Late-Round Perspectives: Jakob Sanderson

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Jacob Sanderson is the owner of the Thinking About Thinking substack, and he's part of the Dynasty Points podcast and ADP Chasing. He's a lawyer, a critical thinker, a Celtics fan, and he once appeared on a game show called Canada's Smartest Person. These are his late round perspectives. This episode is sponsored by DraftKings. There's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance early than with Best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, Draftings giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one debt one, enter lineup in the fifteen million dollars Best Ball contest for just twenty dollars, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of that fifteen millions, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your dream team wants, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. Every breakout star, every clutch play, every touchdown will count towards your quest for a share of fifteen million dollars. I'm drafting over there all the time. It's an absolute blast, So down with the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app now to draft a 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 to seven eight hope end y or text hope en why 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. Voidware prohibited. One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars Headliner contest by nine for twenty five to get one bonus entry twenty dollars. Entry for required reward expires in thirty days. See terms at draftings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best Dashball sponsored by dk now. Back to the show. When I do perspectives, I like to research people a little bit and I googled you and we got to talk about this game show we got. We're on this show called Canada's Smartest Person is correct?

00:02:35
Speaker 2: That's correct?

00:02:36
Speaker 1: What was the show take?

00:02:37
Speaker 2: I wouldn't take it too literally.

00:02:39
Speaker 1: You got, you gotta, you gotta give us the rundown of Like, I have never heard of the show in my life. I'm sure a lot of American listeners have not heard of this show. So what was this all about?

00:02:47
Speaker 2: Not surprised that Americans are not constantly consuming Canadian game show content, but yeah, it was. It ran for I think three years, and it was based on Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence. So the idea was each episode, there'd be four contestants and you would do a challenge based on each component of intelligence. So there would be like physical intelligence, logical intelligence, analytical intelligence, artistic et cetera, linguistic. So I was just watching hockey with my dad during the playoffs and this commercial like kept coming up over and over again. CBC was just shoving this commercial down our throat and it was like apply, Apply, Apply. That was like you should you should apply, Like you're you know, you'd be interesting on TV. You're you're reasonably smart or whatever. So I was like, all right, you know what, screw it. So I felt it a written application and then they called me and we did like an interview and then we had to do an intelligence test, and I guess I did good enough. So then yeah, I flow to Toronto and did not win, So I'm not Canada's smartest person. In my four person episode, I made it to the top two where we had to do a gauntlet, which combined all of the different elements of intelligence. Specifically, I got to the stage about the same time with two left, and we had to carry foam blocks over a seesaw, and that is to test our physical intelligence, and I had insufficient physical intelligence. I continued to drop the blocks over the seesaw. That was the end of the road for me.

00:04:24
Speaker 1: Has been has this been pushed on like social and stuff to you like in your mentions before?

00:04:29
Speaker 2: I've seen it on occasion. There's like right, like at the moment that I lost, you can see like two things. One you can like see me like throw the block on the ground after like falling off and like pretty clearly yelling the F word. And then like the other one is that like after like I've calmed down from that. I just kind of do like one of these yeah, and that has been like slowed down and someone's like made a gift of that. So it's just like a very slow motion version of me like doing the I don't even know how you described above, but doing that. Yeah.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I mean, look, I would say that I am not going to meme that at times this year, but I'm going to meme that at times this year because it's awesome. That's fantastic. Look, this is your first time in perspective you did becoming a best ball bro last year. You and I have chatted for years now. You're one of my favorites in the space and the way that you think about stuff. So I'm really really excited to sort of get into the game theory stuff that we both tend to gravitate towards.

00:05:27
Speaker 2: In love.

00:05:28
Speaker 1: But I like to ask guests whenever their first time is on the show, which has been basically every single guest on this show, what gravitated you towards fantasy football content and writing and doing this sick thing that all of us do.

00:05:41
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm going to start really young on this, So this is like easily the most the range thing about me. It actually came up on our Dynasty Points show this week as well. But when I was like four, five, six, I started like operating entirely fake sports leagues, just like up here in the nogin to the point where I would like make up I had fully made up names of every player on every team in the league. We had like uniforms, logos, backstories, like historical records, all this stuff, and I would just have it all written down in like a book, and then each day I would like decide the results of the games. I would log that and then I would solo act out the day's results. It's like a highlight show on the Sands and Sports Network. I was obviously an only child, so from that age, like it was clear like I had like a truly deranged obsession with sports and with stats. So I feel like it was always kind of a matter of done. But the next major component was that my mom was like, you're not playing football. I was like please, She's like, no, You'll get a concussion and you will die. And so I was just like obsessed with football, especially because it's like the thing I couldn't have, and so I would watch it all the time, think about it all the time. And then once I was introduced to the concept of fantasy football, which I think was like fourteen, I enjoyed my first league, like through work. I was immediately completely obsessive. So became a huge fan. You know. I started listening to all his podcasts, including this this JJ guy, tried to get in on it, tried to learn more about it, and then yeah, once once I moved out to Vancouver for school, that's when Tom Tipple and I and you've been on our show, you met Tom and he was like my real life friend, Like we played slow pitch together for three years before we were did a podcast. Then we were like, hey, want only start a fantasy football podcast, like keep in touch when you moved to Vancouver, and we did, and then got on Twitter to promote the show and stuff, and things just kind of took off from there.

00:07:45
Speaker 1: That's awesome. It's good to have some Canadian blood in the in the streets, you know what I mean, A lot of us obnoxious Americans out there. You're a lawyer also, like you as your day job, so I'm curious, like how that has impacted the way that you look at fantasy football and do your fantasy football analysis, and I think, like, I don't want to make this sound like it's a negative thing. It comes out in your writing, like it comes out in your research, and that like you're incredibly detailed. You really want to think about things that other people aren't necessarily thinking about. And I would assume that stems from what I mean. It could just be innately a part of you and that's why you are a lawyer. But I'm assuming also like it stems from you being a lawyer.

00:08:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably tough to do the chicken or the egg thing. I feel like you get questioned to two different things. One, I think it really helps in terms of like the podcasting and the court stuff. Like I'm so much less nervous I think in court because I've been podcasting to a microphone for like six years.

00:08:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that helps a lot.

00:08:50
Speaker 2: I think also in terms of like the amount of times that I started doing more collective bargaining work as I work in labor law. The amount of times that I just think through collective bargaining in terms of a fantasy football trade is like daily. That's hilarious, Like it's kind of the same idea, like we're trying to align incentives. It's like, yeah, man, like you need a wide receiver and two percent wageing Greece in twenty twenty six. So it's hard to know, like whether I feel like being a lawyer helps more in the fantasy stuff or if it's vice versa. And I also just think naturally, you have a certain personality, certain interests, you get drawn to similar things. I definitely do think like the sort of logical reasoning that is like drilled into your mind through through law school in terms of just you know, if this then that, if that then this. Definitely, I think naturally just kind of affects how I try to think through, you know, not just my writing, but also some of my takes. I guess like it's I constantly try to think in terms of, like, well, what's what would be the most logical reason for this certain explanation and if anything, that might even get me in trouble sometimes, And I've tried to do that a little bit less because I think sometimes you see, like the most easy or simplest explanation is most likely correct, maybe in real life and maybe less in fantasy football, where you sometimes wind up overfitting things, and so I've actually tried to guard against that more recently.

