375: Insights From Building Projections

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachersa Jay Jake zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachariesen, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and seventy five of the Late Round podcast on the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Hopefully you were able to tune into last week's show on building projections or Sharp Football Analysis dot COM's Richreebar and I talked through our projection building processes. It's a good foundation to what I'm going to talk about today, which are the insights I discovered when building projections for this season. I do this show soon after the draft each year, and I think it's a helpful one. It's honestly helpful for me even to just give an honest assessment of where things stand with my projections, but it's beneficial for you guys as well since it may uncover some interesting early values and fantasy football drafts. I remember the show being the foundation of why I was on Christian mccaffe free before he broke out, for example. So today the plan is to talk about ten things that caught my eye when I was building projections this year. Now, before getting into those ten topics, I've got to let you know about an offer from Fandel. With no real games to play daily fantasy on, Fandel is doing the next best thing simulating them. Each night, Fandel will offer a pool of players from a given night's scheduled NBA games. You'll be able to draft a full lineup using the standard roster limits and salary cap, just like you would for the normal NBA multi game format. Players will be randomly assigned stats from a game that they played during the season, and scores will be slowly revealed throughout the night. The contests are one hundred percent free, but winners will be awarded site credit and potentially other prizes each night. For more details, was a fandle dot com or download the fandle app Today. Eligibility restrictions apply. One thing that was pretty glaring when looking at the Atlanta Falcons was how much opportunity there is for the pass catchers in that offense. Atlanta threw the ball six hundred and eighty four times last year. That was the third highest mark that we've seen since twenty eleven. Now that's unlikely to be repeated. But keep in mind that it was Dirk Cutter's first year back as offensive coordinator for the Falcons, and back in twenty twelve through twenty fourteen. Back when he was the coordinator for the Falcons, they ranked seventh, first and third in overall pass to run ratio, and they were first, second and first in neutral script pass to run ratio. Then he goes to Tampa Bay and then he comes back to Atlanta in twenty nineteen, and in twenty nineteen, Atlanta was fourth in neutral script ratio and first in overall ratio. They're a team that you can confidently project is going to throw the ball a lot in twenty twenty. So if we know the passing volume is going to be there, who's going to benefit well. Their wide receiver depth chart is pretty shallow, as we all know. That means Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley should have no trouble paying off their draft day costs as long as they're healthy, especially Calvin Ridley who's looking very ready for a monster season. There are even secondary players on that team like Hayden Hurst, who I'm really intrigued by. Hurst hasn't really had the opportunity to be in an offense like this one as the top tight end pass catching option. But he has a decent chance to get to that one hundred target mark for this year. If he proves that he's talented enough, he'll be one of my favorite late round tight end options this season. Now, speaking of passing volume, there's a good chance that we see a lot of it from the Panthers in twenty twenty. There's a brand new system and a brand new quarterback in Carolina. What they want to do might not matter a whole lot because the defense is really really bad, and they're playing in a division with the Saints, the Bucks, and the Falcons, They're bound to be playing in some high scoring games. I have the Panthers projected for more than six hundred pass attempts this year as a result. What that means is that there's a legitimate opportunity for Christian McCaffrey, DJ Moore, Robbie Anderson, and Curtis Samuel to all meet expectation. All four of those guys have a chance to see one hundred plus targets. I think what's most likely is Moore, McCaffrey or Locks to get there. We know that if they're healthy, they're going to see one hundred targets, and Anderson and Samuel are in the high eighties or low nineties and targets from a projection standpoint, but when you've got a lot of targeted attempts, players need less of a target share to see volume. Robby Anderson and Curtis Samuel can see fifteen percent target shairs in this offense and still get to eighty five targets. There's also a chance that one of Robby Anderson and Curtis Samuel ends up flopping. That could allow the other one to thrive or someone like Ian Thomas to emerge. But the bottom line with this offense for twenty twenty is that I'm intrigued by it. I want pieces of this offense because volume is going to be on its side. I said this last year before he was injured, and