640: Mailbag 5/27/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachersa j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode six hundred and forty of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Soccer fans. This season, Fandel and Captain Morgan are teaming up to give you a one of a kind soccer contest to spice up Game Day, introducing the Captain Morgan Soccer Pick them a weekly fantasy contest that's entirely free to play. The contest is simple. All you have to do is answer ten questions about Captain Morgan and that week's soccer matchup. People with the most correct answers will earn their share of cash prizes. Head over to fandle dot com Slash free Games, Slash Captain Morgan and spice up game Day with a free shot at cash prizes every Saturday. No purchase necessary twenty years older to enter. Location restrictions apply, void ware prohibit see full terms at fandle dot com. Let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from Adam and it's from Patreon. It says the deebo deployment had quite an impact on fantasy football last year. Cordero Patterson was one of the waiver wire ads of the season, and rushing touchdowns Buoie Deebo Samuel's second half production as his targets dropped. Do you think utilizing wide receivers as running back is a trend that will stick? I can envision players like Laviska Chanault or Trey lom Burk's being optimized with this sort of role. Receivers who are dynamic with the ball in their hands but limited route runners. Could also see receivers not wanting to be deployed like this for health slash financial reasons. Thanks for helping me be a better fantasy manager. I think teams are gonna probably try this because it's a copycat league. But I also think the football world doesn't give enough credit to Debo himself and how good he actually is. Cordero Patterson, to me, really wasn't a Deebo Samuel situation last year. He was just a running back. He averaged a target share per game of about twelve point seven percent, and he averaged a weekly rush share of forty percent. That's among all rushes within his offense. When Diebo was seeing the work on the ground that he was seeing in the forty nine ers offense, it represented about twenty one percent of the team's rush attempts, so like half of what Patterson's season long average was, and then Diebo was seeing like a nineteen percent target share, it was a little bit different. But I'm making that call out because I do think that teams may try to do what San Francisco did rather than what Atlanta did, where the player isn't really a running back, but he'll line up back there and maybe see fifteen twenty percent of the team's carries. The problem with how to apply that to fantasy football is that it's a lot harder to predict which wide receivers would actually thrive in that kind of role, and I would strongly argue that none of them will be as efficient as Deebo Samuel was last year, and because of that, it wouldn't necessarily make those players more valuable in fantasy football. But that's especially true in PPR formats where we'd rather them just catch passes. It could bring a player like Chanut back to life for fantasy purposes, but it's hard to imagine the scenario where there are a ton of debos across the league, or it's hard to imagine something like this will have that big of an impact on fantasy football. But teams are gonna try. Yeah, teams are absolutely gonna try. That's what happens in the NFL. It's a copycat league. The next question is also from Patreon, is from the Denchwarmers. Chances of a Clyde Edward Zelayir turnaround in contribution to a win now team? Recent news of the surgery he had last offseason that hurt his preparation. Plus, is Ronald Jones really better God offered him for Chark Gabe Davis In a third, seems like he's going for pennies for the potential. So I want to start off by reading a quote from Ceh. It's from Arrowhead attic dot com and this is from February. The quote says, honestly about to break the internet with this one. So this will actually be my first off season being able to do a full training regimen. After the Super Bowl last year, the first Thursday in March, I had gallbladder surgery. My gallbladder completely stopped working. I was down to about one hundred and sixty pounds and then before I knew it, it was my first time of getting a rep with the football from the Super Bowl was the first OTA practice. I didn't run, didn't do anything all the way up until that point, and was still dealing with stitches and recovery over the course of the summer. So Cech evidently hasn't had a normal off season yet as a pro until this off season. Now, is this something that we should actually put some stock in. I mean, I don't think it's something that we need to just completely ignore. I just wouldn't make a decision solely off of this information. Instead, we can look at the things that I've talked about on this show over the past month with Isaiah Pacheco. Kansas City's new running back Clyde Edwards. Zelayer did look worse last year than he did as a rookie. As a rookie, eleven point six percent of his rushes went ten or more yards. Last year that number was seven point six percent. As a rookie, he had three twenty plus yard rushes that accounted for one point seven percent of his attempts. Last year, he had zero. That twenty plus yard rush number has been the problem for Cech. It really matches to the idea that he lacks speed and he's not very explosive. Even though his rookie season was better, it was still like a twenty fifth percentile rate among one hundred plus attempt rushers. I keep saying this on the show, but this is the reason I think the Chiefs went out and they got Ronald Jones and why they drafted Pacheco, who had the best speed score in this year's running back class, because they won a little bit more of that explosion on the ground. That's fine. I don't think we need to project Cech for two hundred and fifty carries for him to hit a decent fantasy ceiling. Where he really needs to work is as a receiver, and given the Chiefs current depth chart, he's going to be the team's primary pass catcher out of the backfield. That's not something we've consistently been able to say over the last two years. Cech averages a seven percent target share per game last year. In twenty twenty, his rookie year, that number was eleven and a half percent. With the changes within the Chiefs offense, it's not unthinkable that we see Cech hit a thirteen or fourteen percent target share this year. Ronald Jones has had issues as a receiver his entire career, and do we really think that