389: Low-Key Regression Candidates

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and eighty nine of the Late Round podcast with many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. It's another regression week. Last week we looked at teams who might be in store for some regression this year, and today I'm gonna look at things on the player level, but not just any and all players. We know guys like Aaron Jones and AJ Brown are bound to regress in some way this year. Rather than bringing up those types of names, I thought it might be more helpful to give you guys some lower key players who might regress, some players who might not be thinking about when talking twenty nineteen to twenty twenty regression. Before getting to those players, I wanted to send another reminder about Fandals two hundred thousand dollars Saturday, UFC Super Octagon for just eight dollars and eighty eight cents Enter Fandels two hundred thousand dollars Saturday, UFC Super Octagon and compete for your share of the two hundred thousand dollars prize pool, including a fifty thousand dollars first place prize. For more details, visit FanDuel dot com or download the FanDuel app. Today, eligibility restrictions apply. To kick things off today, I want to talk about Jared Goff. I mentioned GoF on a mailbag episode over the last month and how regression is in his favor entering the year, but I wanted to dig in a little bit more on GoF. So, first off, the Rams did score touchdowns last year in a way that didn't exactly favor GoF. They had a one point one zero pass to rush touchdown ratio, which was the second lowest in the league, and it's a number that's far below not just last year's average, but the average that we've seen over the last decade across the league. Generally speaking, we see teams with that low of a ratio bounce back the following year. And considering mcveigh's Rams have had a ratio well above that mark during his two other seasons as head coach, it's not hard to see why natural regression at that level is going to help Jared Goff, but you can look at Goff's numbers too. Yards to touchdowns isn't the best way to judge touchdown regression necessarily, but it can't help. It can help us wrap our heads around regression. Last year, Goff threw a touchdown for every two hundred and eleven passing yards. The league average was a touchdown pass for every one hundred and sixty two yards, and Goff during his two other seasons with McVeigh had thrown a touchdown on every one hundred and thirty six yards and one hundred and forty seven yards. So yeah, maybe some regression was heading Goff's way in the other direction entering last year, but regression doesn't mean an over correction. He still was throwing touchdowns at a way different rate last year. That shows up in touchdown rate too. If you want a super easy way to spot touchdown regression at quarterback, just look at touchdown rate, which is just touchdowns divided by attempts. Goff's touchdown rate was at three and a half percent last year. That's a well below average number, and it's a number that was more than two percent points lower than his previous two seasons. This natural uptick in passing touchdowns from Jared Goff is gonna help everyone in that passing offense, especially Robert Woods, who was only able to find the end zone twice through the air last year. Now, sticking with the Rams, I wanted to make note of the low target share that the entire running back group saw last season. Despite running backs being more and more involved in passing attacks through the years, RAMS running backs ended up with a ten point one percent target share last season. That was by far the lowest mark in the league, and actually it was the seventh lowest mark that we've seen since twenty eleven. If you look at the bottom twenty teams within running back target share over this time so since twenty eleven, and if you look at the teams with next season DATUS that removes last season's Rams, all but three of those teams saw an increase in running back target share the following season, with there being an average increase of about five percent. I wouldn't expect the Rams to throw to their running backs at the same rate this year that they did last year, and that should make you feel a little bit better about Cam Makers and Darryl Henderson, especially if you were looking at projections that are largely based off of twenty nineteen without any regression baked in. Devin Singletary is in such a weird spot this year. I've mentioned this on the show in the past that I sort of went from Devin Singletary is an overrated prospect to man, Devin Singletary was great last year, and I was wrong about him as a player, And now I'm sort of at okay. His ADP doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I've been all over the place. He'll need to be used more at the goal line this year if he pays off, in my opinion, but I'm not sure that happens because Zach Moss is coming into town. But the reason I'm bringing Singletary up on today's show is because he was really, really efficient last year, and we shouldn't just expect that efficiency to continue into twenty twenty. Last season, Singletary had seven twenty plus yard runs. Only seven running backs had more. When you give that some context, you can see regression is likely to hit because he ran for twenty or more yards on four point sixty four percent of his carries, which among one hundred plus attempt rushers. That was the highest rate in the league. Now, to be fair, we've seen numbers that high in the past. We've had twenty nine running back seasons with a twenty plus yard run rate as high as singletaryes last year while the running back had a minimum of one hundred carries. The problem is, among those running backs, we only have two duplicate names, meaning this isn't some easy rate to hit year over year for running back. And you can see this play out in a simple statistic like yards per carry too. Singletary because of his big runs, he also had a high yards per carry rate, or at least that was part of the reason. Now get this, forty nine running backs have had one hundred and more carries and a yards per carry rate above five in a single season since twenty eleven, So forty nine running back seasons. That means we get about five or six of them per season, and last year we happened to get eight of them. So good job twenty nineteen running backs. But of those forty nine seasons, we have forty one with next season data, and of those forty one, only three running backs were able to increase their yards per carry year over year. One was CJ. Spiller from twenty eleven to twenty twelve, one was Jamal Charles, and one was actually Gus Edwards from twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen. And then of those forty one, only five of them were able to maintain a yard's per carry rate at or above five. So, to put this all another way, guys, it's really really hard to maintain super high efficiency a running back. If something goes your way one year, it's not likely to be as clean and nice the next year. So with Singletary's long runs, they're gonna be tough to maintain. Has yards per carry rate tough to maintain. It's a big reason we should be buying into volume over efficiency. If you think Singletary walks into more volume this year than last year, then