888: Mailbag 6/14/24

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherthas JJ zacher reeson, what's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode eight hundred and eighty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in before getting the questions this week. This is another reminder to check out Underdog Fantasy. I've got a legit offer for you. As you know, the Late Round Draft Guide is currently available for pre order for nineteen ninety nine. It's the piece of content that I put the most time into each year by far. You can get that guide for absolutely free if you've never played an underdog. Here's how you do it. Head to Underdog Fantasy dot com and sign up. When you sign up, use promo code late Round, and then make a deposit on July first. When that guide launches, you'll get an email with a link to download the guide. You'll also be getting a deposit offer when you make that deposit, so there's really nothing to lose here, especially if you're planning on getting that draft guide anyway, so check it out Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the Underdog Gap. When you sign up, make a deposit and then use promo code late round and then get your best ball on Bestball drafts are a lot of fun. You've probably heard me talk about them on becoming a best ball bro. You can do it too Underdog Fantasy dot Com promo code lateround. The first question this week is from Patreons from Nico TV seventeen. It says, Hi, JJ love the show in your content.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: Thanks.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: In your episode eight hundred and eighty six, you talked about how RB ones hit at a very high rate compared to ADP expectation and versus later round running backs. I was wondering if this year it makes sense from your view to go running back running back in round one and round two in redraft, since the round two wide receivers are so uncertain and there's a lot of depth at wide receiver, and especially in a position in the draft around seven to nine where it's very possible to get Breis and Bijon in round one since everyone is going wide receiver at the top. Thanks, So I do want to be clear here at the top that round one running backs aren't necessarily better at exceeding ADP expectation because their expectation is much much higher, but Round one running backs are definitely better at giving you high end fantasy seasons. And my research has shown that if you have a high end RB one in fantasy football, it's arguably the biggest advantage that you can get.

00:02:34
Speaker 2: Now, can you go RBRB or should you go RBRB?

00:02:39
Speaker 1: I think one thing to remember is that our re draft leagues this year won't be going exactly how best.

00:02:45
Speaker 2: Ball drafts are going.

00:02:46
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, you might see Bijon Breis Hall go in that mid first round range.

00:02:51
Speaker 2: But the people who aren't sick for.

00:02:52
Speaker 1: This game and just draft in August every year, they love their running backs, players like Kyron Williams, Saquon Barkley, Jonathan Taylor, maybe even Derrick Henry. They're bound to go higher than they're currently going on underdog. So your opportunity cost equation is changing. Maybe instead of choosing between Saquon Barkley and Deebo Samuel, we're choosing between Saquon Barkley and Pukinakua or Garrett Wilson. And if that's the case, I'm gonna side with those wide receivers. And in most cases, I'm gonna still.

00:03:22
Speaker 2: Side with those wide receivers.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: Just because there's some ambiguity in round two this year doesn't mean there won't be hits from that area of the draft or from some of those higher end wide receiver twos. And let's be honest, there's a lot of ambiguity with the running backs. After Breeze Hall and Bijon Robinson fall off the board, Jamiir Gibs a safe bet for a floor, but as the ceiling as comfortable as we want it to be. With David Montgomery in that backfield, Kyron Williams had a bad prospect score.

00:03:49
Speaker 2: We know that's predictive. He also has Blake Korham to deal with.

00:03:52
Speaker 1: Would it Devon ah Chan splits that backfield more than we expect, and Saquon Barkley and Jonathan Taylor they're dealing with mobile coquarterback threats who number one may not dump it off as much and number two might steal some touchdowns. So you have the wide receivers in round two are definitely up in the air, but so are the running backs. That's why I don't think it's necessary to just zig when others zag. But at the end of the day, your league type, the structure, the scoring that should dictate a lot of this. Can you get away with a running back running back start this year? Sure it's not some wild idea. I get this question a lot and people are acting like it's some crazy notion to go RBRB. But is it the way that I'm going to be drafting most frequently? Almost definitely not This does questions from Matt m also on Patreon. It says, I have a general strategy question that I want to understand how you approach How often are you accounting for the math in terms of quarterback plus their weapons as it relates to rankings? Said another way, how much impact does a proven quarterback elevate your rankings and projections of their weapons even if those weapons are unproven such as Marvin Harrison Junior. The same question for a team's weapons. Take the vikings for example, in terms of elevating their unproven quarterback and JJ McCarthy, is it simply just a balanced thing or do you ever say, hey, the math here doesn't add up. How can Josh Allen be QB one and at the same time not a single wide receiver from Buffalo going in the top forty wide receivers and then adjust so I think what's being asked here is if we have wide receivers and pass catchers from a team going early and then the quarterback is going late, does that mean that we're wrong about that quarterback or maybe we're wrong about the pass catchers because the math just doesn't seem to add up. And the opposite is true too. You have Josh Allen as this early round pick, but a wide receivers aren't being drafted super early. I think the first thing to remember is that not all teams are alike and not all talent is alike. With Minnesota, for example, people are gonna be bullish on Justin Jefferson because he's freaking Justin Jefferson.

