1003: Early-Season Schedule Analysis

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 1003 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, 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 $15 million Best Ball Contest for just $20, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of $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 And Connecticut help is available for problem gambling, call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. 18 plus in most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply, void where prohibited, one per customer. Enter the Best Ball $15 million headline contest by 9-425 to get one bonus entry. $20 entry required, reward expires in 30 days, see terms at draftkings.com/nfl-best-ball.

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Analyzing schedules is always a controversial topic in fantasy football. On one hand, no one's played a game yet. We don't know exactly how good or bad certain matchups are. Or I should say, we're not very confident in knowing. But I don't see the exercise of forecasting hard and easy schedules as any different than forecasting offensive line play or pass rates or any other thing that we're forecasting in fantasy football. And doing this each year, this exact exercise, has been really, really helpful. Anyone who's listened to this episode in the past can probably attest to that. Just look at last year as an example. I brought up Washington's easier start to the season across their first four games. And who knows if that helped the passing attack do what they did last year. They got off on the right foot. Regardless, so they faced the Bucks, the Giants, the Bengals, and the Cardinals to kick off their season. Jaden Daniels averaged 23.4 points per game during that stretch. He was two points per game lower throughout the rest of the season. And those were the first four games of his entire NFL career. Or there's the Chargers. I talked up their first two games of the season because they faced the Raiders and the Panthers last year. And I mentioned that backfield in particular. And as we know, JK Dobbins got off to a really hot start last year. Now, the one miss from last year was probably the Green Bay passing attack. And now they had a really soft schedule through about week nine. Though I guess Jordan Love did technically average more points per game during that split. Than out of it last year. And Love was banged up too. Regardless, I would imagine listeners have gotten something from this show in the past. Because I know it's been helpful for me in particular. And I'm typically creating content that interests me as a fantasy player as well. Just like you, I'm trying to win some leagues. To me though, getting players who have good early season schedules can help your team get off to a hot start. And it can help your team simply increase in value. There's also nothing worse than drafting a starter player who underperforms to start the season. Even if there's a schedule-based reason for that. It's not easy to fully grasp that as it's happening. So today, we're going to look at some early season schedules for fantasy assets to see if we should give them a very slight boost in our rankings or maybe a little bit of a downgrade. This is a tiebreaker more than anything else for these guys. But it's still something to keep in mind for all the reasons I just talked through. Now, I'm going to split today's episode up into two groups. Rushing Attacks and Passing Attacks. We'll go through all of the rushing attacks who may get off to bad and good starts and then we'll move to passing games. And of course, I try to approach this mathematically and logically, or as much as I could. A lot of times, people do this analysis by looking at last season's numbers. I don't find that to be as useful. Instead, I'm using a few sources. Projected win totals for each team, sharp football's front seven rankings, which obviously just aren't focused on run stopping, but they are helpful. And then, PFF's secondary rankings. Those all help me to find some good and bad schedules for these fantasy assets. Alright, we good to go? Let's do this.