4 Metrics Every Dynasty Manager Should Use | Dynasty Fantasy Football Podcast Ep. 864

Welcome back into the Dynasty Nerds podcast. I am your host, Garrett Price. And I'm here with Andrew Mott. And today we're getting a little nerdy. We're talking about data points, data sets, statistics, numbers that matter to us when we are playing fantasy football. Now some of these might have a little more to do with your rookie drafts. Some of these might have to do more within season concepts. Some of them might even tie in a little better to different styles and formats like baseball. We're not going to give it all the way now. But we're going to dig into these numbers and tell you why we use these numbers for our fantasy football team. So let's not waste any time with pleasantries. Andrew, get right into it. What is the first number set, data set, and a little concept that you have for the good viewers today? Yeah. I mean, my first data points or just concept in general is going to come down to my rookie drafts. That's one of the most exciting points of the year. That's one of the most important times because that's when you're getting new talent into your roster. And being able to make the right selections there is the difference between having a dynasty team that can be super competitive and kind of just ruining your roster because you're wasting value every single year picking the wrong players. So you would be dismissed, not talking about hit rates to an extent. But I have specific hit rate data that I use in my own leagues for my own self. And it is just looking back over the last 10 years. I like looking back to 2014 right now is what we have. I didn't include 2025 or 2026 because we don't have enough data on those two draft classes yet to really make any assumptions. But it's looking at which round these players were drafted and how likely it is that they become a contributor for our fantasy football teams. Now, the cutoff for that is quarterbacks and tight ends. Those ones positions are most likely going to need to have a top 12 fantasy football season. The running backs in the wider series, they need to have top 24 seasons. So when you're looking at this, I'll tell you kind of how likely it is that those players end up becoming those types of contributors. So for quarterbacks, first round accounts for 60% of those hits. Everything after that, round two, three, four, five, six, seven, 10% or less every single round. So if your quarterback-- And just to clarify, so you're saying if a quarterback gets one top 12 season, that's considered a hit? Correct. Yeah. All right, just making sure I'm understanding it correctly. Yep. So if they are not drafted in the first round, it's very, very unlikely that they are going to be a top 12 quarterback for you in fantasy football. A running back, 85.7% of first round running backs gave us an RB2 season at one point. Round two is 70.8%. Round three is 48.6%. After that, we're talking about the day three running backs. Nobody had a better chance than the fourth round guys, which makes a lot of sense. They were guys that just missed day two. And those are at 18%. So if you're looking at round three running backs or later, the best shot you got is about an 18% chance that they become a top 24 running back for you. Wide receivers-- you look at round one, 54% of those round one wide receivers-- they became top 24 options. Round two and three-- the day two guys-- they were 35% and 25%. And everybody on day three, the best round was round five, actually, at 8% chance. And then tight ends, 70% of round one tight ends gave us a tight end one season, 35% of round two tight ends, gave us a tight end one season. And every other round was 10% or less. So the big takeaway here-- and it feels like it's fairly easy to just look at it and say, yeah, that makes sense. But the data backs it up is day three guys-- guys that you're going to be using third round rookie picks on, fourth round rookie picks on. Those guys really don't have any real shot at hitting. The best chances you can have on those guys is taking shots at running backs. So if you're going to use the later round picks, use them on the running backs that can become at least a shot, a 20% shot at being a top 24 guy. But everybody else is going to be an outlier outside of day one and day two. And I think this is helpful data. And like you said, even though it's something that I think people would naturally assume, it's good to know when you go, especially not even necessarily go to draft. But it's when you're trading. I think is really where this is helpful. When you're looking to trade four or trade away a draft pick, you're thinking, OK, what are my odds on this player hitting? OK, the players that are available to me are a first round wide receiver, late first round wide receiver. I've got a round two running back. And I've got a round two tight end. And like these are the guys I have available to me. One, it could help clarify who I want to draft. But I think more importantly, when you look at this, I say, OK, I'm going to have a-- like what was a round two running back? What was the hit rate on that? The round two running backs is 70%. OK, so you say I have a 70% chance of this round two running back hitting at least one top 24 season for my fantasy football team. If that's