00:06:01
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, look at the team's weapons. Jordan Addison doesn't have that much competition. TJ.

00:06:07
Speaker 1: Hockinson is coming off an injury where he won't be healthy to start the year more than likely. What that means is that targets are being funneled to very specific players in that offense. Both Jefferson and Addison have a chance to capture large target shares, so they're gonna be drafted earlier. That doesn't mean the quarterback has to also be good, because in this specific case, Addison and Jefferson are winning through volume. I mean, Jefferson's gonna win regardless because he's a monster, but Addison in particular, he's gonna win through volume. It's really a volume and offensive environment play. It's less about the talent profile though he's a fine player. Just look at the Dolphins. They're always a great example with this. Miami has two top fifteen wide receivers and Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle. Why is in Tua being drafted as a top ten quarterback. Well, because their success doesn't necessarily mean that two is going to be a beast in fantasy football. It's just that the two wide receivers are bound to capture a massive target share in their offense, and they're incredibly efficient receivers. With Josh Allen number one, technically he does have an early round pass catcher getting picked in Dalton Kincaid. But number two, he's a mobile quarterback. We're drafting Josh Allen because of what he can bring to the table as a rusher. It's very possible that Allan is a good fantasy quarterback this year without having a super usable wide receiver. In fact, just look at what happened last year when Joe Brady took over as offensive coordinator. With Brady, Allan ended up scoring one and a half more points per game, but Bill's wide receivers saw their rate of giving fantasy managers a top twenty four performance get cut in half. During the first part of the season, they averaged one point four top twenty four performances per game. That was point seven with Joe Brady, and we saw that down the stretch when Stefan Diggs wasn't as valuable. What's more important with this stuff is sort of at the extremes when the market works together to give us some insight. What I mean by that is, if you have a quarterback getting drafted late and he doesn't have any pass catchers getting drafted early, and I talk about this in the draft guide for the record, but if he doesn't have a pass catcher with a high ADP, that's a problem because that's telling us that he likely doesn't have some stud player in that offense, and obviously stud players are going to help a quarterback. Those quarterbacks late end up performing a whole lot worse than the alternative. Every once in a while, you're gonna get a CJ. Stroud type year, But that's pretty uncommon, so I hope that answers your question. At the end of the day, you have to still focus on what the quarterback does well and why these players are being drafted where they are. How condensed things are from a target distribution standpoint, that matters a lot, as does quarterback rushing. This last question from twitters from at g Mark four to three to one to one. Could Malachi Corley function like a Randall Cobb esque Wooby for Aaron Rodgers? If so, wouldn't that make him a tremendous steal as late as he's going in drafts?

00:09:13
Speaker 2: Thanks?

00:09:15
Speaker 1: Well, Randall Cobb wasn't exactly Randall Cobb. In year one. He had thirty one targets and he scored once. Now, he competed with some really good players, But I think that's still important to note, partially because Corley himself is a pretty raw prospect.

00:09:29
Speaker 2: He didn't run a.

00:09:29
Speaker 1: Full route tree in college, and he did so against inferior competition. He's definitely got that dog in him. He's a great yards after the catch player. But if I'm trying to be rational, level headed, I think a lot of what we're going to see in year one is sort of manufactured stuff for Corley, at least during the front portion of the season. Not only that, but Randall Cobb was a pretty good prospect. He had a ZAP score of eighty one point seven. He was an early declare wide out. He showed off a lot of versatility at Kentucky, and he didn't go to a smaller program like Corley did. According to my prospect model, because of Corley's strength of competition, he technically.

