858: Analyzing 2023's Biggest Misses

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Lab podcast with your host JJ Zacherthis j Jake Zacherfons.

00:00:11
Speaker 2: What's up everyone.

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight and fifty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in. Did you miss me?

00:00:23
Speaker 1: I had a little time to recharge to get my data in order for the off season, and I'm very excited that it's the off season. Not because I disliked the weekly grind of the regular season. Obviously that's the most important part of the fantasy football calendar. But during the winner in the spring months, I'm able to do deep dives. I'm able to study topics that I just can't get to during the regular season, and I'm able to do a little bit of reflecting. I say it all the time, but during the fantasy season, I don't do a whole lot of analysis on why I was right or wrong about a certain preseason take or even an end season take. I just don't really see the need to do that while the season's still going. My goal is to give you advice to keep your fantasy teams winning. Going through w's and l's doesn't achieve that goal. Instead, I just wait until the season's over. That way, I can thoughtfully look back at some of my preseason takes or even my d season takes, and I can evaluate them. And I want to evaluate my approach to things because I want to be better. It's really that simple.

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Speaker 2: So with that in.

00:01:27
Speaker 1: Mind, today's episode it's the one where I make fun of myself. I walk through some of my worst takes from the season. But I'm not just stopping at hey, look at me, I'm a moron. I want to know how big of a moron I actually was. Did I get a little unlucky or was the wrong stance on a player or situation completely avoidable? And if it was avoidable, how can I and you make sure the mistake doesn't happen again next week? Then I'll do the opposite and go through some of my biggest hits. That's always an easier show to do because I'm only human. I want to be right, but being wrong is okay. It's not a bad thing to be wrong. We're not gonna get everything right in fantasy football, being wrong can be good. It's the best way to learn and to grow, and I've definitely done a lot of that through the years because of this episode. Okay, I'll stop rambling, but before I get into things that didn't go my way in twenty twenty three, I wanted to let you know that the Late Round Prospect Guy the twenty twenty four version. It's officially available for pre order. This year's guide. It's gonna be different. Not only are the prospect models improved with some new approaches, but you'll get tight end scores this year as well. Yes, the tight End Model is being published. You can check it all out by heading to Lateround dot com. Now, let's take a look at the dumb things that I did in twenty twenty three. I think my biggest miss of the season was with Mike Evans. If you look back at last year's Late Round Draft Guide, you'll notice that Evans wasn't written up as a player to avoid. It was Chris Godwin instead, and that was because Godwin had the higher eighty versus Mike Evans. Godwin also had never really been an alpha receiver in the NFL when it came to target share. I was worried about him on that front. That actually ended up being an okay enough call. Godwin played slightly below average draft position expectation, and for the record, I'll be referencing that throughout today's show. So let me explain what I mean when I say ADP expectation. Every player in a fantasy draft has some sort of ADP, right, Using historical numbers, we can figure out the number of points per game that we'd.

00:03:32
Speaker 2: Expect a player to score at that ADP.

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Speaker 1: So Godwin in twenty twenty three he had an ADP of about fifty four according to my Fantasy League's redraft data. At that ADP, he'd be expected to score twelve point six PPR points per game.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: That's based on history.

00:03:48
Speaker 1: But he scored twelve point three points per game, so he was below expectation, albeit slightly. Mike Evans definitely was not. Evans played four point six PPR points per game above ADP expectation. That was his best season versus expectation since his rookie year. He was a top eight value a wide receiver this year according to my numbers. So yeah, I'm an idiot for not being higher on him. I was about six spots lower and wide receiver rank with Mike Evans versus consensus. Now, a few things went wrong here, and they're definitely things that can fix in the future. Number One, I did what I tell people not to do, and that's draft off of consensus assumptions. The general assumption with this Tampa Bay offense was that the passing attack would take a serious step back, And to be fair, there were reasons to believe that they were gonna throw the ball less and also run for more touchdowns this year than they did in twenty twenty two. I wrote about that in the team regression section of the Draft guide. And guess what those two things happened. Year over year Tampa Bay's passing volume. Their pass attempts dropped by almost two hundred, the team's receiving yards fell by over seven hundred.