00:10:11
Speaker 1: I also want to ask you because this is sort of like a high level thinking exercise and not so much like player takes. I mean, we're probably not going to do like an insane amount of player takes anyway in this hour, but do you think that one question that's kind of in the back of my head and I'm actually going to be doing this is spoiler alert, I guess, But for the next episode of the podcast, I'm gonna be looking into how rookies have sort of evolved and just just if they're still good values, because trends definitely dictate that they. You know, if you're looking at like a decade, fifteen years, what have you you know rookies have been amazing bets and are they still great bets? Like that's basically the question. I haven't even dug into it, really, I'm just asking the question, right, But that plays into what I want to ask you here. Do you think the fan and I know that you've tweeted about this a little bit too recently and wrote about a little bit, but do you think that the fantasy popball market right now has got and smarter. And I say that without specifically talking Best Ball or specifically talking seasonal I think that we got to kind of separate it a little bit because I do think that there is sharper drafting more than likely because there's more money on the line and people are talking about a little bit more deeply with Best Ball. But do you think that the markets has gotten smarter with fantasy football or is that an overblown aspect it has.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just so much more content available from really sharp people. It's getting accessed. I mean, I think you stink back. I mean for years people were playing fantas football and complete silos. Right. There was no one doing podcasts, there's no one doing shows. It was like a magazine would come out on August twenty eighth, you know, and that would be the only fantasy football content people would see for an entire year. And then they would do their draft with their bodies and they would they would read out the score from the box score and then put it in a log book. And I mean, then you know, you get the advent of some of that content, and a lot of that's very basic. But I mean you look in the last five ten years, and I mean, I'm living proof of this that there's so many people that you realize how limited the bearers of entry were into the content game because of things like well, Twitter, YouTube, sub stack, et cetera. You know, you don't need to wait for Yahoo or ESPN to tap you on the shoulder anymore to start creating things. And when you have so many more content creators, you have so many more sources of people to provide information. You have people that are asking interesting questions and inspiring other people to ask other interesting questions. And I think we just have so much higher level of information available to players now that players then in turn are making a lot better decisions in terms of what they're listening to in terms of how they're actualizing that. So yeah, I think for sure the fans football markt has gotten a lot smarter, and it's happening in all formats. The average conversation I have in a trade with a Dynasty manager is like a much higher level conversation that I would have had six years ago. You look at seasonal ADP and yeah, I agree, you're going to have I think still a much software ADP in your you know, twelve person work league. Then you will in Basketball Mania in the main event, but I still think it's probably a lot sharper relative to where it would have been years and years ago. Yeah, and in part because a lot of those people that are playing in those twelve person work leagues are now playing in Westball Mania. You know that. I similar I've been looking at a pretty similar research angle, and I was writing about recently it was sort of where do these spike weeks come from? And over the last three years, and one of the things I noticed was like, well, there's a good truck of these late round spike weeks coming from the wide receiver position. And I'm looking, I'm like, oh, almost all these are, like it's like half of the spike weeks within a three year period of wide receivers going after like wide receiver sixty we're all from. And then it's like you look at the board and it's like, I don't even know if the state actually is useful in this respect, because you know, Garrett Wilson comes out in twenty twenty two, he was being drafted as the wide receiver fifty nine, and it's like, we would never do that now, Like that just never happened. A million years. So yeah, it's it's really hard to figure out. Like clearly there's a point at which rookies are over priced, right Like if we just drafted them all in the first round, that would be bad. So it's like, you know, so trying to figure out where that is it's tough. Like it feels like every year since we've started being smarter with it, people say this is the year that they're overpriced. I mean, it was demonstrably not true last year, right, like right, you know, Marvin and Rome were bad picks, but like you look on that like Brian Thomas, lab mcconkeye, Bucky Irving, Jade and Daniels, Neighbors, Neighbors, Like there was a lot of the rookies last year were a lot of the best picks in fantasy. So you know, that's just one sample of outcomes. But I think they are still intriguing that this year. But I I definitely agree that if it continues in this direction, at some point in time they might become overpriced.

00:15:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this has also been something on my mind when it comes to the running back dead zone, like part of it is I think, you know, you mentioned like the inundation of content and just the fact that like there's just stuff everywhere, and it's really easy to for things to It's like a game of telephone in a way, right where you're hearing one thing and then you're kind of interpreting it like to a ninety five percent accuracy each time, and then it gets kind of watered down and confusing in a way. And I think it's gotten Like my opinion is it's kind of gotten to that point with the running back dead Zone. I think it kind of got to that point last year a little bit. I wrote an email about how, like the dead zone wasn't really the dead zone last year in the same exact way that we had seen that that actually did come to fruition to a degree, But that's not really the point. The point to me is that like when we come up with these general ideas of draft strategy and game theory and and those things then get I mean, look at how Siegel wrote zero RB and what he wrote about in that article, and how people talk about zero RB today and how they've talked about it for years at this point. But like zero RB is not just to do this one thing and always do this one thing. Same thing with late round quarterback back in the day. Whenever I wrote that ebook, like, I didn't write that to say that you have to draft quarterbacks late all the time. I'm saying, this is what the market is giving us, and this is what generally happens in the market from a trend's perspective. And so with the running back dead zone, I think that it's gotten to the point where it's just oversimplified. And I think this plays into what we were just talking about with the market getting smarter, and is it possible that we're in an era right now where the dead zone just is no more because the market is not boosting up the same type of Mike Davis archetypes they've been boosting up in the past. And like you know, like Zemere Whites of the World happened. Sure, but at the same time, it seems like it's not happening as frequently do you do you seem to see the same type of thing in the data that you look at.

