465: Mailbag 12/18/20

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha Jay Jake Zacher reson What's up Everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com in this episode four hundred and sixty five of the Late Round Podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network, I appreciate you for tuning in. We've got a quick mailbag show this week. But before get into this week's questions, I want to send a reminder to all Late Round podcast listeners in Colorado about the bud Light Pick and Kick bonus. The program is simple. For every field goal and extra point the Broncos make against the Bills on December nineteenth, fans who place the money line bed of at least twenty five dollars on the game will receive a three dollars bonus added to their FanDuel Sportsbook account. If the Broncos kick three field goals and three extra points, that's eighteen dollars in bonus cash. December nineteenth is right around the corner, So crack open a bud Light, download the Fando Sportsbook mobile app, and place your bet today. The first question this week says Love the show should teams that did not make the playoffs, but the league lets them play through the season be able to choose waiver wire players. Got burned this week as a last place player chose a running back that I wanted to pick up. So another most popular take for this question is that non playoff teams shouldn't put in waiver claims, and if my team didn't make the playoffs, I abide by that. If there aren't rules around it, though, then you don't have to ignore your waiver claims, and if something's on the line still, you definitely don't have to. But let me play Devil's advocate to this idea for a second. Throughout the regular season, when waivers run, we're competing with eleven other teams for players in the twelve team league. That means our probability to get a certain guy off the waiver wire is not super high. For argument purposes, let's just say that it's one to twelve in a twelve team league. Now, let's say it's a semi finals, which it is this week, there are only four teams left. Now you're odds and getting a waiver wire player. If these non playoff teams can't put in claims it's one in four, So the odds change because fewer teams are going for players off the waiver wire, and that means the waiver wire can make a bigger impact. You could argue that it really benefits teams that have more holes since they now have a better chance to plug those holes. Now is that fair? I don't know. I'm just giving you the other perspective. My overall stance is that if I'm not in the playoffs and I'm not playing for anything, I don't put in any claims, but I do think it's fair to go after players after waivers. Initially run this has questions from at Fishwind what's going on with Terry McLaurin. He went from automatic wide receiver too to shaky flex option. What's causing the downturn in production and what data can we examine to determine if it will continue. So McLaurin has had back to back down games after only really having one one of those down games this season, and it came against the Rams, So what's going on? Well, first off, I don't think two games is a big enough sample size to say that he's a super shaky flex option, but he's also been banged up. He had an ankle injury last week that could explain his down performance against San Francisco, and honestly, the good news that he still had a twenty one percent target share against Pittsburgh. It could have easily been a matchup thing. Washington was finding that Logan Thomas and JD. McKissick, they were working, So it could be a lot of things. It could be the individual matchups, the injury, or just variance. I think this is a case where we can't just let a couple of games like this overshadow the bigger sample size and the bigger picture. It's only natural to be a little bit worried, like, yeah, I wish that McLaurin wasn't hurt and didn't have two down games in a row, But don't take that too far in one direction. He's very good and he should be fine against Seattle this week, or at least I would project him to be. The last question says, what situations do you find it useful in redraft to stack a quarterback and wide receiver or to hedge an opponents wide receiver with their quarterback. An example would be Tannehill or Brady with AJ Brown facing Godwin or Evans, I generally don't force the issue in a redraft league unless I know that I'm a big underdog, or if I'm a big favorite, but I still won't let that get in the way of me being optimal and making optimal choices. For example, let's say that you're a big favorite and your opponent has Godwin and Mike Evans. You know that starting Brady would limit the upside that your opponent has because any points that Mike Evans or Chris Godwin get, Brady's going to get them too, So if one or both of them go off, Brady's likely to have a good game too. That's fine to go with Brady in that scenario, but don't start him over. Like Patrick Mahomes, you still have to make the right start sit decision. And then with stacking, if you need upside, sure go ahead and stack. That's why stacking has always been a popular DFS strategy in tournaments. If you're stacking, you're getting strong correlation. If the stack pans out, you're in great shape. If it doesn't, you're not. So it's a high variance approach that you can take. If you're a foresure underdog. But again, the general theme with questions like this is you