1004: Mailbag - Jordan Mason's Value, Elijah Arroyo's Outlook, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1004 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 the $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 that 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 $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 most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply, void where prohibited. Enter the Best Ball $15 million Headliner Contest by 9-4-25 to get one bonus entry. $20 entry required, reward expires in 30 days, see terms at draftkings.com/nfl-best-ball.

Sponsored by DK. It's a mailbag week. Let's get to these questions.

The first question is from Patreon. It's from Billy D and NC. It says, Hey, JJ, just started reviewing the 2025 draft guide. Great work. Thank you. My question is, what are your detailed thoughts on Jordan Mason of Minnesota? He appears to be a great athlete in a very good situation, yet you have him ranked as the 35th best running back in your redraft rankings. Do you think he has a good chance of beating this ranking and his ADP? So my rankings have him around RB 35 Like you said, fantasy pros ADP has met RB 38 So technically from that perspective, I'm ahead of the market. If I look at DraftKings best ball ADP, Mason's RB 30 But I would argue that he's an archetype of player that's a little bit more attractive in a best ball environment. Now let's talk about why. So Mason's coming over from San Francisco and he joins Aaron Jones in that Minnesota backfield. Jones is older now, which makes me feel old. But he's on the wrong side of the age curve. Mason is right in his prime. And he's coming off an incredibly strong season on the ground. According to NextGen stats, among qualified running backs last year, only Derek Henry and Saquon Barkley were better than Jordan Mason in rushing yards over expected per attempt. And Mason was seventh in yards after contact per attempt. And then we get these reports like the one that we saw earlier this week, saying that their workload split, Jordan Mason versus Aaron Jones, is going to be relatively equal this year. So why have any difference in ADP between these two players, if their workload split is going to be even? Now I talked about this a bit on becoming a best ball bro, and then I brought it up in more depth within the Late-Round Fantasy Football newsletter this week. But we have to do our own filtering when we get reports from beat writers. We can't just take what they say and not try to provide any context surrounding it. You know, I was going to do another question for this week's mailbag, but I think it plays into what I'm about to talk about here. It's from at the Dave from work on Twitter, and it says, What guidelines do you find helpful when distinguishing between signal and noise this time of year? Everyone wants to find the next big thing in fantasy, but we also don't want to overreact to situational reps or guys playing in shells. So we get a report that says, hey, Jordan Mason and Aaron Jones, they're essentially going to split their work in half. But we're not asking about the perspective of who's writing that report. Generally speaking, the public and non-fantasy football managers, they're not going to care about receiving work as much as we should. Like in a full PPR environment, a running back target since 2014, so not a reception, but a target, it's been worth one and a half PPR points. A running back rush has been worth 0.6 points. Even in standard formats where you get zero points per reception, targets are more valuable than rush attempts. I promise this is going somewhere. When I do my draft guide each year, one of the obvious consistent themes is that the market is always undervaluing pass catching at running back. If you can find a pass catching running back in the middle rounds, you generally will do well with that player. So let's look back at this Minnesota backfield. Someone says the backfield is going to be 50-50, but that's usually coming from the perspective of just general workload. They're not necessarily approaching this and saying this from the perspective of weighted opportunity. So we have to do our own analysis and place it on top. We know Jordan Mason is going to be involved, but what type of role is he probably going to play? Well, we know he was good on the ground last year, and he's been a good ground game running back throughout much of his career. I wouldn't be shocked if he ends up out attempting Aaron Jones this year. Like, I think that's in his range of outcomes. But where my concern lies is on the pass catching side, something that doesn't get nearly as much focus with these headline reading discussions. Mason played college football at Georgia Tech, and he played alongside this pretty good running back named Jumeir Gibbs. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. So, we can forgive Mason for maybe not having the most robust receiving profile in the world while in college. With that being said, his per route run efficiency was below average throughout that time. Then he gets to the NFL, and he's been a pretty ineffective receiver in the NFL. Even last season when he was playing as San Francisco's lead back and an offense where we know they're open minded about throwing the ball to the running back. Mason ended the year with 14 total targets. He had a sub 4% target share per game rate. He had a yards per hour run rate of.54. He's been below average as a receiver to kick off his career. What does Aaron Jones do well? He's a great receiver. It would make total sense to keep Jones in that role while Jordan Mason takes some more early down stuff. So, my stance on Mason is that he could see projection wise, like 45% of Minnesota's running back rushes this year. Aaron Jones then sees a similar number, and then a handful of other guys kind of fill out from there. And Mason probably gets more goal line work than Aaron Jones does. When I say that Jordan Mason is going to get goal line work though, don't mistake that to mean that Jordan Mason is going to see all of the rushing touchdowns for Minnesota. It just means that when they're close to the end zone, he's probably going to be on the field. And that's going to give him a higher share of those rushing touchdowns. But my fear with upside with Mason is the pass catching. Plain and simple. We don't see league-winning players in fantasy football very often without that strong target share. So without it, I don't know if Mason really has that like strong RB2 level to get to. He's not a bad pick. And I do think in best ball, this is a totally different discussion. But he's not a clear-cut target for me. He's just someone I'm at-market with because of the pass-catching profile.