1002: Regression Candidates

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha. J J Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode one thousand and two of the Late Round Fantasy football podcasts sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season's right around the corner, and there's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance early than with Best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, DraftKings is giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one, enter a lineup in the fifteen million dollars Best Ball contest for just twenty dollars, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of fifteen million dollars, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your dream team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. Every breakout star, every clutch play, every touchdown will count towards your quest for a share of fifteen million dollar dollars. As you know, I'm drafting over there and I'm documenting things with becoming a best ball bro so you can use the information from that show to help you out as well. So download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app now to draft your twenty dollars Best Ball lineup to play for a share of fifteen million dollars, and get a second ticket to play free for a share of that fifteen million. That's two chances to win big without ever setting your lineup again. Draft one, Get one only on DraftKings. The Crown is yours. Gambling problem called one hundred Gambler New York call eight seven to seven eight hope en y or text hope eny to four to six seven three six nine and Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling Call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit CCPG dot org eighteen plus and most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibili restrictions apply. Void were prohibited. One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars Headliner contest by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry. Twenty dollars entry required. Reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best dash Ball sponsored by DK we're now officially within the standard Late Round podcast schedule. What I mean by that is each year around this time, I do the same episodes, just with new content like this one. This is one where I talk about regression candidates. Next week we're doing early season schedule analysis and then players to target, players to avoid, and so on, which means everything is planned out right now through the end of fantasy season, which is kind of crazy to think about. But as I said, today's episode is about regression candidates. To me, regression is probably the most important concept to wrap your head around in fantasy football, and I still think that it's one that people don't totally understand. When we talk regression. It doesn't always automatically mean bad. It doesn't mean that some player is getting worse. It just means that a player has some average, some mean that he's likely to perform closer to If you play golf and you typically shoot in the low nineties and you have a round of eighty five, you don't just expect to shoot in eighty five the next time that you're on the course. You're expecting to go back to your average, your mean of ninety to ninety five. You just got a little lucky and you shot in eighty five. You didn't actually get better. With fantasy and football in general, something we have to separate is the fact that a player can perform just as well on a real football field while getting better or worse in fantasy football, because at the end of the day, fantasy scoring doesn't match real football. An eighty yard pass that doesn't result in a touchdown from a quarterback, it's worth less than a one yard touchdown throw, even though that eighty yard pass is likely way more impactful. Numbers fluctuate, and sometimes a lot of times it doesn't have anything to do with the actual skill level of a certain player. So on today's show, I'm going to talk through a handful of regression candidates, players and in some cases teams who did some weird and unsustainable stuff last year statistically, and since the market is likely going to use previous season numbers to project here in the current season, there may be an opportunity to target to avoid these players as a result of regression. So, without further ado, let's get to the first candidate. I think one of the best examples of regression this year is at quarterback, and it's not Jared Goff, who I've talked about a lot this offseason. I think there's probably a better example in Baker Mayfield. Now, look, I'm a borderline Baker Mayfield stan I liked him coming out. I've always been kind of an apologist. But my job is to be objective, and being objective leads me to say that Baker Mayfield is gonna regress this year. An easy way to spot that is just look at touchdown rate. Good quarterbacks will typically have higher touchdown rates, but it's still a number that regresses to the middle or to the mean. Baker Mayfield's touchdown rate last year was seven point two percent. That's like three percentage points higher than the league's average. That resulted in Baker throwing forty one touchdowns, thirteen more than his previous season in Tampa Bay, which came in twenty twenty three. He's never had a season like he had last year. Now, people are gonna hear this, and they're gonna