the case, would I rather go with this guy or would I rather trade it for a veteran? Is there better odds of this veteran hitting, do I think, versus this player? And so I think that's where that really, really comes into play is when you're trying to make those trades. Yeah, and I think also when comparison when you're drafting, I mean, the round two wide receiver is a 35% chance. The round two running backs is 70% chance. So if you look at two guys that are both drafted in the round two of their NFL draft, and you say one of them is a running back one's a wide receiver, you have doubled the chance that that running back actually becomes a top 24 option for you than the wide receiver does. So that may sway you one direction than the other. And I also think of it too. Like a good example would be this year. Jonah Coleman is a player that people are pretty excited about because of the Denver landing spot. He is still a day three running back, Garrett. And he was going in the 201 to 204 range in most people's rookie drafts. So according to this data, we're using a 201 or a 202 or 203, whatever you're using in that early second, on a guy who does have an 18% chance based on this data going back to 2014 to be a top 24 option. So again, to kind of just piggyback off of your point, would you rather take that 18% chance on Jonah Coleman because he's new and exciting? Or would you rather just trade that 201 for a guy who's going to be a top 24 option this year in like, Deandra Swift, would you rather take that option moving forward? Sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that makes absolutely perfect sense. And I think that's the way we got to think about things. I think sometimes we as fans of football, as fans of NFL football, we think of it only in terms of is this guy good? Is this guy bad? And I get that from a fan perspective, like, you know, do you know ball like to who is this guy? Who's that guy? Who's this guy? Like, you know, cool. Like, and that's awesome. It really is. But at the end of the day, we're solving a math problem. There's really what we're doing when we're playing fantasy football. And so you're looking at what are the odds? One thing happens versus another thing happens. What are what are what is this player plus this player on average going to give me versus trading for this player and this player? These are all math equations that we're really doing. We don't like to clarify them that way. We don't like to say them that way because it sounds way more nerdy and boring and less fun. But really, at the end of the day, it's a numbers issue. It's a math problem. It's not always a easy, good, is he bad? Absolutely. All right. Let me get into my first one here. And one of my favorite things to do is I love to know by team how they target a certain position. And so I love to go into previous years data because it'll tell me a few things in here. So I know fantasy pros, they have a great kind of tool that tracks NFL targets by team. And so if you look in there, you'll go and you can organize it by, you know, how often does this team throw to the running back? That's the one I care the most about because typically it's going to be pretty different from team to team. You look at the 49ers last year. The 49ers through to the running back position over 30% of the time. 30% is a lot to throw to a running back. Conversely, you go all the way down to the Rams. The Rams through to their running back 11% of the time last year. So you have almost three times more targets for a San Francisco running back versus a Rams running back. Now, is all that going to be exactly the same this year? No, it'll vary slightly. But for the most part, it's the same cast and characters that are on these teams. It's still Brock Pertie. It's still Christian McCaffrey. It's still Matthew Stafford. It's still Sean McVeigh. It's still like a lot of these pieces are still the same. So I would expect that San Francisco is going to be towards the top. And I would expect the LA Rams are going to be towards the bottom at target in the running back position. But sometimes it's even good to know, okay, what are a team's tendencies because that offensive coordinator went to a new team or that quarterback went to a new team. One of the things you learn over time is a lot of these older quarterbacks tend to check it down. often a lot of these younger athletic quarterbacks are going to tuck it and run more often. So you see here like the number two team Pittsburgh Steelers. That was Aaron Rodgers. He checked it down an awful lot last year, 20.5 or sorry, 25.4% of the time. So Aaron Rodgers is back at quarterback. Yeah, it's a different offense. But we saw Kenneth Gainwell be in a very, very effective running back last year, partly because of all of the things he did in the air. Should that maybe alter or change how I would view a Jalen Ward, how I would view a Rico doubtal? Maybe because there's a lot more target opportunities at that position on that team versus some other teams. The Miami Dolphins were a super high one last year. However, you kind of have to throw all that out the window on this one because my credentials is gone to has gone. But what you can do is you can say, okay, maybe that's all true. But I'm going to go now to the chargers knowing that they have Mike