1119: Mailbag - Chicago's Pass-Catchers, Going Against ADP, and More

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Whether you're new to football, a fantasy football fan act or a die hard man, NFL pro will help you analyze the game like a pro. Listen to NFL pro on the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up everyone? It's JJ Zach are you sin in this episode 11 19 of the late round fantasy football podcast tuning in. Thanks for before getting to the mail by questions this week. I just want to send another reminder to check out the late round draft guide. There's over 270 pages of content that includes game theory, strategy, ways of spot breakouts and bus players to target players to avoid and more. You get cheat sheets with the guide as well. And I'm now updating that guide twice a week up until football season. You can update of the rankings on Wednesday and then you get the update of the rankings again on Friday alongside the players to target players to avoid in late round dark throws. So if you're listening this mail by episode on a Friday, which is when it releases, you should have that updated guide in your email inbox. You can learn more about it. Check it out over on late round dot com. The first mail by question this week is from Eric from the members hub on late round dot com. It says, "Hey JJ, appreciate another great season of draft content. Love the work you've been doing with market score. Thank you." With three pass catchers from the Bears going so high, I'm curious that there have been similar seasons in the past where three pass catchers from the same team were all drafted in the top 70. And if those players all met or exceeded their ADP expectation, I'm wondering if this would provide meaningful context for understanding the range of outcomes with these Bears players. Thanks. So I dug into this. I looked at all teams since 2014 who had three pass catchers, some combination of tight end and wide receiver, drafted in the top 72 overall. That gives us through round six and a 12 team league. There have been 11 teams where that's been the case. Now we'll get to the results in a second. First, as a lot of you know, I often analyze through the lens of average draft position expectation at every spot in a draft at every ADP, there's some sort of expected points per game for that player. And that's all based on history. So a player drafted 50th overall might be expected to score 13 PPR points per game or something like that. If that player then scores 14 PPR points per game, then he exceeded that expectation by one PPR point per game. When we look at the 11 teams who met this criteria of having three pass catchers with high ADP, it's been rare for all three of those players to exceed expectation. In fact, it's only happened once the 2023 49er saw it happen with Debo Samuel, George Kiddell and Brandon Ayuk. The good news is that six of the 11 teams saw two of the three players exceed expectation, three of the 11 saw one and then Washington in 2017 when they had to rail prior Jordan read and Jamison Crowder, talk about names we haven't heard in a while. All three of those players got destroyed. They were terrible versus ADP expectation, especially to rail prior. So you can interpret this a lot of different ways. On one hand, I do think odds are again seeing all three of these bears pass catchers beat expectation. On the other hand, the most likely outcome here just based on this small sample is that two of the three do well against expectation. Keep in mind though, too, this is against expectation. When ADP is higher, expectation is higher. It doesn't mean that all three of these players will just be unusable and fantasy football or one of them will be unusable. For example, when we have tight ends in this sample because some of these teams only have wide receivers. 86% of the tight ends hit 10 or more PPR points per game. Almost 60% of the wide receivers get to 14 or more PPR points per game. I don't think this means that we have to fade one of the three pass catchers in this offense because remember we're playing a game of probability. If you miss out on Luther Burton and Colston Loveland and you think those are the two players who are likely to hit in this offense, it doesn't mean that Roma Dune's A is an automatic fade. We know this can go in a lot of different directions. We know there's a chance that Loveland is the odd man out or burdens the odd man out. So yeah, I'd say the likely chance here just based on our limited sample is that two of the three end up as good picks. You hear that? It might freak you out a little bit. But keep in mind, players that aren't in this kind of situation, they're gonna bust too. This asks questions from the mailbag forum on lateround.com it's from Brian. It says, "Hi JJ, big fan of your work. Thank you." A guest came on your show recently and stated that he wasn't leaving a draft without having someone from the chargers on his roster. Curious for your thoughts on Lad Maconkey. So I had talked a lot about Lad back in like May, especially on the late round show. I'm in on Lad. This Mike McDaniel offense is gonna have so much more motion to get his guys open and in space compared to what we've seen over the last couple of years in LA. Over the last four, no team has had more motion at the line than the Miami Dolphins by a healthy margin