771: Mailbag 6/9/23

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ Zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson what's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode seven and seventy one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Who's ready for season long fantasy football. If you're excited and you won an edge on the competition this year, make sure to check out the Late Round Draft Guide. I've been hard at work trying to get this thing ready for its launch on June thirtieth, and I think you're all gonna dig this year's version. In it, I talk about some of my philosophical views on fantasy football, dig into finding breakouts and busts, share my favorite targets and avoids this year, and then my top two hundred rankings are available at the end. Those rankings, along with the players, the target and avoid that's updated every single week from the time that the guide launches all the way through August, so you'll get an updated version of the guide to your inbox every single week. You could read more about it and pre order the guide right now over on lateround dot com. It's currently nineteen ninety nine. It's gonna bump up to twenty four ninety nine when things launch on June thirtieth. Let's get to these mailbag questions. The first question this week is an email, says HIJJ. One thing that seems to always qualify statements about Isaiah Pacheco a pa Checko chamber, if you will, is that he doesn't catch passes. As you like to say, this might signal something about coaches when to get the ball in his hands. But do you think it matters that when he started to take over the backfield last season and through the playoffs he had a broken hand and a torn labram in his shoulder, or do you think his college pass catching profile might mean that, even when healthy, he'll never really take on that pass catching role. This is a question about when to intervene with context instead of relying just on the year two model. Thanks again for all you do, best, Alden. First off, the whole notion of coaches getting the ball in the hands of good play, that's mostly a college thing. I mean, great running backs will be every down backs. Great running backs in the NFL, they're going to see the ball in the ground and through the air. But I say that about pass catching with college prospects, because in college, teams will give some players absurd workloads because they're only going to be playing college ball for a few years. Now, when it comes to Pacheco, I do think there are some pass catching concerns, at least from a ceiling perspective. Consider this. Since twenty eleven, we've seen sixty nine seasons where a running back played eight or more games and saw a target share per game rate of at least fifteen percent. Now, look, a fifteen percent target chair per game rate's really good for a running back. That's what I'm saying. I'm looking at ceiling here. Now. Not all of those sixty nine players were able to play eight or more games as rookies as first year players, and some of them were rookies far before twenty eleven, so I'm not looking into their data. But of the sixty nine who were rookies from twenty eleven onward and who played eight or more games as rookies, that leads us to forty two running backs. So forty two running backs who've had a fifteen percent target chair per game rate since twenty eleven and who were basically active as rookies now Isaiah Pacheco was active as a rookie, he was playing, his target share per game rate was two point four percent. That was partially because he didn't get a lot of playing time to start the year, but it was also because they didn't use him in that role. That number did get better in the playoffs, but it was still just about seven percent. That's nothing special, but for the regular season, two point four percent that was his target share per game. Now, the reason I'm looking at this is because eventually we would love for him to be this prolific pass catcher right one who would eventually get to like a fifteen percent target share. Well, of those players with a fifteen percent target chair during their rookie seasons, only theoretic Kenyan Drake, and Dion Lewis had a comparable target shair to Isaiah Pacheco. None of those players were like year in and year out reliable guys in fantasy football. Ramandre Stevenson's next on that list. He had a five point three percent target share as a rookie, and I think that's what you'd probably be crossing your fingers for with Pachecko. That he's looked at by Kansas City to be this bigger body pass catcher, but Stevenson had a better receiving profile in college. Pachecko's wasn't as bad as people probably think, but it definitely wasn't good. It was pretty average Stevenson. When he was active in college, he showed off his pass catching skills. My main point with all this rambling is that we're likely not going to see some crazy pass catching ceiling from Isaiah Pachecko. He was also by far the worst running back on that team last year in yards per route run, So I'm not sure we're ever gonna see him be like a top six or so running back in fantasy football without an outlier season in touchdowns, because how a running back does during his rookie season is predictive, and I'm not sure i'd really blame the injuries here either. We don't know the exact timeframe of how that all impacted him. And I say this of all the time, but oftentimes when we make excuses like that, we often overstate what that means for a player's fantasy output. Like you could do the exact same