1001: Mailbag - The Browns Backfield, Isiah Pacheco, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1001 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season is 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 $15 million Best Ball contest for just $20, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of that $15 million, 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 $15 million. 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 $20 Best Ball lineup to play for a share of $15 million and get a second ticket to play free for a share of that $15 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, call 1-800-GAMBLER. In New York, call 8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY to 467369 In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-77777 or visit ccpg.org. 18 plus the most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply, void where prohibited, one per customer. Enter the Best Ball $50 million Headliner Contest by 9-425 to get one bonus entry. $20 entry fee required. Reward expires in 30 days. See terms at draftkings.com/nfldashbestdashball.

Sponsored by DK. Now, let's get to these mailbag questions.

The first question is from Twitter. It's from the first man underscore Adam. It says, do you use sports books when researching player stats and projections specifically for over underlines or projections? No, I don't. There was a great comment about this exact topic this week by established the runs Adam Levitan, and he's exactly right. And I'm just going to read it because he articulated it really well. It was a quote tweet about Rashi Rice and Jawan Jennings' prop lines. And this was before all the news broke with Rashi Rice. But he said, seen a bunch of these posts, think people should be very careful about using prop lines for fantasy. Number one, season long prop lines aren't that efficient. Limits in liquidity are very low. Number two, prop outcomes are binary. We don't get paid more if Rashi Rice goes for 1800 yards. Number three, when you don't get paid on ceiling outcomes, it's harder to accept the floor outcomes. For Rice, there's tail risk on the knee and suspension stuff. Number four, good fantasy rankings consider the full distribution of outcomes. Good prop lines are simply medians. Maybe Jennings goes for 800 yards 50% of the time and 1800 yards 1% of the time. Whereas Rice hits 1800 yards 20% of the time. That's a massive difference. Number five, books should be and are daring bettors to bet overs on season long props due to injury and chaos outcomes skew hard to left tail. Rookies guys off injury like Rashid Rice typically have far wider range of outcomes. So essentially these lines are giving us some median outcome when in fantasy football we're often not concerned with that median outcome. Now I removed part of this question that was from Patreon because it names someone else in the fantasy industry and I'm not here to disagree with someone else's take who can't defend it. But the player in question was Jared Goff and the question alluded to Goff having really good season long prop lines compared to other quarterbacks and then how that made him undervalued in fantasy. But this is exactly what I've been saying about Goff and why you can fall into this trap of thinking that he's a value. In fantasy football, we shouldn't be concerned about median outcomes at quarterback. Quarterback is the most replaceable position in the game. Now, it's hard to match the elite guys at the position, but you can get streamers each and every week and put together a low-end QB1 performance by points per game. And I know this factually because I've been doing that and tracking the results of my other podcasts living the stream. I've been doing that for the last 10 years. Low-end QB1 production is replaceable in 99% of leagues out there, maybe 98%, which means I don't care that Jared Goff might finish as the QB10 after being drafted as the QB11. He's literally been a top six quarterback in his career zero times. He's never scored 20 points per game. He's never been a serious difference making player. And this is not the season where I want to bet on that changing. He's coming off a high touchdown rate season, so his cost is higher. He lost his offensive coordinator. The Lions, they have more question marks on the offensive line than they did before. As a fantasy analyst, my job is to not tell you who's going to simply meet expectation because that doesn't win fantasy leagues. Like a lot of my fades this year, a lot of players I'm not aggressively drafting, they're guys who I fully understand can meet their ADP expectation, like Bryan Robinson and Jared Goff. But I don't think given Robinson's receiving upside that he's going to be something I'm upset about passing on. Same with Jared Goff and what he can do because he doesn't run the ball. Now, I could be wrong. Any of my predictions could be wrong, but that's where my analysis points to. With quarterback, it's even easier to make those adjustments and assumptions because they're arguably the most solved position in fantasy football. We know that if we miss out on someone who ends up as the QB9, the QB10, our fantasy season is far from over. It's far from ruined. Just know that these prop lines are not the types of lines that we should be worried about in season-long fantasy football. We should be far more concerned about the ceiling outcomes for these players throughout most of our draft, not the median ones. Now, maybe you could argue that they're more important for some of the early round picks, but definitely not past that point in your draft.