994: Mailbag - Jonathan Taylor's Outlook, Quarterback Bounce-Back Candidates, and More

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha j J zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode nine ninety four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: So download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app now to draft your twenty dollars best ball lineup to play for a share of fifteen million dollars, and get a second ticket to play free for a share of that fifteen million. That's two chances to win big without ever setting your lineup again. Draft one, Get one only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one hundred gambler in New York call eight seven seven eight hope en Wyre, Tex hope en wy to four six seven three six nine and Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org eighteen plus and most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply. Void were prohibited. One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars headliner contest by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry. Twenty dollars Entry fee required. Reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best dash Ball sponsored by DK It's a Mailbag day. Let's get to these questions. The first question from Patreon is from KJS. It says, just finished your episode on taking advantage of quarterback touchdown rates? Can the inverse of exceptional touchdown rates be applied to those who had poor touchdown rates last year? Aside from mobile quarterbacks? Are there any candidates that jump out as prime bounce back targets, especially in a superflex format. Yes, the inverse can be applied, and I wish I would have focused on that more on that episode that I did earlier this week, because it's pretty fascinating after digging into it more, I'm just gonna go over some data really quick that I think explains this really really well. I looked at every quarterback ranked QB one through QB eighteen by average draft position since twenty fourteen, and this ADP data is from Fantasydata dot Com. I then only included players who played eight or more games in a particular season in this analysis, and then I looked at all of those quarterbacks who played eight or more games, I matched them with their previous season touchdown rate. So Peyton Manning in twenty fourteen, he was the QB one by ADP the previous season, he had a crazy eight point four percent touchdown rate. Now, I didn't want to get players with skewed touchdown rates because they had low pass attempt numbers the previous season. So in order to qualify for a touchdown rate, the quarterback needed two hundred and more pass attempts in that previous season. That led to one hundred and sixty seven quarterbacks in total. Twenty three of those quarterbacks had touchdown rates below four percent the previous season. One hundred and three of them had touchdown rates between four percent and six percent. That's not a surprise because that's where the majority of quarterbacks finish the season in touchdown rate. And then forty one of them had touchdown rates above six percent the previous year. Now keep in mind there's a bigger number of above six percent them below four percent here because we're looking at top eighteen quarterbacks by ADP. If a quarterback had a poor touchdown rate the previous season, chances are the market's not going to draft him very high than next year. But that's three buckets. You get low touchdown rates, normal touchdown rates, and then high touchdown rates. Now get this of the twenty three players with low touchdown rates, forty eight percent of them exceeded average draft position expectation in that following season or the season that we're analyzing. But thirty five percent of them scored two or more points above expected per game, and then seventeen percent of them scored four more points per game above expected.

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Speaker 2: And again this is.

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Speaker 1: Based on average draft position expectation. Every draft position has some sort of expected point per game value based on history, and this is looking at their actual totals. They're actual points per game versus that expected points per game. Now, if you go to the four to six percent touchdown rate bucket, the normal touchdown rate bucket, you get fifty three percent of them exceeding expectation, but just twenty percent of them exceeded expectation by two or more points, and only ten percent of them by.

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Speaker 2: Four more points.

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Speaker 1: In other words, the players with low touchdown rates sub four percent touchdown rates, they were exceeding expectation at a larger degree than the players with normal touchdown rates. Then we get to the high touchdown rate group, the guys in the previous season who had a touchdown rate of six percent or better. Of those players, just thirty four percent of them exceeded EIGHTYP expectation. That's by far the lowest of the three groupings. And while they did match the normal touchdown rate group and exceeding two or more points per game, not a single quarterback from this group, not a single one who had a six percent touchdown rate or better the previous season, exceeded ADP expectation by four or more fantasy points per game. Now, a lot of this has to do with the fact that high touch rates one season lead to high average draft positions the next season, and when ADP is high, it's hard to far exceed that expectation. But that's also the freaking point touchdown rates regress, so the market isn't regressing that number quite enough. Meanwhile, players with low touchdown rates below four percent, they're exceeding ADP expectation at a really high rate, at least compared to the other groupings. They're giving us these really good seasons versus expectation. Now, the player who stands out most for me this year with this analysis is probably Dak Prescott. Dak's touchdown rate last year it stands out it's just three point eight percent. He was at six point two percent five point eight percent and six point one percent during his three years prior.