00:04:58
Speaker 2: Their percentage of.

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Speaker 1: Touchdowns that can aim through the air and twenty twenty two was eighty four percent. In twenty twenty three, that number was seventy eight percent. The flaw in my analysis was that I looked too much at volume and not enough at what was going on with Tampa Bay at and even higher level last season in twenty twenty two, that is, and that's despite doing projections. I just didn't focus on it. For whatever reason. Yes, they were losing Tom Brady, but Tampa Bay only scored thirty one offensive touchdowns in twenty twenty two. Since twenty eleven, NFL teams have been averaging about two point four touchdowns per game offensively. In twenty twenty two, Tampa Bay was at one point eight. Only four teams were worse. So yes, the volume wasn't the same for this Bucks passing attack, but the Bucks offense realistically was projected to be better offensively from a scoring perspective. Now, the other piece of this is that I didn't put enough stock into the potential for Mike Evans to see a higher target share in twenty twenty three versus twenty twenty two. In twenty twenty two, is target share game was actually under twenty percent. So realistically, he could have combated this lower passing volume in the Bucks offense by seeing a higher target share, and that's exactly what happened. His target share rose by almost five percentage points. And then obviously there's the touchdowns. He did outperform in the touchdown colin this year by a couple of scores, but he was used in a way where his expected total was still very, very high. And it's Mike Evans why wouldn't that be the case, So my read on the Tampa Bay offense being more run heavy spot on that happened. The problem is that I made the amateur mistake of just following along with consensus and thinking that Baker Mayfield would be an obvious downgrade, even though Tom Brady wasn't very good in twenty twenty two for this Bucks offense, and for the record, that's why I don't see this as a similar situation as what we saw in twenty twenty two with the Seattle Seahawks. Gino Smith in twenty twenty two was better than Baker Mayfield in twenty twenty three. Let's get that out of the way. When people made that comparison this past offseason and they compared Evans and Godwin to Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, I wasn't gonna project Baker Mayfield to have the best adjusted completion percentage in football. But when Gino took over that team, he was taking over a team that was actually quite good in touchdowns per game the year prior. They saw a decrease in touchdowns per game that year. That wasn't the case for the Bucks. The Bucks starting point was much lower, if that makes sense. And look, Evans himself played way better than I expected to. There's no doubt. His yards per route run was significantly higher than what he'd been seeing with Tom Brady. And obviously his touchdown production was there too, which is crazy for a thirty year old wideout. But he's a Hall of Famer and he showed us why in twenty twenty three. Next time I'm looking at a situation like this, I need to stress every part of the offense year over year, and not just the volume side now. To be honest, Mike Evans wasn't a player that people would troll me for. Drake London. On the other hand, that story is a little different. I think people came at me for my Drake London takes more than any other player this year. And look those trolls, those people who want to get under my skin, they were right.

00:08:14
Speaker 2: I was wrong.

00:08:15
Speaker 1: Drake London was not very good this year in fantasy football. I thought London was a good pick this year for a few reasons. Number one, he's good at the game. His year two model score was very very strong, and players in his tier usually work out well. Not only that, but historical average draft position data. It suggested that a player like London would outperform ADP players with his background, his rookie season, peripherals, his draft slot, good results usually happened. Basically, I drafted Drake London because I thought he was a very good wide receiver, and I also played into the thing that I just talked about with Mike Evans. London was being pushed down in ADP.

00:08:54
Speaker 2: Because of his situation.

00:08:55
Speaker 1: We all know that the Falcons were coming off a season where they were one of the most run heavy teams in modern NFL history and they had no answer at quarterback. If you rewind the tape, you'd hear me recognize all of that. Of course, there was risk with Drake London. There was Desmond Ritter, there was Arthur Smith. It had a shot to go south. My point in drafting London, I'm gonna lump Christian Watson in here as well, but my point with him was that you should feel free to take shots on potentially very talented players and that range of your draft. They went in round four and into round five in a lot of leagues this past year. If you were loading up on wide receivers early, then it didn't kill your team. If those guys busted, there were a lot of seemingly good wide out selections immediately after those guys too, that you could get in the later rounds. So the Drake London thing, the Christian Watson thing, yeah, give me the l.