he comes with a huge, huge injury risk. But I have to just say this on the show about what my projections are showing, and what my projections are showing is that aj Green can end up being a nice Fantasy football value. Now I think his ADP is very fair. You're weighing the risk with the reward and the risk is that the dude has played one full season out of his last four, and he's played just nine games since the end of the twenty seventeen season. He's also going to be thirty two years old once this season starts. But we're not talking about dynasty here. This is more redraft focused since we're looking at twenty twenty projections. The situation is interesting for aj Green. I do worry about Cincinnati's offensive line to go along with playing the Ravens and Steelers four times. I'm not denying that this could go south, but look at the upside from a projection standpoint. The last time we saw aj Green, he had a fourteen and a half percent target share despite playing just nine games. That's a pro rated target share of almost twenty six percent, which isn't that shocking because that twenty five percent number is generally the threshold for an elite wide receiver to hit, and he, at least at one point was an elite wide receiver. Cincinnati was Zach Taylor taking over last year. They were really pass heavy. Of course, that was game script driven, but when you look at just neutral gamescript situations or when games were within six points. The Bengals were the third most pass heavy team in football last year. They actually had a higher ratio in neutral game scripts than their overall ratio. That's not what you typically see from a team who's really bad. Maybe they play things more conservatively in twenty twenty with a rookie quarterback. That's certainly possible. But there's a path for aj Green to have a pretty good year. He's got to stay healthy and Joe Burrow's got to look good. But if the Bengals continue to run their offense in a similar fashion, Green has a lot more target upside than some may think. I'm not saying to rank him as a top fifteen wide receiver, but he has that potential if he looks fresh coming off this injury. I talked about Ryan Tannehill on my mailbag last week, and I wanted to bring him up today because my projections do like him. Just to reiterate some of the stuff that I said last week. Yes, regression is coming for the Titans offense. They were scoring touchdowns at two high of a rate last year when compared to the number of field goals that they were kicking on a per drive basis. With Tannehill under center. The Titans were second in the league and touchdowns per drive, behind only Baltimore, but they were dead last in field goals per drive because they were converting at an unsustainable rate. But keep in mind projections factor in regression. It's not like my projections have Ryan Tannehill with a seven point seven percent touchdown rate like he had last year. It's actually significantly lower than that. Even still, he came out as the QB ten in my projections when he's being drafted more as a mid range QB two. One fear I do have is that Tennessee doesn't have the greatest schedule to open up the season, so the passing attack may get off to an annoying start. But Tannehill from a season long perspective, is absolutely in play as a quarterback target, at least I think so I wouldn't mind pairing him with like Teddy Bridgewater and Joe Burrow as a trio in a superflex league while looking awesome at wide receiver and running back. And speaking of the Titans, I should probably mention AJ Brown here too. The chance that Aj Brown gives us another season with a twelve and a half yards per target rate is pretty slim. It's slim to none. Let's be honest. He's going to regress big time in the yards per target department, but my projections actually have him still as the wide receiver seventeen. That's exactly where he's being drafted. And I just wanted to bring this up because again, when you're looking at players to draft or when you're doing your rankings, you can't just assume regression means avoid. If a player is set to regress, that player isn't someone you should automatically avoid in fantasy football. Now. I don't know if I'll have a ton of aj Brown and redraft, but his ADP is not as egregious as some may think. Another example of how projections factor in regression is with the Jacksonville Jaguars. We know the story of last season, especially with Leonard Fournette. He scored just three touchdowns on the ground despite over eleven hundred and fifty yards rushing. His yards to touchdown conversion was nuts. He should have scored way more than he actually did, and even when you adjust for his goal line rushes and his rushes in the red zone, he should have had about four and a half more touchdowns than he did on the ground. And you can see this at the team level as well. Last year, Jacksonville threw twenty four touchdowns and they ran for just three of them. That's an eight point zero pass to rush touchdown ratio. Since twenty eleven, only one team has had a ratio that high, the twenty seventeen Seattle Seahawks. We've seen four times counting that Seahawks team with a ratio of seven or higher. The other three teams all came in twenty