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Speaker 2: CJ. Stroud. That's another one.

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Speaker 1: C J. Stroud was under that four percent mark last year too, And you can also throw in Matthew Stafford and Geno Smith. If the goal is finding value at the quarterback position, you actually want to target players who had low touchdown rates the previous season when you're drafting them at ADP. Now, obviously, if you reach for these guys, if you don't draft them at ADP, you're losing that advantage. It's not going to be as valuable as a pick like Dak Prescott. He's a great candidate for this, but if you take him QB seven, you're not really taking advantage of the touchdown rate stuff. But at ADP, those are some of the quarterbacks who really stand out. This ask question is also from Patreon, is from Tanner. It says, hey, JJ, why are you low on Jonathan Taylor? Seems like a solid RB one at a discount. Now. I'm a little lower on Jonathan Taylor because the Colts offense just scares the living you know what out of me. Taylor was the RB seven last year in PPR points per game and plenty of you will point to that and say that doesn't make sense for me to have him at RB ten right now, which, to be fair, that three spot difference it's not insignificant, but Taylor was a totally different player when Anthony Richardson was under center last year versus when he wasn't. Richardson threw ninety percent or more of Indianapolis's passes and ten games last year, Jonathan Taylor was active for nine of those games. In those nine games, Taylor averaged a target share per game rate below five percent. He did average over sixteen points per game, but those outings weren't totally predictable.

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Speaker 2: He had two.

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Speaker 1: Games below seven points, and he had a twenty six point and a forty point performance in there too. Outside of those games, Taylor's target share per game rate was over twelve percent, and he averaged over nineteen pper points per game. Obviously, either of those splits it's fine from a points per game standpoint, but it's very difficult for me to confidently buy into a player who has the possibility of seeing such a low target share and he absolutely needs to maintain his ninety four percent running back rush yare per game rate in order to keep up this pace, and maybe that happens. But keep in mind that since twenty eleven, among running backs who played ten or more games in the season, only Saquon Barkley has been able to hit a ninety percent running back rush year per game rate more than once. It's a really, really hard number to sustain. Now. I know I made the comparison to Anthony Richardson. He may not even start. But I also don't have this insane confidence that Daniel Jones is gonna be great for Jonathan Taylor either. But look, I'm not gonna fault anyone for drafting Taylor. I don't think he's quite an avoid because he's too talented of a player to be that. But I'm probably gonna be underweight on him this year if this cost holds steady. It still may, though a lot can change as I research stuff more, especially for this draft guide. This has questions from Twitter's from at Underscore. I three e nww. It sort of looks like ben ww. Maybe I got that wrong, but that's what it looks like. It says, Hey, JJ love the show. Thanks question the too many MOUs defeed narrative. Every year, this narrative pushes players down, but there are always teams in the end which do support multiple weapons and have people clamoring for all of their weapons. Is there data to support this narrative? So look, I've shared this before, but we see teams with multiple receivers in the top twenty four all the time in fantasy football, Like I'm talking five six of them per season in PPR points per game, a team can sustain and produce multiple usable pieces one hundred percent. But I don't think that's the entirety of the too many mouths defeed narrative. Like you're saying that in the end, teams do support multiple weapons, which is true, but I don't think that's what the too many MOUs.

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Speaker 2: Defeed idea is all about.

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Speaker 1: Rather, it's about the fact that in an offense with a lot of good players, it's hard for players to reach the kind of ceiling they might hit in an offense without those players, And that's objectively true. Anytime someone asks a question like this, I like to go to extreme hypotheticals because they can explain something really quickly. If you had a team with Justin Jefferson, Jamar Chase, Nico Collins, Pukaakua, aj Brown and Malik Neighbors. Do you think those wide receivers would be as good in fantasy football as they are right now today?

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Speaker 2: Of course not. Not only would some.

