1011: 15 Transactions for Week 1

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

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Sponsored by DK. Well, we've officially made it. It's the first 15 Transactions episode of the season. For those of you who are new, welcome. This is the episode each week where I talk about who to buy, sell, add, and drop in fantasy football. I write a newsletter with all these recommendations and I turn it into this podcast episode. You can find that newsletter by signing up for free over on lateround.com. So with all that in mind, let's get this season started.

Add Olly Gordon. Miami's backfield is kind of a mess right now. Devon Achan is set to return this week from this calf injury, but who knows what happens there? You never know what can happen with something like that. And then there's Jalen Wright who had some sort of leg operation. He's gonna be sidelined for a bit. And then as we know, Alexander Madison, he's been out for the year with a neck injury. So the next man up in this backfield is Olly Gordon. Now, Gordon was a day three selection in last April's draft, so it's really hard for him to have a great ZAP model score. And that's my prospect model, the ZAP model. It's called the Zachariason Adjusted Prospect Model because I'm very, very creative. Draft capital is an input in that model. So a round six selection, which is what Olly Gordon was, it's gonna be really hard for a player like that to have a crazy high score. But with that being said, Gordon's score was 63.4. That was way better than expected given that draft capital. The model saw him as undervalued. It gave him a low risk draft capital delta. All that says is that the model liked him more than the NFL did. That's because he had good size and his age-adjusted production was really strong, which isn't that much of a surprise because he won the Doak Walker Award. That's for the best running back in college football. He won that a couple of years ago. He got statistical comps in the model of James Connor and Ramandre Stevenson. Now look, Devon Aitchin's fantasy value, it really comes down to receiving. He's being selected high in fantasy drafts because of what he can do through the air. Last year, his running back rush air per game rate in non-injured games was 58.5%. That's a good number. It's not an elite number, and it leaves room for another running back to see some volume. And that other running back in this backfield right now is Oli Gordon. And Gordon's still out there in two-thirds of Yahoo! Leagues. And for the record, when I mentioned the percent roster numbers on this show, I can only work with the information that's out there. I understand that some of you are in five, ten fantasy leagues and he's not available in any of them. But I found that Yahoo! is a good indicator for what the average league really looks like. And I'm speaking to a wide variety of people. So please don't attack me when you hear these numbers. But regardless of all that, Ollie Gordon, a very clear ad right now. Buy Drake May. So look, if you consume Late-Round Fantasy Football content this summer, you're not surprised by me saying to buy Drake May right now. He, to me, was the most obvious late-round quarterback of the season. We know that rushing production is really important for quarterback success in fantasy football. And Drake May gave us that as a rookie. The only full-time quarterback starters last year to average more rushing yards per game than Drake May, Lamar Jackson, Jaden Daniels, Jalen Hurts and Kyler Murray. Drake May gave us over 4 points per game via rushing alone. As I talked about earlier this offseason on the show, second-year quarterbacks have been really good bets in that QB7 to QB18 range historically in fantasy football drafts. And that's exactly where Drake May was being drafted. And there's really some chance that you won't get another opportunity to buy into Drake May. The Patriots get the Raiders and the Dolphins over their first two games of the season. According to Pro Football Focus's preseason secondary rankings, both Vegas and Miami have bottom five pass defenses going into the season. So if Drake May goes off, his price is going to soar. By Trevion Henderson. So if any of you guys are fans of the Fantasy Footballers, which I'm sure a lot of you are, then you might have heard last week they had their Fantasy MVP show, and I was featured on that show. I submitted my MVP, and my MVP was Trevion Henderson. So naturally, I've got to talk him up on this first 15 Transactions episode. Let's talk about the Zat model first. Henderson looked good in that model, and that's because his breakout score, which is derived from a player's age and schedule-adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt numbers, it was an impressive 86.4. He had 312 receiving yards on 27 catches as a freshman at Ohio State, with Jackson Smith and Jigba, Garrett Wilson, Chris Alave, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Igbuka on that same team. He still had 312 receiving yards. Now Trevion Henderson is on a team with way worse pass catchers than what he competed with in college. And he's in a backfield with Ramondre Stevenson who's coming off a season where he had a really poor yards per out run rate. And as we know at Running Back, that's predictive of future target share. I don't think it would be that surprising if Trevion Henderson ends this season with like a 13 or 14 percent target share. What we should be worried about is the ground game work. But a lot of receiving volume can make up for a lack of rush attempts, a lack of rushing production. In fact, since 2011, we've seen five instances where a Running Back finished the season with a 50 percent to 60 percent Running Back rush share and a 13 percent to 16 percent target share. Both of those numbers, like I said last week in the Bold Predictions episode, both of those numbers are well within Trevion Henderson's range of outcomes. Those five running backs in PPR points per game finished 18th, 13th, 12th, 8th, and 6th. I really do think a top 10 season is in Trevion Henderson's range of outcomes. But he also has a really high floor because of how they're going to deploy him more than likely as a pass catcher. And just like Drake May, Henderson can get off to a hot start as well because they get the Raiders and Dolphins over the first two weeks of the season. Add Xavier LeGette. Look, I'll just be straight up. Xavier LeGette was not a draft target of mine throughout the summer. I just didn't think he was that impressive of a prospect. And in year one, nothing really changed my opinion. I thought that Jalen Coker was the best rookie wide receiver for the Panthers last year. But as we know, Coker is now on IR. He has his quad injury. So Xavier LeGette is going to get more opportunity. And look, I know a lot of people are going to say, Xavier LeGette and Jalen Coker, they basically play two different wide receiver positions. Jalen Coker has been more of a slot guy. LeGette is going to play on the perimeter. But that's not really how projections work. There's only a 100% target share to go around in an offense. If there's a worse wide receiver now playing in the slot, that's going to help Tetaroa McMillan and Xavier LeGette, among other pass catchers in that Panthers offense. The question is, will LeGette capitalize? Like I already said, I don't think he's that special of a wide receiver. He had question marks littered throughout his prospect profile when he was coming out last year. And he came through as a rookie with a pretty bad 1.19 yards per out run rate. And he had opportunity last year to really become an alpha in that offense. But I'll be honest, I've been adding him in drafts ever since that Coker injury. Because this game of fantasy football has plenty of variance. You're throwing a late round dart throw to get LeGette. Or in this case, he's just sitting on the waiver wire. He's still out there in a ton of leagues. And here's one of the main reasons that I think you should be going after him. Carolina gets Jacksonville, Arizona, Atlanta, Miami, and Dallas in five of their first six games this year. Not a single one of those secondaries should scare you at all as a fantasy manager, at least not right now. So we could see some usable weeks from Xavier LeGette.