sixty percent of their snaps from the slot, not all of their snaps. I just think it's rational to believe that when everyone's healthy, Tony is going to be on the field, and since Darius Slayton is the least talented wide receiver of that group, he'd be the odd man out in three wide sets. He'll still get rotated in. But I don't see why Tony couldn'er shouldn't be able to hit a twenty percent target share in that offense moving forward, or why that's not a reasonable outcome, and that will naturally mean the other wide receivers there like Galladay and Shepherd, that they don't have the same type of target share ceiling that they once had. This next course is from at aleish Earn. Have you upgraded your August forecast of Rashad Bateman With Lamar passing more? Is he worth grabbing? So I'm just gonna brain vomit some thoughts out there for this one. I hope it all makes sense at the end. My forecast on Bateman was very much a career long forecast, not just a twenty twenty one to one. For those of you who don't know what my take on Bateman was, it was the following. I loved them as a prospect. My model had Jamar Chase as the top receiver in this class. DeVante Smith was number two, and then Bateman and Elijah Moore were ninety six percentile prospects and third. The talent was never in question. What was tough to figure out was how he'd produce in fantasy given the other pieces in the Ravens offense, but more importantly the fact that as long as Lamar Jackson would be under center, the Ravens would be run heavy. And I still think that's the case. I still believe the Ravens are going to be a run heavy team with Lamar Jackson. You could argue that in twenty twenty one, everything that's happened for the Ravens has favored the pass more. They lose their top running backs to injury, the defense is playing really poorly. That means that Number one, the Ravens may not feel as comfortable being as run heavy because they don't have reliable backs. Even if that's not that logical, it's not crazy to think that a team would think that way. Number Two, though gamescript hasn't been in their favor, Baltimore's a four and one team that's run one hundred and thirty one offensive plays this year. While trailing, that number isn't that far off from the league average. Despite being four to one. The Ravens defense not playing as well, that's naturally gonna force a more pass heavy script. But guess what, Baltimore's still twenty fifth in the league in overall pass rate and they're twenty eighth in neutral game scripts. So many things have helped them see more passing volume this year, and while they're just running more plays than most teams, so that passing volume is closer to league average in total. Their intentions are still clearly to not be some pass heavy team that still very much worries me long term. And what's also somewhat of a concern is what happens if Lamar Jackson doesn't play out of his freaking mind. What happens to Bateman with two really good weapons and Mark Andrews and Marquis Brown in that offense. I'm less worried about the latter, but the former is probably gonna come event because so far this year, Lamar Jackson has probably been the league MVP. His yards per attempt rate right now is nine point one. We've seen that yards per attempt rate be hit just three times over the last decade, once by Aaron Rodgers in twenty eleven, Nick Foles in twenty thirteen, and Matt Ryan in twenty sixteen. Unfortunately, that efficiency probably is not going to last. I think Lamar is still going to ball out and be fine, and he can still sustain fantasy relevant pass catchers even with a little bit of a dip there. But this argument has always been about ceiling and not floor, and it's been about the long term ceiling and the long term viability not what could happen in a random season where things swing in one direction like we're seeing this year in Baltimore and how things have really helped the passing attack. So where I stand is that Bateman should be rostered right now. That's why I had him as an AD just a couple of weeks ago. The Ravens passing situation is the most favorable that it's been under Lamar Jackson, there is no doubt about it. But remember the argument for the Ravens passing more from people is that because they drafted Rashad Bateman, they would throw the ball more. Rashad Bateman hasn't been on the field. The reason the Ravens are throwing the ball more is because of gamescript. The defense hasn't played well. Maybe that'll keep up. But we also can't expect Lamar Jackson to be this good because he's been unbelievable. But yes, right now, given this environment, you should want to add Rashad Bateman because going back to what I talked about earlier, what if this is the norm for the twenty twenty one season, what if this is what's possible. Unlike Kareem Hunt, you're not selling a player You're not trying to extract that value. You're talking about someone who's on the waiver wire that you can just add. So yeah, go ahead and try to add that. Because Rashad Bateman is a very good wide receiver, he was a very good prospect in this offense in twenty twenty one. There's at least some ceiling there. The last question this week is kind of a personal one. It's from at the Curse Fantasy. One of the things I appreciate about your podcast is that it's to the point. However, with Mike Tagliar's passing, I feel a little guilty consuming fantasy analysis without knowing much about the analysts. Care to share a little bit about you personally, background, family life before fantasy football. Thanks so. I usually shy away from these types of questions on this podcast because I want everyone to just get as much fantasy football information as possible on this show. Forget me. I just want you guys to win. But I also don't want there to be any guilt that you're consuming this information from a stranger and you may be benefiting from that information, yet you