866: Wide Receiver Prospects Who Produced Like Studs

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacheris JJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode eight hundred and sixty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. As I said last week, my prospect model's got a little makeover this offseason. A lot of the same metrics are still used in them, but there are some changes too, and I'd argue that there were more changes done to the wide receiver model than the running back one. The wide receiver model which has been named the ZAP model. Like I said last week, but the wide receiver ZAP model has a handful of different factors that go into it. The goal of the model is to predict fantasy output for an incoming rookie across his first three years in the NFL. There are a handful of inputs within that model, but three of those inputs are production related. One of them has been a staple of the model, and that's collegiate yards per team pass attempt. It takes a play receiving yards and it divides that by his team's total pass attempts. Now, historically the model it just looked at a player's top season in yards per team pass attempt. The metric breakout age that used to be an input in the model, so age adjustments were happening elsewhere. All that mattered, though, was the best season in yards per team pass attempt. The ZAP model is a little bit different. Rather than taking that singular number, it creates a breakout score that's based on yards per team pass attempt. This is similar to what I talked about last week with breakout score a running back. Essentially, breakout score is my way of showing age adjustin production, rather than using something like breakout age, which is pretty binary and works off of dominator rating, a metric I don't really love in the first place. Breakout score looks at a handful of thresholds that a player can hit in yards per team pass attempt, and it looks at a player's age when he gets to those thresholds. It then scores that player's breakout out of one hundred breakout scores entirely driven by yards per team pass attemp. It's adjusted for strength to program too, but it's the most important production related metric in the ZAPP model at wide receiver. But there's also now a Fantasy points score. This is a new one, and I now realize that when you say that out loud, it sounds like I'm saying fantasy points scored. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying Fantasy point score. A player's Fantasy point score is also out of one hundred. It's not age adjusted like breakout score, but it adjusts for how many pass attempts a team had, and it adjusts for the school that a player went to, because obviously it's easier to score more points at South Alabama compared to Alabama. So it's basically a market share number, but with Fantasy points. So we've got breakout score and Fantasy points score. The last input is rushing production. That's the last production related input. Players get extra love in their zapp score if they had rushing production in college. Now where am I getting at with all this? While on today's episode, I'm going to look at the various production profiles from this year's draft class, and by production profiles, I'm talking about how these players look within the production metrics in the ZAP model. I'll just be focusing on breakout score and Fantasy points score though, because those are the two bigger inputs in the model. Like last week, I'll be comparing this year's draft class to successful wide receivers that we've seen in the NFL, because these scores that I'm talking about are there to help predict NFL success, and if that's the case, then successful NFL wide receivers probably did pretty well within those scores, right Hopefully at least. The question we're asking is which players from this year's class produce like studs. That's what we'll be looking to answer. Before getting into things, I want to remind you about the Late Round Prospect Guide. The guides currently available for pre order on lateround dot com, and it has everything you need to crush your rookie drafts this year. You get information about what goes into these ZAP models. There's prospect profiles, year two model profiles, and so much more. You can learn more about it over on lateround dot com. Okay, so just to reiterate, I'm going to be comparing the wide receivers from this year's draft class to successful Fantasy wide receivers in the NFL. That way, we can see if there are any studs from this class. And by this class, I'm referring to the thirty nine wide receivers who were invited to the NFL Combine this year. By successful wide receivers, we've got to define that. What does it mean to be a successful NFL wide receiver from a fantasy perspective. Well, I'll be using similar parameters as I did last week on the running back episode. I'm defining successful wide receivers as wide receivers in the NFL who gave us multiple seasons since twenty eleven of fifteen or more PPR points per game, with a minimum eight games played for a season to qualify. So those are seasons where the wide out hit at least wide receiver two status, but more than just a low end wide receiver two. Using those qualifiers, you get fifty wide receivers. But a lot of those wide receivers entered the league a long time ago. We're dating this back to twenty eleven, but some of those wideouts entered the league long