358: Mailbag 3/20/20

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Speaker 1: This is the Label podcast with your host JJ Zacher, Resa Jay Jake Zacher Reason. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at FANDL and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and fifty eight of the Late Round podcast many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Free Agency is in full swing. I'll be getting some of my free Agency takes out to the world on a show early next week. Don't you worry. A chunk of today's Mailbag episode covers some of the moves, but I'll get into more detail next week when things finally settle down, I promise. Before getting into the mailbag questions of this week, I want to let you guys know that with most of the sports world on hold, horse racing is still live. FANDEL is doing its part to continue to bring sports fans excitement by offering users a chance to bet on horse racing. Use your existing fandl DFS login credentials to gain access to twos to learn more about the sport, including understanding how the odds work, the various types of bets, and most importantly, how you can win your bets, watch all of the races live across over three hundred tracks, and fill the void left in your sports fandom today. For more details, visit Racing dot Fandel dot com or download the FanDuel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. The first question this week is from at FF Aggregator got to talk about Brady and what it does for Godwin, Evans and Howard. What are Brady's tendencies? Will he favor Howard Moore focus on the short game with Godwin. I feel like I know, but don't have numbers to back anything up. This is probably the one free agency move that I have to talk about on today's show. But again, I'm going to talk about this early next week, so I'm going to reiterate some of these points on next week's show as well. But it's such a big signing that it's important to fire off some takes. I think we're seeing a lot of misinformation out there with Brady and what he's capable of doing, and we're seeing misinformation with his tight end utilization. Let's start with the first one. The Bruce arians offense is one that pushes the ball down the field. We see a lot of fifteen plus yard attempt throws. In this offense, Tampa Bay was first in the NFL last year in the rate in which they threw the ball fifteen or more yards down the field. In twenty eighteen, they were third. If you look at what Bruce Arians did in Arizona, which was at times with bad quarterback play, his team's never finished a season ranked outside the top ten in deep ball rate. Meanwhile, over the last five years, New England's ranked twenty sixth, seventeenth, eighth, sixteenth, and twenty second in deep ball rate. So Tom Brady wasn't pushing the ball down the field like Bruce arians offenses have. I think that's been taken as Tom Brady is a dink and dunk quarterback who can't throw the ball down the field. But the lack of deep attempts doesn't mean he's incapable of throwing the ball deep. And throwing the ball deep well. Among quarterbacks with two hundred and more attempts per season over the last five seasons, here's where Brady's ranked in completion percentage on those fifteen plus ariyard throws fifteenth out of thirty three, thirteenth out of thirty three seventh out of thirty five, second out of thirty three, and tenth out of thirty six. He's been above average and deep ball completion percentage in every season over the last five years, and his average percentile is the seventy second percentile. Basically, get this narrative out of your mind that Tom Brady can't throw the ball deep and he's been doing this with some really bad pass catching personnel. Now he has Chris Godwin and Mike Evans, and with this whole Oj Howard thing, I've got a feeling, and this is clearly subjective, but I have a feeling that people are going to overstate what this means for Oj Howard. He really didn't have a huge receiving role in that Arian system. And while Brady's utilized tight ends in the past, he also utilized arguably the greatest tight end of all time with no tight end personnel. Last year. Do you know where the Patriots ranked and tight end target share dead last? If Brady loves of tight ends, the Patriots wouldn't have been dead last and tight end target share last year. I'm not saying Oj Howard is toast. If he has a late round ADP, he'll be a fine dart throw because he's good. I'm just noting to not ignore personnel with this type of analysis. And then regarding Evans and Godwin, both are going to be fine. Like I just said, Brady's arm hasn't fallen off. He can still be accurate down the field. I think it inherently helps a guy like Godwin a little bit more than Evans, but both are going to be fine. Both are still very high in my initial projections. And as for Brady, my numbers have him at four four hundred and seventy seven yards, almost thirty touchdowns, and a little over