434: Mailbag 10/23/20

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha, j J Zacherson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at Fandel and at Number five dot com. In This is episode four hundred and thirty four of the Late Round podcast. So the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Was that a record? Thanks for tuning in. Head to fandel dot Com Slash League slash Listener League right now. You know why because you can interrupt the three lineups in the contest with FanDuel Podcast Network listeners for five dollars a lineup for your chance to win a share of the fifteen hundred dollars in prizes. Best of all, it's rake free. That's Fandel dot Com Slash League slash Listener League. Eligibility restrictions apply. The first question this week is from at Enbirch twelve. How do you feel about Devonte Parker's outlook rest of season given the TUA news? Is he a sell a hold? I mean, I'm open to trading pretty much anyone all the time. It can't hurt to at least see what someone's willing to give you. But let's look at this at a high level. Miami ranks eleventh in net yards per attempt right now, they're tenth in overall passing yards, and they're pretty average and neutral gamescript pass rate. Parker has about a twenty percent target share this year. That's not anything special, So I wouldn't even say someone like Parker specifically has thrived this year due to Ryan Fitzpatrick. I would argue that maybe the Dolphins end up being more conservative with Tua, but it's not like this is a Dack to Dalton situation where you had this really pass heavy offense and a quarterback who was objectively very good, and then you were going to a backup quarterback, a good backup quarterback, but still a backup quarterback. Everything has been averaged to slightly above average with a Dolphins passing attack, and Fitzpatrick has been spreading things around pretty evenly. So maybe we see a slight downgrade if we're playing this conservatively, but I'm not sure that we can just assume that's the case. Fitzpatrick hasn't been as dgaff as we've seen in the past either. He's actually got a low deep ball rate this year. With these types of scenarios. It's easy to say it's a rookie things are gonna be so much worse. But you also have to imagine a world where Tua really hits. We've seen that already with a couple of quarterbacks in this draft class, so it could also be awesome. This change could be really good for the pass catchers, and there's a possibility he builds a really strong rapport with one of his wide receivers. Maybe that's DeVante Parker, maybe that's Preston Williams. We don't know, so I think overall, given the current circumstances, I think Parker is just mostly a hold. This last questions from at sam L two eight zero zero one zero two to one. If you're in a good position to make the playoffs in your league at the halfway point, are there any specific moves you would try to make from a roster construction standpoint. Yeah, so if you're in good shape, you should stop looking at your bench as a place for flex guys like Damian Harris is a good example. The chance Thatt Harris really really hits probably isn't very high since the Patriots utilize so many different running backs, But in a random week. He might be usable in your flex if you've got a lot of injuries or buys, but if your team is set, then you don't need guys like Damian Harris. You're better off looking at handcuffs or higher upside players than you are Damien Harris. I'd argue that's the case for most teams, but that's just a random example. You can also start handcuffing your own running backs if you're not in need of a lot of variance in a higher ceiling. And as usual, just keep doing your best to enhance your starting lineup. Don't focus on bench depth. As the season moves on, you need to enhance your starting lineup. That's almost always the case, but when you're set, that's definitely the case. This has questions from at Fantasy, but how does the possibility of Antonio Brown going to the Seahawks affect both Lockett and DK Metcalf's rest of season value? So, for the record, I've picked up Antonio Brown in leagues because you never know. The last time we saw him, he had just changed teams, played one game for that new team, and in that game he had four catches for fifty six yards in the touchdown and that was on eight targets. We're talking about one of the best wide receivers. Ever, it's not like AB got away from the game after playing like garbage. He was still playing like a very good wide receiver. Now do I think the probability of him hitting this year is substantially high? Of course not. But it's the right upside player to add at the end of your bench. And yes, I'd be concerned with other pass catchers no matter where he signs. I sent a tweet the other day saying that I just hope that Ab doesn't ruin Metcalf and Lockett because I've got a lot of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett and Redraft this year. And some people laughed at that notion. But by ruin I don't mean make irrelevant. I mean DK Metcalf could go from being one of the best wide receivers in fantasy football to one who isn't seeing as much volume because when you add a player into the mix, target shares get shuffled around, even if the offense is more efficient. I don't want DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett to lose volume. And like I said, we're talking about Antonio Brown. We're not talking about des Bryant here. Even if probability tells us that Brown likely won't be his old self, we know what's possible, So I think there should be at least some concern, even if it's not a huge concern, but some concern with the pass catchers on whatever team Antonio Brown signs with. So