can and you should absolutely think through this kind of thing, but don't sacrifice being optimal with your lineup. As a result, this has questions from at niners billion, how much are you trusting Deontay. I have Jeff Wilson if he starts, but I can't make anything of Deontay one way or another. For what it's worth, a quarnerback matchup for Deontay this week against William Jackson. It's not perfect by any means, but we saw Deontay against the Bengals this year and he had eleven targets, he caught six of them. He had one hundred and sixteen yards in a touchdown, So I'm not that worried about the matchup. Obviously. The worry comes from him being benched again, and that's a risk that you just have to be willing to take her not. I don't really know how to answer that, but if it makes you feel any better about a potential Deontay Johnson decision that you're making, I've got Deontay in multiple semi finals this week, and I'm starting him at the very least he's still a low end wide receiver. Two. This next question is from at advent Prime. I play in a keeper league where you keep up to two players for a cost of two rounds earlier than their twenty twenty draft round. Free agents are kept round fourteen, anyone you might target as a keeper off the waiver wire for twenty twenty one. So I got this question a ton this week, so I figured I should answer it. The best way to approach this kind of thing is to look at injured players and underperforming rookies and then match that up with players who could be free agents next year. So I'm just gonna run through a bunch of examples for you guys. One guy who pops to mind, Keishawn Vaughn. Leonard Fournette might be gone next year, Vaughn could step into that third down role for the Buccaneers offense. I'm not totally giving up hope. You could add Anthony McFarland or Benny Snell because James Connor is a free agent. You go with a running back in Seattle like DJ Dallas, maybe Rashad Penny because Chris Carson's a free agent. Aaron Jones is a free agent, so maybe aj Dillon makes sense. And by the way, I'm not saying I think these guys won't re sign with their teams. I'm personally expecting Aaron Jones to stay with Green Bay. We're just throwing darts here, and don't forget about injured players if you're able to keep them too. This may not be applicable to some of your leagues, but Paris Campbell, Courtland Sutton, Dak Prescott, Saquon Barkley, the list goes on and on. Now I know I didn't cover every single guy. I'm probably missing someone obvious. I just don't know everyone's specific league and rules and who's available. That's just my process for this type of question. Look for young players who may be underperformed, maybe someone like Laviskas Channault too. Also find injured players, and then look at expiring contracts, especially at running back, and see if the backup behind the player who's no longer going to be on that team, see if he's worth holding on to. This last question says what's the best way to rank fantasy keeper positions? One tight end, two run back, three wide receiver slash quarterback, four kicker slash defense lol ie is a tight end one more valuable than a RB one, et cetera. This completely depends on the player, but generally speaking, running backs and wide receivers are more valuable than tight ends in fantasy football because of the demand of the position you're starting more than one of them. That's why we see running backs and wide receivers get drafted early and often when you can get some tight ends late. Now. I know that's been a little bit different this year with Travis Kelcey because he's having a monster season. But we shouldn't group tight end ones and say they're the best position to keep, and we really shouldn't group positions together at all. It's all case by case. It all depends on the individual player. Now, if any of you are already needing to think about keepers this year, I did an episode on this over the offseason. It's episode three hundred and ninety one and it's called Keeper League Strategy. This last question says, it seems like some of the rookie running backs are finally starting to meet expectation. Would you rather have Cam Akers or Jonathan Taylor full point bpr rest of season? So, as I alluded to in the last couple of Late Round podcast episodes. Cam Akers looks like he's become the workhorse in that backfield, and he's had better backfield share numbers than Jonathan Taylor over the last couple of weeks. He's averaging eighty six percent running back rush share per game, and he's had a seven point four percent target share, and that target share is being brought down by a two point three percent share two weeks ago. Taylor, meanwhile, is still splitting that backfield to a decent degree. His running back rush share is about twenty four percentage points below camp Makers over the last two weeks, and his target share is pretty much the same. Now, we're working with small samples here, so take this all with a grain of salt. But if we make assumptions based on how things are trending, Acres looks like he has the edge and overall workload. But Taylor does have the best matchup of the two against Houston this week. The problem is that next week he gets Pittsburgh, and since Acres gets the Jets and then the Seahawks over the next two weeks, I'm probably gonna side with Acres from here on out. This US Christ is from at Andrew hall FF, what do we do with AJ Green and dynasties he