ten picks. He's still a lower end QB one given the competition at the position, but he's in a great spot to be relevant. This next question is from at I Chris Lawson. Hey, JJ, not sure if you've covered the topic of vacated targets yet, and I know it's way too early to ask this, but I'm going to ask it anyways. How do you expect the target Ditri to play out in Houston with Hopkins leaving one hundred and fifty targets behind? Is it Randall Cobb season? Lol? Thanks? Okay, so I don't want to dig too deep into that situation because I'll leave that analysis for next week's show. But I do want to touch on the idea of vacated targets. Here's what we know about a wide receiver target. It's earned. DeAndre Hopkins sees a lot of targets in his offense because he's good, he can create separation, and his quarterback trust him to make plays. Whereas a running back just needs to be on the field to see a rushing attempt, a wide receiver needs to generally get open to see a target consistently. So if we know a target is earned, then we can't just assume a wide receiver just steps into another wide receiver's role and sees the same amount of volume. No one is going to fill the void of DeAndre Hopkins. But on top of that, good players leaving teams means that those teams become less efficient. When a team is less efficient, they score fewer points, and when a team scores fewer points, they don't score as many fantasy points. That's true from a general volume perspective too. If a team is less efficient, we shouldn't assume that that team is going to maintain the number of offensive plays that they'd otherwise have because it becomes more difficult to sustain drives. Now, I'm not saying DeAndre Hopkins being out of Houston means that the Texans offense is gonna suck, but it did take a hit. So we can't just assume that they're going to have as much volume, that they'll even be as pass heavy as they've been, or that one person is going to benefit most from DeAndre hopkins departure. I'll give more of a breakdown on the Texans next week, but I want to at least get that out there as sort of a setup, because it's important to remember that player talent matters. I'm not saying that this is your real conclusion here, but because DeAndre Hopkins is gone doesn't mean that Will Fuller is going to see one hundred and seventy targets next year. It doesn't mean that Randall Cobb is going to get one hundred and fifty. They're often slight bumps, but it can come at the expense of both individual efficiency and overall offensive efficiency. This next question is loosely related to that, and it's from at at that hat. Maybe it's early to be doing this, but you see enough targets to go around in Cleveland with the addition of Austin Hooper without eating into any of the pass catcher's twenty nineteen numbers. So when we have a baseline, which in this case is Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry's twenty nineteen season, it's a lot easier to answer these types of questions because we have sort of an expectation. When you add a player to the mix, let alone a good one who's likely to demand looks to go his way, it's going to impact the rest of the team in some way. You just have to hope that it doesn't lower a player's volume totals so much while it doesn't increase their efficiency. It's all about volume and efficiency, both at the team and the individual level. After doing my initial projections, I'm not super worried about Landry and obj Perse if we're comparing them to twenty nineteen. At least, I think it's a downgrade for Hooper though, because we could see a much less friendly passing attack in Cleveland than what we saw in Atlanta. The biggest loser is David and Joku. The Vikings used their two tight ends sets a lot last year with Kevin Stefanski, but the Titans were also more effective in fantasy football when Adam Thielen was sidelined. Kyle Rudolph had four top six performances last year. Three of those came when Adam Thielen wasn't playing. I'm more bullish on OBJ than Jarvis Landry, though given perception, it's easier to see a bounce back from OBJ than Jarvis Landry maintaining his work, but both players still will have a significant target share and be relevant in that Brown's offense. The biggest hit here came to David and Joku. This has questions from at FF life thoughts on DJ Moore and Miles Sanders at this point in free agency. Yeah, I mean, I think both are pretty strong winners so far, or at least they've remained neutral. Sanders has a big opportunity to see a lot of work in that backfield without a whole lot else there at the moment, and DJ Moore is seeing a quarterback upgrade over last year no matter what. What's wild about Dj Moore is that he put up almost twelve hundred yards in fifteen games last year with really bad quarterback play. Now you get a quarterback who's been a little bit more cautious than aggressive with his throwing. He's historically had a lower average depth of