too. Mike McDaniel also doesn't run a whole lot of 11 personnel. During his time in Miami, only the Ravens ran less out of 11 personnel than the Dolphins did. The Dolphins were tied with the 49ers. Fewer wide receivers on the field means more of a target funnel to the wide receivers who are on the field. Over the last two seasons, Maconkey has a 2.52 yards per out run rate on routes with one or two wide receivers on the field. And his targets per out run on those types of plays is 26%. When there's been more than two wide receivers on the field, his yards per out run falls down to 1.83 from 2.52. His targets per out run goes from 26% to 21%. That's a pretty significant difference. This goes for a lot of us, but I think we're all pretty bullish on what this Chargers offense might be able to do this year. They could be a top five offense pretty easily. Lad Maconkey is attached to a good quarterback. There's a lot to like about this situation, so yes, I've been drafting Lad Maconkey. This has questions from Phil from The Members Hub. It says, "On your recent show with Rich Rebar, you discussed drafting Ramondre Stephenson over Travian Henderson in certain circumstances. The main argument being, "Pass pro prowess and trust from the coaching staff." Hasn't that logic failed us time and time again with favoring a current starter over the more explosive younger player? I'm thinking of Zach Moss and the Bengals late career Cowboy Zeke, Damian Harris, ironically involving Ramondre. Can you drill down further into how the argument is different with Ramondre this season? I think the very clear difference here is that you're making the assumption that Ramondre Stephenson is a worse player than the guys you just mentioned. Late career Ezekiel Elliott is not Ramondre Stephenson. Damian Harris, a guy with zero pass-catching chops, is not Ramondre Stephenson. Zach Moss is not Ramondre Stephenson. Look, I was on the Henderson side last year. Trust me, I get the allure. But I also recognize that Stephenson played really well. He was better than I anticipated, especially during the second half of the season. I've said it before on the show, but Stephenson was first in the NFL last year and rushing arts over-expected per rush. He was first among qualified running backs and catch rate over-expected. And keep in mind, with some of the other examples that you're showing, we don't have a year-long sample of those players playing ahead of the more explosive player in their backfields. We do with New England. To the point where Henderson was a relevant in the playoffs. And look, I'm not saying that Henderson won't matter at all in fantasy football. He will. There's still a lot to like about his profile. But I do think there's a lot more substance to this Ramondre over-travy on thing than a lot of those instances in the past. Not only that, but with a lot of those instances, I was in on the more explosive back. The younger player, the seemingly upside player. I just think we can't deny what we saw last year. And honestly, what we're hearing out in New England this year. This says questions from Twitters from @Jaysman1. It says, "For teams drafting from 103 or 104 in PPR, do you consider heavy wide receiver builds as a viable approach? Often the top running backs are gone by that two-three turn, so does pivoting make more sense? Either a wide receiver wide receiver or wide receiver bower's build? Do we just let the tears guide us? Thanks." So I did a Reddit AMA this week and shout out to the fantasy football subreddit. But this was a question I got asked like eight different times. And it's a super, super valid question. In a vacuum, I like Jamar Chase and Pukinakua more than Christian McCaffrey. But the way that most draft boards fall if you get one of those wide receivers in the top half of the first round, you're going to miss out on that really good running back tier in round two. And then you may not love who you're staring at in round three at running back. Especially if someone like Nico Collins falls or someone like George Pickens is there. You might want to go wide receiver once again. I think that's the bigger deal here. In your question, you're only talking about the first two rounds. It's really about the first three rounds. So all this has made me shift my tiers a bit to putting CMC in that second tier. You have Gibbs and Beige on in tier one, but then if you'd rather go with the running back in the first round, knowing that you can get two very good wide receivers in rounds two and three, you may have to just take a chance on Christian McCaffrey. And if you don't want CMC, I get it. I'm still drafting him because the upside is clearly insane. But maybe you take on a chase or apuca and you immediately like try to trade. I just know that once you get into round four, round five, running back just gets a lot more questionable. So it just depends on your comfort level. If you go with chase or apuca, you should be aware that you're potentially going with a zero RB type build. That's fine. Just know what you're getting into and how to build that kind of team before it just completely surprises you. This has questions from Roger and it says JJ. It sounds like two is having a terrible camp and won't be starting for the Falcons. Is there any concern at all for Drake London? Thanks. So I did talk about this a little bit on the late