fifteen, and they were the Giants, Jags, and Chargers. Among those four teams the teams with a pass to rush touchdown ratio at or above seven. The Seahawks from twenty seven to twenty eighteen saw that ratio go from eight point five to two point three. From twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, the Giants went from seven point two, so they scored over seven times as many passing touchdowns as rushing touchdowns that year to four point three. The Chargers went from seven point five to three point three, and the Jags went from seven to three. You may say that this is just a small sample size, but the way teams score touchdowns generally regresses, so Jacksonville is likely to see a split in twenty twenty that favor rushing touchdowns more than it did in twenty nineteen. What this all means is that Fournette shoud hypothetically get a bump in rushing touchdowns while the passing attack might take a step back. If four net were to be guaranteed the volume that he got last year, he'd be an awesome, awesome fantasy selection. Maybe that happens, but there's plenty of doubt about his workload after the team tried to trade him away, and they may not force feed him as a pass catcher this year. That would hurt his upside. So I think he's kind of priced correctly right now. But a player like DJ Chark does scare me a bit. Expert rankings on Fantasy Pros has Chark at wide receiver twenty three, but my projections have met wide receiver twenty nine, and the main difference there is likely the change in how the Jags are going to score touchdowns this year compared to last year. I feel like I talked down about Zach Ertz all the time on this show, and I sort of keep getting owned because Ertz comes through with serviceable lines. He's been productive, and honestly, my stance on Artz is not that he's bad, and it's not that he shouldn't necessarily be ranked where he's ranked. It's just that I think that perception doesn't totally match reality with zach Ertz. When the Eagles were healthy last year, we saw zach Ertz's target share drop by about three percent. When Golden Tate joined the Eagles. A couple of years ago, when Tate played significant snaps, Ertz's target share was under twenty percent. It's just the Eagles keep getting hurt, so Ertz sees more volume naturally, and he's been someone who's really benefited from those volume spikes in fantasy football. And now that everyone is healthy to start the year, it's tough to look at Ertz's target potential in that offense the same way and by the same way. I really mean, it's very, very hard to project Ertz for one hundred and thirty five targets like you saw last year, let alone the one hundred and fifty six that he saw in twenty eighteen. Dallas Goddard's another year in al Shawan and d Jacks are there. They drafted, Jalen Reger, Miles Sanders is going to demand looks out of that backfield. It all adds up to Ertz being in the high teams or low twenties and projected target share, which then means that he could easily be under the one and twenty target mark this season. I actually have him projected for about one hundred and thirteen. He can still be projected as one of the better tight ends in fantasy football given that target total, but he'll likely be a little bit overdrafted as fantasy managers don't recognize how this target share has been impacted by competition in that offense. One of the things that rich Reebar talked about on last week's projection building show was how you can build floor and ceiling projections by manipulating rushing share and target shares for different players. And one of the players that he mentioned as an example was Clyde Edwards, a layer, and it was a really good example because in a projection, you're likely splitting up the Chiefs backfield between Cech and Damian Williams. But even when you do that, and I've got Cech with about a forty four percent rushing share, right now in a ten percent target chair. But when you do that to Cech, he still comes out as a fringe top twenty fantasy running back. I think you can easily argue that his floor is a high end RB three or a low end RB two, but his ceiling is at absolutely insane. If you were to give him the kind of workload that we saw Damian Williams get down the stretch last year, then Cech becomes an RB one easily. That's the impact the Chiefs offense can have on projections. The same really can be said for someone like me Cole Hardman. Even if Hardman sees a fifteen percent target share, which isn't an amazingly high number for a wide receiver, then we're looking at him reaching eighty targets. And if he's reaching eighty targets, he'll have a pretty easy time getting to the top forty at the wide receiver position. But again, like Cech, what happens if he's more involved than what we're projecting a lower volume player in the Chief's offense is usable, it's just how things work out when a team level projection is pretty bonkers, like the Chief's projection is. But then if a player in that offense then sees their workload increase, you start to see a path that player breaking out. I think Hardman has that potential this season. Maybe that's an obvious statement to make, and you don't need projections to show you, but it's amazing to see how