00:17:04
Speaker 2: For sure, this running back dead zone conversation, and I wrote about it a bit last year too, and it brings to mind good Hearts law, which is when when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to become a good measure. So you know what I mean by that is, like, there's a reason why rounds three to six used to be a bad range to draft running backs. And it's not because there's like a pit of molten lava that all running backs fall into as soon as they hit round three without knowing. Under the veil of ignorance, we had developed certain habits about what running backs went there, and that tended to be where poor running back profiles started the cluster. And then you know, we started talking about it far more, and people like you said, take sort of the very two dimensional version of that content, which is, okay, rounds three to six, no running backs got it, And because of that, you know, we just start drafting way less running backs there. The running backs used to go round three, circling around five, around five, starts going around seven, et cetera. And those running backs, of course, just become much less troubling picks when you start pushing their adp back. I looked at, like I said, this piece about sort of where results come from in drafts that came out last week. Specifically, it was looking at running back versus receiver and how much you know, sort of wide receiver prices have increased over the years, and even how they've mostly stayed steady since last year when running backs had a really successful year. And if you look at it on a projection versus projection basis, there's there's just no question right now that like that old dead zone areas where running backs start to separate from wide receivers in half PPR, this is best ball maina ADP. You know, they're projecting for more points basically throughout the dead zone. But then you look historically over the last three years, and I looked at weeks ten through seventeen, so trying to capture for some of the environmental factors that would be present of the playoffs, and twenty plus point weeks and twenty five plus point weeks, and wide receivers are just like kicking the shit out of running backs in that wider in that round three through six range. So to me, this sort of shows two things. I mean, one, you know, projection, of course, as we've known about the dead zone, does not really capture the whole story in terms of making our running back versus wide receiver decisions in that range. The two that like we have either intentionally or intuitively, like correctly made the decision of where and when to de emphasize the running back position in that range, and we've correctly decided, okay, we're going to we're going to deweight projection in this area of the draft. We're going to take the wide receivers because we understand they have more upside. The running backs have this fragile floor and some of these profiles have limited ceiling, and when we've already kind of adjusted for that, this now changes the price calculation and it makes these running backs far far less damaging picks. You look at who I used to think would be the dead zone pro files, and it's now kind of going almost more like the Round steven Round eight. I think of that cluster of running backs where it's like, basically once the last of those rookie starters are off the board and you get into the group of like Aaron Jones and Tony Pollard and Brian Robinson, DeAndre Swift and Isaiah Pacheco, it's like those guys to me are like classic dead zone profiles who five years ago would have been going in like round four and five and would be like screaming avoids. I would never even consider drafting, and I'm not actually that in on many of them, but it's like you look at now and it's, well, those guys are going round seven, round eight. It's a completely different equation if they just you know, because I don't think they have that much upside, But like the upside is they kind of just hang onto the job and survive for an entire season. But if you do that in round eight, that's a rock solid pick. If you just hang on and survive. The wide receivers are going against are like a Mecca Buka and Josh Towns and Darnell Mooney. It's not tem McMillan and Say Flowers and George Pickenson whoever. So it's just a completely different equation.

00:21:06
Speaker 1: Yeah. You know what's interesting is when I do ADP analysis, because I probably I mean honestly, I probably do more of like the ADP analysis than almost anyone in the space, just because I'm really interested in it. And when I do that, I get a lot of feedback, Like, for instance, I did the tight end dead Zone episode earlier this week, which even on the episode, I'm like, I'm not trying to dub this the actual tight end dea zone. It was just a really easy shorthand way to make a title for an episode, right, Yeah, But I got a response, and I got a multiple response from people that said, well, this year is not the same thing as historical years, you know, So like looking at historical ADP data is not necessarily going to help you in the current season because that might not be predictive because the market changes and player archetypes change and the landscape changes. I don't even fully disagree with that notion. Like I look at the running back like last year, in the Draft Gun in particular, I started to look at instead of rounds, I started to look at just within positional ranks, right, And if you look historically within positional ranks at running back, there is generally a drop off in production after like RB twelve, and then another big drop off after like RB eighteen or so. Right, So it's like, if we're seeing those drop offs, and you don't want to be the person drafting at the top of that drop off, You want to be the one drafting at the bottom of it. Similar that you don't want to talk draft a player at the top of a tier, you want to draft them at the bottom of a tier. And so I feel that with the running back dead zone or even the tight end dead zone, whatever, these areas of drafts where we see bad hit rates or a drop off and hit rate happen. What I think we need to wrap our head around and be okay with is that year to year, Yes, the landscape can change, It's just probably not going to change as dramatically as you think it will change. If you look at last year, we had a lot, just a good amount of depth at running back, right, Like, it was a solid, solid group overall. Where there wasn't there was a bad draft class, There wasn't a lot of competition trying to eat into some of those running backs workloads. And then we saw a lack of injury and all of that just hit a perfect storm for running backs to do, especially RB twos to do really really well. Right, And then this year I still think it's pretty deep. Like I think running back is deeper when.

00:23:20
Speaker 2: You look at this year, Seper, we just added like a six great rookies who are potentially right start right. Yeah, So it's.

00:23:26
Speaker 1: Deeper and we feel better about those players. And it's okay to say that even within the position that might push the hit rates that the drop and hit rate back more, right, And so I think I think that like because like going back to like the logic of what the dead zone is to me with with like running back or even tight end, but with running back in particular, it's always been to me a supplying demand thing. There are only so many elite running backs in football to begin with that are gonna be true bel cows in fantasy football, right, and at the end of the year, we still only see a handful of them. So eventually, when you're in round three and a round four you're inn RB two territory, people are like, oh crap, I got to get one of these guys, or try to get one of these guys. But realistically those players are inferior talents, they're not as strong, and they just project well right at the end of the day, like Xameir White last year, right, And so that's why the dead zone has sort of existed. And to take that to the to the tight end stuff, and I guess I'll throw this your way too. I think that we see it more at tight end more consistently because of the way tight ends are and the way that they score points. Right, tight ends we know are there's gonna be an unbelievable amount variance week over week at tight end, because a tight end could get three catches for forty yards in a touchdown and be a tight end one in a given week. Right, And so we know going into a season, especially this year, it's more clear cut than last year. But we go into a season, we're like, Okay, there's only gonna be like three or four tight ends that we know for sure we'll get a twenty percent plus target shair like that, we feel very very confident that happening, maybe one or two in the later rounds will emerge and be one of those players. But to me, the reason why the tight end dead zone is actually more stable than the running back dead zone is the fact that there likely is not going to be a scenario in the in the recent future of tight ends of us getting like twelve or thirteen or fourteen tight ends seeing twenty five percent target shairs in their offenses, you know, and like and so like. As a result of that, there's just mass variance with those guys that are ranked like tight end five to tight end eighteen nineteen, Like, it's just what happens every year and there hasn't been any correlation between tight end seven to tight end eighteen since twenty fourteen, like literally zero correlation between where those guys have been drafted and how many points they've scored. And I think it comes down to those two factors. It's the fact that we only have so many elite tight ends and I don't know if that's going to change. And then we also see that really like truncated scoring, Like it's just that there's a lot of variance there. Is that the way that you kind of would view it.

