638: Mailbag 5/20/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha j J Zacher reson.

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Speaker 2: What's up everyone?

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Speaker 1: It's JJ zach er Eason and this is episode six hundred and thirty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for tuning in.

00:00:22
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Speaker 1: Your exclusive odds are automatically applied to the first horse that you pick to win on Friday or Saturday. Plus, with win Bet insurance, you can get up to five dollars back on all eligible races if your horse finishes second or third. Just download the fandel Racing App, create an account, and you're all set. Doesn't matter if you're new to horse racing or season pro. The FanDuel Racing App is perfect for everyone, so get in on the action this Friday and Saturday with two exclusive offers only on the FanDuel Racing App. Now, let's get to these mailbag questions. The first question is from Phil It's from Patreon. It says prefacing with volume is king and James Connor had a unique season last year. At what point does a player's role overrule the expectation of touchdown regression? Not all volume is created equal. Admittedly I did expect regression and tried to sell Connor for a while early in the season. But why expect regression when a player is locked in for multiple looks inside the five on a game by game basis? Is it viable to ignore potential regression for a boom bust player like twenty twenty one Connor, who can be an RB one on five touches. Okay, there's something big within this question, and I think is really really important to talk about. And now I'm gonna run through my typical golf analogy to help with my answer. Let's say you typically shoot a ninety one you golf. Sometimes you shoot an eighty eight, sometimes in ninety four, but you're in that ninety range. But when you play, you're playing on a variety of courses. Some are easier than others, and when they're easier, your expectation changes. Right, Like, let's pretend that you only play on a really easy course for an entire summer, that ninety score that you typically shoot, your expectation changes because it's an easier course. The expectation may shift to something like a score of eighty five instead. You mentioned in the question why expect regression when a player is locked in for multiple looks inside the five on a game by game basis, Well, that's the equivalent of playing on an easier golf course. Regression is short for regression to the mean. That mean or average is going to be different for every player based on how that player is used. Regression is not as simple as saying, this guy is seeing a ton of touchdowns and there's no way that he can keep scoring that many touchdowns. There's more to it than that. What kind of offense is he in? What role is he playing in that offense? Regression is going to be more relevant when you per proper context. But let me ask you this, what if on that golf course, you're shooting in eighty and not in eighty five, so your expectation shifted to that eighty five, but you're still exceeding expectation, you can then still regress. I have a formula that looks at where running backs touched the ball and it calculates how many touchdowns we'd expect that player to have across the season. So it's like Pro Football Focus have expected touchdown formulas as well. For James Connor, last year, my method had him at ten to eleven touchdowns, PFFS had him at eleven, and that's all on the rushing column. For the record, Connor ended up scoring fifteen touchdowns. Those eleven touchdowns are high for a mean. Jonathan Taylor was the only player with more expected touchdowns last year on the ground according to PFF My method had Joe Mixon and Damian Harris and Antonio Gibson pretty close. But the point is it's a high number. It's a high expectation, but he still exceeded that expectation. We should still expect some regression. The expectations should not be that James Connor scores fifteen more touchdowns in twenty twenty two. That's not reasonable. Now, don't confuse regression with how you should approach a player in your draft. Just because I'm saying James Connor is unlikely to score as many touchdowns this year doesn't mean that I'm fading James Connor because a lot of times fantasy managers exaggerate what that regression means. I have Connor pretty close to ADP, so I'm not really in or out right now, But I think that's another thing that people get confused by. Sometimes regression doesn't mean that you avoid a player. It just means the player is going to see some of his numbers move towards an average. That average can still be really valuable. But as the questions asking you should never ignore regression, what you should do instead is give statistics as much context as you can. This naxt question is also from Patreon, and it's from Nick. Can you talk through the process of ranking Wandel Robinson where you did with a higher z P Prospect score than guys he's behind. So I talked about this in Wandell's blurb in The Prospect Guy, which you can still purchase over on Late round dot com. By the way, but his size is not a size that we've seen success from in the NFL. Jamison Crowder is really the only example of a player being decent. At five foot eight, Tyreek Hill was technically that tall as pro Day, but he measured a lot taller in the NFL. We've seen that happen all the time. In fact, the Giants did that with Wandell Robinson. But sure throw Tyreek Hill in there too. We also know that Tyreek Hill is an outlier and Wandel Robinson is not exactly the.