00:09:50
Speaker 2: On the result.

00:09:52
Speaker 1: But the way I approached those players, and I talked about it on the show, the way I approached it was that they were guys that you could make up for if they didn't live up to their potential. With Drake London, I just thought he was a stud player. I still think he's a very very good wide receiver. With Christian Watson, he just had crazy, crazy upside, and I'm more than willing to invest in that kind of upside and redraft. But I'll save some of the Watson talk for a mailbag episode. Where I do think I was right with London was with Atlanta's team philosophy. The consensus assumption was that Atlanta was going to be this ultra run heavy team once again, and while I did see them being as a run heavy team this year, they were bound to regress there and they did. They actually threw the ball one hundred and fifteen more times year over year, they were still a run heavy team, Don't get me wrong, they just weren't historically run heavy like they weren't twenty twenty two.

00:10:42
Speaker 2: Now on the volume.

00:10:43
Speaker 1: Front, where I was wrong with London was making the assumption that he could maintain a twenty eight percent target share year over year. He did that as a rookie, which played into why he was such an attractive year two option, But his target share in twenty twenty three was twenty three percent per game. That led to fewer overall targets per game despite the Falcons being more pass heavy. If I'm being honest, though, you guys, I don't think I necessarily change my approach here. I think, versus consensus, i'd be higher on a player like London in his profile, and I think with that process, I'd win more often than not. Where I think my process will change is just how aggressively I go after a profile like this where the team situation could very clearly go south. Some may disagree, but I'm still a believer that London's a good football player. Since we're talking about the Falcons, let's just shift our focus to b Jon Robinson. I was okay with drafting him in round one this year, and he underperformed on a points per game basis by about three PPR points. He averaged fourteen and a half PPR points per game, and that includes the ridiculousness of that sickness game. But he didn't live up to expectation. I think people are going to go back and look at this season and say that it was insane that a rookie running back who'd never done anything in the NFL was getting drafted that early in redraft. But I think that's a pretty simplistic way of looking at this. There's a lot more to it, And honestly, we've had four rookie running backs with first round eightyp since twenty eleven. Two of those four ended up exceeding expectation by a huge number. Those two were Saquon Barkley and Ezekiel Elliott. The two who didn't. One was Clyde Edwards, a layer he underperformed expectation by about four points per game, and then Bjeon Robinson by about three points per game. As I said all offseason, Bjon Robinson was much closer to a Saquon Barkley or an Ezekiel Elliott type prospect than a Clyde Edwards a layer one. I mean, you can extend this rookie running back analysis into round two. Also, in round two, you add Nase Harris to the mix. When he was a rookie, he outperformed expectation by two point six PPR points per game. He was great. Okay, Let's look at round three of a twelve team league. Now you've added Jamiir Gibbs, Josh Jacobs, Leonard Fourie, Trent Richardson, and Dalvin Cook when they were first year players.

00:13:03
Speaker 2: Guess what, Every single.

00:13:05
Speaker 1: One of those players exceeded expectation on a points per game basis. Dalvin Cook only played four games, though, because he was hurt. I just want to throw that out there. But guys, the Bjon Robinson stuff has nothing to do with the fact that he was a rookie.

00:13:19
Speaker 2: If anything, rookies.

00:13:20
Speaker 1: Are amazing as early round picks. It had to do with usage. We've seen seventeen running backs get drafted in round one since twenty eleven while playing ten or more games as rookies. So Travis Etn for example, not part of this subset. Of those seventeen, Robinson's running back rush are per game as a rookie ranked thirteenth. Now, the four running backs who were ranked behind him in running back rush are per game they were mostly pass catching backs. They didn't profile to be the same kind of player that Bijon Robinson profiled to be in the NFL. Those guys were Jamiir Gibbs, Christian McCaffrey, Rashad Penny, and David Wilson, and Wilson and Penny didn't have the same type of draft capital that Robinson had. I looked back at my projections from before the season started, and I had Robinson at a sixty three percent running back rush are per game rate.