usable Hardman can be even with just a fourteen percent or fifteen percent target share in that offense, because the offense is that good. So in twenty nineteen, Le'Veon Bell handled seventy one point three percent of New York's running back rushes while seeing a fifteen point eight percent target share. As a result, he was a top twenty running back in points per game. The Jets also tied Pittsburgh for the fewest touchdowns in football, with twenty five. Since twenty eleven, we've seen sixty five teams with next season data, so we're excluding twenty nineteen teams here, but we've seen sixty five teams with thirty or fewer offensive touchdowns scored. Of those sixty five teams, fifty two of them saw their touchdown totals increase the following year, and the average increase was about eight touchdowns. Now, of the teams with twenty two to twenty eight touchdowns, so plus or minus three touchdowns from what the Jets had last year. We've got forty four teams since twenty eleven who scored twenty two to twenty eight touchdowns. These are the teams most comparable to the Jets. Among those teams, all but six increase their touchdown totals the next season. The average increase was nine point two. Almost half of them increase their touchdown total by double digits. What I'm getting at here is as bad as Adam Gase may be, and as mediocre of an offense that the Jets might have, there's very little doubt in my mind that they'll score more touchdowns in twenty twenty than they had in twenty nineteen. That's especially true with Sam Darnold healthy, and that'll impact Le'Veon Bell. If you project Le'Veon Bell to have a similar workload as last season, then Bell legitimately has top ten upside. Even if you don't, he should still be able to live up to his lower end RB two ranking that we're seeing right now now. I likely won't be heavily invested in the Jets this year, because, again, regression doesn't mean over correction. I doubt the Jets offense is just gonna light up the NFL. But Bell has gone from being overrated to potentially being underrated in just one season. If you can't tell by no now. A lot of my analysis on this show has to do with team level numbers just as much as the individual players numbers, and it's because I work at the team level first with projections, and then I project my way down to the player level. One team I think might just be overvalued throughout is the LA Chargers. Let's look at what the Chargers team has looked like of late with Philip Rivers, because Rivers is the obvious big piece that's not there in twenty twenty. Okay, so over the last three years, the Chargers have won five, twelve and nine games. These are all seasons with Anthony Lynn. They had an overall pass to rush ratio in these seasons that ranked at lowest eighteenth in the NFL. But the year they were eighteenth was the year they won twelve games. When you're leading in games, you're throwing the ball less in neutral script ratios, or when games have been within six points. The Chargers have had two top five seasons over their last three, they've been way more pass heavy than I think people understand and realize. Now comes a change with Philip Rivers no longer being there, and you have to question how that overall race shifts as a result. It's not like the defense is bad for LA. They can be in games and be fairly run heavy with whoever they want to throw in under center, whether it be Tyrod Taylor or Justin Herbert. In a projection, it's tough to make the assumption that they're going to continue to throw at the same rate with those other guys at quarterback, and that will have a dramatic impact on that team, since the team is one that we look for with pass catchers, more specifically Austin Eckler. Austin Eckler is a tough case for me because I love him as a player and he's the exact type of running back that you want in today's NFL. But I also manalizing fantasy football, and I have to be realistic. I have to be objective. Eckler's yet to carry the ball more than one hundred and thirty two times in a single season. Melvin Gordon's been in his backfield. Yes, I'm not saying he won't hit a career high this year, Austin Eckler is likely to hit a career high in rush attempts. I'm just noting that even when Gordon was out last season, Eckler's running back rushing share was one that would have ranked closer to twentieth than the end than first. And not only that, but Eckler wasn't nearly as efficient as a rusher when he was the primary early down guy. He was better when the backfield was split. What that means is that his rushing ceiling is going to be capped in some way. But then you run into the problem of what if the Chargers And maybe this isn't even a what if, but what if the Chargers are a lot more run heavy this year? Targets are way more valuable to running backs in fantasy football, especially in PPR leagues, than rushes are. So if Eckler isn't in as pass heavy of an offense, his target share, and it's a target share that should be high, but his target share is of a smaller pie, it's going to be very hard for Eckler to get to one hundred targets. Again, he had one hundred and eight last year. But then, on top of that, what if the Chargers don't score touchdowns at that high of