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Speaker 2: Same type of player.

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Speaker 1: He doesn't have the same type of speed as Tyreek Hill does, and that's how Tyreek Hill wins. Now, I've heard plenty of pushback about this. You like Elijah Moore and he's only an inch taller. Does an inch really matter that much? I mean, yes and no. Elijah Moore is actually an interesting analytical comp for Robinson. In my model, Robinson's three comps were actually Elijah Moore, Marquis Brown, and two tou at Well. So it's a wide range about comes here. But let's compare Robinson to Elijah Moore. Let's dig into the logic here. I liked more a lot as a prospect. You guys know this compared to Robinson, he looked better in my model. That's number one. But if you recall, I definitely had some concerns about his ability to play on the outside in the NFL, and then as a rookie he basically played as a perimeter wide receiver and he thrived, so it naturally made me like Elijah Moore even more. Robinson is probably going to be a slot guy. We can profile him as more of a slock guy than how we profiled Elijah Moore, so that could limit his ceiling a bit. And for a smaller player who's so versatile, Robinson didn't test exceptionally well athletically, he was just fine. I don't care that much about athletics as immeasurables at wide receiver, but I do care a little bit more when we're looking at semi outliers or potential semi outliers, which wandel Robinson will have to be because he's five foot eight, let's just be honest. So because of these natural question marks, I bumped Robinson down a little bit subjectively. The thing is, though I've drafted Robinson in a ton of spots and rookie drafts, so I know that my rankings are higher on Robinson than what's out there, even though I bumped him down from what my model was saying. And that's what you really need at the end of the day. You just need to like a guy a little bit more than the rest of your league. And I will say this, I do have a lot more faith in a player like Robinson than two two at Well. Atwell actually didn't have a terrible production profile at all, but he was tiny. He had a sub twenty three BMI.

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Speaker 2: Wandell. Robinson's a little thick.

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Speaker 1: His BMI is over twenty seven, and I think Robinson's just a better prospect overall compared to Atwell. So even though Atwell is a comp I don't think that's the direction that we're gonna go with Wandel Robinson. But I do think there are some very obvious concerns. I'm hoping they don't matter to the point where he becomes irrelevant because today's NFL is more forgiving when it comes to these smaller wide receivers. But I do think it makes sense to bump Robinson down a tad as a result. Just don't mistake that with me, not him. I'm still very much on team Wandell. This last question is from Twitter's from at mozamec. Can you give us some flag plants that you've personally been coming out of the majority of your own rookie drafts With the two players I've drafted the most in rookie drafts this year are Khalil Shakir and Isaiah Pacheco.

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Speaker 2: If you take a look at.

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Speaker 1: Dynasty League football dot COM's rookie average draft position data, Shakir's got thirtieth overall ADP and Pachecko's at forty three, and that's in single quarterback leagues. I tend to diversify more at the top of drafts because there's a higher opportunity cost involved, but later in rookie drafts, I'll throw darts in a lot of directions, but I'm not nearly as afraid about being overweight on certain guys. With Shakir, my model had him with a draft capital delta of almost seven percent, which means he was underdrafted according to the model, and that's because he had a best season receptions per game rate of seven point four, a best season yards per team pass attempt rate of three point two, and a touchdown share a bestie touchdownchair fifty percent, all while breaking out before hitting twenty years old. Shakir has an opportunity to make some noise as a rookie too. The Bills have Jamison Crowder and Isaiah McKenzie who can play the slot, which is where Shakir profile is to play, but they're not established in that system. Crowder's also on a one year deal. McKenzie, Well, I do think that he's a really fun player. He hasn't exactly established himself as this huge slot threat. So Shakier not only could surprise us as soon as this year if he just wins that role, but he could just end up having that role in year two, and I think there's a chance of that happening given his profile, and then with Isaiah Pichecko. I mentioned this a bit on the show already, but I just think that it's the right kind of dart to throw. Clyde Edwards Zilaire has not been explosive in the NFL. He actually ranked as one of the best backs last year in percentage of kerries that went for positive yards, but he was dead last and twenty plus yard rate.

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Speaker 2: Because he just.

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Speaker 1: Lacks that explosion. That's why I think they went out and they got Ronald Jones. I've never been into Ronald Jones, but he at least isn't terrible on that. He's just a really bad pass catcher, which is why I never liked him.

