652: Mailbag 7/8/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha. J J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode six hundred and fifty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into this week's mailbag questions, I wanted to give a shout to the Established the Run podcast. The podcast is free and hosted by two legends in the fantasy space, Adam Levitan and Evan Silva. You probably remember them from their time at Roadal World. Established the Run episodes are quick, fun, impact with analysis. They cover fantasy news and reactions, rankings, how to bet, player props, best ball, and more. I think it's a great compliment to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast because it's more conversational in nature and they cover topics that I might not cover. I'm a longtime listener and I can vouch that they know what they're talking about. So check out the Established the Run podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. Also, don't forget to sign up for fandom Fantasy. For users you have had to make a deposit on Fandle Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you do is to posit a minimum of ten dollars in your Fandle DFS account. You'll be instantly rewarded with two free vouchers. Be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head over to fandel dot com or download the Fandle Fantasy app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandel app for more details. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Nick says, Hey, JJ, love the show. Thanks. You do a lot of studies and analysis regarding snake drafts and the rounds to avoid certain types of players, et cetera. Do you also do this for auction and or plan on including auction info as part of the draft guide? Thanks? I got another one from Robert that says, JJ, longtime fans slash listener. This draft guide is off the charts man. Congrats well worth the cost. Thank you. All of the leagues I play in are now auction and some keeper's auction. Your previous articles and podcasts on where the winning players come from transformed how I approach auction drafts in the past. I'm wondering if this new Picasso draft guide should alter my auction strategy moving forward. Would love your insights on how you take all this great info and plan for your auctions. I realize the individual draft market sets the tone creating the need to be flexible, but how do you enter the auction before any bids have been made? Slash one. Okay, So I get questions about auction drafts all the time, clearly, and I totally understand it. I play in a lot of leagues that are auction drafts too. But don't overthink this. Translating from a snake draft to an auction draft is not nearly as complex as you might think. The first question here says you do a lot of studies and analysis regarding snake drafts and rounds to avoid certain types of players, et cetera. In the end, I'm doing analysis that's based on cost. Right, I'm saying to avoid some player because this price is too higher, target some player because his price is too low. Sying avoid the running back dead zone because in those rounds, historically running backs have not panned out at a very high rate. All you need to do is shift You're thinking about cost when you shift to an auction draft, you're going from draft slot as your cost to actual dollars. Generally speaking, the same rules can apply. Because auction values are usually created from rankings, they're often still way too linear in nature. So you know that the running back dead zone area, the running backs that get drafted there in a snake draft, they're likely to be a little bit overvalued in an auction draft too. And you know that a late round tight end or a late round quarterback approach, which can work in snake drafts, it can work in auction drafts too, because the supply and demand function of fantasy football doesn't shift. Whenever you go to an auction draft, you're still just starting one quarterback and one tight end. I'll likely get to the point where I do more auction strategy content, maybe in the twenty twenty three version of the guide, but I get auction questions all the time. Is if the content that I'm doing isn't relevant to actionction drafts because it's focused on snake drafts, but it's still completely relevant for auction drafts. The same behavioral things that we see in snake drafts occur in auction drafts too. There's a little bit more to it, which is why I did an evergreen episode on the topic back on episode three hundred and ninety three. Tiers and understanding those tiers is so important. In an auction draft. There's strategy on how to nominate players, there's strategy on when to attack certain tiers. But overall, like at a high level, the same general concepts apply. You just have to be more reactive and flexible and aware in an auction draft than you do in a regular snake draft. But in the end, all analysis has to do with cost. Every piece of analysis that I do is related to cost, and cost is not dramatically different from a snake draft to an auction draft because at the end of the day, you're still playing the exact same game. One player who's valuable in one format is going to be valuable in another one too. This as questions from at lad ninety one. It says your guide, which is a great read. By the way, thanks, list Travis etn as a draft value this year based upon some of the findings of previous studies. However, the first season following a Liz Frank often disappoints, and while many data based analysts rate him as an elite pass game weapon. Many film analysts I follow rated him as simply above average and felt that the huge receiving stats were a result of getting the ball in his hands as the best player in his offense, rather than being a genuine elite pass catcher. I realize this nuance is very tough to capture in a data model, but I know that you apply a subjective lens to a lot of the work that you do. With this in mind, do you have the opposing views regarding the injury and pass game usage based on your favorite film and injury experts, or do you like him despite them? So with the injury, of course that's baked into my analysis. Coming off of that injury, he may not be one hundred percent and he still hasn't played in the NFL, so of course there's downside. But that's also why he's not a second round pick in fantasy drafts right now, because if he had played last year and he had played to about expectation, I would bet that he'd be a potential second rounder this year given the James Robinson injury. But yeah, the injury is a concern regarding the pass catching thing, though I don't really buy that at all. I think models can capture this type of thing quite well at times, too, Like we can't just assume what someone is seeing with their eyes is right and the model is wrong, simply because the model can't capture everything, and analyst's eyeballs can't capture everything either. Why give them the benefit of the doubt here because their narrative just seems correct. Now, I haven't seen the same analysis that you're referring to, but you're almost dinging him for being a good player in a way. If a college team is trying to get the ball in a player's hands, that can't be viewed as a bad thing. That's why there's signal to receiving numbers for running backs coming out of college, because it shows versatility. It shows that teams are trying to get their playmakers the ball in different ways. But at the very least, he's likely a very good pass catcher coming out of the backfield. Based on our evidence. We see Jacksonville talking about using him that way, we see it in the data, we saw it in college. The only other running back