446: Mailbag 11/13/20

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ Zacherwatha j J zacherwethon What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at Fandel and at number fire dot com in this episode four hundred and forty six of the Late Round podcast with many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. The twenty twenty NFL season may feel like it's flying by, but there's still plenty of time to play fantasy football on FANDEL. The FanDuel Podcast Network. Listener League is back for Week ten, and with eleven games scheduled for Sunday, you have plenty of options to choose from when building your lineups. Enter the Rake Free weekly NFL contest, made exclusively for you the Listener for just five dollars and compete for your share of the fifteen hundred dollars prize pool, including one hundred and fifty dollars to first place. To enter, visit fandel dot com Slash League. Slash Listener League eligibility restrictions apply. The first question this week says, coming up to the deadline, how willing are you to lose a trade to get a definite upgrade to starting roster, example, setting a starter in your top two bench assets for a top five levels starter at the position. So winning or losing trades is subjective to begin with, right. That's a huge reason that trade vetos are dumb, because even if you think a trade is lopsided, it doesn't mean that it will actually turn out to be lopsided. Basically, I don't think that we can assume a trade is a loss for you if you're improving your starting roster, especially this time of year, we obviously would need examples. I'm not saying just trade away all of your bench assets, but the goal is to consistently improve your starting lineup. It may feel like a loss on paper and in a vacuum, but it may actually be a win for your team's overall value. But overall, as a philosophy, you should be trying to improve your starting lineup all the time. Trading bench assets is a great way to do that. This ash questions from at j underscore pzy. Does any top twelve quarterback have a better rest of season schedule than Drew Brees? Thanks JJ, So if you look at adjusted fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks, Breeze does have the best schedule on average from now through the end of the season, but some teams are really close. Those teams are the Bears, Chiefs, Rams, Raiders, Giants, and Jets. So you could argue that Patrick Mahomes is right there too. And remember this changes slightly when looking at playoffs schedules and only playoff schedules, But Breeze is set up really well from now through the end of the season. This ash question says, is it too early to target defenses for the playoffs? What teams are you eyeing? Thanks for everything, JJ, So if you look at ad justin Fantasy points allowed, the team with the most advantageous matchups from weeks fourteen through sixteen is Chicago. They face Houston, Minnesota, and Jacksonville. Now that doesn't look amazing on paper, but Houston gives up a lot of sacks and a lot of pressures and Jacksonville does too, and then Minnesota has had some really bad games at times this year, but they've been a lot better in the last couple of weeks. Baltimore is a defense though, that has a really really good schedule. I'd argue that it's better than Chicago's because they get the Browns, Jags, and Giants. They're right next to Chicago when looking at their opponents' averages and adjusted Fantasy points against. So I'd put Baltimore as the highest priority. Like, if you want to trade for them, feel free to just send a bench player for the Baltimore Ravens defense. The Browns are another defense to target, though they do get the Ravens in Week fourteen, but then they get both New York teams in weeks fifteen and sixteen. So if you need a cheaper defense, that's the direction that I would go in, and then I would probably just stream in Week fourteen. This naice question is from at LEPs underscore t. I don't have a top five tight end, so how can we evaluate the tight end landscape going into the Fantasy playoffs? I e? How important is schedule, snap count, rats, run, et cetera. Thanks, I would say it's not more or less important than it typically is. The reason I brought up guys like Austin Hooper, Dallas Goddard on this week's fifteen Transaction show, and even Mark Andrews is the sixteenth transaction it was because they're players who at least have that opportunity to jump into a higher tier of tight ends week in and week out. Those are the kinds of tight ends that you want to go after. And remember, matchups aren't everything, especially at tight end. They matter to a degree, and I'd much rather have what looks like a good matchup on paper versus a bad one for a tight end. But it's just a piece of the puzzle. You first and foremost won a player who's on the field, who's running routes, and who's seeing targets. This ask question, says love the podcast JJ. Thanks. Am I crazy to trade away Dalvin Cook to get Dereck Henry given their playoff schedules? Okay, so do I think that you're crazy? I don't think that you're crazy? No, would I do it? Like, let me be honest here. I know I'm a fantasy analyst, so I'm supposed to have all these answers. You guys, listen to me to give you some answers. I don't have an answer to that. I feel like this is one of those instances where I'd feel mentally destroyed if I made this move where I'm giving up the clear better player and a deal who's seeing better usage and is performing out of this world. Right now, I feel like I would never play Fantasy football again if I made this move and then Dalvin Cook goes off in the playoffs and Derrick Henry doesn't. Because of course that's possible. We know that's possible. There's so much volatility in this game, and like I just said, matchups are still just a piece of the puzzle. They're not everything. Now that being said, I had Dereck Henry as a bye this week for a reason. No player has a better Fantasy playoff schedule than Derrick Henry. He could go nuts. It's not like schedules are irrelevant. So I'm absolutely viewing him as an elite asset down the stretch. Now, I know I'm kind of all over the place here, so let me try to be more concise with how I feel about this question. I guess maybe my point here is that you don't need to trade a way Dalvin Cook for Derick Henry. You don't need to do that. That's not a transaction that you need to make. If we had neutral opponents for both of these running backs moving forward, we would take Dalvin Cook. And that's the way the market is generally going to view this. So at the very least, if you're going to make a move like this, which again I don't think is absolutely nuts, I probably wouldn't do it, but I understand it. But if you're gonna make a move like this, try to extract more value and get more with Derrick Henry. Flip wide receivers or something on the two teams. Find an upgrade elsewhere within your lineup. If you really want to get Dereck Henry and you're giving up Dalvin Cook to do that, at least upgrades somewhere else too. And by the way, I'm recording this before the Thursday night game, so I might sound like an idiot right now. He might have gone off, he might have done horribly. Maybe he got hurt. I hope he didn't get hurt. But just so you guys know, I'm not gonna go back and