00:14:13
Speaker 2: He finished the season with a forty seven and a half percent one.

00:14:17
Speaker 1: And then, on top of that crappy ground game usage, Robinson wasn't used to the team's primary goal line back until halfway through the season. That turning point is when we saw his points per game rise by four points. The second half of the season was more of what I expected from Bjon Robinson, and he would have outperformed ADP expectation had he maintained that second half pace throughout the year. So I was definitely wrong in the results front with Bjon Robinson, but I'm not mad at this process at all. Arthur Smith was more unpredictable than I thought that he'd be. This wasn't a rookie running back thing. If you hear someone say that they're wrong objectively, it was a misuse of resources thing. And that's why Arthur Smith doesn't have a job with the Falcons anymore. I wasn't out here saying that you have to draft Patrick Mahomes this year. I did think in smaller leagues getting an elite quarterback made sense.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: That being Mahomes Allen and Jalen hurts. But Mahomes didn't work out.

00:15:21
Speaker 1: The reason I'm bringing up Mahomes on today's show is because early in the season, you might remember this, I did call him a bye candidate, and that was largely based on two things. Number one being upcoming schedule and number two, he's Patrick Mahomes, and that was clearly wrong. I went back and read the blurb that I wrote about Mahomes when I called him a bye candidate after week four, just to remember the logic behind it. And look, I'll be honest, this is not easy to do on a podcast that's gonna be listened to by a lot of people. But I'm gonna read part of that blurb because it highlights why it was wrong. It says, through four weeks, Patrick Mahomes, the Patrick Mahomes is the QB eight in points per game. He's averaging fewer than twenty standard Fantasy points per contest, when he's been above that mark during every year as starter. That alone tells you that this probably won't keep up, that he's likely going to be better.

00:16:14
Speaker 2: Now.

00:16:14
Speaker 1: After I wrote that, I got into the chief schedule and how it was pretty easy moving forward. All of that was true, and I do think that history can teach us a lot about the future. But the problem here is that I wasn't looking enough into what Mahomes had done thus far through the first four weeks of the season, even if I wanted to use the strength of schedule argument, I was failing to recognize what he had faced up until that point in time. And I just for that kind of thing when I'm doing my analysis, I just saw it as a pretty easy transaction. Mahomes, as we know, didn't get better, and that was an end season missed by me. I like Tony Pollard this year, and according to ADP expectation, he underperformed by a little over two PPR points per game.

00:17:00
Speaker 2: Not great.

00:17:01
Speaker 1: I don't really regret my process on Pollard, though. To be honest, Pollard played a little over his head in twenty twenty two, There's no doubt, but he had been an efficient runner throughout his entire career. In fact, and this is something I wrote about in the draft guide. Pollard entering the season had seen runs of ten plus yards on at least thirteen percent of his rushes, and three of four NFL seasons, we just don't see that type of efficiency.

00:17:25
Speaker 2: Now.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: Was that dude to having fresh legs and never carrying some massive workload. I mean, maybe there's something there, But when Ezekiel Elliott had missed time, Pollard was not just an RB one in fantasy. He wasn't just like a top twelve back. He was the RB one in fantasy. When you look at his production in that small sample without Zeke Tony, Pollard was the RB one. I'm talking Christian McCaffrey like numbers. Unfortunately, Pollard just wasn't as good this year period. He saw his rate of gaining ten plus yards cut in half. More importantly, and this is what absolutely destroyed his fantasy value. He scored three goal line touchdowns three. According to Pro Football Focuses Expected Touchdowns model, Pollard underperformed the touchdown column this year by nearly eight touchdowns. Let's just do some quick math. Eight touchdowns equates to forty eight fantasy points. That's over two point eight fantasy points per game, Meaning, had he hit expectation in the touchdown column, Pollard would have actually outperformed expectation in twenty twenty three.