00:25:57
Speaker 2: Too, Yeah, I would agree with that for sure, And this is like maybe an offcut at that point. This relates back to what I was saying about the projection brain, that we have a lot right now with bastball Mania that I think is interesting but somewhat misguided, where I'm seeing a lot of this year. Look that you know, the late the later tight ends are priced down really cheap, and actually they project better than some of the late running backs wide receivers, So you know, you can't draft the early tight ends. You got to wait on some of the tight ends, the really late tight ends. I actually don't mind, but I'm also seeing this constantly brought up for guys that are in the mid to late tight end one range, and I think that to me, you know, it reminds me a lot of the arguments that you used to be made for my view, shaky running back profiles and the running back dead some where it's like, well, they project better, you know, they're more stable. And it's like to me, yeah, if the wide receivers that you find yourself like really interested in drafting in the mid to late ramps are like Christian Kirk and Romeo Dubs and Josh Palmer, I do feel like you might as well just kind of take a tight end. But like I feel like, you know, the reason what we're hoping to get out of running back spide receivers in that range is just a wider band. I mean, part is just like very logical, Like wide receivers are like athletic, fast people who like can do things on the field. That tight end is being drafted tight end twelve simply it was not capable of because like they're probably a dad runner. So like, you know, whatever Kyle Williams ceiling is this year, I mean he might score zero points, who knows, But like his ceiling is just more interesting than what you're going to get from the average tight end in that range. So it's not surprising to me that like, yeah, all the running backspide receivers who project well are gone before we're taking a bunch of like mid tight end. But there still is some upside potential there from a season long, sustained perspective that goes beyond I hope they score touchdown in Week seventeen. And I feel like what gets underrated is when you're especially again like a best ball format or in the main event, maybe less so in your redraft league, if you're trying to finish first in this like massive entry tournament. Like I'm very uncomfortable about. I don't think these builds are horrible or bad at anything. They can totally work, but like you have to acknowledge that there's there's an opportunity cost not just with projection, but there's an opportunity costs when you're devoting three spots in your lineup to players that like don't realistically have all that much sustained season long upside, where you're just kind of hoping to ham and eggs and touchdowns together. And so that's an opportunity cost too, right, Whereas if you can draft one of the few tight ends early where that does not apply, and then also just keep stacking upside bets throughout your draft, that's quite attractive to me, even if it projects slightly worse at base. And I think that sometimes when we start to see the projections, we get very anchor to that. And yeah, it reminds me a lot of the running back dead zone when we talk about that that tight end range. For sure, I do think it's a little bit more stable.

00:28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the projections pieces is something that I've kind of railed against for like a decade. At this point where projections are great, Projections are fine, and people can look and should be viewing projections, and if you want to build projections, I think the exercise of building projections is very very helpful. Like I do it every single year, but I get people, And I got an email this morning from someone that was like, Hey, I really want to join your Patreon. Do you publish projections? And my answer to that is no. And the reason for that is number one, the people who do it really well are doing it a lot, and they are on top of it constantly, and they are tweaking things constantly, and I don't have the time to do that at the moment. And I don't really think that you necessarily need to unless you have a certain sole purpose for it, Like there's definitely more purpose in it for like DFS purposes or something like that, right where, And I'm not a DFS guy. That's one reason. But also I just I think that projections don't tell you nearly enough about range of outcomes that at the end of the day, right And you're talking about, like you know, a Kyle Williams or some rookie wide receiver that's gonna go late versus a projectable tight end, and people get really really excited about the projectable tight end as opposed to the range of outcomes of a I mean, you could look at Base shall Tutin and see that that sure, there's a floor that's kind of scary, but the ceiling is crazy, right, Like we inherently know that ambiguous backfield really fun, fun prospect has the right traits all that kind of stuff. Good offense, or at least should be a good offensive environment, Like there's reason to love base shall Tutan, and people are not going to love Base shall Tutan because he's going to project in a split backfield and people are just going to say, oh, I'm just gonna go with the sure thing at tight end and get a player that I feel more confident in at that position. Then get a base Shall Tutant type. Like I can sit here today, right now and easily make an argument to take base Shall Tuton over Travis Kelce like all day, Like make that argument, right, And I'm not saying I'm gonna rank it that way per se, but I'm just saying, like that is where I have that like projectable group of tight ends is more in that range where there are those really high upside and fun rookies or like you know, the the uncertainty of some really talented players. And I I've always the player that I've always gone back with with this example through the years at tight end, as Greg Olsen. Greg Olsen used to back in the day, get drafted in like round five. I'm looking at my ADP database. I was actually pulling it up as you were talking because it just it hit me that this is exactly what we're talking about. If you look at where he was drafted twenty eighteen fifty seventh overall, you know, twenty seventeen, fifty first, twenty sixteen, forty eight, like in that like you know, fifth to seventh round range usually, And if you look at how he performed against ADP expectation, one point eight points over expected, point seven points over expected minus two point nine points over expected, Like that's per game point seven points over expected. That kind of player is not winning you your league. You're just getting by with that kind of player. And that's not even factoring an opportunity cost, where at that time there were a lot of good running back to wide receivers emerging from that fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh round range that could be really winning you, you know, the more important position. So like at the end of the day, I think that what you brought up with, like the projectable output of some of these tight ends. You can still have your favorites. Like it's fine if you like, I'm still okay enough and at most of the time, and I think this price has gotten a little bit higher, But like Evan Ingram is still intriguing to me in some way because you know, there's there's the joker role and there's a lack of competition in that offense, and there's like, you know, someone like Travis Kelce. I'm just like, I don't I can't do this for me. Yeah yeah, right, Like this just this is all based on projection and not looking at what that true ceiling might look like. For a thirty six year old tight end coming off is by far worst season of his career, you know, And so that's where I just I think that's where like the tight end dead zone comes from and why I think a lot of those guys end up being overrated at the end of the day.

00:32:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I mean I think I wrote this in a piece last year. Like when we're talking tournaments, you know, you you just log into Draft six hundred and eighty thousand entries or something like that. It's like your your median expectation is to finish like three hundred and forty thousand places, right, So it's like you have eighteen chances to change that. You have eighteen chances to go from you know, outside of the top three hundred thousand to first. And I get it's not that linear. It's a weekly advance and everything, but like you need to hit a few massive, season long, sustained hits to be able to probably accomplish that I and I do try to not to not take lightly the value of each individual chance to do that, and to try to avoid, when possible, making a pick that I think is only going to be you know, that temporary life raft, right, that's just going to get me buy at the position. And if you can't, if you can't picture a scenario where your pick is, you know, the best pick, you could make that round more than one or two times in a draft than I do think you are being a little bit too safe. So that that's certainly, yeah, I'm largely in agreement with that for sure.

00:34:11
Speaker 1: And to put a bow on this, I'm gonna say that this era is Greg Olsen as TJ. Hockinson.