McDaniels now. And maybe they're going to get a little bit of a bump at the running back targets or Atlanta. You know, maybe Atlanta gets a little bit of a bump because to us there now, those are the kinds of things where you can kind of look at some past trends for these coordinators, or these coaches and say, how is this going to change this year? Or do I expect those things to stay similar? And you can look at the other positions as well. Wild receiver tightens. I think those are valuable to look at as well. But the running back one specifically for me, that's where I really, really like to dig in, especially if it's a new situation with a new, you know, a change in scenery for the coordinator, new quarterback. Like, what did they do in the past? So I can go to previous years and see, oh, yeah, when he was the starter 2022, this is what he was doing. That helps me to better understand what I should be getting out of these players. Yeah, it's, it's definitely something that you need to be paying attention to. And I think we've done that a little bit this off season too. I mean, you brought up many points about Todd Monkin and his play calling and how that can affect Quinch on Judkins. We've brought up Mike McDaniel and Amari on Hampton and all of these other different changes that have happened and how this can affect fantasy football purposes because it is fun and exciting to be like, yeah, this guy's got a new situation. Things can be different now. We want them to be the way that we want them to be. Maybe that's hopes and dreams. But when you start digging into the data, sometimes you start looking at that, you can really start to see a clear picture as to what this actually might look like. And maybe it's different than what you want it to look like. Yeah, I remember perfect example. I remember several years ago, I in year two, now I was never the biggest Nazi Harris guy, but he had a really good rookie season and kind of made me look stupid. And I was like, tank. And so people are like, oh, Garrett, you're doubling down in year two. And I was like, yes, I know, like I am doubling down. But it's, it's not because of Nazi Harris as much as it is. Ben Rufflesberger retired. Who do we have in now at quarterback? I think Nazi Harris was one of the leaders in receptions at running back in his rookie season. I think that's going to decrease quite a bit because if you have, you know, a Kenny picket or whoever else at quarterback, he's not going to be getting the same target volume. And we did see a pretty precipitous drop off for him being the running back three overall to him being, you know, somewhere in the running back two range. So huge drop off in year two. So some of this data really can help you identify guys that should be trending up or could be trending down. Absolutely. All right, well, I am going to move on to one of my next favorite things to do. And I'm sure everybody likes to do this, but it is to try and find the breakout player. And it's always easy to point at, I mean, you just talked about new coaching staffs, new situations, things like that. It's easy to look at that type of stuff. But what if I told you that there's actually data that supports cutoffs for whether or not players actually are likely to break out or not. And so that's what I like to look at. I have data for every position and basically the age cutoff for when players no longer really break out for fantasy football. So if you just go at each of these positions really quickly, we're looking at this and quantifying a breakout as a player who qualifies for the very first time as a top 12 season in fantasy points per game for the quarterback and the tight end. And then the wide receiver, they need to qualify as a top 24 option in fantasy points per game for the first time at those positions. So that is kind of what the breakout qualifier is for people at home. Quarterbacks, if they have not broken out by age 26, it doesn't usually happen anymore. Running backs, it's by the age of 25 wide receivers. It's by the age of 24 and tight ends. It's by the age of 26. Now I have some more data basically here that will tell you the percentage of people that were outliers at each of those positions. I have those as cutoffs because the vast majority of players break out within those age range or age ranges. So going at quarterbacks, only 20% of quarterbacks ever produced their first top 12 season after the age of 26. So 79% of quarterbacks have produced a top 12 season before the age of 26. If it doesn't happen by then, it's just likely not happening. The running backs 80% of running back breakouts happen between the ages of 22 and 24 only 20% of running backs break out after the age of 25. So if they haven't broken out by 26, you're looking at a guy who basically never will. Wide receivers, you're looking at 43% of wide receivers breaking out between the ages of 22 and 23. Only 16% of them have ever given us a top 24 season for the first time after the age of 26. And then tight ends 69% of tight end breakouts happen between 23 and 25. Only 21% of them have recorded their first top 12 season after the age of 26. So that's kind of why I made those the cutoffs. As you can see, like once you get to that age that I gave you 26 for quarterbacks, 25 for running backs, 24 for wider receivers and 