00:18:27
Speaker 2: And I get it. He didn't get there. That's why this is an l That's why I was wrong. But if you were to.

00:18:33
Speaker 1: Tell me that Tony Pollard, a player who was unbelievably efficient and strong as a runner across his first four years in the league, if you would have told me at the beginning of the season that he'd see over two hundred and fifty rush attempts and have seventeen goal line rushes and not exceed expectation, I would have been surprised. Guys, Tony Pollard became just the second running back since twenty eleven to have more than fifteen goal line rushes and score three or fewer touchdowns on them. The only other player was oddly Nick Chubb in twenty nineteen. At the end of the day, I'm trying to project volume first and foremost, and Pollard got that in a really good offense. He took a step back as a player, for sure, and maybe that was due to him finally being a consistent bell cow back. Maybe he couldn't handle that. Maybe it was him coming off an injury. Maybe, And I think this has something to do with it. It was how Dallas used him, but that was just part of the story. And even bigger part was just him playing historically bad when it mattered most for fantasy managers, and that's admittedly not something that I'm going to ever project. I'm not going to project someone to score three goal line touchdowns on fifteen plus goal line rushes, so taking a step back, I think this is a case where I might be slightly more hesitant when a player is stepping into a bigger role. I think that's a big learning for me, for sure, But I don't want to overstate that because it doesn't always work out this way. Look at Austin Eckler when he got more work. I think pross wise, I'd probably make the choice to draft a player like Tony Pollard once again. That's just me being honest about the evaluation, and I play fantasy football a little bit more aggressively than others, but I do think that i'd make that choice once again.

00:20:16
Speaker 2: Now, I've got one more thing for you.

00:20:18
Speaker 1: I could go on and on about the things that I missed this year, because there are tons of examples. I'm just trying to get the bigger stuff here and the most intriguing stuff for all of us.

00:20:27
Speaker 2: To learn something.

00:20:28
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've talked about on the show through the years is how rookie wide receivers tend to be undervalued in redraft. The hit rates for middle round rookie wide receivers in particular, they're really strong and at the very least, especially with late round ones, you get great production from them during the second half of the season versus the first, which makes sense because they have to get acclimated to the game.

00:20:49
Speaker 2: Now.

00:20:49
Speaker 1: This season, I called out all four rookie wideouts as targets who are being drafted in those middle to later rounds, Jackson Smith and Jigba Jordan Addison, Zay Flowers, and Quentin Johnston. The first rounders in the real NFL draft last year, and the reason I want to talk about this in particular is because it's been something that multiple readers and listeners have come.

00:21:07
Speaker 2: To me about.

00:21:09
Speaker 1: They saw this as bad advice and look in some In total, the four of those players were bad picks. That's largely because Quinton Johnston is not nearly as good as his draft slot indicated, and Jackson Smith and Jigba didn't have a big role in Seattle's offense. QJ underperformed his draft slot by four point five PPR points per game. JSN was about two points per game under expectation. But two of those four players did outperform expectation. Addison was one point nine points above expectation, Zey Flowers two point one. But this is the show about the misses, so let's focus on those ls. Let's focus on JSN and Quinton Johnston. I thought that JSN was the best wide receiver prospect in the twenty twenty three class, and generally speaking, I'm gonna target talent in fantasy football, both in dynasty and redraft. On top of that, Trends told us that when a team has three pass catchers being drafted as early as Seattle's pass catchers were that's a sign that the offense is going to perform well in that season. I laid all of an information out on the podcast and in the draft guide, and while Seattle's offense it took a step back in twenty twenty three. They scored two touchdowns per game versus two point five the year prior. They averaged fewer yards per play, they ran fewer plays overall too. That had some effect on Jackson Smith and Jigbo, but so to the fact that part of the upside with Jasn was that he not only had one injury related path to upside, but he had two. If one of dk Metcalf or Tyler Lockett got hurt, then Jaysen would have seen a big boost in production. Some may say that it's silly to embed that into analysis to determine if a pick is good or not. I totally disagree. It's part of the game. You're not drafting solely because of that. You're not drafting Jaysn or you didn't past season solely because he had injury upside, But you are drafting knowing that there's a higher chance than an injury can help a player like JSN versus another wide receiver George Pickens gets a boost if Deontay Johnson goes down. But there's only one wide receiver in that Pittsburgh offense who could really boost up George Pickens' numbers with an injury.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: With JSN, there's two of them.