say, but Baker not only had injured pass catchers last year, they also added to that room this year. How could he possibly get worse? Well, here's the thing. Most regression related statistics with quarterbacks are gonna stem from the team level because quarterbacks control so much of the game, so if they're doing weird things, then something's probably going on at that team level, and for Tampa Bay, that's exactly the case. Two things happened for the Buccaneers last year. Number One, they were fourth and touchdowns per game at three point three to five touchdowns per contest. Number two, seventy two percent of their touchdowns came via the pass. Now think about this. For a high passing touchdown total to happen, a team will have to score a lot of touchdowns and then also see a lot of those touchdowns come via the air. One of those two things at least has to happen. There have been thirteen teams since twenty eleven who had three point twenty five touchdowns per game or more while seeing at least seventy percent of those touchdowns come via the air. The Buccaneers are one of those teams, and they're the only team that did it last year. That means we have twelve teams who have next season data. Of those twelve teams, guess how many ended up seeing an improvement in passing touchdowns year over year. One of them did and Funny enough, only the twenty twenty Bucks from twenty twenty to twenty twenty one saw an uptick in passing touchdowns, going from forty two to forty three. That was when they had Tom Brady. The average team lost nine point seven passing touchdowns. And yes, some of these teams were even bigger regression candidates than Mayfield and the Bucks. I'm not saying he's a lock to throw ten fewer touchdowns, but I don't think that's even close to out of the range of outcomes here. My projections have him around thirty two. Mike Clay, the gold standard for projection building, has him at thirty three. Mayfield ran the ball more last year, and he was more effective as a rusher in fantasy. So if that does stick, if that Russian component sticks, he may be able to maintain his ADP expectation. Now I have my doubts personally of that, which is why I'm more on the avoid side than the target side with Baker Mayfield. But regression should hit. Even with the mechag Buka in the picture. Mayfield can play just as well as he did last year in real football while still regressing statistically. That's how regression works, we shouldn't simply expect greatness. And the Buccaneers they were pretty great last year. Now, we talked some team level regression with Mayfield, and I want to shift to another NFC team and look at the Eagles because their twenty twenty four was absolutely wild with how they ran their offense. The Eagles were really run heavy last year. And when I say really run heavy, I mean extremely run heavy. They're forty one point nine percent pass rate and that's on a ten PHI for the record, but that forty one point nine percent pass rate wasn't just the lowest in the league. It was the second lowest. Since twenty eleven. We've only had seven teams with next season data hit a sub forty five percent pass rate. The Eagles were way lower than that. Not only did all but one of them increase that pass rate the following year, but the average increase in pass rate from those teams has been seven percentage points in games were reaccounted for ninety percent or more of the team's pass attempts. Jalen Hurts averaged just twenty five point five pass attempts per game last year. The year before that, that number was almost thirty three. Before that, it was thirty one. We can sit here and say that the Eagles are good, that they're going to be run heavy, and that Sakwon Barkley changed the dynamic of that offense. I wouldn't even disagree with that, but it's really hard to sustain such a low pass rate. Not only that, but the Eagles have one of the five toughest schedules this year. When viewing opponents through the lens of win totals, they might trail in games this year more than they did last year, and that would result in more passing. So this means that we should expect to see more passing volume in this offense, and that's gonna help the pass catchers. It doesn't mean Saquon Barkley's dust, but I think we'd all agree that regression is likely going to hit Saquon Barkley on the volume front. I sent a newsletter about this last week. But among players with three hundred and more carries in year end since twenty eleven, there have been twenty four of them. With next season data, the average player tends to lose a few rush attempts per game, So expect the Eagles to throw the ball more here in twenty twenty five. Now, I've talked about Terry McLaurin throughout the offseason, but he's one of the more obvious progression candidates this year. At wide receiver, McLaurin scored thirteen times last year after having scored four or five touchdowns in each of his four seasons prior. And it's not like his target share dramatically changed or even his per route run numbers. His yards per rout run was just a little bit better than his career average last year, and his target share per game rate was twenty three point three percent. He'd been above that in three other NFL seasons. McLaurin accounted for forty four point eight percent of Washington's passing touchdowns last year. He scored thirteen of their twenty nine passing touchdowns. Not only