before that. The ZA model goes back to twenty eleven, so not all of those wide receivers have readily available data to work off of. When you remove those players, you get thirty wide receivers or thirty successful wideouts. The goal now is to look at that group of successful wide receivers and compare it to this year's draft class. More specifically, will compare collegiate breakout scores and fantasy point scores. So let's look at this group of successful wide receivers. First. There are thirty wide receivers since twenty eleven who had multiple fifteen plus PPR point per game seasons. When looking at their collegiate profiles, the median breakout score of this group is ninety two point nine, which is a very high number when you consider one hundred is the highest that a player can score. This is the successful group's median. Meanwhile, the median fantasy point score is eighty four. Again, that's a pretty high number all thing considered. Now, let's shift our focus back to this year's draft class. The thirty nine wide receivers from this year's class have a median breakout score of forty eight. The median fantasy points score is forty nine. So both numbers are significantly lower compared to the successful wide receivers, right, And that makes me feel good because that means the metrics appear meaningful. Not that I didn't know that already through testing breakout score gets more weight in the ZAP model, so let's dig into that first. When look at the successful wide receiver group, just five of the thirty wide receivers had a breakout score below eighty, so over eighty three percent of successful wide receivers had a breakout score above eighty. Among the thirty nine wide receivers in this year's draft class, thirty one of them failed to get a breakout score of eighty. That's pretty significant. One of the bigger names who failed to get there is Keon Coleman. His breakout score was fifty six point six, which was slightly above average within this class, but it's definitely not a great breakout score for someone who who has a late first round projection on NFL Mockdraft database dot com. Coleman's having some issues with breakout score because he never reached a pro rated yards per team pass attempt rate of two. Usually elite players can get all the way up to three, but his best season in yards per team pass attempt was only one point nine to four. That's not that great, though he did do it at Michigan State with Jayden Reid on the roster, so that's a plus. But get this This is actually directly from this year's Late Round Prospect Guide, so you get a little glimpse of what you can get with the guide. It says, let's start with his that's Coleman's breakout score. It's just fifty six point six. From twenty eleven to twenty twenty one, we saw twenty seven wide receivers get drafted between pick twenty and pick forty. That's around the area of the draft where Coleman is projected to get selected. Of those twenty seven, seven had breakout scores below sixty. And then I list the seven wide receivers. You're ready for this, Brian Quick, Cornero Patterson, Calvin Benjamin, Bershad Perriman, Philip dor Set, Josh Dockson, and Jalen Rager. Kelvin Benjamin was the only one of those players to get to ten or more PPR points per game in one of his first three seasons in the league. Conversely, thirteen of the twenty who had breakout scores above sixty got to ten or more PPR points per game. So yeah, that's a red flag to keon Coleman's profile. Another player who didn't get to an eighty breakout score in this class is Lad McConkie, and guys, I gotta say McConkey as one of the strangest analytical profiles that I have ever seen. His breakout score is only forty three point five. He actually wasn't very good in yards per team pass attempt throughout college. His highest pro rated rate is just one point sixty three. But it's wild because his per route run numbers they're awesome. Yards per team pass attempt correlates relatively well to yards per route run when looking at a player's top season in both, and the delta between mconkie's top season in yards per route run and yards per team pass attempts it's the largest that the ZAP model has seen from a higher end wide receiver. It's absolutely crazy. And the reason that's the case is because McConkie didn't get full time reps at Georgia for whatever reason, whether it be how they just use their personnel, game script injury. But mconkie didn't run a normal number of routes. He was fifth on the team this past year, and routes run. When he did run routes, he was great. It's just that those numbers aren't what going to the prospect model. You'll see in the prospect Guide that his zapp score still isn't that bad, but the lack of route participation that's why his yards per team pass attempt is so low and why his breakout score then is also kind of low. Eighty. Mitchell is another player to call out here. I talked about him on last week's Mailback episode, and I think that I kept things a little bit too high level with my answer on that show, because Mitchell did play alongside some NFL caliber talent during his collegiate career, which started at Georgia and ended at Texas. With that being said, when we prospect analytically, we're finding general trends to help us increase our probability of hitting on a player, and the general trend is that players with numbers like Mitchell's don't work out at a very high rate. His