basically I would not dismiss this. This says questions from at Jesse Watson what to do with the Patriots Damian Harris and Edelman drop for bye week villains? I mean, I think that I'd basically consider those guys that it depends up on your waiver wire, though every waiver every league is different, but players like Harris and Edelman in most leagues, to me, at least they are by week villains and they've had their bye, So it's just entirely dependent on what's out there and who you're replacing them with. This best question from at kJ Underscore Analytics. In your fifteen Transactions episode, you said that you could be the guy for us to say drop that guy. Can you please tell me to drop t Y Hilton? I would probably put Hilton in the same Marvin Jones bucket. Yes, the difference that we've seen a big target share game from t Y Hilton. But if you need to drop Hilton, there's at least reason backing that move. This best question says, Josh Allen is averaging half as many Fantasy points in the last two weeks than he did the first four. What's different and where does he end scoring wise by the end of the year, as in, do I need a second quarterback to rotate with him on tough matchups. So over the first four weeks of the season, Josh Allen had three rushing touchdowns. In the game where he didn't score a rushing touchdown, he had four hundred and seventeen passing yards and four touchdowns against a beatable Miami defense. Over his last two he's faced Tennessee in Kansas City. I'd say he hasn't looked as good, but not having that extra six points on the ground, that's the difference between being a mid range QB one to given week versus the mid range QB two. But here's the other thing that's changed, and this is probably more important, deep ball passing. Across weeks one through four, he completed nineteen of twenty three passes that traveled fifteen or more air yards for five hundred and forty seven yards and three touchdowns. So that's twenty three point eight yards per attempt on those throws and he was completing eighty three percent of them. Over the last two games, he's completed three of twelve deep ball passes for fifty seven yards in a touchdown. That's less than five yards per attempt. Going from almost twenty four yards per attempt on deep balls to five, that's going to change your fantasy output. Those numbers are likely somewhere in the middle. That's where they should be. That's where they should land moving forward. He was never going to maintain his deep ball completion rate and the numbers that he had to start the year. But this is not just regression. This has been an over correction over the last couple of weeks. And I'm sure John Brown and his health has something to do with this, but not all of it. Some of its matchups, some of its variants. Maybe it has to do with the weather. There are a lot of factors to something like this. I would still be viewing Allan as a plug and play quarterback right now, though I don't think that you need to go out and get a second quarterback to play by matchup. You might have to later in the season because there are some tough matchups, but because even with some crappy outings for Alan, he's still giving you a pretty damn good baseline. This last questions from at Chris is me, how can you generally tell when selling high is a good idea versus a mistake? What factors can be used to infer if things have actually changed for a player versus if this is an anomaly. This question is also about Brandon Cook's lol. So the first thing to remember is that you never know of what you're doing is a mistake or not. You guys know that I'm wrong with my advice all the time. That's gonna happen in fantasy football. But if you're selling high, something that I would consider are the same types of things that I talk about on the fifteen Transaction Show. Each week, ask yourself if the production is coming with or without strong peripheral numbers. Even when Brandon Cooks wasn't producing, he was still running a lot of routes. His target share was generally fine. I talked about that on one of the ten Trends episodes, and then you have to read the market. I try to do my best to sort of do this job with fifteen transactions, but sometimes you just can't sell high, especially when players come out of nowhere and don't really have a strong track record, like James Robinson. Selling Robinson after like week two didn't make a ton of sense, not just because his usage was awesome, but because the majority of people did not believe. They didn't believe in James Robinson and they probably still don't. Whereas I kept talking about Mike Evans as a cell because his production seemed way too good based on some of those secondary numbers, and because it's Mike Evans, we know he's good, we know there's a name behind it. So it's a combination of a lot of things. You can obviously also watch the guy play and see if you think that he's lost a step. I'm just answering this from the number side. This ass question says, for those that spent a ton of free agent budget on Madison, do we have buyer's remorse and cut bait or is he a luxury hold? With Cook's injury appearing to not be as serious, We've got to stop making sweeping judgments off of one game. Was Madison good against Atlanta? No, of course not. Should we conclude that he'll never be worthwhile if Dalvin Cook misses more time. No, I don't think that's logical either. It does serve as a good reminder though, that, for whatever reason, we view high end handcuffs as these like flawless running backs that when they step in for an injured starter, they're just automatic going to perform and see a similar workload as that starter. That sometimes does happen. Mike Davis is a great example of that, but it's not typically