was that by far the highest of his career, but if you take a look at the players who had been over the forty percent mark since twenty eleven, and you look at the guys who have been able to repeat that mark, it's basically elite touchdown scorer after elite touchdown score Mike Evans, DeAndre Hopkins, DeVante Adams, Brandon Marshall, Dez Bryant. Now DJ Moore is actually on that list too, but that's simply because he played on teams with such few passing touchdowns. There's more variance with a guy like Moore. And by the way, since twenty eleven, we've had thirty four instances where a wide receiver accounted for forty percent or more of their team's passing touchdowns. The average target share among those players was close to twenty seven percent, four percentage points higher than where Terry McLaurin was at We can sit here and say that Washington will simply score more touchdowns this year, resulting in McLaurin having more opportunity to score. Aka, he can take a hit and touchdown share and still do fine. And while I recognize that's still a possibility, we also have to recognize that the Commander's offense was very good last year and there's more competition for mclauren, so regression is likely coming for Scary Terry. Best ball drafts seem to be accounting for that a bit. We definitely can't assume he's going to be nearly as good in fantasy year over year. Now on the running back front. One of the more obvious players there is James Cook. Pro Football Focus has their expected touchdowns formula, which tells you how many touchdowns you'd expect a player to have given his usage in where he's seeing touches, and when you look at that, for James Cook, he was expected to score eleven point six touchdowns. Last year he scored eighteen. That was the second biggest over performance in the game. Buffalo was actually one of two teams last year, the Eagles being the other one, who had more rushing touchdowns than passing touchdowns. That's happened twenty eight times prior to last year and since twenty eleven. Of those twenty eight teams, the following year, twenty five of them saw that pass to rush touchdown ratio increase, and of the teams who saw a decrease, that decline was by less than a percentage point. The average increase among those teams has been thirteen percent, meaning the Bills saw about forty eight percent of their touchdowns last year come via the air. Very quick math based on the average increase that we've seen from these teams, and this isn't the most precise way to do this. For the record, but it is a way to do this. But that thirteen percent number would mean that this year Buffalo would see a sixty one percent past to rush touchdown rate instead of a forty eight percent one. And if that's the case, if they scored the exact same number of offensive touchdowns, we're looking at the potential for eight fewer rushing touchdowns. Now that can obviously he hurt Josh Allen, but he'd also be throwing those touchdowns that are being converted to passing scores. James Cook is not going to be throwing them. So it's a little bit scary for Cook entering twenty twenty five. But another running back that I want to call out here is a guy who outperformed in the touchdown column even more than James Cook did. And everyone is rightfully pointing to Cook and screaming regression. But what about Jamiir Gibbs. Now this is not to say that you should fade Gibbs, because there's a scenario and there's an out for him this year where the Lions just used David Montgomery less and that would be insane for Jamiir Gibbs fantasy value. But strictly from a regression standpoint, Gibbs did outperform expectation in a touchdown column according to PFF's formula by six point eight scores. He's an insane player, so he's gonna probably outplay that expectation most seasons. But six point eight is not insignificant, and I don't know if we can simply project and expect another season of five point seven yards per carry. So I still have Gibbs ranked very high in at ADP because he's done incredible things without having a serious belcow workload. Imagine a world where that actually happens on the volume front. But I think there's a wider range of outcomes for a player like Gibbs compared to alternatives in the draft like Bjeon Robinson. You just gotta go with what you're most comfortable with now. I talked about the Eagles and their run heavy ways last year, but the Packers they were also guilty of being more run heavy than anyone expected. Matt with Flores coached the Packers for six seasons. During his first five, his team's average a pass rate of fifty six point three percent. Those teams had a pass rate over expected below zero, and just one of those seasons. Last year, Green Bay's pass rate was just forty seven point seven percent, their pass right over expected minus eight point three percent. Now, part of that was Jordan Love maybe not being one hundred percent. Malik Willis got a couple of starts, Josh Jacobs joined the team. All of that, but it wasn't a normal season for the Packers. If you look at teams who have been in the forty six to fifty percent pass rate range since twenty eleven, the vast majority of them see an uptick and pass rate the following year of the thirty six with next season data, only six of them dropped in pass rate in that n plus one season, and the vast majority of them increased that pass rate by three percentage points or