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Speaker 2: In fantasy. But he is explosive.

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Speaker 1: That's what Ronald Jones can bring to the table. And what did the Chiefs get with Pachecko. They got a player who had the fastest weight adjusted forty time at running back in this draft class. He also had a really good draft capital delta in my model, which again shows whether or not the model thinks a player was over or underdrafted. Pachecko's top comp of my model was actually Damian Williams, a player who thrived in this Patrick Mahomes Andy Reid system. Let me be very clear here, though, I do think the likelihood that Pachecko works out is pretty low. There's a chance that he doesn't even make the team. But you're throwing darts at the end of your rookie drafts, I think there's plenty of reason to target him, which is why I've been doing just that. This question says, hi, JJ, how do you approach the running back position in a productive struggle style startup draft. I've never pursued that strategy until this year, but I found running back to be so overdrafted that I punted it completely through the single digit in favor of loading.

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Speaker 2: Up at quarterback and wide receiver.

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Speaker 1: That feels instinctively like a mistake, but perhaps given running back timelines, it makes sense it's not necessarily a mistake because running backs are going to give you production more quickly early in their career, meaning it's the one position in rookie drafts that you can get immediate production from when you're looking at non elite players. So if you build up elsewhere on your roster and you get good rookie picks, you could immediately turn those picks into usable running back assets to maximize your window to win. I've done this in drafts in the past successfully too, and while it feels very uncomfortable that first year, you can build your running back room pretty quickly. The last question this week is from at Shift Work Life. It says on the running back dead zone, rewind you said that the process is evergreen. Given that this was the most popular episode from the reigning Fantasy writer of the year, are you afraid that the draft strategy may soon change just like the mid round quarterback situation. Great work, keep it up. Thanks so, first off, I don't think the shift to more mid round quarterbacks in fantasy football is necessarily the result of a market dynamic the reason we're drafting them earlier. The reason I've been talking about the shift the last three years is because we've reached a point in fantasy football where there is an edge to be had at that position. Back in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, there was almost zero correlation between preseason average draft position and postseason result at quarterback.

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Speaker 2: That has changed.

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Speaker 1: Now We not only have a general idea of which quarterbacks are actually going to be good, but the ones who are good are actually giving you an edge because of their rushing ability and passing ability. So the idea of drafting quarterbacks a little bit earlier, which again I've talked about this the last few years, but this whole idea is not a market related thing. It's an actual performance thing. Meanwhile, the running back dead zone is more of a dynamic that we see within the market or within ADP and how managers behave, And to be honest, I'm not sure we're gonna see it drastic change for a few reasons. Number one, there are just so many people who play fantasy football. It's hard to get the running back dead zone message out to casual players. If you're listening to this show right now, in May. You're not a casual player. You have a fantasy football obsession. It's great, it's a great hobby, but let's be honest, you like fantasy football more than your league mates probably do. And that leads to number two. The people like me who are talking about the running back dead zone, we're really really into this stuff. It's not like mainstream sites like ESPN are talking about this concept over and over again. It's places like this podcast or Roadoviz or Establish the Run. Those sites are big within the fantasy space, but they're not mainstream and they don't influence the casual audience the same way they do the die hard one. And then number three, it's not an easy to grasp concept. Something like the late round quarterback strategy is pretty simple to get across. Even if you don't understand the details, Wait on your quarterback, get it later than you expect, be the last one to draft one.

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Speaker 2: You'll still be fine at the position. If you do that.

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Speaker 1: With the dead zone, the application is not as clear cut, and it can often shift based on the type of format that you're in. That's not the case with the late round quarterback strategy, at least not as much so. It's a more difficult theory and strategy to implement and to grasp. There's more of a fuel component to the running back dead zone. As you're drafting now, I often get questions that are like, if everyone does strategy X, if everyone drafts their quarterback late, should you still do it? Should you still implement that strategy? And some of the times, no, you shouldn't. But we rarely are in a position where that actually happens. It's all hypothetical. But yes, players become values at any point in the draft. But I would almost guarantee that the majority of your drafts, they loosely will follow ADP. And if that's the case, then the running back dead zone is going to exist. 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 Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and forgets follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. It was great to be back. Thanks for listening this week. Everyone really appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend and I'll be back in your ears next week.