sure, a snag him. But if you're like me and you're afraid of Zach Moss playing that Frank Gore role and stealing goal line looks from Singletary, this is just another reason to avoid Singletary this year because of his lack of sealing. Now, Devin Singletary has a new teammate this year in Stefan Diggs, and he's been a little bit polarizing in the fantasy community during the month of June over on bestballtens dot com. Diggs has a wide receiver twenty six price tag. Some see that is way too cheap given the talent that Digs brings onto the football field, but others see that is too costly considering he's changing teams. There's a good amount of competition in the Bills offense, and the Bills are likely to be a run heavy team. Now that's exactly where I have Digs in my projections. He's wide receiver twenty six in my projections, So I don't have a strong take in either direction. What I do know is that for people using last year's numbers to justify Digs this year, you're probably doing it wrong. Diggs had an outlier season in twenty nineteen, and I don't think a lot of people realize it. We all talk about AJ Brown's crazy yards per target rate, especially as a rookie, but Diggs had a yards per target rate that was second highest among receivers with fifty or more targets last year. It was twelve point one four. That's only the seventh time since twenty eleven that we've seen a wide receiver with a yards per target rate north of twelve while seeing at least fifty targets. That alone tells you that Diggs is likely not going to repeat that performance. But then on top of all that, you can just look at diggs career itself to see why he's probably not going to match that number. He's now played five years in the league. Let me read you his yards per target rates during his first four years eight point five, seven, eight point zero, six, eight point nine to four in a not so nice six point nine zero, and then last year happened where that number jumped to twelve point one four. What's wild is that Diggs had fifty five fewer targets last year compared to twenty eighteen, but he ended up with one hundred and nine more yards. That's how bonkers his efficiency was. He's not doing that again this year. You should bet on that. And if that's the reason that you move off of him in fantasy drafts, that's fine. It's baked into my projections and he still comes out as a wide receiver three. But I wouldn't be drafting him in the top twenty this year at the position, even though He's a really, really good wide receiver. There's reason to be worried about Nick Chubb this year, and it has to do with Kareem Hunt. When Kareem Hunt came back and he was inserted in the Browns lineup last year, we saw Chubb's target share per game average go from eleven point eight percent to six point eight percent. We saw his PPR points per game average go from almost nineteen to thirteen. Kareem Hunt matters to Nick Chubb's upside. What goes a little unnoticed with Nick Chubb, though, is that things should have been better for him last year statistically. First off, according to ESPN Mike Clay's opportunity adjusted Fantasy Points metric, Chubb should have had nine more points last year than he actually had. All the while, when looking at where Chubb was receiving carries, how many yards he had, and how many touchdowns he actually scored, he should have also scored more touchdowns. I've got a weighted metric that looks at how many touchdowns a player should have scored versus how many of the actually did score. Based on it, Chubb should have had two and a half more touchdowns last year, only four running backs fared worse. I don't want this to be taken as me telling you to draft Nick Chubb. I think his price is where it should be. But it's also important to not just say Kareem Hunt is there and everything is really really bad, because there's at least something positive about Chubb's profile as we enter the twenty twenty season. Drew Brees was better than you probably realized last year. I mean maybe not maybe you realized that he was good, but he was really freaking good. He came back from his injury in Week eight. From Week eight through Week sixteen, so relevant fantasy football weeks, Drew Brees was the QB three in fantasy football, and he was only scoring like point three fewer points per game than Ryan Tannehill, who was the QB two. So we were basically looking at Lamar Jackson a huge gap and then Drew Brees, but he was doing some unsustainable things. Brees finished with a touchdown rate of seven point one percent last year. Not only is that well above average compared to the rest of the league, but it was the highest touchdown rate of Drew Brees's career. He threw a touchdown for every one hundred and ten passing yards. That was also the best rate of his career, and it was way better than his average, which was a touchdown for every one hundred and forty two passing yard. Basically, expect a slight shift in how the Saints score touchdowns. They were fourth highest and passed to rush touchdown ratio last year, and given all of these numbers about Drew Brees, that makes total sense. What it means for fantasy purpose is that some may be overrating this passing attack while underrating the rushing attack or underrating Alvin Kamara. Now to this point, and the last guy that I'm going to talk about today, Jared Cook, is a very volatile selection this year. I had the mailbag question last week about Jared Cook, and I promised that I would talk about him on today's show, and here we are. I think a lot of people probably see where he finished last year and where he's being drafted this year, and they say, man, Jared Cook is a huge value. He finishes the tight end eight last season and now he's being drafted as the tight end eleven. But I think an argument could be made that he's still a little bit overvalued, especially if you're planning on taking someone like Mikeasicki or Hayden Hurst over him. Now, I just mentioned how Drew Brees overperformed the touchdown column life year, and that helped Jared Cook a lot. He scored nine times when his yardage total. If you look at the yards to touchdown conversion at tight end since twenty eleven, he should have had more than three fewer touchdowns last year. Meanwhile, no players scored more fantasy points than they should have at the tight end position last year than Jared Cook. According to Mike Clay's Opportunity adjusted Fantasy points metric, Cook outperformed or overperformed by thirty nine points. And Cook had a really high yards per target rate too. He's the only fifty plus target tight end last year to finish with the yards per target rate above ten, and his twenty nineteen season is just one of six tight end seasons where that threshold was hit. So there are reasons to be down on Cook strictly from a regression standpoint. But then on top of that, you've got a more competitive tight end landscape, and the Saints went out and they added Emmanuel Sanders this offseason. That's why I don't think he's severely undervalued. I think there are plenty of reasons to believe that Jared Cook is more of a tight end two than a tight end one. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've guys subscribed 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, I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailback episode.