breakout score is only forty two point five. I mentioned some players on last week's show who have been drafted in Round two since twenty eleven who had as low of a yards per team pass attempt as Mitchell had. We'll do the same exercise, but with breakout score. Here are the wide receivers who had breakout scores below forty three Mitchell's score who were drafted in round two since twenty eleven. Brian Quick, Aaron Dobson, Mikol Hardman, Paris Campbell, Van Jefferson, and Alec Pierce. Regardless of his competition and his fit within his collegiate offenses, we can still say that these numbers make him a little bit of a riskier bet. But what's interesting is that because of a lot of his non production metrics, like his teammates scorer his early declared status. Because of those things, Mitchell actually doesn't even have a high risk tag within the ZAP model. So there is risk, but at least there are other things that do elevate his profile. I'll get to one more player who has a red flag and breakout score, and that's Malachi Corley. Corley's the guy in this draft class who comps best to Deebo Samuel. It seems like there's one in every draft class. Corley's the guy in this class, and Deebo is actually one of his comps. Within the ZAP model. The problem is that Deebo had way better marks than Corley had across the board. Corley failed to register a breakout score. A big reason for that was because he played at a smaller school in western Kentucky, so that adjustment brings down his raw yards per team pass attempt number. But his best yards per team pass attempt rate was only two point zero eight in college. His breakout score is zero when Debo's in college was over eighty seven. But look, Corley definitely has that after the catch profile in the build to be that type of player in the league, to be a Deebo Samuel type player, there's no doubt. I think it's fine to recognize that there's upside to his profile. But his top comp in the ZAP model is a Marii Rogers. He comes really close to Rogers actually, and Rogers he was talked about as a Deebo Samuel type two. So be a little bit cautious. Look, I'm open minded about Corley and how things will translate. He really was used in a way in college where we don't fully know what he's capable of because he saw tons of screens, He saw tons of looks behind the line of scrimmage, and it makes sense to use him that way. Just watch Malachi Corley play. The dude has that dog in him. But at the same time you have to question if all of this is a limitation. Now, there are other players that could shout out here who have lower breakout scores. Roman Wilson's only at forty six point two. For instance, the Washington wide receivers not named Romadounze, they were lower two. But let's move on to fantasy points score. Remember when looking at her successful wide receiver sample, their median Fantasy point score was eighty four. That's significantly higher than this year's class. On top of that, only three of the thirty players in the successful wide receiver sample had a Fantasy point score below sixty. Twenty five of the thirty nine wide receivers in this year's class are under that mark. One of those players is Keon Coleman. Yet again, I already talked about him, though, so let's move on. There really aren't any big name players that we haven't talked about yet who have horrible Fantasy points scores. So instead of calling those guys out, the guys who are bad who have red flags, I'll give some shouts to two players who have pretty decent scores that seem noteworthy. Roman Wilson's one of them. His breakout score not the best. His fantasy points score, though, helps him out. It's eighty nine point four, which is a huge plus first profile. One other one that I want to shout out is Malik Washington. I'm really intrigued by Malik Washington's overall profile. He's a really fun player to watch because he's a slot guy who's not afraid of contact. He didn't have an amazing breakout score because his production at Northwestern wasn't amazing, but he got to Virginia last year and he dominated. He had a top five best season yards per team pass attempt in the entire class, and his fantasy point score it's an impressive eighty five point nine, So watch out for him. Okay, now for the big reveal. Were there any wide receivers in this year's class that matched exceeded the successful group medians in both breakout score and fantasy point score? Well, this probably isn't shocking, but two of the players who got there were Marvin Harrison Junior and Malik Neighbors. The ZA model currently favors Neighbors, but I'm not gonna argue anyone who has Harrison Junior ahead of Neighbors. They're both elite Cornerstone Dynasty assets. They're incredible prospects. One other player got there though, too, Xavier Worthy. He's a smaller built wide out out of Texas who had crazy good production as soon as he got there. He's someone that we should all be monitoring over the next couple of months. There are more wide receivers that I'll gladly talk about on future mailbag shows, so if you've got questions about the class, feel free to ask them. But that's it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by stretching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and efort to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I greatly appreciate it. I got a Late Round Perspectives episode for you later this week. I'll talk to you then.