26 for tight ends, you're looking at roughly a 20 to maybe even less 15 to 16% chance that those players will actually see a breakout happen. So it's important when you're looking at players like let's say RJ Harvey, for example, he is 26 years old right now. And we said that running backs, if they haven't given us a top 24 season of fantasy points per game by the age of 25, they likely won't break out. So you're looking at players and their ages and trying to figure out if they actually can break out now. And that's especially beneficial when you're looking at players who are switching teams on a second contract. And you're like Chinko Conco, for example, can he break out? Well, where is his age? Does he meet the criteria? Yeah, very, very interesting stuff. I'd be curious to tie age and year in the league together on that one to see where that all plays out because specifically speaking to the tight end one, that makes perfect sense because we did a series a while back and we revisited on the flagship podcast, but 80 or no, it's higher than that. It's like 85% of tight ends that have multiple tight end one or sorry, top six tight end seasons. So we're looking like at the very high end, do it within their, they have their first one within their first two seasons. So age wise, that would match up pretty close to what you're talking about. Depending on, you know, how old or how young a tight end is when they come out, we're seeing a lot of guys come out at, you know, 23, 24 years old, a little bit older at the position. But, but yeah, so similar type of concept there where those numbers while they don't match up perfectly because age and years aren't exactly the same and guys declare later and all the COVID stuff made some guys super old and you know, whatever, but all of that it logically flows with some of the things that we've talked about before. So it's always good to kind of have that. And it is tough, you know, you mentioned like a Chico Conquo, like I was in on him. Maybe I'm a little more nervous now about a guy like that to potentially break out and have a big year this year. So it definitely is interesting to think about the the Jonathan Brooks type of guys, you know, yeah, he's young enough where he would still fit it. So we were okay. I don't have to be as nervous about Jonathan Brooks because he still fits fits in that age range. So very, very interesting stuff. How often do you use this not only for like your dynasty teams, but do you use this for like best ball, redraft, all that kind of stuff as well? Yeah, I mean, in best ball and stuff like that, when you're drafting those single season tournaments and you're trying to, you know, find the guys late that can blow up and help you kind of see that massive ADP swing because that's what you need in best ball, right? You need the guys that can outperform the ADP. If you're looking at the ages and you're like, okay, I could take 50 shots on Chico Conquo, but he's 26.8 years old. And we said that if they haven't done it by 26, it's a 20% chance. Do I really want to invest 50 shares of my exposure into Chico Conquo? Same thing can be said about a Dalton King Cade. Dalton King Cade has not given us a top 12 season in fantasy points per game yet. And he is going into his 27 year old season. The day that tells us right now that Dalton King Cade has a 20% chance that actually ever finishing as a [BLANK_AUDIO] 12th fantasy points per game type of tight end now. So does that change the way you think about Dalton King-Kate? Is he somebody that while everybody else is like, you know what, he's gonna have, it's gonna happen. I want it to happen. The date is telling us it likely won't happen. Maybe you take advantage of that in the trade room too. Yeah, makes perfect sense. All right, well, let's get into my last one here. The last stat that I really look at that I value, a stat that I think actually matters. And I go to team rankings.com. And I look at team pass play percentage. And the reason why this is significant to me is I want to know realistically how many opportunities are my pass catcher is gonna have. How many opportunities are my running backs gonna have? How often are they playing in the type of game is where they are going to be able to put up significant points. And so you look last year at NFL team passing play percentage. Now, there's a new regime. Maybe things are a little bit different. But the Arizona Cardinals last year passed the ball 65.9% of the time. So what we're saying here is Arizona last year, two out of every three plays. They are throwing the football. That's a ton of opportunities. And then it logically makes sense. Why Trey McBride had such a good season. Why Michael Wilson had so many opportunities to have big games. Like those kinds of things make sense. But it also can kind of help you identify potential outlier situations. When you look at, you know, most of these teams that are in the top 10, all of them were at or over 58% of their plays were passing plays. Well, you go down in the reason I said I'm a little nervous this year about JSN Seattle's 30th in pass play percentage. They're only at 50.29 and they drafted a running back. So odds are they're going to want to run the ball with their first round running back. They have other guys there as well as X, Charbonne is