thing for Najie Harris this year. You look at his splits from last year and you say Oh, he was injured the first half of the season, and then he wasn't during the second half of the season. But a lot of things changed during the second half of the season. It's just really easy to overstate those kinds of things. We don't know the exact impact of an injury like that when it's not as obvious. Sometimes injuries are obvious, but this one not as obvious. I do think Pachecko's capable of being like a fringe double digit percentage target share guy. That's maybe like an eightieth percentile outcome for him, like a ten or eleven percent target share. I just wouldn't put a ton of weight into those injuries, and I would try to be realistic about the fact that Pachecko looks good. He looks like he might be able to be an RB two in fantasy football, but without the receiving the upside is capped the SA's questions from Twitter. It's from at keV says sixty. It says, I'm wondering how nil might affect your model regarding early declared as possibly staying in school longer. Have you given this much thought or does it need a year or two to play itself out. Yeah? I've given this a ton of thought, but it's one of those things where you once again can exaggerate what a change like that actually means. It's sort of like how people view PPR scoring versus half PPR scoring, Like if your league decides to go from half PPR to full PPR. I know that I'm coming off a podcast episode where I talked about that, so it is kind of relevant. They see that you're getting an extra half point per reception, and then they think to themselves, Wow, if this wide receiver catches eighty passes, that means he's gonna score forty more points with his scoring. That's significant, but it's not as significant as you think because everyone else is also scoring more points. It's all relative, and that's how you should think about this. You're not going from twenty early declare wide receivers in one draft class to zero in the next. You might be going from like sixteen or seventeen to a line even or twelve because we have seen fewer early declare wide receivers since the nil stuff started. Now, that could be variance because it's not a long timeframe, and like I said, it's not like we're not seeing early declare wideouts, but we are seeing fewer of them. The thing is, though I'm testing this stuff every single off season, I change my model up all the time with new information, whether it's the discovery of new metrics or if it's something like this where the older stuff I'm measuring doesn't seem to be worthwhile. So I'll be able to start picking up on this kind of thing in some kind of way as I do that testing. It's just that one or two seasons isn't going to dramatically change things. And keep in mind that early declared status is just one of many inputs. It's important to not just get fixated on that, like a player not being in early declare would all of a sudden be a bust. It matters, But I've been one of the numbers driven analysts who's spoken against letting early declare status override your opinion on players. I was far higher on Chris Alave last year because of that fact. So this is all TBD. We need more data to know the true impact, but it can't hurt to know that there are fewer early declares out there. The good news is that a player staying in college an extra year can still improve on his overall profile in my model. Hypothetically, you'd hope that he'd put together better numbers during that extra year, because he's got an extra year of experience, and if not, that could also be telling about the kind of player he is. The next question is from twitters from at tofer k forty four. Who is a rookie you are staying away from in rookie drafts and why? I think One guy I was a little bit lower on versus the market this year was Rashid Rice. I did get him in a rookie draft just to have some exposure, but he seemed to be a guy who was pushed up by landing spot because he went to Kansas City, which is understandable because of Patrick Mahomes, but it's not like we've seen wide receivers hit at a really high rate in that location in the past. Now, that last piece has nothing to do with why I was lower on Rice. My model wasn't a massive fan. He's one of those non early declared wide receivers. He didn't play it a big program, and even still, his age adjusted production was pretty ordinary. He fell below the eightieth percentile on the Prospect model as a result, which is not a good sign. And then all the while Matt Harmon of Reception Perception, he charted Rice and the results were not kind. This is from Harmon's write up on Rice. Quote. Rice's success rate versus man and zone coverage are among the lowest recorded for prospects in the Reception Perception database. So Matt's process doesn't look at Rice favorably. My process doesn't look at Rice favorably. Obviously, anything can happen because the prospecting world is very tough. But he wasn't as intriguing to me as some of the other wide receivers in that range. And by the way, make sure you check out Reception Perception because it's a great, great resource. This course is from Patreon. It's from Zach. It says, historically, in redraft, we want to be targeting ambiguous backfields where two running backs have similar average draft positions. What if instead there are three running backs who have similar ADPs. I think it's possible that the Dolphins and Bears backfields end up this way. So years ago I wrote and talked about ambiguous backfields and fantasy