590: Mailbag 12/3/21

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha Jay Jake Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandledet number fire dot com in this episode five hundred and ninety of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the Fandel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget about this week's Fandel Podcast Network Listener League. Check out fandle dot com Slash League slash Listener League to join. It's a rake free contest that costs five dollars to enter and has fifteen hundred dollars in prizes. You can interrupt to three lineups of the contest. Again. That's fandle dot Com Slash League Slash Listener League. To join. Eligibility destrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandal app for more details. It's a mailbag show. Let's get to these questions. Let's kick things off this week with a question from at spokesan Beer that says, given your preseason strategy on draft running backs and ambiguous situations, how has it worked this year? Is this year an outlier? Did you learn anything new in twenty twenty one that you will use to update your process. I also got one from at jas Vets that asks, with this year's injury bug, how do you feel the handcuffing discussion will go during next draft season. Now, I wanted to combine these two questions because I think there's a lot of overlap if I were to really dumb down my running back strategy when drafting. And this is based on analysis, it's not just me saying things, But if I were to dumb down the running back strategy, it would be the following draft running backs early or wait until the later single digit rounds to get them avoid the dead zone. And when you're targeting players in those single digit rounds, largely go after running backs and ambiguous backfields. Don't draft RB twos in those single digit rounds who have RB one teammates that are drafted early. In other words, don't draft high end handcuffs. I'm saying that as Alexander Madison takes over for Dalvin Cook and as AJ Dillon becomes a more usable piece for the Packers. So to some I probably sound like an idiot, but I don't base my decisions off of one season or a couple of instances where the strategy's wrong, and actually, i'd ask you, this is the strategy even wrong this year. Let me talk about handcuffs for a second. I'm likely gonna redo a handcuff study this offseason that I did a few years ago, But in the study that I did a few years ago, I found that handcuffing is a bad strategy. You rarely get season long hits from traditional handcuffs. And not only do we often think handcuffs produce better than they actually do, but a lot of times we don't even know who the handcuff is. On top of that, high end running back injuries don't always happen early in the season. The median injury timeline was around week nine when I did that study, which means you're holding on to someone who's not doing anything for your roster for nine weeks. This is why a lot of leagues had Alexander Madison on the waiver wire this past week. This is why the Dalvin Cook manager in a lot of cases wasn't even the one with Madison, because people drop those players when injuries don't happen early in the season. The other thing we often don't think about when talking handcuffs is opportunity cost numbers show that the best middle round breakouts are indeed players who come from ambiguous backfields. They're running backs who's RB one isn't drafted high, or they're the running backs who are the RB ones on their team, they just don't have a high adp. Take a look at the best running backs in fantasy football this year on a points per game basis. Derek Henry, Jonathan Taylor, Austin Eckler, Alvin Kamara, Joe Mixon, Najie Harris, and Christian McCaffrey were all early round picks. The players who entered the discussion this year who were drafted later were Cordero Patterson ambiguous backfield, Leonard Fournette ambiguous backfield, Darryl Henderson ambiguous backfield, especially after they got Sony Michelle, James Connor ambiguous backfield, Elijah Mitchell ambiguous backfield, Michael Carter ambiguous backfield. The only player in the top twenty in points per game who wasn't in an ambiguous backfield drafted outside the top rounds is Kareem Hunt, and he number one needed a lot of touchdown fortune to get there. But number two we also know that his situation even entering the season was different. And yes, I'm looking at points per game here. It doesn't tell you what happens when these players are strictly starters. But by only looking at when Alexander Madison gets the nod or when AJ Dillon is a starter. If you only look at that, you're not really analyzing what's going on throughout the whole season. You're missing out on the fact that those guys, specifically Madison, aren't usable without an injury. No one is arguing that they can be usable. They absolutely can. I'm arguing that your hit rates across an entire season are much smaller and that there's still a cost of holding a dead asset on your bench. Now, I should add I think it was a pretty average to below average year for the ambiguous RB one theory, which is different from the high level approach of drafting from ambiguous backfields. It's basically a subset of the ambiguous backfields thing. But the approach is and always has been to go after these backfields without clearcut RB once first and foremost. It seems so obvious when you phrase it that way, but it really shows up when looking at results, and it plays into why you should avoid dead zone running backs and target these middle to late round picks that are in these ambiguous backfields. You should not have been drafting Mike Davis this year. People weren't sitting back and saying, oh, just go get Cordero Patterson, But we were looking at ADP data and we were looking at his profile and saying, Mike Davis looks like a trap. And you can spot these backfields and increase your odds of hitting on a player from those backfields. And the same goes with Elijah Mitchell. A lot of people were drafting Trace Sermon, a lot of people were drafting Raheem Mostered, and Elijah Mitchell ended up being the one to emerge. But if you understand that these are the backfields that you should target, then you're gonna have an edge on your league mates and getting these players and potentially getting these players. It's about probability. Now to the question about how the handcuffing discussion will change, I think it's definitely going to change because fantasy football managers are insanely reactive to this kind of thing. We always overemphasize the things that happen in one season as opposed to just looking at the bigger picture. And that brings me to the next question. The next one's from at z Man nineteen eight nine to five. With the amount of injuries to running backs this year, do you see wide receivers getting pushed up more next year? With this change your overall draft strategy. I know you have always