the case. I've done studies showing that it's not typically the case. That doesn't mean that you drop them. Don't get me wrong. Madison is still an RB two if Cook goes down potentially in RB one. I just mean that we have a little bit too much confidence in backup running backs. Remember, they're backups for a reason. Talent gets fed the rock, and if they're not as talented, they won't see as many opportunities. This best questions from at Saint Stephen twenty. Is it time to move on from Matthew Stafford? Great matchup this week again, but didn't get it done last week In a similar spot, so I wouldn't necessarily call this weekend's game against Atlanta a similar spot. Atlanta has been the best matchup in the entire NFL in terms of adjusted fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks. Jacksonville's thirteenth and Stephen, I'm not calling you out specifically here because this is a super super common thing for fantasy managers to do. But don't get too caught up in a single game stat line. There's a lot of variants in a single game. If you use Matthew Stafford, last week, you had good process. The Lions ended up scoring four offensive touchdowns. It just so happens at number one. The Jags couldn't generate any offense themselves, but number two, three of their four touchdowns were rushing scores. Most of the time, you're not going to see that type of ratio. That's why the average pass to rush touchdown ratio across the league is almost two, meaning we'd expect a team to throw two passing touchdowns for every one rushing touchdown. So there was just some bad luck for Stafford. Some of those rushing scores could have easily been passing ones, and if that happened, we wouldn't have called Stafford's outing on Sunday a bad one. It would have been fine. That's just how it goes sometimes. This next one says you use data on neutral game script pass to rush ratios often. Is this data equally robust for all teams or do we need to put this in context of how often a team is in this neutral scenario. For example, the Jets are almost always playing from behind, so there are very few data points in neutral game scripts. Yeah, we've got to give any data some context. But for the record, every team, aside from the Jets, they've run well over one hundred plays and neutral game scripts, so the Jets are sort of an exception. This asks questions from at Stuck Underscore in Underscore CLT when does Juju make it into the fifteen transactions column? Well, first off, I talked about Juju earlier this season as a CELL candidate, but I wanted to use this question on today's show to let you guys know that I try to build off of the transactions each week so that I'm not super repetitive. Sometimes I will repeat transactions when they need to be repeated, like when a player still has a low percent rostered number when it should be higher, or when I say to buy or sell a player and that player does the opposite of what the transaction said, so I want to re emphasize it. Like Mike Evans, Aside from those instances, I tend to not repeat transactions. My stance may slightly change, and you're more than welcome to ask where I stand on a player, but I do try to build off the transactions each and every week. The last question this week says, what's your suggestion on how to get into the fantasy football industry as a writer and or stats person. I feel like I'm way too involved and passionate for this not to be a career choice for me. Lol. Thanks. So I don't always answer these types of questions on this show. Kind of makes me feel uncomfortable, but I do get them quite a bit, so I figured i'd at least answer this one. Maybe it'll help someone, maybe it won't. I'll keep it brief, but I think the best advice that I can give is pretty basic. Create good content. That's the general idea. But when you dig into that and ask what's good content, I think it's content that's differentiated while still serving a purpose. You can differentiate what you do in a lot of different ways. Me saying that this is a numbers driven podcast, that's not enough. There's a lot of those out there saying that this is a bite sized, numbers driven podcast about fantasy football that you can listen to quickly while getting all the fantasy football information that you need. That's a little bit more compelling. This podcast, for example, was differentiated by keeping it shorter. The fantasy football landscape has a bunch of good hour long podcasts. I wanted this one to be quick and to the point. But look across the industry at some of the things that people have done that have really allowed them to stand out. Matt Harmon with Reception Perception, rich reebar in his Worksheets, Graham Barfield with Yards created the fantasy footballers and their ability to create the best sounding and well produced podcast in the industry. That was definitely a way that they differentiated. Because they had that background, they were able to Matthew Berry in his personable writing, Evan Silva's Matchups column. Even when I started, I wrote the Late Round Quarterback ebook before ebooks and digital guides were really popular in the fantasy football space. But more Importantly, I wrote it when everyone was drafting quarterbacks early. So differentiate, but do it all with a purpose. Each of those examples has meaning behind them. If you just keep doing the same thing that everyone's doing, your stuff will not stand out. I can guarantee you that. We know it's a fairly saturated space. But if your content's good and it stands out, people will recognize it, I promise you. But that's going to do it for today's show. 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 everyone, I appreciate you listening. Enjoy your weekend. I will talk to you next week.