00:34:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's he's That's It's true. He's always there. It's the same thing.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: And I'm looking I'm looking at Hockinson versus expectation minus point four points per game plus two point one plus three point six. Whenever he had that like crazy, he was just getting targeted like crazy. And that was also an overall ADP of one hundred and and twenty I guess, so it wasn't that season. But regardless, like when he's been drafted in the Greg Olsen range, which I guess has only happened twice at this point. He exceeded expectation by two points, and by point two points. That's not going to win you your league at the end of the day. Like he'll have stretches, that's fine, But I feel the same way, like I think that he's the quintessential this year, especially like the quintessential Greg Olsen type pick. You know, fine, I'm not gonna like yell at you for taking TJ. Hockinson, but at the same time, it's really hard for me personally to just be overly excited about that when five rounds later, six rounds later, you're gonna get just as much upside.

00:35:11
Speaker 2: From that kind of player. Yeah, definitely, all right.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: I want to ask you also if you think zero RB is now dead after last year.

00:35:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I used to draft a lot of z RB teams. I've drafted very few this year, so maybe I think it's dead. I don't think that any of these things are dead because I try not to take these things too literally. Yeah, you know, it's good to bring back to the get Heart's law of it to me, zero RB is more about a set of principles, and it's more about being aware that wide receiver scoring is more dictated by talent relative to running back, and running back scoring can at times at least be dictated in contingent ways and based on circumstantial ways, and understanding how that affects the ultimate ceiling of our roster construction, and then also being very mindful to me not to just never take running back bets. But it's more about being choosy about the running back bets that we want to take, because I think if you approach especially tournaments from the standpoint of I'm trying to hit an extremely high percentile outcome, I know that it is possible to in the late season have teams that project similarly to a lot of early running back teams at the running back position with contingent outside bets or with late breakout running backs. We see those every single year, And so if I'm going to take a running back in the early rounds, I want to take a running back as a realistic path to outproduce, you know that contingent layer, like if you think of like a Tyrone Tracy last year, to me, he was like a great example of like what happens when you just kind of like are a starting running back. Yeah, And it's like that's just sort of like what start running backs score, and like you can get a guy who projects that way by week eleven, especially a redraft, just from contingent scenarios most years. So it's like, I want a guy who can break past that threshold by a significant degree if I'm going to invest in early running back pick in it. But there's a lot of opportunities to do that. You know, I still think we have not been like the one area where I think the market is maybe not adjusted quite well enough to the dead zone we have. But like, not only are we just drafting all sort of the dead zone ish profile running backs later, but we also are drafting quite some very exciting running backs later, you know, like Marian Hampton's the first round pick, going like the four or five turn for now, maybe maybe not, he doesn't have an eyeball, and then then he'll be going in the first but we'll see. I mean, Treveon is going in the sixth and he was like a very well regarded pass catching prospect who was a top forty pick is going like the middle of the sixth round, Judkins, the top forty pick. I wasn't actually as high on as Trevian Orhampton, but like, he's a top forty pick who's had an ability to handle a workload, a super athletic and he's going in the seventh, which is like crazy. I don't think we would have ever done that a while ago. It hasn't been distributed evenly. And so because there's more interesting running back bets at more interesting prices, I'm tending to draft a lot of them. That being said, I think these things always come back around. You know, there's a lot of thought about is late round quarterback dad right, you know a few years ago, and to me, late round quarterbacks very back this year. I think just the profiles that are going in that range are very, very interesting, and so I suspect that zero RB will be back with a vengeance in the future. But I think it's less about, you know, the specific adherence to well, I'm drafting my first running back in round seven or something like that, and it's more about keeping in mind a set of principles that in certain ADP environments, certain NFL environments, might lead you to not taking any running backs for the first five or six rounds and a lot of your drafts, and sometimes that doesn't manift us that way. I don't think it's manifesting that way this year to where I'm drafting a lot of zero RB teams. But I suspect that the you know, the arc of the universe is complicated, and well we'll have it back in our lives again at some point.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I still think there are certain archetypes that we should be going after and not going after, like you know, I know that we can we could argue that to what we talked about earlier, that like archetype drafting isn't as relevant these days because the market has gotten sharper, But there's still going to be pockets where you know, there are plays like for instance, I I, you know, Jared Goff at the beginning of the off season when his ADP was way higher than it should have been, or even Baker right now, I.

00:39:42
Speaker 2: Don't know if there's I don't know what we're doing with Baker.

00:39:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, right where it's like, okay, we have a lot of data that shows that you know, high touchdown rates one year, really bad BET's to make the following year, and you know, so on and so forth. And then we have the same kind of arguments about like pass catching at running back, right, Like you one, pass catching running backs, if there is a red flag to a to a running backs profile from a pass catching standpoint, you're getting them the first three or four rounds. Like that's that's a red flag that you might not want to go in that direction and you know, at least not be overweight on that player. And and so I do think that like that's really important too as we like look at what the dead zone is all about, because you know, at the end of the day, like like I said, I think that we're in an area of time right now and an era of time where we have really talented running backs across the league that are capable of being bell call type backs. I mean, Breece Hall is like a mid range RB two right now, you know, like yeah, like Breesce Hall's talented AF. Like the dude is clearly very very good. You know, obviously had a down year last year and that's going to impact the way that that people are gonna view him. But we know that he has a three down skill set. We we have a we have concrete evidence of this, right, And even like Chase Brown, like there's some concern about the fact that you know, he was a late round pick and and YadA, YadA, YadA, and you know what, you know, what was his workload stemming from last year, stemming from you know, a lack of competition, And that's all scary, right, But if you are looking at this from mostly an upside perspective, you can still use Chase Brown as a as an anchor. Right. There's a lot of players that are out there that should make us feel pretty strong about, you know, not necessarily needing to force zero RB. And and that's where I think there's this intersection of strategy and player analysis where a lot of people will just look at the player analysis side and just say like, yeah, draft this guy, don't draft this guy, And then others will and people probably put me in this other bucket where they think that I am not you know, player analysis focused enough, and that I'm only looking at the strategy side, and that you know, I think that you can't draft running backs in the you know, between round three and six because of the dead zone. That's not it at all. I think there's just an intersection of all of this where we have to just look at what the trends say, understand what the trends say, and then look at the player analysis side and kind of go from there.

00:42:00
Speaker 2: Chase Brown is a fascinating player this year. To me, I agree, because he is. To me, he's the posher child of how we've changed, mostly in a good way and maybe too much, because like I feel so confident that in like twenty twenty one, this guy's going at like the one dot nine And I liked hard avoid, you know, like he he reminds me a lot of like remember when we drafted Kenyan Drake at like the one eleven one year? Yes, yeah, And it was like, here's this guy who like was a workhorse back for like a sustained period of time at the end of the season, and he was like as good as any other running back in fantasy for a while. But we're reasonably less sure that he's actually that guy compared to some other dudes. And at that time we were like, but we actually don't care. We're going all gas, no breaks. You know, what's what's his what's his projection? Put him right up there? You know? Oh, is there is there like Stemic Risk here not worried about it, you know, or Ken we drafting him ahad of Michael. With Chase Brown, though, it's like we've corrected to a massive degree. You know, he's going in like the middle of round three, and which.