they're going to give those duties to Derek Gore. I think there's some fragility with Cech because one player, one pass catching addition, can change his value from now until the start of the season. But he's got a path to being pretty relevant this year. And it was a good sign that Daryl Williams ended up not resigning. And don't discount his short yardage ability either. I mentioned this before, but only Tony Pollard was better at gaining positive yardage per rush last year. There's obviously a lot of situational factors that play into a statistic like that, like the fact that both Pollard and Cech saw just two to three goal line carries. But it's at least some sort of sign showing that we may be overstating that side to his game. Right now, I'm more in than out with Cech. Speaking of Daryl Williams, we got another question from Patreon from Robert that says, how are you feeling about the Arizona running room. I feel like banking on Connor to stay healthy is crazy, But the RB two could be anybody Ino, Keyante, now Daryl Williams. Is this a place to shoot your shot on a player since someone will be relevant, or is this a place to avoid with all of the moving parts. So I'm not really buying into Eno Benjamin right now because I think there's a good chance that he's the fourth best running back on that roster. He had opportunity last year, he didn't do anything with it. Keyanta Ingram isn't a bad prospect, and we have the ambiguity with him. We have the question of what if he's actually really good? And Daryl Williams is a really solid protector and pass catcher. He's a reliable player. James Connor is going to see the most work in this offense by far as long as he's healthy. But since we're talking about the late rounds, I'm probably still throwing the dart at Ingram just because we have more information on the other players, and that information tells us that they're not like super special backs. Williams is good. Williams has had good weeks in fantasy football, but we sort of know what he's about at this point, so I'm taking a shot on Ingram and then Williams and then Benjamin. I think if Connor goes down, though, we're likely going to see a split. This has questions from Twitter's from at sideshow Tim two, Zeke is a dead zone running back to avoid or Zeke is a great value in drafts this year. So I got a lot of running back dead zone questions this week. So I want to just say one thing about the dead zone overall before answering specifically for Zeke. But I look at the running back dead zone from the lens of opportunity cost. Given the ADP data that I've used to analyze this stuff, I've found that in regular redraft leagues, so not best ball leagues. I need to be clear there. It's not best ball leagues, but in regular redraft leagues, round four and five running backs typically are not good bets. And you can extend that just a little bit too. Not only do they not differentiate themselves enough versus players they get drafted three or four rounds later, but that's also a prime spot, or it has been for league winning wide receivers. We see it pretty much every single year. That's the opportunity cost side. Keep in mind that league winning running backs can still come from the dead zone. Valuable running backs can still come from the dead zone, and where the den zone starts and finishes doesn't need to be some fixed thing. You can have some flexibility with how you approach it all. It's just that in general, we know what historical trends have told us. Now. As it pertains to Ezekiel Elliott, I don't have enough real regular redraft league data to work off of for this year, but in Bestball leagues he's usually getting drafted around RB seventeen, and I think that's a value for him. I think Tony Pollard is a value too, because here's the thing. Both of those players are being drafted around where my projections have them. But projections are a most likely outcome, and in that most likely outcome is the fact that both of those players stay relatively healthy. The most likely outcome is not that Zeke gets hurt or that Tony Pollard gets hurt and is out for the season, but we know that that's very possible. We know that if one of the other players in that backfield gets hurt, the other one has a much higher ceiling. So the fact that they're getting drafted where my projections have them, that's a sign that they may be values because it's not totally capturing any best case scenarios. We should be weighing upside more than downside, especially later in our drafts, because that's what wins leagues. So I'm in on Zeke right now, and I'm also in on Tony Pollard. This asked questions from Twitter. It's from at Enron eighty eight. It says, with so many wide receivers performing well in their rookie years, is the third year breakout still something we should consider slash value slash hold out for has that timetable been moved up across the board or just in specific cases? So the third year breakout notion has never really been that real, at least in recent history. Every study that I've done has found that year two is the year that you want to focus on for wide receiver breakouts, or at least they happen in year two at a higher rate. But it also depends on how you define breakout and what you're trying to accomplish. Like, if Michael Pittman is better this year than last year, are we saying that he broke out this year? Because to me, he broke out last year. But I've seen a lot of graphics and stuff on social media listing Michael Pittman as a potential breakout candidate. I can just say that I focus a lot on Year two players given the research that I've done, especially one who had decent production as rookies. I'll have more on breakout players later this summer, though. This asks questions from at FF Tommy b It says, can you name a few players you've traded for this offseason? And why so? I have a pretty big consideration set when looking at players to trade for in dynasty. Usually I approach trades from the perspective of who am I trying to get rid of on my team and not who am I trying to trade for? And the main reason for that is because a lot of players are going to be able to help you win in fantasy football, and if I can match players I want to get rid of with teams who could use those types of players, and I'm open to trading for a lot of players, then I'll more easily get a deal done. So I'm not necessarily going league by league and proposing trades in those leagues for the same player. I have players that I'd like to trade for or who I think are undervalued, but I'm more inclined to try to sell off assets that I