don't know that much about the stranger. I also don't want to be a stranger. I'm pretty open about my life on other platforms, whether that's Twitter or whether that's my other podcast called Living the Stream. But I realize that a lot of you only listen to this show, So here goes. And for the record, if you don't care about this, which I know a lot of you won't, and that's totally fine. Seriously, I promise you, it's fine if you don't care about my life. But if you don't care about my background and my life, you can stop the podcast right now. I hope you crush it this week and I'll catch you next week. But I was born and raised right outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I went to a really big high school called North Allegheny, and I'm still incredibly close with my high school friends, even though we're not all living in Pittsburgh anymore. I also married a high school friend. She and I went to different colleges. I went to the University of Pittsburgh. She went to renstally Or Polytechnic Institute that's right outside of Albany and New York. She's the smart and nerdy one between the two of us. She's actually helped me a lot through the years with data related projects. But we started dating during our sophomore years of college, so we had a serious long distance relationship for almost three years in college, and we've been together now for fourteen years and married for six and a half. We moved to Cincinnati, Ohio after graduating college. I worked in advertising for a few years. I just didn't get enough out of my job there, even though I loved the people that I worked with, So in turn, I wrote an e book during my spare time called The Late Round Quarterback Back in twenty twelve, and that ended up changing my life completely. It allowed me to do this for a living. I got a full time gig in the fantasy up all industry with Number Fire back in twenty thirteen, and it was a startup that was then bought by a fandel My wife and I then moved to Charlotte, North Carolina in twenty fourteen, and we've been here ever since. We love Charlotte and the friends that we've got here. For those of you who never been to Charlotte, Charlotte's one of those places where everyone who lives here is not actually from here. It's still such a young and new city, so it's been really awesome to settle down here. I've also got a three year old daughter named Avery, who's the sweetest, smartest little girl in the world. I've never been a three year old who's more determined in my life, and it really gives me so much joy every day to see her accomplish things. And I've also got a little dog named Henry who's eleven years old. Let's see. I also play video games. I've been a console gamer for most of my life, but I play far less than my dad years than I did in my twenties. I used to be very into beer, but I changed my lifestyle last January and now I eat gluten free, so I'm not a beer person anymore. I drink a lot less than I did in my twenties as well. I like to exercise. I ride my peloton a lot, and I'm starting to get back into running to cross train a little bit more. I'm not like the strictest person in the world when it comes to my health, but I've taken my health a lot more seriously over the last year and since becoming a dad. And then I guess the last thing that people may not know about me is that in my past life aka. Before I started doing this fantasy football stuff for a living, I was really into graphic and web design. I taught myself how to do front end development when I was in high school, and I've done design work for years. It's just that ever since fantasy football became my job, priorities shifted. I still try to open up Photoshop every once in a while, but I'm not caught up to speed like I used to be with new features and such. But that was the reason I got into advertising and marketing out of school. I got my degree in marketing, had a design and development background, so I brought that together and I was a project manager, but I didn't really care for it. Like I said, some may be wondering where my data background comes from, and honestly, I was always just interested in decent in math. I was always a couple of years ahead with it. I was bad at other school subjects, but I was really good at math. So it was really easy for me to bring sort of all these different together when I try to get out there in the fantasy football space. I had a love for football. In the game of fantasy football, I had a design and marketing background to differentiate myself a little bit, and since it's a data heavy game, I knew that I could handle baseline stuff with data and then just sort of grow as I did more work with numbers. That's pretty much it, though I honestly don't live a very thrilling life from the outside. I get to do what I love to do for a living, and then I enjoy my family and do the things that everyone loves doing, like watch TV shows, get together and hang out with friends, play golf, just the typical stuff. So hopefully that all gives you an idea of where I came from, who I am, and how and why I'm doing what I'm doing. I'm a very lucky person. I've worked hard, and not everything is as easy and as simple as I just made it sound. But I'm incredibly lucky and I realize that. And the reason I feel that way isn't just because I get to talk about fantasy football for a living. Like that's cool and all, and I definitely love it and I feel lucky to be able to do it. But first and foremost, more than anything, I'm lucky to live where I live, with the family and friends that I have. To me. Life is about relationships and I've been blessed with a lot of good ones. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to Late Round podcasts, 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 for listening this week everyone, I really appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend Crush Week six. I'll talk to you next week.