00:43:08
Speaker 1: Is a huge difference in value, a huge difference in value. I know that people people are gonna hear that and they'll be like, oh, it's only a round and a half, Like that is a huge, huge difference in value, and.

00:43:17
Speaker 2: It's it's actually almost like double the gap if you think about the fact that, like think about how many running backs we used to draft early, and so if you think about it in terms of the wide receiver opportunity cost, Yeah, wide receiver opportunity cost of a late first used to be probably like the second wide receiver drafted right. But now we're drafting not only are we ranking Chase Brown, I think behind running backs he would have been drafted ahead of years ago, like a Bucky Irving for instance, but like because a large reason he's being pushed down is because so many other wide receivers are being drafted earlier. He's going against like you know, JSN or whatever wide receiver eighteen yees. So it's like, not only is he going in the mid third instead of the late first, but if you think about like where the wide receiver eighteen would have been drafted in the era that Chase Brown would have been a late first, would have been like the fifth round.

00:44:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like it's just like a.

00:44:13
Speaker 2: Completely different world that we're living in, to the point where now that projection, instead of being fully baked into his cost, it's like his price is now a kind of a reasonable hedge between like if he just is what he was last year, he's like one of the best picks on the entire board, And yeah, there is still I think a lot of fragility to his profile, but he's priced now somewhere in the middle of that where you know, there's a lot of room to surpass his price on either side. And I've mostly been into it. I've also made the case and this this is where he gets into like the player take aspect of it, where it's like, yeah, like I get the fragility because he doesn't have a big pedigree. He was fine last year, but he wasn't you know, winning like world's most Efficient running back contests. But like this is a guy at least who has a history of handling a massive volume of work in college. And that matters to me a lot because you know, that shows to me he's not just like some guy who kind of fell into volume that can't handle it, like he actually can. He's shown that he can in college. That's strongly predictive. Is he going to be you know, as good in that volume role as b Jon Robinson? Probably not, But like if the Bengals decide this year, hey, you know works for us if we have like the fifteenth best running back and we can just load him up with touches and he can do everything for us, and hey, our offense is really going to be you know, built by t Higgins and Jamar Chase being the difference makers. Anyways, that works for me. So he's like a fascinating player to me this year.

00:45:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, your point about the wide receiver opportunity costs a spot on because like, here's the thing. We know that if you hit on a top three running back in fantasy football, that's the biggest advantage you're going to have in in pretty much any format. Right, Like, if you have that, I mean, look at what Jamior Gibbs did down the stretch last year, right, Like, if you have that kind of production and what CMC did a couple of years ago, you're you're you're in such a good spot to win your fantasy league if you just get that guy right and it's different when and by the way, Kenyan Drake in college was not know what Chase Brown was. You know, that's a good So it's another good example of why Drake, I know where it's weird talking about a pick from like four years ago, but or five years ago, however long it was. But Chase Brown does have that backbone. But the opportunity cost side. If you're saying to yourself, Okay, we're gonna draft either Chase Brown or Marvin Harrison Junior right here right, and you're you're asking you a question of which player is the overall better value and you look at the range of outcomes. What if Marvin, I mean, Marvin Harrison Junior still has a chance to not really improve and just be you know what he was to a degree last year. We also wreckon was a really good prospect and that things can improve and they could deploy him differently and run him down the middle of the field a little bit more and give him better looks and hopefully, let's cross our fingers that happens. But we also have to recognize that, like if the ninetieth percentile outcome hits for Chase Brown or Marvin Harrison Junior, I think we'd all agree we'd rather have Chase Brown and that environly right. So that's why I think, like to your point, this is way different than drafting him over Nico Collins, where we know that we're going to get some beefy production from Nico. We don't know that with the wide receivers that we're drafting him over right now.

00:47:35
Speaker 2: I mean, the argument used to be when zero RB first was on the scene, the argument was more about rejecting scarcity and embracing production. Right The argument was, wide receivers are going to outscore these running backs because of how we used to draft, and don't be scared of the running back scarcity argument. Just take the take the better players who are going to score more points, because there's ways to combat a scarcity issue later with contingent value arbitrage through pass catching running backs, taking shots on late rookie breakouts, all of that thing. Right now. That's just that's no longer the case because we're drafting I think much smarter running backs are out projecting the wide receivers. So it's not like you're it's not like you have to draft running backs because of a scarcity problem. If anything, it's actually the opposite. The arguments now that you hear, which I think have some merit for drafting early wide receivers, is like, look, we're drafting these wide receivers like hotcakes. You know you're going to run out of upside eventually, so you've got to make sure you have enough wide receiver firepower before you turn over to running back, which because look, how what kind of volume you can get later. It's I think they're both reasonable arguments, but they're completely different arguments. And to me, this second argument, it lends itself more to diminishing returns, right. And one of the things that I've kind of come to the conclusion of it's like, yes, I do still agree that we shouldn't be probably in most years drafting like these crazy running back times for starts or things like that, Right, we still want that upside at the wide receiver position. One of the taglines and zero are always used to be win the flex, and that made a lot of sense because wide receivers when you looked at that flex range, because the way we were drafting, were consistently outscoring running backs to the flex. That's just like demonstrably not the case anymore, especially in HALFVPR on underdog, where you're you should probably be orienting to put a running back into your flex position. So to me, now it's kind of an inverted zero RB argument we were looking at. Okay, I know where my wide receiver upside is coming from. There's less contingent value here. I need to make sure I guess efficient wide receiver upside early. But I don't want to get into a range where I'm taking on diminishing returns out a position that doesn't project to have quite the same season long upside or scoring. So once I've got my efficient you know, firepower wide receive your position, I want to make sure that I'm actually adding in some running backs here to capture that value. And so that the result of that for me is that I'm I'm drafting I guess more boring themes than I usually have. I'm just kind of I'm just kind of building my starting lineup like a boomer A lot of the time.

00:50:16
Speaker 1: It's funny, it's like the it's the parabola meme at the end of the day, like like we're we're basically just back to to how how those boomers were drafting. So, speaking about running backs, and I already mentioned base Shall Tutin, but you wrote a piece about the about ambiguity and the Jags backfield. I know that you got you went at it on Twitter a bit with folks who are just rejecting your your ideas and your notion here. But you believe bay Shall Tuton is the best click in that backfield? Do you still believe that? Number two? But also, what's what what makes you feel so confident about this? Talk? Talk to me about the logic behind all that.