more. So, if we anticipate the Packers being more pass heavy, that'll obviously help the passing attack and potentially downgrade Josh Jacobs. Where I'm worried with Jacobs is close to the end zone. Last season, no player in football had more goal line carries he was at twenty two. We averaged two to three running backs per year getting twenty or more goal line attempts. So we can't just assume that those carries carry over. Green May had the fifth most rush attempts at the goal line last year, and they were bottom ten at the goal line in pass rate. We could see some of that go to the passing attack now. The Packers are really easy to stack in best ball. And while I don't think Jordan Love is something you need to reach for in your season long leagues because he's a pocket passer, it wouldn't be surprising to me at all if he outplays ADP this year. It's unfortunate that they rotate their wide receivers the way that they do, but it's not like any of those wide receivers are super costly in drafts. So I'm overall very in on this Packers passing attack. Now, extending this Packers discussion, let's talk about Tucker Craft. So full disclosure, I think Tucker Craft. I think he's a draft target this year. He's an ascending talent. There's ambiguity with the pass catchers. He's the right kind of bet to make in my eyes. With that being said, he did some really funky things last year. Specifically, according to PFF data, he had a yards after the catch per reception rate of nine point three In twenty twenty four, thirty tight had fifty or more targets. Tucker Craft led all of them in yards after the catch per reception. The player in second was George Kittle. George Kittle had a yack per reception of six point six, nearly three yards less than Tucker Craft, so Craft, as a result, outpaced his fantasy points per game expectation by two and a half points per game. That's according to PFF's formula. Now, the reason I think we can still be in on him is essentially improvement as a player, but more importantly, betting on him getting higher than a fifteen percent target share. And if he gets higher than a fifteen percent target share, that's on more passing volume. He was a solid prospect. He has the right athleticism markers, and he's shown that off in the NFL. He's in an offense that should throw the ball more this year. It's an offense with question marks at pass catcher. Just know that there is some regression coming his way. Now, I'm going to end today's show with a fairly obvious regression candidate, but it's one where we can have a little bit of fun when projecting his ceiling and it's Trey McBride. The dude had two receiving touchdowns last year and he now has six touchdowns on two hundred and ninety two career NFL targets. I mean, look, maybe Trey McBride is just really bad at finding the end zone. His final season at Colorado State literally saw him catch ninety balls and he scored once. He only had ten touchdowns during his four years in college on one hundred and sixty four catches. Now, it's not to say that McBride a physical freak of nature who's one of the best tight ends in the game. It's not to say that he can't find the end zone. I'm not being totally serious. I think there's at least some variance to all of this. Last year, McBride was dead last in the league or first really depending on how you want to look at it, and underperforming his expected touchdowns that's across all positions. According to PFF's numbers, he should have had about nine touchdowns. He had three, and that's total touchdowns because he did have a rushing score. He only had two receiving touchdowns when he was expected to have eight and a half over the last fifteen years, tight ends have scored a touchdown on average on every one hundred and thirty three receiving yards. That's the average across the league. We're including dudes here like Johnny munt Oj Howard, Mercedes Lewis, it's every tight end. Trey McBride is obviously better than the average tight end. McBride scored a touchdown last year on every five hundred and seventy three receiving yards. Had he scored six more touchdowns like his expected touchdown total said, he would have then scored thirty six more points across the season. That's over two more points per game. Had he done that, that McBride would have been around seventeen point seven PPR points per game. That's a number that's been matched just nine times since twenty eleven. Now, I'm not saying that you have to draft Trey McBride. There's game theory and there's an opportunity costs associated with drafting him. What I am i am saying is that his upside is pretty insane if he's able to see the exact same role that he saw last year. Now, clearly that might change, but you at least know that you're getting a pretty great floor with him now. Clearly there are other regression candidates that we could have talked through today, but I wanted a good mix of individual player and team level ones to get you thinking about the topic. I talked through a wide variety of examples and hopefully it made you think differently about some teams and players here in twenty twenty five. But that's it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and hope to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. I've got becoming a best ball bro hitting your feeds tomorrow and then another Perspective's episode later in the week. I'll talk to you soon.