round show this week, but I want to dig into these splits a little bit more because they're kind of interesting. Drake London over the last two years. He's run 384 routes with Michael Penix under center. He's at 543 without Penix. On routes run with Michael Penix, London has an absurd 2.99 yards per out run rate. He's a 33.6% targets per out run rate and he's had 0.63 ppr points per out run. For context, those numbers would only rank behind Pukinakua when looking at the 2024 and 2025 seasons. On his routes without Michael Penix, we're looking at 1.92 yards per out run over a full yard lower, a 26% targets per out run rate, and 0.44 ppr points per out run. It's truly been night and day. I thought maybe Tuah would be able to step in and at least be a distributor to where it wouldn't matter a ton, but it's very clear that we want Michael Penix for Drake London. Based on how things have gone for Tuah and Camp, there's at least some upside here, and it looks like it's at least trending in that direction, thankfully. The last question this week is from Travis from the members hub and it says, "Maybe this is a question, maybe this is a vent. I'm not too sure, but I find the trends pre-fantasy seasons so perplexing." Wide receivers were the talk of the town over the last few years, but now it seems like everyone's talking about running back, running back. People seem to just follow the results of the previous year and think it translates to the next. I just don't understand why this occurs. My gut tells me this is all noise, but my mind says, "Are the masses right?" "PS, with your help, I'm officially the back-to-back-to-back three-time champ of my homelike. And I credit it to your infoing guidance. Here's to becoming the four-time." So first off, congrats on the success, but that was not me. You're the one managing your team, but I do appreciate the love. Second, I wrote about this a bit in the draft guide this year, but running back ADP isn't so dramatically different this year compared to last year. I mean, there's a difference, but it may not be as big of a difference as you think. So much so that people are kind of losing their mind over it. Now, I did that portion of the guide back in early July, so I'll refresh that a little bit because obviously we're in later August. And I'll look at Fantasy Pro's consensus ADP from 2025 versus 2026. When looking at the top five rounds in the 12-team leagues of the top 60 picks, this year we're seeing 26 running backs get drafted versus 24 last year. So really not that big of a difference. Round one, six running backs were drafted both years. Round two, you have five last year, six this year. Round three, you had three last year, and five this year. Round four, you had six last year, five this year, and then in round five, you had four both seasons. So you can kind of see that running back is going a little bit earlier, but it's just not this completely different environment. Now there are pockets within those rounds where running backs did move. RB1-RB5 is basically in the same spot year over year, but everything from like RB8 downward is a little bit earlier. How we define going a little bit earlier is up to interpretation though. RB1s are generally going two spots earlier than last year. RB2s, about five spots, which is a little bit more meaningful, and overall among RB1s and RB2s we're talking like three spots earlier than last year on average. But yes, they are going earlier. Is it so crazy though that everyone's just reacting to what happened last season? I don't think so. I kind of think the market's being reasonable. We have another data point of the NFL trending into a more run heavy league with heavy personnel, which has helped flatten wide receiver while growing the depth they're running back. That may make it seem like that we should be making sure we get elite wide receivers, because they're big difference makers. If you get one of those elite wide outs, you're getting a big edge at the position. But I would argue that we're kind of doing that in drafts right now. RB1s, where we usually get the best production, like top 10, top 12 running max, they've usually separated themselves historically in terms of preseason expectation versus postseason result. Like it's really weird how it all formulates every year, but RB1s, like top 10, top 12 running max, they're usually the ones giving you the best edge. Since those difference makers are off the board, teams start drafting a lot of wide receivers. And obviously the super stud wide receivers, they're being drafted among those running backs. So we are elevating the projected difference makers at wide receiver. The Jamar Chase, Pukinakua, CD Lamb, Jackson Smith and Jigma, Aminra St Brown. So like I think a lot of that is logical and not just some response to what happened last year. Now, is there validity to the fact that running back has stayed pretty healthy? Yes, definitely. The thing is, even if we see more running back injuries, which I do think we're going to see unfortunately, it doesn't take away from some of the research that we did at late round fantasy football this offseason. Like how satellite running backs are slowly dying, we're not seeing as many James Whites and Chris Thompson's anymore. And more of our traditional RB2 types of fantasy football, they're seeing more volume through the air to help give