football and how you shouldn't avoid those types of backfields in your draft. You should target them because ambiguity drives down prices for these running backs, but sometimes backs from those backfields emerge and that gives you a great value. Now, ever since I did that, I've done more research on the topic a lot more, and one of the things that I found was that when a middle round running back has a teammate getting drafted in the running back dead zone, that's the real moneymaker. It's what got me on Tony Pollard last year. Those players hit at a very very good rate. But technically you could consider those backfields ambiguous as well. It's not like they're being drafted far apart from one another. The players you want to avoid are the ones who have higher end teammates. Or if you're faced with a middle round running back who's his team RB one, but his teammates get drafted late. I'd rather have a running back and an ambiguous backfield than that type of running back. So this whole thing has evolved a lot through the years, but because of what was introduced early on, some people don't realize that. I'm not saying that's you, Zachary. I'm just prefacing here now. According to my Fantasy League dot COM's average draft position data. We've only had one instance where three running backs were drafted the single digit rounds together of a twelve team league since twenty eleven. That was the twenty nineteen Eagles, and Miles Sanders ended up being a pretty good pick from that group. He outperformed ADP expectation by almost four PPR points per game, so a player did emerge. And when you extend that ADP parameter into the late rounds, the data doesn't suggest that you should necessarily avoid those backfields where you have three decent running backs. In fact, if all three of the backs are late round picks or double digit round picks, it suggests that it might be a backfield to target. Injuries are inevitable and a player in that backfield just might be good, So I wouldn't treat those backfields any different. Now. The last one this week is from my friend at Dino Game Theory. He says, which running backs are the traps in Fantasy football this year? Now? I love this question because I've been working on the running back session of the draft guides. This plays right into it, and I have sort of a controversial answer for this, and my stance is subject to change. But from a process standpoint, from everything that I've looked at and spotting breakouts and finding players who really outperform their average draft position, one player who does not fit that criteria at all this year is James Connor, which I know it's kind of shocking, right because if you look at projections, Connor comes out looking okay. If I compare projections to ADP Connor looks like a totally reasonable pick, potentially even of value. But there's correlation between running back success and overall offensive success. If you've got a top ten offense in touchdowns per game, that's really good for a running back. That's not super easy to project, but I think that we would all agree that Arizona has a very very low chance to be that kind of team this year. On top of that, James Connor's older. I usually split up my running back analysis by looking at the dead zone and then looking at middle rounds. Those are two separate buckets, but in both cases, older running backs don't perform as well. Connor wasn't in this draft range last year and the year before that, which was his first year in Arizona. He was a late middle round pick, but he was still in his fifth NFL season. The data shows that players don't exceed expectation very well when they're past their fifth NFL season. I mean, let's just call it what it is. James Connor is a volume play. He's a play on projected volume. The situation is not very good. He's now twenty eight years old. He just screams someone who's gonna be fine and maybe live up to expectation. But he doesn't look like someone who's gonna far exceed that expectation. And the way that I play fantasy football, the way that I teach the game, I want players who are gonna far exceed expectation. It would be really easy for me as an analyst to sit here right now and say, yeah, go ahead and draft James Connor, because chances are James Connor's not gonna ruin your fantasy team. But I'm not playing to get sixth place. I'm playing to get first. I want players who can far exceed their expectation. And the pushback for me saying all this about Connor, it's gonna be something like, well, who else is gonna touch the ball on that backfield? But guys, that's the exact same thing that we've said about so many running backs out of the running back dead zone and out of the middle rounds in the past, who else is gonna touch the ball? That's not enough. So I think from that perspective, James Connor's kind of a trap. He's someone who can merely match his expectation. I want players who can far exceed that expectation. I want league winners. That's 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 searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and know for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Now, one last thing before I go at Bretta on Twitter, let me know that Ted, who's a fan of this show, is getting married next month and his bachelor party is this weekend, So big shout out to Ted. Drink a nice cold, glutenless white cloth for me, but enjoy the party, be safe, and congrats on the marriage my friend. Thanks for listening. Everyone, enjoy your weekend and I will catch you next week.