don't want to teams who may need them. But there are some consistent players that I've gotten this offseason. For sure. Two of them come to mind. One is Kenneth Gainwell. The main reason I've gotten him is because my year two model really likes him. The year two model looks at how a player looked as a prospect and it combines that with how the player performed in year one, so I think that he's the right type of dark to throw. And then the other one is another later round running back, Lil Herbert. I've talked about this one on the show quite a bit, but David Montgomery is on the last year of his rookie contract. Herbert was better in a lot of efficiency metrics last year. There's a new regime, and there's a chance that we see Herbert just getting the offense naturally a little bit more given the new staff. I think the most likely outcome is still that Montgomery sees a ton of work and he's a Chicago Bear after this year. That's probably the most likely outcome, but we have to be open minded about range of outcomes. So those are two players that probably traded for most because they're cheap and they have interesting profiles. But like I said, my approach is very much to get rid of players rather than target super specific ones. When you target specific players, it's tougher to get trades done. Open your consideration set a bit. The last question this week is an email and it says, JJ, I saw your tweet that you were buying Giants players this year based on the Dable signing. Aside from Saquon who is the most likely wide receiver to have a fantasy impact this year, they are all practically free and both redraft and dynasty started, and Kenny g is going criminally late in all drafts and is the most proven wide receiver on the roster. Thanks always enjoyed the show, Josh. So for any of you who are subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football newsletter, which is completely free, by the way, and you can subscribe to it by going to Lateround dot com, you already know the answer to this because this week I send an email out talking about Cadarius Tony being undervalued. Tony is the wide receiver fifty three in early Bestball drafts. Golladay doesn't go that much after him, and I would rather take a chance on Tony than Galladay, though I do think that Galladay is totally fine. Let's first talk about what you're referencing in this question. On Thursday, I sent out a tweet and the tweet said why I'm buying Giants players in fantasy. Number one, they have a new coach that helped shape one of the best offenses in football. Number two, they're coming off a season with just twenty three offensive touchdowns. When teams with that low of a total see big increases year over year. And number three, they have the easiest schedule in football. I talked about Daniel Jones and the Giants offensive touchdowns already, but just as a reminder, teams who score very few touchdowns one year generally see a nice boost the following year. That's not surprising. Usually a team did poorly in the touchdown column because a lot of things didn't go that team's way. Sometimes that leads to big changes, so we usually see a big uptick in year over year touchdowns. The thing is, fantasy managers are usually wang previous season information a whole lot when they draft, so the Giants, because they sucked the last couple of years and they scored just twenty three touchdowns last year, Fantasy managers are largely ignoring that offense in total because every non Saquon Barkley player is being drafted in a double digit round or they're going undrafted. That's fine and all, but if you believe in dable, if you see the obvious regression, and if you account for the fact that their schedule is easiest in the league when analyzing via win totals, it starts to paint a picture that the offense in general is probably a little bit undervalued. So back to Cadari Tony. Why is he the one that I'm targeting the most. It's because of what we've seen historically with breakouts. Last season, among relevant wide receivers, only Antonio Brown, DeVante Adams, AJ Brown, and Cooper Cup were targeted at a higher rate per route run than Kadarius Tony, and that's according to Pro Football focused data. He just couldn't stay healthy, but when he was on the field, he was getting targeted. That's a good sign. And I mentioned earlier that my research has shown that second year wide receivers breakout at a more substantial rate than any other year. If we reference back to my breakout wide receiver study that I revisit every single year, there are four main criteria that breakout wide receivers tend to share. Number one, they don't come from nowhere. Number two, their quarterbacks ADP doesn't matter. Number three, they're second year players, or they break out at a higher rate of second year players. Number four, they have a higher hit rate when then the first pass cats are drafted on their team by ADP. This criteria helped lead me to Michael Pittman last year, and this criteria really does as Tony. The reason Tony is being drafted where he's being drafted right now, in my opinion, is because of the off the field stuff, which may or may not even be a thing. We don't know. But it's not like he's expensive, that's all priced in. We saw his ceiling last year against Dallas. We know that he's capable. I don't see why we wouldn't want to take a chance on that when he's going as late as he's going. And yeah, sure draft Kenny Galladay too. I'm just less inclined to go for a player who's twenty eight years old and hasn't produced in three years. He's still fine, though, given his price and everything that I'm saying right now about the Giants. The weapons there are good, the offensive line should be better. Brian Dable is coming off a job where he helped formulate one of the best offenses in football. There are definitely reasons to be more bullish than the market on the New York Giants, because the market clearly hates the Giants. So that's why I'm buying them right now, especially Tony in these early best ball drafts. That's going to do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by wishing for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You know, for to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out lateround dot com for everything that I'm doing. I've got a couple of guides for sale. I've got the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon, and remember to sign up for my free newsletter that's where all my written content is going. Thanks for listening, everyone, Enjoy your long weekend. I'll be back in your podcast feeds next week.