since twenty eleven to have been drafted in the first round with a best season reception share of at least fourteen percent. Etns was closer to fifteen percent, but the only other first round running backs with that reception chair have been Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, Todd Gurley, and mark Ingram. Each of those players have multiple fifty plus reception seasons in the NFL. We don't need Etn to be the best pass catching back in the world. We would love for him to be really good in command a Christian McCaffrey like target share, of course, but that's unlikely to happen. But even if he's not elite elite, it doesn't mean he can't be great in fantasy. A player of a non elite caliber can still hit a fifteen to sixteen percent target share, and that, alongside one hundred and fifty plus carries, can get a dude into a low end RB one territory. I guess what I'm saying is who is elite? What does it mean to be an elite pass catcher at running back? Is Aaron Jones elite? Is DeAndre Swift elite? Because the way that they score points in fantasy football, or the way that they're projected to score points, that's what we can see with Travis Etn, and yes, I'm fully aware that those running backs are extremely good pass catchers, but there's not much evidence out there to suggest that Etn absolutely can't be that. Now Etn's cost has risen, he's becoming a little bit less of a value as a result of those rising costs, but that's in more competitive leagues. In a home league or in an office league, he's probably not going to creep up as much. That's why I think he's going to be a value through August. This s's questions from Patreon is from Robert. It says auction strategy question. If you add all of the receivers in Green Bay together, it would still be a lower value you as what DeVante went for last year based on ADP, assuming you would grab the top target. Is it worth bidding on all players or is it gonna kill my bench to do this and bite me later. I would not advise you do this because you're making the assumption by doing this that one person is going to emerge in that Green Bay offense, when we have no idea if that's going to be the case. This is a similar strategy is when people capture backfields, you shouldn't usually capture backfields because it's not a guarantee that said backfield will have a player that comes out of it that's gonna be worthy in fantasy football. And while those players seem cheap to acquire, there's still an opportunity cost involved, which is not only drafting those guys and not getting another player at that draft slot, but it's holding onto those players on your bench, which doesn't allow you to have someone else. The reason a player like Adams is more expensive than all of those other guys is because he's providing a ton of fantasy points in one single lineup spot. This is why US fantasy analysts always talk about doing two for one trades. When you get the one, you're likely getting the best player in that deal, and you're capturing all of those fantasy points in one single lineup spot as opposed to spreading it across multiple spots. You can always add a replacement level player in a worst case scenario. So no, I would not do this. I don't mind throwing darts at any of those wide receivers. I just wouldn't get them all on one team. One might emerge, but you're not guaranteed that at all. In fact, I think odds sort of favor that a Packers receiver won't emerge this year, simply because that's what we've seen historically from players at their ADP. This last question is from Patreon. It's from Matt. It says, correctly identifying the right back and an ambiguous backfield can win your league. So, in a backfield like Miami's moster Edmunds, Michelle gaskin, what should we be looking for to identify the best chance at hitting? So I'm using this question as a teaser for next week's show because on next week's show, I'm gonna be digging into breakout running backs in the process of spotting them. I do it every year, and it's all laid out of my draft guide. By the way, I just won't be giving everything away that's in that draft guide, but I'll be talking about these types of situations. What you should be looking for is the stuff that I talked about on the Ambiguous Backfields episode last month, and then some other facts that would lead you to chase Edmonds. I actually think that Edmonds is a decent value right now, but I'll explain more on next week's episode. The last question this week is from at Rooster Jones, and it says everybody knows by now that touchdown outlier seasons regress. Is there any way that they just don't for certain players? Julio, DJ Moore, Mike Evans, Adam Thielen. Yeah, so I've talked about this a ton on the podcast in the past, but I think we need to get out of the habit of just looking at a player's touchdown total, seeing that it's a lot or a little, and automatically categorizing a player as a regression candidate or not. Where players see targets, matters, and a lot of times that can explain what people think is a player not regressing. Like look at Mike Evans versus DJ more or as a perfect example. Both of them should regress to the mean in the touchdown column, but their mean is not necessarily the same. Last year, for example, Pro Football Focus had DJ Moore at six point three expected touchdowns. Mike Evans expected touchdowns were closer to nine. So Mike Evans should have outproduced DJ Moore in the touchdown column last year, which he did. It just so happens that Evans outperformed his own expectation while DJ Moore underperformed compared to his so the gap between those two players became massive. And yeah, some players are better at football and are going to be a little bit better at scoring. A lot of factors can play into that. So maybe the answer to your question is, yes, some players don't fully fully regress, but when there's a clear, clear outlier, like you're saying in this question, a player will regress in some way, or we should at least bet on that. Maybe it's not to a league average or what we see from an average player at his position. But we can't go around projecting Mike Evans to score four TI touchdowns again this year with the exact same volume and situation that he had last year, because that's the assumption that we make when we're talking about regression, that they have the exact same situation in the exact same volume. Mike Evans might score more touchdowns this year because he might just see a ton of volume in that Tampa Bay offense like that can change. But if he saw the exact same looks and he was in the exact same situation, we should then bet on Mike Evans not scoring as many touchdowns. That's what regression tells us, but Evans might be better than average this year. Maybe his expected touchdowns this year ends up being eight and he scores ten, but that's a lot different than scoring fourteen when he was expected to score eight point seven, which is where PFF had him. Players are going to be better in some statistical categories, but they still can and will inevitably regress. That's why we see fluctuations for players each year in those statistical categories. But just remember that not everyone's expectation is the same. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, 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 LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out the draft guide over on lateround dot com. It's twenty four to ninety nine. It's updated weekly. There was an update that went out on Friday. Definitely check it out. Dominate your drafts this year. I would really really appreciate it. But thanks for listening everyone. I'll talk to you next week.