00:10:09
Speaker 2: Never broke out. Cobbs' breakout score was about average.

00:10:13
Speaker 1: Now, I'm open to being wrong about Corley, and I'm not gonna fauld anyone for a later round pick, especially in a stack. But I think you could make ceiling arguments for a lot of rookie wideouts who are being drafted late, or just wide receivers in general. So I'll have some exposure to Korley this year in Best Ball because I do think spiked weeks could happen with this archtype. Like I said, he's a good YAK player. He should get some cheaper touches in that offense. But I don't think that we're looking at.

00:10:39
Speaker 2: A league winning type player.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: I don't think missing out on Corley this year is necessarily going to burn you. This last question is an email from Dan. It says, after listening to your running Back dead Zone episode, do you favorite Tajy Spears over Tony Pollard and Chase Brown over Zach Moss because they are second year backs that were drafted by their team as opposed to free agency signings. Since these backs will be selected in the dead zone, So remember the analysis I talked about on that show. Focus more heavily on RB twos and if focused heavily on cost itself. Overall, we generally want second year running backs after that RB one range. We want pass catchers too, and we want ambiguous backfields because in these ambiguous backfields, prices are falling for players because they're ambiguous. The market hates ambiguity. I still prefer a player like Moss straight up to Chase Brown, because I still look at these macro trends and then dive into the individual player and the individual circumstance itself. With that being said, I think the gap between Moss and Brown and the gap between Pollard and Spears, especially those gaps should be shrunk. In other words, at cost, I prefer Spears, and I probably prefer Brown. The Tennessee backfield in particular has been really interesting to me this offseason because everyone loved Tajy Spears before free agency he was a dynasty darling, and everyone hated Tony Pollard last year because he couldn't score touchdowns. Then all of a sudden, people are more into Pollard than Spears. When the Titans themselves have called those two running backs interchangeable, when Spears is the younger of the two, when Spears is coming off a rookie season with a really good target share and we want pass catching backs, especially in the middle rounds Now, I'm not saying it's obvious that one is better than the other, but I legitimately think that it's a coin flip between those two players. And notice that it doesn't have anything to do with the dead zone itself. Remember all of this is about probability. We don't need to fade every single dead zone running back. If you go back to the research that I was talking through, high end RB twos who aren't first or second year players, So guys in that RB thirteen to RB eighteen range, they get you sixteen or more peace er points per game at about a fifteen percent clip. The next group, the veteran low end RB twos, it's ten point five percent in the rate of getting to fourteen or more PPR points per game. For those low end RB twos, really not that much different than RB three's in high end RB fours.

00:13:16
Speaker 2: That's the macro trend.

00:13:19
Speaker 1: I know that I'm kind of going all over the place here, but I think this is really important because whatever you took away from that episode is the thing that I care about most. And if the takeaway was to prefer an RB three or an RB four straight up to an RB two, that's not what I'm trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that when you get into that mid range RB two area, even in the upper end of that area, if you can't get a young running back, you've generally been better off waiting a couple of rounds for a running back because the cost changes. The benefit does change, but not nearly as much as the cost. You're getting similar output for a cheaper cost, So instead of getting a running back there, you might want to go with a different position in order to extract value. This doesn't mean that you then prefer RB fours, you shouldn't prefer RB fours over RB twos in general, even if those RB twos are smack dab in the dead zone, and even when those RB fours check a lot of the market related boxes that we look for, you still need to dig into each individual situation. Now, generally speaking, I'll probably like younger running backs and ambiguous backfields more than the market will. So I do like Taj Spears more than the market, and Chase Brown is fine too, but my preference for them is not. While ignoring cost, cost is always part of the equation, because while the dead zone backs see a really big drop off in production versus the backs who get drafted right before them, there's still better bets in general than later round running backs RB twos. While they're not that great, they're still better than RB three's. It's just the cost involved in getting them isn't really worth it. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found it ho for to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening. Everyone, enjoy your weekend. Happy fathers did all the dads out there. I'll talk to you next week.