00:50:47
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you know, it's like feeling really confident in something. I tried to explain this in the piece, like feeling very confident that something is the right take is like very different and than feeling very confident that something's going to happen to me. I agree, Yes, my attitude about this in particular, I actually and most of what I wrote about in the piece, it's like I just completely disagree with the notion that if I'm like sixty percent sure of a take, that means I should enact that take sixty percent of the time. Like to me, I disagree with that. I think, like there's nothing you can be one hundred percent sure of in fantasy football. But like, if you think that something is a materially better bet, even if you can totally see scenarios where it doesn't work out, like I think, you want to still enact that bet as much as possible, especially the ternament setting when we're going to lose like one hundred and twenty two of our entries, you know, in the first fifteen leagues. Because if I think something is a strong bet to make a cost, I want to give myself as many chances as possible of rolling the dice correctly around that bet for a team that might actually advance. You know, there's how many times have you had a strong stand on a player and then it doesn't amount to anything because you know, you only drafted that player on so many teams because you didn't want to get ahead of yourself, and then you never got that player matched up with some other player that you really wreck out. Yeah, yeah, so you know I'm willing to take stands without There's a difference I think between like having conviction and being like irrogant or overconfident. And I want to have conviction, but it doesn't necessarily mean that I can't think of a scenario in which my take doesn't hit. But that preface out of the way, Yeah, I just think Tuton is a really really intriguing prospect who was one of the best. You know, if you look through a lot of what I do in my running back work prior to the draft is one it's the tape, but it's also looking at advanced running back efficiency metrics, looking at miss tackles force, looking at breakaway percentage, looking at yards after contact, and any of these metrics that you start sorting by you get basically the consensus best running backs in the class. And then you consistently get R. J. Harvey and Bachheal Tuton. And then the NFL decided that actually the nerds are read a J. Harvey date They've drafted him in round two despite anyone not expecting that. But Tuton still goes about where he was expected to go, And I do think he was a legitimately undervalue piece by the NFL, but he goes to an incredible situation. Travis Etn to me is an interesting player who I actually thought was kind of undervalued by the community for a while as a real life running back, where I thought he got nitpicked kind of unfairly, especially as a pass catcher. But you look at how I mean fantasy will ball generally waits at the end of the season, but especially in bestball manium, especially in the main event or these late season contests. We now have three straight years him declining an efficiency throughout the year as he starts to get banged up and declining an efficiency year over year over year. And so I just look at a player where I have serious concerns that I'm drafting a player who's going to be at his best in the weeks that I need them most. When I look at who's gotten less efficient for three consecutive years and within those years gotten less efficient from week one through week seventeen. And with BIGSB, I've been drafting more of him because he's been falling a lot. I don't know why, even though we've had like a lot of sort of negative news about Tuton and negative news about Eten, but so I'm drafting him way more now at his new cost, but earlier at least my view was I think he is better than Etn at a couple of things, but he's just such a one dimensional player. And this is like just like kind of a feel thing. But like when I look at how Liam Cohen operated his offense last year, even dating back to how he operated his offense at Kentucky, it's like a very pace in space style of offense, and I just don't know how much I can picture like a Tank Bigsby fitting in a offense. It's kind of built around versatility because he's he's just kind of a sledgehammer. So I just don't know if there's a role for him. That being said, I think the cost now is quite limited, and maybe Twutin, you know, it's just not ready this year, not good whatever. It's fourth round rookie, and Etn kind of looks like he did last year, and maybe Cohen says, well, look, i only have one running back that can get me any yards, and so I'm gonna rebuild sort of a little bit of what I wanted to do and maybe Tank hits. But with Tuton, I just think it's the best of all worlds. I'm reasonably confident that he's a legitimately good rusher if he gets an opportunity. I think he has some receiving upsides. Not an elite receiving profile by any stretch of the imagination, but it's not like a hopeless one, and it's an offense that I'm extremely excited about basically every piece in and I just look at him as one of the last opportunities to get a potential lead running back over the second half of the season that could potentially be a lead in all circumstances and has a lot of really intriguing aspects to his profile. I think he's really good, but we'll find out.

00:55:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, I love that answer. I mean I've been a Tuton guy. Yeah, even before the combine. He pops with the stuff that I look at, and I think it makes a lot of sense. I do worry about the profile, Like you said, it might not to say that I would approach it this way because I'm still going to raft mid season long, but it might be a better best ball kind of selection from the perspective of like it hitting at the right time and you know how antsy a home league situation might get because you only have so many spots on your bench and stuff, and you don't want to be the person that d drops bace Shall Tutin and then he ends up going off, you know, week eleven onward. But even still, I'm drafting him everywhere. He's He's something that I'm really into, and obviously it's an ambiguous backfield situation. I want to ask you one more question before we go. I asked this to Daggle a couple of weeks ago, and I think it's just an interesting one. So if you look at the top thirty top forty wide receivers, it feels like a pretty efficient position in the way that the market is ranking them. Do you feel number one, do you feel like there are any obvious fades a wide receiver right now sort of in that range? And then if there aren't many of them, does that speak to the market being sharper or do you think the position's just deep?

00:56:52
Speaker 2: Probably a little bit of both, but I do think the marks caught on a lot sharper. I think the market has always been much better at pricing established wide receivers than they have been other positions, a large part because once you're at a full route share and you've played like three years in the league, your target learning ability tends to pretty stable until you decline. You know, it's not that hard for the market to correctly rank most of these guys once you look at okay, well, because like realistically, yeah, once you've played a few years in the league, you've gotten up to full routes, and it's like you're a twenty five percent target share guy, and you kind of like are a twenty five percent target share guy until you're not good anymore. And so most of the big divergences, you know, are either due to like injury, but beyond that, it's rookies, second year players, or it's players you know that are changing teams, changing quarterbacks. So I think we've always been prett efficient with the established wide receivers. We used to just be like horrific at understanding rookie upside at the wide receiver position. Yeah, yeah, where it used to just be like you could basically just do it blind, like if you just didn't even look at any of the profiles and you just like every time you saw rookie, you just clicked them in. You know, twenty five percent of your draft. You're probably coming out of head basically every single year. But we've now gotten a lot better with that, and so now that we've done a better job of pricing in the rookies, it's hard to find that much of an edge left within the wide receiver position. There's like a couple of fades, but there's not a lot that are obvious to me. Like to me, the most obvious fade at the wider steer position is probably Terry McLaurin. And that's just like the one thing that I don't think the fantasy industry will ever get past. It's like when we have a player who's been the same player for years, but when year that same player scores twice as many touchdowns we just died, they're like actually twice as good as they've ever been. And that's you know, that's kind of like the Baker Mayfield thing as well, where it's like that I think is just probably the one fade that will continually paid dividends is if you just kind of always fade the veteran who scored way more touchdowns than they've ever scored before, and then they will probably ever score again. You're probably coming out of Haead more often than not, so he stands out to me as a fade. But beyond that, most of my fades are not comfortable ones, like they're ones I believe in having stands on things, and I have smaller preferences. So you know, it's like I've barely drafted any of Alm and Ross Saint Brown this year, and most of that is just because I really like the other guys like Nico Collins and Brian Thomas quite a lot, and I like them a little bit more and I'm looking, Okay, well, how can I get more than eight percent to everybody? And it's like, well, if I'm gonna get twelve percent and Eco and twelve percent Brand Thomas, aman Ross got to go to the wayside. But I would never be like aman Ross a bad pick, you know at the one to eleven or whatever. It's like, obviously he's a totally fine pick at the one eleven. He's a great player. So I agree the fades are made difficult, Like the other guys that I think have potential to be very bad plicks are, you know, just sort of some of the riskier picks, like I think Marvin Harrison carries a ton of risk at his tap given what he did his rookie year. Think Tyreek Hill at his escalating tag carries a ton of risk given he wasn't very good last year. But you also look at those profiles and it's very easy to conceive how they can beat me. You know, it used to be what I try to look for in fades are like small hit, big miss players where I'm not that afraid of them ruining my season if they hit right, and I see paths for large downside and I don't see a lot of those this year. So to me, now what I wind up fading is some other fading players that I think are just like slightly mispriced because of like silly things like, oh they scored a few too many touchdowns last year, they're being priced off too much. Or players that I think are just sort of you know, maybe small miss and small hit, but they're in a range where I think there's bigger hip potential right next to them.