edit this out after the Thursday night game because I think this question was a really good question. This last questions from Tauca twenty. Most of your transactions are buy, hold, or sell players based on their peripherals. As we've seen players sustain unsustainable numbers over some time. Where do you draw the line between this guy will regress rest of season, or this guy just has a great season e. G. Russell Wilson's touchdown rate. Okay, So one thing I think is important to remember with regression is that it happens all the time, even to players who don't seem like they're regressing. Take Russell Wilson as an example, the guy that you just mentioned in this question. He has a nine point four percent touchdown rate right now. The highest touchdown rate that we've ever seen was from Peyton Manning in two thousand and four. He had a nine point nine percent touchdown rate that year, So we're kind of seeing something historic from Russell Wilson. But Wilson didn't have a nine point four percent touchdown rate all year. In fact, from weeks one through three his touch on rate was thirteen point six percent. From weeks four through nine, our most recent sample, his touch on rate has been seven point two percent. Seven point two percent is not that big of an outlier. Russell Wilson's had a season with an eight point two percent touchdown rate, and he has been with a seven point zero percent touchdown rate. So let's go back to what I said at the start of this answer. Regression happens all the time, even to players who don't seem like they're regressing. Russell Wilson doesn't seem like he's regressing, but he's regressed. It's just that his numbers were so bonkers to start the year that we're now assuming that he's at this nine point four percent touchdown rate from here on out. It's really closer to seven percent now. When it comes to the recommendations that I make on this podcast, I want to make recommendations that are actionable, because even though Russell Wilson was bound to regress from the start of the season and how he was performing, his regression didn't push him into being like a QB six or something. We would still view Wilson to this day as one of the best fantasy quarterbacks. So while I'm looking at regression, I'm trying to spot regression in a way that moves the needle that actually matters. It matters, but it doesn't matter in terms of how you're dealing with this player and whether or not you should trade or buy a player. But just remember that regression is undefeated even in small moments, even within a game, like if a quarterback completes five straight deep balls. We shouldn't expect him to continue completing every single deep ball in that game. It just depends in the timeframe that you're looking at a specific piece of data. So just remember that regression is undefeated. This last questions from at Jacob Underscore Baldwin ten. Is Tyler Lockett still a must start? I mean any question like this, The answer is, it depends who you're starting him over. I do think there are obvious concerns about Tyler Lockett's consistency, though he was a top twenty wide receiver across the first three weeks of the season, and he's ranked higher than wide receiver fifty, wide receiver fifty and weekly scoring just once over his last five games, with that one game being that monster outing that he had against Arizona. But I do think that you should consider the volatility of other receivers, like because Tyler Lockett's highs have been so high, his volatility looks insane. It is insane, but we at least know that his ceiling is there. The difference between him finishing is like wide receiver seventy in a given week versus someone finishing his wide receiver thirty. Let's say that doesn't really matter that much. That's not what's putting your team over the edge. So I think Lockett, because of his ceiling, should be started pretty much every week unless you've got really good wide receivers. But again, I can't answer this one super specifically without knowing who those alternatives are. This next question says, how do you value touchdown dependent players? I feel like there's generally too much of a negative connotation associated with it when I listen to fantasy heads talking about these types of guys, seemingly due to the variance that comes along with them. Thanks love the content. Thanks. I think this sort of just goes back to what I was talking about before with regression, Like I never bring up Tyreek Hill as a sell on the fifteen Transactions podcast, despite the that that he's scored at least one touchdown in all but two games this year, and he's only hit one hundred receiving yards once. He's been close two other times. But overall, Hill's outside the top ten in receiving yards at wide receiver this year, and he's scoring all these touchdowns. But there's just such a baseline to a player like Hill, given the offense that he's in how he scores his points and the quarterback who's throwing him the ball. There's no need to say, oh, Tyreek Hill has just been touchdown dependent. We know there's a crazy ceiling each and every week. I think when you're looking at the non elite players, touchdown reliance matters more. That's why I brought up Will Fuller this past week. I think Fuller is awesome, and like I said on the show, I understand if you don't want to trade him away, but he's not going to maintain this pace of scoring, or at least it's very unlikely. And for someone like him if he doesn't score, there's a little bit more on the line than with someone like Tyreek Hill. So it's case by case. Someone being touchdown dependent does matter because players regress when it comes to scoring touchdowns, so you have to take it seriously, but every player's situation is still unique. The last question this week is from at LA Underscore twenty twenty Underscore sm In the last five years, season long, fantasy football has shifted to PPR from standard. What is the next shift that you see coming to the fantasy world? Now I mentioned this before in the podcast, but every year people get more and more into fantasy football. We've seen the evolution of best Ball leagues so that people can have a ton of leagues and build sort of this portfolio of players. We've seen league structure change at more of the micro level, and we've seen more people get into dynasty. I think that's one area where more people are going to move to because as the masses get more and more into this game, they want to manage all year round, they want to dig deeper into player analysis that happens in dynasty, and I think people are going to eventually grow tired of the way that quarterbacks are valued in normal season long leagues. People already are, so we may continue to see the shift to superflex. The problem is, for any league structure type change like that, it's gonna have to happen within default settings in a place like Yahoo or ESPN. That's the way that it truly becomes the norm. Like if one of the big fantasy platforms says superflex is now the default setting, then all of a sudden, all my analysis would be geared towards superflex leagues. And I hope that day comes. I just highly doubt it's gonna come anytime soon. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you enjoyed the podcast this week. I will talk to you next week