been a hero RB proponent in terms of structure. This question plays into the previous one, but it needs to be stated, We've done this before, We've been in this situation. If you look back at historical average draft position data, anytime there's a good season for early round running backs, it's followed up by a season where running backs get drafted higher. When early round running backs aren't good, the opposite happens. Again. This is something where data analysis can really drive home the point. And I'll do that over the off season, I promise. But your strategy should not drastically change year over year in fantasy football, change and you can look at things differently, but this is typically your chance to find an edge and being contrarian, I mean we even saw that this season to some degree. It's just that so many early round players ended up sucking, not just running backs, not just wide receivers. I'll talk about this a lot more over the offseason, but to get your minds going in the right direction, don't overthink this strategy should not change nearly as much as people think this. Next persons from at bored Murk is aj Dillon startable going forward even with a healthy Aaron Jones. Is he gonna be an RB one? Probably not, But he had been trending in the right direction even with a healthy Aaron Jones since that Pittsburgh game in Week four. If you want to remove the last three weeks from this analysis, since Aaron Jones has been banged up, look at weeks four through nine. In those six games, Dylan had a forty two percent running back rush share and a five point four percent target share per game. Aaron Jones had a fifty four percent running back rush are in a sixteen percent target share. So Jones was being utilized a lot more as a receiver. That makes sense, but the rush shares weren't that dramatically off, at least compared to the first few weeks of the season. Now Jones has the injury and we've seen more Dylan over the last three weeks as a result, we've also seen him be a pretty impressive receiver, so I think Dylan has at least earned more work, and with Jones having had that injury, I think Green Bay would understand that there's no reason to run one running back into the ground. Now. The other thing to keep in mind is that the Packers are playing really well. If they hit positive game scripts, that's gonna benefit Dylan. They just don't have a super kkewalk playoff schedule facing Baltimore Cleveland, Minnesota in weeks fifteen through seventeen. But the state of the running back position does mean that Dylan is like a fringe top twenty top twenty five running back right now, like things are just rough out there. But as we've seen, he's obviously got upside if Aaron Jones gets hurt. This last questions from at you can call me SRS. You graciously provide your hits and missus recap. When do you look at remaining games and say positive regression won't hit this player? So let's first ask ourselves why we care about regression. Well, we care because it's real, it exists, and we can often find edges when we properly understand it. If a player is playing poorly but he has good peripherals, we should expect that player to produce a little bit better moving forward. But there are other factors at play when we're looking at production. Regression leads to a change in production, but other things can lead to a change in production as well. With regression, we're making the assumption that things stay steady, that a player's situation will remain the same, that his role won't change, that he'll see similar volume. But that kind of thing can change. So if a team is walking into a tough schedule, or if a team loses their star quarterback, we'd expect that to affect a player's production, even if that player was a regression candidate. So I do it all the time. Regression is just a piece of the fantasy football puzzle. Situations change, Like if Damian Harris all of a sudden started seeing a twenty percent target chare per game week over week, I would feel differently about Damian Harris. When we get new information, our opinion should change. But when I say that Harris should regress, I'm saying that as long as this remains the same, we should expect worse production because odds favor the fact that he won't score touchdowns at this rate. So one way to think about all of this is separating regression from situation. The situation side of things can always change, and that would then change the way that we feel about a player producing better or worse because of regression. But regression itself is undefeated over the long run. This last question says, JJ, should I roster Sony or Jeff Wilson. Thanks all of the handcuff talk earlier, it was related to drafting. I roster and ad and drop handcuffs in season all the time. I just want that to be known. And with handcuffs, you've got to think about upside, what does his player's profile look like without his starter? And I'd argue strongly that Sony Michelle would be in a better spot without Darryl Henderson than Jeff Wilson without Elijah Mitchell. Not only is the Rams offense generally better, but we've seen Kyle Shanahan utilize other bodies in his backfield. We even saw that a couple of weeks ago when Wilson saw his sixty six percent running back rushare against the Jacks. That numbers finding good, but it's not elite. Michelle would likely be closer to a bell Cow without Darryl Henderson. That's why I had him as the sixteenth transaction earlier this week. The last question says, Hi, JJ, love your content. Thanks. What's the best strategy for a team on the outside looking into the playoffs? Should I roster handcuffs, start, boom or bust players or just keep going with my optimal strategy. I don't know what your specific situation looks like, but if you've got lower odds to make the playoffs, you need more variants. You need players who have high ceilings if certain events unfold in a specific way. I always tell people in these situations to tell yourself a story. How can player X, who's a wide receiver four become a wide receiver two or a wide receiver one. Is it possible? If the only reasonable possibility is the guy becomes a wider S three, then he's probably not worth rostering, or at least starting. The obvious place to go with that, then, is with what you noted, and that's the running back handcuffs. Because running backs can see such a jolt and volume if their lead back goes down. Those are the types of players who offer a lot of variants this time of year for teams who are struggling. But I'd also say that most teams should be rostering those guys because we all need high upside. No team is perfect, so tell yourself a story about each player. It's really helpful when determining someone's floor to ceiling combo. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found it. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I really appreciate it and enjoy Week thirteen. I'll talk to you next week.