a rate. What if the quarterback situation is a mess. What if Josh Kelly, the bigger bodied downhill runner who's looking to take the Melvin Gordon role, what if he becomes the goal line rusher for the Chargers? And what if Austin Eckler's yards per two target rate regresses In twenty nineteen, twenty one running backs had fifty or more targets. Not only was Eckler's nine point two yards per target rate the best among those running backs, but it was almost a full yard better than the player who was in second, which was Dalvin Cook. And Eckler's career yards per target rate entering last year was seven point eight. It's an efficiency number, just like any other efficiency number that regresses. And all of this is ignoring the fact that he outperformed and overperformed in the touchdown column last year too. Now, I don't want this to get twisted because I know how some of this is coming across, and I know someone's just waiting to hit my Twitter mentions to say, I know you hate Austin Eckler. But so I need to say that I don't hate Austin Eckler. I just don't think that he's locked into this top ten running back positioning the way that a lot of other people do. And it's almost becoming a contrarian take to feel this way, and I find it strange when there are so many things that have changed or will be changed to Eckler's situation, whether it be a quarterback switch or just natural regression. Basically, Eckler should be able to provide the floor that we all love from his pass catching ability, but where's the ceiling coming from. He's gonna have to be used in ways that he's never been used in the NFL to really reach that top tier, and that's what I'm looking for. If I'm spending a pick in the early second round, I can see that path to upside with someone like Miles Sanders, and even if I sort of disagree with his ADP, you can even see it with someone like Kenyan Drake. But it's just harder to carve that path for Austin Eckler. I would love to have Eckler as my RB two, but drafting him over some of those stud wide receivers or over someone like Miles Sanders. I just currently cannot do it. The last situation I want to talk through on today's show is Tampa Bay. There seems to be a large number of people who don't see Tom Brady supporting Chris Godwin, Mike Evans and Rob Gronkowski that the two wide receivers can't live up to their draft day costs, while Rob Gronkowski being a top ten tight end. But guys, I think it's all possible. When you build things out, it's very clear that this can happen. Let's start with the team level stuff. Tampa Bay wasn't actually super pass heavy in neutral game scripts last season, they ranked sixteenth, and Bruce arians teams historically have been either average or just slightly above average when in neutral game scripts in terms of past to rush ratio. They've ranked higher than twelfth in neutral script pass to rush ratio just once in his six seasons as head coach and as offensive coordinator, his teams were actually below average. Basically, don't get Arians offense confused with pass heavy. It's not pass heavy, it's vertical. That may seem like not a great thing for Evans and Godwin But the thing with Tampa Bay is that they have these top talents at wide receiver, but the team's depth chart is still pretty shallow. Outside of Evans and Godwin, no one on that team is demanding a high target share, So both players should still easily be able to walk into a target share in that twenty two percent to twenty five percent range, and Gronk has upside with that too. Getting up to a fifteen percent target chair is very attainable given the lack of true competition outside of those big wide receivers, as long as we assume that he's going to see significantly more work than Oj Howard. Now, as I've said on this show in the past, I'm also not concerned about Mike Evans falling off the face of the earth with Tom Brady because of Brady's lack of aggression on his deep balls. It's true that Brady hasn't pushed the ball down the field at the same rate as what we've seen from Bruce Arians offenses, but Brady's consistently ranked in the top half of the league and completion percentage on intermediate and deep ball throws over the last few seasons. I love Godwin and I have him ahead of Evans pretty comfortably, but Evans could end up being the bigger value in redraft this year because people are worried about this fit with Tom Brady. There are plenty of other things that I noticed when building projections this year as well, like how Jarvis Landry continues to be incredibly undervalued, and how the Packers may want to be a run heavy team, but don't assume that they're more run heavy this year than they were last year when you consider gamescript that's what drives past to rush attempt ratio. Most The Packers' win total is nine right now on FanDuel sportsbook, when they won thirteen games last year. They're not going to see as many positive game scripts, but hopefully you're able to take at least something away from today's show. We're officially getting closer and closer to draft season. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got 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 appreciate all of you, and i'll talk to you later in the week.