target, and that can help Djmore because DJ Moore is really good after the catch. I think Curtis Samuel is still fine, but I'm still very bullish on Djmore as a player. But if you look at that same statistic that I was talking about earlier, the rate in which a quarterback threw at fifteen or more air yards, Bridgewater threw it deep at the lowest rate in the league last year, at least among quarterbacks with one hundred and fifty or more attempts. That's thirty eight quarterbacks, and he ranked thirty eighth. Now, Drew Brees was pretty low too, so it could have been system and personnel related to a degree, but Bridgewater hasn't been an aggressive thrower in the NFL. But with all this in mind, don't forget that everything's changed in Carolina. There's a completely new coaching staff, and I think that we have reason to trust that coaching staff to put their good players in places to succeed. This next one is an email which you can email me questions at jjat number fire dot com and it says, if the Bears get an upgrade at quarterback, could Anthony Miller be this year's Chris Godwin or at least Chris Godwin light I see some similarities. Both had good but not great production their first two years, but both had stretches of real relevance. Both would be considered the second guy in an offense. They have similar size, speed numbers in draft capital. Both would have a major change around them, in this case hypothetically a quarterback, and I'm not saying he has top five wide receiver potential, but mid to high wide receiver two and becomes a dependable weekly starter. What are your thoughts, Steven? So this was sent to me before the Nick Foles signing, just to give everyone some context. But we can still talk about the process a little bit. I do get the similarities here, and I like Anthony Miller the player a lot. He's had some unfortunate injuries to start his career. It's just really hard for me to not make the connection of what those two teams look like and who's playing quarterback and what they want to do. Godwin was in a perfect situation last year. It was a down the field offense. That also ended up seeing a lot of volume, and there was so little competition for targets overall. I know that I just talked about how good players will see volume, but please don't take that in the extreme direction. Is me saying filling a team with good players doesn't matter for target share? It does. If the Buccaneers add someone like Antonio Brown, of course it's going to change target share projections. Of course it's going to hurt Mike Evans and Chris Godwin in terms of fantasy performance. And when you have a good player with very little going on around them, like we saw with Michael Thomas last year, you have unicorn seasons. My point in the vacated targets thing is not to say that competition is irrelevant. I just want to be clear there. But everything lined up for Chris Godwin last year. Anthony Miller doesn't have the same type of quarterback. He's not gonna have a Jamis Winston Degafft type quarterback unless they go and sign him. And the offense really isn't the same either. So basically what I'm saying here is even if the target share projection would be similar between Anthony Miller and Chris Godwin. It's hard to see that same type of sea feeling for Miller as we saw with Godwin. His realistic ceiling is probably more of a lower end wide receiver two, which I guess isn't that far off from what you're saying. But I'm just trying not to make such a tight connection with Miller in a breakout that just doesn't happen all the time. I like the thought here, though, and I don't mind Anthony Miller as someone to acquire in general, but I don't know if high end wide receiver two numbers would be possible without an Alan Robinson injury or without something drastically changing for Chicago. This last question is from at dz M. Does the Arizona trade increase Kyler's fantasy value? And just how hyped should I get? So when all the craziness went down with Houston and Arizona this past week, I had people in my mentions talking about Kyler Murray as a late round quarterback candidate or as the late round quarterback value. And Guys, I hate to be the one to break this news to you, but Kyler Murray was never going to be a late round quarterback option this year. I mean even last year he finishes the QB eight as a rookie, there's no chance he was going to be a viable later round option. I can tell you that you should be hype about him, though. My current projections basically have him as the QB three behind Lamar Jackson and Patrick Mahomes. I think there's a case to be made for Russell Wilson or even Dak Prescott there. But Murray's upside is crazy, so be excited. But if you generally draft quarterbacks late, don't expect to get Kyler Murray this year. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get to subscribe 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 everyone, enjoy your weekend.