01:00:49
Speaker 1: That's how I feel, too, because whenever I do the draft GUD, I'm putting it together my targets and avoids, and with the avoids at wide receiver and why I've asked you and Dagels because it's just a little bit more difficult exercise to kind of go through. And I think the one player that stands out to me in the I don't think he'll burn me category is Jerry Judy, where yeah, I don't feel like like, could I see a scenario where he beats ADP Of course, right, like I but if you look at some of the splits, you know, with and without Jamis and with Cedric Tillman in the lineup and all that, kind of you start to create the story where you're like, wow, this could just be like a nineteen percent target chair guy who is just fine but not anything special. Meanwhile, you get players in that range where there is still a lot of potential, and like, I think the biggest range of outcome player in that area is probably like a Juwan Jennings because he goes against every every historical thing that we aside from like previous season production and peripherals. Like you're talking about like a year five breakout, Like there's literally never been a player like this at least in my database, where now's a breakout in year five like that, and it's that good of a breakout in year five like that like maybe you could go back to, like this is just off the top.

01:02:01
Speaker 2: One one I can think of is Brandon Lloyd, Yeah, Brandon Lloyd type or like a maybe Devonte Parker type, like like we can't.

01:02:08
Speaker 1: Saw that happen with him, but I don't think the peripherals were nearly as good, and I don't think the circumstances were nearly as good. So I'm actually like, I'm still in on Jennings because I just I like the situation he's in and the upside that that he presents. But he's a player, where Like it's weird because I think that people this is just a perfect example of probably you too, like not drafting off just the the median outcome. But like I like Jennings more than Judy, even though I think Judy has a more stable base than Jennings does. Right, totally, Yeah, And that's sort of what this comes down to at the end of the day.

01:02:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up Judy. I talk to put him on on a recent Dynasty show, and it's it's for different reasons than mccorn, but it's kind of a similar idea. You look at his targets and yards per out run. Over the five seasons of his career, he goes point two to one, one point sixty six point two one, one point eight, five point two two, two point one eight zero point one eight one point sixty five point two zero, one point seven to two. He's basically been the exact same guy his entire career, and there was nothing about last year on a per route basis that was more impressive than his previous four seasons. He ran two hundred more routes than he's ever run before. YEP. So kind of similar to the touchdown thing. It's just a routes version of that, where it's like, yeah, if you take a guy who's been a pretty good wide receiver and then you give him two hundred more routes, you know he'll probably get forty more catches and five hundred more yards and three or four more touchdowns without really changing you. He is, and looking at the Browns this year, you know, maybe they roll the Flaco for seventeen games and that happens again, I don't think so. I think probably most of the season winds up being Gabriel or Sanders, and they end up probably running the ball more and being more dysfunctional, and so I agree. I think you're going to see Jerry Judy probably earn target on twenty to twenty one percent of his routes and probably have between one point six and one point nine yards perrot run. But like if that route total is five hundred instead of seven hundred, you know the production is going to decline by like twenty eight percent, which is like really hard for people to wrap their head around. The inverse of the Judy case that I've made is the Pickens case, where it's like, this is the guy who I think is about to run one hundred and fifty more routes than he's ever run before, and if he's just the same guy he's been the last couple of years, he's going to look like a completely different player in people's eyes. So I think I think that's one thing that we do still miss a little bit. It's one thing that we're talking about translating targets per rout run and yards per out run from a guy who didn't run all the routes, because sometimes you can run into like the Cadarius Tony problem of the world, where yeah, when when Dotavie the routes that he runs are like, let's throw a screen past the Cadarius Tony, right, then he runs ninety percent of the routes that you might not like the world you're living in, but when we have these guys were already full time players, and it's just a matter of well, they got a completely new environment, you know, and so now they're running one hundred and fifty or two hundred more or less routes than they have just because of circumstance. Right, They're still the same player and they might still have the same role. That's one of those things where I think the projections and especially our perception of these players can be way off in a big way. Pickts has been one of my most drafted players for that reason.

01:05:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it makes a ton of sense. I think that's a really really good way to think about it. Is like if you're not seeing a change in the actual player, I thought this way. This is going back to t J. Hockinson. Whenever he had that crazy season where at the second half of the year he was getting like insane volume. He was not any different as a player. It was the same dude. Like, it wasn't his Yarchs pro out run, his targets brought or is his yarchs pro out run numbers at least were not dramatically different. It wasn't like he just got insanely good, you know. And so I do think that that perspective is one that that folks should definitely think about when they're drafting. But Jacob, Man, this was awesome. People are gonna love it. Let everyone know what you're doing, what you're working on, and where they can find you.

01:06:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've referenced a couple of the pieces already on the show. You can find all my written work Thinking about Thinking, which is just my name Jacob Sanderson dot substock dot com. You can find a piece I've been referencing a lot on where upside comes from based on DP analysis. If you like JJ's work, you probably enjoy structural DP analysis, so I think you might enjoy that piece. You can find me in every Tuesday night on the Fantasy Points to YouTube and podcast network doing Dynasty Points. You can find me on ADP Chasing as well also every Tuesday morning, and uh yeah, we'll have a lot of fun stuff going on there for the summer. We'll have drafts and stuff up on the ship Chasing feed too.

01:06:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't recommend your work more. I love it. I'm always reading the newsletter and stuff. You do great stuff, appreciate it. You find my guide my work over on lateround dot com. Make sure you are ordering the draft guide right now. I'm also doing live streams all the time now on YouTube with best Ball Season most definitely here for a larger number of people, not just the sikos out there who are drafting in May and June, but doing live streams all the time. I'm giving out free guides pretty frequently on those live streams, so check them out. That's at YouTube dot com, slash at late round deff. Otherwise, everyone, thanks for tuning in.