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Speaker 1: Of those players just not be on the field as much because the wide receiver room is so deep, but when they are on the field, they wouldn't command the same type of target share because there are other elite players there. So obviously, too many MOUs defeed isn't some false narrative. It's a very real thing, and you can see that with these extreme examples. But to me, the too many MOUs defeed argument is more relevant for non elite players in a real environment, not a hypothetical one. Elite players are gonna see high target shairs no matter what, Ceedee Lamb. In ninety nine percent of realistic environments, he's gonna see a huge target share. But what about the next two down, the guys in Chicago where there's more ambiguity, the players in Green Bay.

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Speaker 2: The reason people say there are.

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Speaker 1: Too many MOUs to feed is because in those situations, especially when like Chicago, you've got a lot of above average weapons who we don't know if they're a lead or not so when other competition enters the picture, it's easier for those players to lose at least some target share because they're not the obvious center point in their offense. Could Roma Donze be that dude for Chicago? Sure, you guys know that. I've talked about his range of outcomes enough. We just don't know that yet. So the fact that the Bears went out and they got Colston Lovelin, they got Luther Burden from a projection standpoint, that hurts romadonsay, because there's more mouths defeed, Now, I wouldn't look at too many MOUs to feed as something that's black and white. It's a difficult thing to just generally define. But also every team is going to be unique. But since projections and outlooks they start at target share and there's only a one hundred percent target share pie to go around. The weapons and a player's offense absolutely matter. It's just that elite talent will generally beat all of that other talent out. This nast question is an email that says, hi, jj, I'm a longtime listener and a first time buyer of the Prospect Guide. Love the show and the guide. Thank you so much. I wanted to discuss Terrence Ferguson a bit. It seems he's often grouped with or behind players like Mason Taylor, Elijah Arroyo, and Harold Fannin in most rankings and mocks, but the ZAP model places him alongside Lovelin and Warren as an elite producer. I recognize that he's on the cusp of the elite producer threshold, but I'm curious about the metrics that are weighted more heavily in the ZAP model that led to the model liking him more than consensus. Could you also share your thoughts on why you believe these specific metrics correlate with a higher success rate. Thanks for tuning me in, Charlie. Yeah, so I've talked about how the ZAP model really likes Terrence Ferguson. He's part of that elite producer category, like you said in the question, which is the same category as both Loveland and Warren, and some might be surprised that his ZAPP score isn't like super super far away from those two tight ends.

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Speaker 2: But the reasoning here is really simple.

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Speaker 1: The tight end model it cares about athleticism, and because Loveland and Warren didn't give us a forty time to calculate speed scoreer, they're getting more generic numbers for their scores. The fact that they still have really strong ZAP scores tells us that they're really good prospects. But Ferguson was able to elevate his score because he gave us some testing numbers and they were great testing numbers. Now I mentioned this on Perspectives with rich Dotson and he was in agreement. But this tight end class, some of these secondary guys are just better values than the top end ones in rookie drafts this year. Like I would rather get Ferguson in the third round than Warren and Loveland in round one in rookie drafts. And don't get me wrong, I really really like Colson Lovelan, and Tyler Warren as prospects. But Ferguson's the tight end three in this class, and like I said, his score isn't so so far away from those two other guys. This is more of the fact that I love Terrence Ferguson than I don't like those other two tight ends. But this really comes down to the fact that Ferguson tested and athleticism matters a lot at tight end, especially versus running back and wide receiver from a Fantasy points perspective, And this may not seem fair like. It's almost like Warren and Loveland are being punished for not testing. But number one, I can only work with the data that I'm given. I can't just make things up. But number two, Draft Capital is still grounding things here. It's still placing those first round tight ends above Terrence Ferguson. But I will say one of my big projects next offseason is gonna be working on that tight end model. It's a tough position to really nail down. This last question from Twitter is from at Connor Helly. It says, does this Bears offense have more downside than people were taking into account? Ben Johnson is a rookie head coach, Caleb was bad last year, and three out of four of their pass catchers are unproven. Yet the only thing anyone talks about is the upside. I see a very wide range of outcomes here. Could be elite, could be trash one hundred percent, one hundred percent. Yes, there's a very real outcome here where the Bears are hugely disappointing.