00:23:24
Speaker 1: It just so happened that those two guys missed a combined one game in twenty twenty three, and guess what. In that game, JSN had a season high sixteen point three pepirow points scored and he had a twenty nine percent target hare. So not only could JSN just be good, but there was that injury upside, and I do think there were platforms out there where JSN ended up getting juiced up a little bit too much. And maybe I factored in that injury upside thing a little bit too much too. But at the same time, as a middle round pick, I'm shooting for upside, and I do think that upside was present with JSN.

00:24:01
Speaker 2: Like think of it this way.

00:24:03
Speaker 1: On the season, JSN played about two points below expectation on a points per game basis.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: That was with arguably the worst.

00:24:10
Speaker 1: Fantasy circumstances that he could have walked into, because again Tyler Lockin and DK Metcalf. They stayed relatively healthy all year. There weren't injuries. Now, he wasn't usable in most ten or twelve team leagues, but he still got by in deeper formats despite those injuries, not even hitting now. I think this goes back to some of the other things that I talked about on today's show. In the future, if a wide receiver, even a rookie wide receiver, has two pretty legit options alongside him, I'm probably not gonna be as aggressive moving forward. But if his ADP falls to a reasonable spot, and if I believe in the talent similar to JSN this year on some platforms, I'll feel fine taking him Now. Quentin Johnson was in l as well on the result side of things, and unlike Jackson Smith and Jigba, Johnson had all the opportunity in the world and he just fell flat on his face. I had talked a lot about Johnston being a volatile prospect during draft season last year, like during prospect season, and he's looking like he's gonna hit the lower end of his range of outcomes. But I've said this before. When we're talking about the ninth the tenth round for a wide receiver in redraft, that's not really that big of an investment. It'd be different if I was screaming for you to buy QJ in dynasty. That's a legit investment. You're not losing your fantasy league if you miss your ninth round selection. You'd ideally want him to hit, of course, but I think Johnston, despite the result, was actually still a reasonable redraft selection, like from a process standpoint, and that's coming from someone who questioned him as a prospect and wrote about that. At the end of the day, we were talking about a first round wide receiver who was attached to Justin Herbert and an offense with aged wideouts. It's hard to see that today, knowing that he's likely gonna bust. I understand that I'm just trying to be objective with this process and how things ended up. I do think that it was rational to take that shot in some leagues. Now, a lot of people are gonna look back at this season and think that rookies aren't reasonable selections in redraft. And yeah, there was some volatility with this rookie group this year. Players like Tank Dell, Pukinakua, Jayden Reid, they emerged guys like Jasn and Quinton Johnston. They didn't come through despite having better draft capital. But I think it's very, very easy in a case like this to take a singular data point Quentin Johnston, for instance, and make sweeping statements about a class of players. At the end of the day, we have loads of data pointing to younger players being great season long picks. I'm not going to change my opinion because a volatile first round wide receiver didn't come through, or because a talented first round wide receiver was buried on his depth chart, So be prepared for me to still tout rookie wide receivers. This season didn't change that at all. Now, like I said, there are plenty of things that didn't cover on this show that I could have. I had Deebo Samuel as a cell at the complete wrong time. I was cool with buying into Pittsburgh's passing attack this year. Trust me, guys, I know there's more that I got wrong. I just wanted to focus on some things that seemed to really capture the twenty twenty three season for me that gave us a wide range of examples. I hope the exercise helped you as much as it helped me. Next week we'll do the opposite. We'll look at the things that went right and talk through whether those things were actually predictable or if I just got lucky. But for now, that's it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't fit to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. This Friday, I'll have a mailbag episode for you, so stay tuned for that. I'll talk to you then