them better floors. I talked about that with Brandon Godula on episode 1108. Even if more injuries occur, which by the way, like I said, I think it's probably going to happen. I do think that we'll still see better play from running backs based on some of that research. Beyond that though, wide receiver is just pretty flat. That's something I talked about at the start of the offseason on the death of the fantasy football wide receiver too. I do think we're going to see a little bit more fluff at that position this year, just given where some of these guys moved in the sheer talent that we have at the position. With the true difference making alphas at wide receiver, they're going early, like I said. And when that next tier is deep, it means you can take a chance on a running back early while still getting good talent at wide receiver after doing so. Look in the end, fading market sentiment is usually a good strategy in fantasy football. The market makes assumptions. We should probably question those assumptions because we usually think that we know way more than we actually do. In this case, I do think that the market's kind of overriding some specific running backs in the first five rounds. Sure, but that's no different than any other year. There are definitely pockets where I'd rather take a chance at a wide receiver than a running back over the first five rounds of a draft. But I don't think this is a really weird response to another season of run heavy, heavy personal offenses. I think the market's actually doing what it should be doing. And honestly, I think the way that drafts are moving, the way that they're set up, they're allowing us to go in a lot of different directions with our builds. So I guess to answer your question more directly, I do not think a running back running back start is totally necessary no matter what. I do think they're parts of your draft where it's a pretty good look though, like the back half of round one. That one to turn area has some serious difference making backs. And then you can easily loop around the next three rounds and get awesome wide receivers. We also have to be truthful here and that ADP matters for how we draft, even if we disagree with ADP. If the market's being completely irrational, we can't just ignore that. We can't just do the opposite of that because then we can run out of certain positions. Like if you think the market is drafting running backs too early, but you're draft, your legmates just keep drafting running backs over and over and over again. At some point, you have to react to what the market is doing. You can't just ignore it. And the way that things are set up right now, like I said, there are pockets if you're draft where it does make sense to go running back running back. Just based on what ADP is showing and based on how the market is behaving. But then like I said earlier, there are spots in the draft where 0RB makes plenty of sense. I think it's uncomfortable, but I wouldn't shock me at all if there are some leagues out there this year where 0RB does really, really well. I think that's why I don't see ADP the same way that others are seeing it this year. The way ADP falls, there are actually a ton of different ways to approach drafts this year. You can kind of choose your own adventure based on your league settings and what you're comfortable with. And honestly, that's the way it should be. That's it for today's show though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast, make sure you are researching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Thank you. me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Early next week Tuesday's episode, it's going to be the bold predictions episode. People love this thing every single year and I've been hearing from you guys as the when that thing is going to be published. It's going to be published on Tuesday. But here's the catch. There are additional bold predictions via the late round newsletter. And that's going to be released on Wednesday next week. If you're not subscribed to the newsletter, do it right now. Go to late round.com, click newsletter and just submit your email address. You're going to want to do that for the season anyway. Again, late round.com, just click newsletter. Otherwise, everyone, thanks for listening this week. Greatly appreciate it. Crush your drafts this weekend and I'll catch you next week. The new NFL season is here and you should be listening to NFL Daily as we march along to Super Bowl 61. You'll have fresh content in your feed every day, all season long. That game winning drive, maybe it's her, but maybe it's Gino, maybe it's my homes. If Fernando Mendoza or any of those rookies are balling out, we'll break down the tape. Join me, Greg Rosenthal and an all-star cast of co-hosts as we preview and recap every game. Listen to NFL Daily on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. If you love football and want to understand what's really happening on the field, check out our show NFL Pro. Every week we break down the biggest plays, trends and matchups using exclusive next-gen stats, insights and NFL content you will not find anywhere else. Whether you're new to football, a fantasy football finag, or a die-hard fan, NFL Pro will help you analyze the game like a pro. Listen to NFL Pro on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.