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Speaker 2: We have to be cognizant of that.

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Speaker 1: But there's also a very real outcome here where the Bears offense is awesome, and we have to be cognizant of that too. But in situations like this, you have to see how the market is reacting.

00:16:37
Speaker 2: To this kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: What's going on in fantasy drafts and what's going on in fantasy drafts or even expert rankings is that the Bears are still not being valued like this is the expectation right now on Fantasy pros. Caleb Williams is QB thirteen. He goes around that spot in DraftKings Best Ball drafts too. Dj Moore is the wide receiver twenty on Fantasy Pros, Romadoun Say the wide receiver thirty seven, Luther Burden wide receiver fifty three, and those are also pretty comparable to what you see on DK. DeAndre Swift is really affordable, Roshan Johnson is basically free right now, and Colston Loven and Cole Kment they're not being drafted as sure things at tight end.

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Speaker 2: Now. Look, I know part of the reason the wide.

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Speaker 1: Receivers in particular are cheaper is because the market's afraid that they'll play off of each other and cap each other's upside. Similar to Green Bay last year, but number one ambiguous wide receiver situations, they're typically good, not bad. That's how you extract value. Number two, they're still pretty cheap. A year two wide receiver in redraft who was a top ten pick just a year ago is sitting in wide receiver four territory in an up and coming offense. You guys know, I could go either way with Roma, Dunza and Dynasty, but in redraft, I'll.

00:17:51
Speaker 2: Take that on all day long.

00:17:53
Speaker 1: It just doesn't matter that much to my fantasy team if he doesn't work out, and then obviously it's the same deal with Luther Burden. I don't care that much about median outcomes in fantasy football. When I get into like round four, round five of my drafts, I'm gonna keep leaning more and more unseiling as the draft goes on. You can't play scared. As Nelly once said, two is not a winner. Three nobody remembers you're going for number one.

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Speaker 2: The last question this week is from at S Dick thirty nine.

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Speaker 1: It says, how are you utilizing tools like chat, GPT and your data modeling? How do you think AI will change fantasy football. You know, it's funny that this got asked this week because I've been using chat GPT a lot more this year for research for the Draft Guide, and this is what I found.

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Speaker 2: I don't think anyone can just.

00:18:44
Speaker 1: Input some data and let AI just run with things. You still got to really guide it in the right direction. But when you start cooking, it can really speed up the research side of things. It's allowing me to discover new things to look into, which has been a ton of fun.

00:18:59
Speaker 2: Honestly, it's kind of addicting.

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Speaker 1: I think it's very clear that every single industry, not just the fantasy football one, is going to be impacted by AI. And if you're someone who's on the fence or just doesn't want to dive in, I would change that attitude. Get comfortable with it, learn how to use it, try your best to get ahead with it because it's not going away, and it can seriously make your life easier.

00:19:25
Speaker 2: So I found a lot of good with it.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: It helps with discovery and ideation, it helps with modeling and making sure that I'm crossing my t's and dotting my eyes.

00:19:35
Speaker 2: I just think that.

00:19:36
Speaker 1: Today it's still in a place where you need to seriously cross reference things and have a good understanding of what you're actually doing and what it's doing. If you don't have that basic understanding, if you don't understand modeling whatsoever, and you're just feeding it data and just saying whatever it says is right, then you're not gonna be able to utilize it very.

00:19:55
Speaker 2: Well right now.

00:19:57
Speaker 1: Maybe in the future things change, but right now it's really important to still have a general idea of what's going on. But overall, I've been using it and I think most others should be using it too.

00:20:09
Speaker 2: That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening.

00:20:11
Speaker 1: If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by shooting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at LATEROUNDQB. Make sure you're heading to Lateround dot com pre order that Draft Guy. There's a lot of new information in it this year that I'm very excited to publish and get out there, and also check out the other offerings The Late Round Fantasy Football Show has been going on with me and David Kitchen. Check that out on YouTube dot com slash at laterounddeff and on lateround dot com. You can still get the Prospect Guide and make sure you're subscribe to the newsletter. I think that's it. Thanks for listening to everyone, I really appreciate it. Have a great weekend.