looking like he might be able to play sooner than we thought and things like that. Do I really want to trust a player that is going to be getting so few opportunities to have targets compared to guys that are in the top 10, the Cincinnati's, the Jamar Chasis. You know, the, let's see what other teams are up there. Dallas, C.D. Lam and Mike, George Pickens, like these teams are having a ton of opportunities. Where Seattle's not. Conversely, you know, I can look at some of this and some of you have to use logic like one of the the highest ones every year is Baltimore. Baltimore is only throwing the ball 48% of the time. Well, part of that is if you're like, oh man, so many opportunities in the running game for for Darecandor. Yes, but Lamar Jackson's part of that equation. So they're running the ball with Lamar Jackson. So you have to kind of keep all that in mind, but you look at a good example, Green Bay. Green Bay last year was 28th and past play percentage. That's telling me that even though I don't love Josh Jacobs and their signs of regression and all of that for a single year, there might be just so much volume that it doesn't matter. Maybe I don't want to invest in him long term, but if we expect that trend to continue, maybe that's what we need to be looking. New England, we're in the through the ball only 53% of the time. A lot stayed pretty similar, but they did add some receivers. So you have AJ Brown and you have Romeo dobs there that they didn't have before. So that one's like a little trick here. Do I trust that one? Do I not? And these are things that I would recommend not only looking for when you're drafting this year, but specifically, I want to look three, four, five weeks into the season. What are the trends telling me? Should I be trading for trading away certain assets that maybe are under producing, but we know that they're going to be getting a lot of opportunities. So maybe those are guys that I target early on in the season before they break out, before they have big games, because I know that the volume tells me they're going to be getting more opportunities than maybe other players at their position. Yeah, I mean, I think the Josh Jacobs thing is a very interesting thing that you bring up because I was just looking into the Green Bay Packers the other day and like the run rates and how much they're passing. And I was also looking at projections and like, what does Vegas, you know, project for Jordan Love as a passing total? What does, you know, what are they saying that Christian Watson is going to get as a receiving total? What is Josh Jacobs rushing line at? Like, that's another thing that I like to look at sometimes too, but it goes right back into what you're saying of like, how often are these teams actually running the ball? How often are they actually passing the ball? And when you pair that with something like what I just mentioned of like, what does Vegas think that they're going to do too? Some of the sharpest books on the planet that are making millions and billions of dollars off of this to be accurate, it shows you a clear picture of what can actually happen from a year by your basis. Absolutely, absolutely. So we give you these statistics, we give you these numbers. These are things that we actually use in order to help us draft, trade, identify breakouts, like these are things that we actually use for our own stuff. So we wanted to give you these numbers and come to your own conclusions. Doesn't mean that you have to read this and say that I agree 100% with how Andrew does it or Garrett's absolutely right. No, you might look at some of these numbers and say, yeah, that's true, but and you might have other things that you consider because, oh, well, they do, they were playing from a negative game script a lot and I expect them in their division to be a little more competitive. So maybe they're not going to throw as much. You have to use your own common sense and your own logic in some of these to identify some of this kind of stuff. But all of that being said, I think we've given you a good roadmap on how, you know, this is more of a teacher manifest as opposed to give a manifest. We're teaching you out of fish. We're not saying that this is how everything's going to work 100% of the time. But now you have the tools, the concepts in order to do your analysis a little bit better. So Andrew, anything else before we get out of here? No, I'm glad you said the last part that you did, though, because it is important to understand that data can be formatted and formed and misinterpreted to a point where you want it to say certain things. So it is good to understand that you need to use your own common sense. You need to use your own mind and brain to kind of put some of the context behind some of this data at times and be like, okay, that makes sense to me because it is actually what I was seeing. Like if the data feels weird sometimes, you need to double check it. So I'm glad you said the last part there. Absolutely. Well, we appreciate you guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. Make sure to like, subscribe, and hype these videos. If you're listening in podcast only form, make sure you're leaving us five stars on your favorite podcast app. We appreciate you guys. We'll see you in the next one. See you.