droppable or a worthy stash in case he lands somewhere better next season to finish his career. I don't think it's smart to drop Green, even though he's looked pretty dusty this year. He may just need a change of scenery, and I can't imagine there's a better option sitting on your dynasty waiver wire right now. I've got him in one league and what I'm doing is I'm stashing him. I'm crossing my fingers and I hope that he can find the right spot. This that's christ is from at Derek Underscore Yetti HEJJ love the show. Thanks. You mentioned implied team totals based on sportsbooks. Obviously, the market will move the line if it considers it incorrect once it opens. But do you trust the sportsbook totals more than any other projection, say your own or number five, et cetera. Thanks. So, At first I read this question, I thought it was referring to trusting individual player projections more than implied team totals. And yes, obviously I would trust a player projection more than an implied total because he employ total is about the team, not the individual player. But it's hard to answer this question without knowing what's going into some of the team level projections. I can tell you that there's some correlation between implied team total and actual total. And if we know teams are going to score points, then that means players on those teams are also going to score points. But something like this is tough to answer because every projection system is going to be different. Not only that, but there's usually not going to be massive discrepancies between what somewhere like Fandal's sportsbook is saying versus what a projection system is saying. I mean, there will be, and you can exploit that, but it's not like every single team each week shows something wildly different between sportsbook and projection. It's not like a projection says the Chiefs are going to score forty five points, and then the implied team total for the Chiefs is like nineteen. The reason using implied totals can be helpful on my shows because anyone can access them and understand them. They're helpful not just from an application standpoint, but from a learning one too. So I haven't been taking emails for the mailbag. During the season, but things were a little bit slower this week. And I think this is a good one to end on. It's an email from Jesse and it says, Hey, JJ, how do you go about playing quarterbacks in matchups that will appear to be very lopsided but provide opportunity both through the air and on the ground. The example I'm thinking of is Ryan Tannehill last week. The matchup was excellent, but the game got out of hand and they leaned on the run very quickly. Sixteen points is fine, but certainly isn't the ceiling I'm looking for in the semis. I fear a similar situation could arise against Detroit this week. Thanks Jesse. Yeah, look, you ideally want situations where games are going to be close because it keeps teams throwing. I think the fear against Detroit is very real and it's very fair in situations like this, though, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, we're not flawless at predicting gamescript last week with Tannehill, script when as expected, but it doesn't always go that way. So when it doesn't, you've got a good matchup and that team might keep throwing The second thing to remember, though, is that in order for that positive game script to hit, the quarterback generally has to be good. I know you mentioned Tannehill last week, and yeah, sixteen and a half points, that's not anything special. But what happens if that early Derrick Henry touchdown is actually a Tannehill passing touchdown. If that happens, we're not even talking about this question right now. Because Tannehill scores over twenty fantasy points. It's not ideal, don't get me wrong, but I think this is one of those cases where without looking at the bigger picture, it can force narratives into your brain because efficiency is more important at quarterback than volume. We want both, of course, but there's very little correlation between pass attempts and fantasy points scored at quarterbacks on a weekly level. That's when you're looking at twenty plus attempt throwers, which is a number basically every quarterback hits each and every week. It really just comes down to touchdowns. For your Tannehill example, you could counter it with something else that happened last week, Russell Wilson. If we want to look at anecdotal evidence, there's some anecdotal evidence Russell Wilson. He was ultra efficient. He only played three quarters in that game, but it didn't matter. Maybe it didn't give him a super super high ceiling, but he still got it done. And Tannehill should hypothetically still be able to get it done in this matchup against Detroit. But overall, I'm going to be most concerned with efficiency over volume, and I want my quarterback's offenses scoring a lot of points because it's very easy for a rushing touchdown to just be a passing touchdown. How often do we see a running back get stuffed at the one and then they throw for a touchdown the very next play. That's how these narratives can flip that easily. That's why we shouldn't be overly concerned with something like this. That's going to 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, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week everyone, I really really appreciate it. Good luck in the semi finals and I will talk to you next week two