1026: Mailbag - Chase Brown Panic, Drake London's Performance, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

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

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 1026 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings.

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Now let's get to these mailbag questions.

The first question this week is from Patrick on Patreon. It says, Hi JJ, I want to know your thoughts on Jaden Blue. Can you speculate to what might be holding him back, and where do you have him rest of season compared to guys like Woody Marx and Brichard Smith? Should I continue to hold on to Blue for when he finally gets his chance, or is it time to let him go? Thanks for all your great content and community. So I know after week one I said to hold Jaden Blue, and now it's been three weeks and he hasn't been playing. Now, fortunately, after week one, I didn't say Javont A. Williams was a sell, or else I'd be really cooked. But in all seriousness, holding or not holding Blue, it's going to come down to your own roster and the depth of your league. I play in leagues that are deep, not all of them, but a lot of them, and in those leagues, you can afford to hold on to a player like Blue, and most 12-teamers, you could have probably dropped him last week when he was inactive. Now, that being said, I'm kind of interested to see what happens with CD Lam being out. If they want to get another dynamic player in that offense. So maybe wait and see if he's inactive once again this week. But like, the question of speculating on what might be holding him back? The dude was a day-three pick. I know that I liked him as a prospect. I'm not running away from that. I thought he was a good redraft selection, and that was wrong, more than likely. But I've come across this a lot in the first few weeks of the season. A lot of the, I can't believe I drafted player X when that player isn't doing anything right now. Like Travis Hunter. People are so upset that they drafted Hunter when he's not playing as much as we expected on offense. Look guys, you're gonna have a lot of misses in fantasy football. It's why me as an analyst, it would be really stupid for me to come on my show and act like I don't miss anything. I'm gonna miss stuff all the time. So is everybody else. That's the way this game is played. You're often gonna have more misses than hits because there are only gonna be a handful of True League winners every single year. If you spent a 6th round pick on Travis Hunter and Travis Hunter Buss, you're not completely screwed. At that moment, you took a shot on upside, which is exactly what you should do in fantasy football. Because again, there are only a handful of League winners. It's just that I'd say for Hunter, like the 10th percentile outcome is currently hitting. A lot of things have not gone his way from a fantasy perspective, and that's unfortunate. But it's gonna happen all the time. And you need to stop assuming or thinking that every move that you make is going to be perfection. We're playing a game where we're trying to forecast how humans are gonna perform in a sport. Same exact thing with Jaden Blue. He might not be NFL ready, period. He's not the typical NFL running back. He's undersized, he didn't see a lot of work in college. I think he's a good pass catcher, he's dynamic, but he's certainly not typical. And it hasn't happened, at least not yet. I don't know exactly why it hasn't happened, because I can't evaluate anything. He hasn't been on the field. Only the coaching staff knows. But it's not like he was a slam dunk prospect. We're not talking about Ash Gingenti here. This goes into another question that I got this week from at 80s underscore hairband on Twitter. They asked to talk about Caleb Johnson, and what was missed with his evaluation. If this is just an Arthur Smith shenanigans thing. And then they finished by saying, quote, I'm sick to my stomach, passing on Warren in a couple of leagues and drafting this guy. Now, fortunately, one of the things that has gone my way this year, unlike the Jaden Blue stuff, was liking Jalen Warren more than Caleb Johnson. But I feel for people who drafted Johnson. It's not like I thought that he was a horrible, horrible draft pick. It's not like I thought that he would be inactive in week three. I thought he had a pretty complete profile as a prospect. But it's impossible to know exactly what's going on when we haven't actually had an opportunity to evaluate these players on a football field. We're taking the coaching staff's word for it. They're saying that they're not capable, they're not ready. All we've really seen from Caleb Johnson is a bonehead mistake on a kick return, and then two random rush attempts where the offensive line didn't get that much push. It's okay to not have full answers for some of this stuff. But we should understand history. And typically, when things go down a certain way with how coaches handle their players, typically those coaches aren't going to be massively, massively incorrect. Like if Caleb Johnson doesn't play a decent number of snaps this season, he's almost definitely not going to become something in fantasy football. Same deal with Jaden Blue. So we move on to the players that we have seen, that we can evaluate. Woody Marks. I think he's looked apart, and honestly, he's played a little bit bigger than what his frame suggests. I like what I see and I like the trajectory on the peripherals front. Now, I don't think he's going to turn into a league winner the same way that I think Baishal Tooten could, but I think Marks can be usable. Brichard Smith. Tough to really go all in when he's a little bit smaller, but I'm still holding out some hope that the Chiefs could use him in like a Jarek McKinnon like role, because they need to do something with those running backs. And when a situation calls for a change, I want to be ahead of that potential change. I just think that we need to take a step back and remember that these were all relatively low cost players, Caleb Johnson aside. They had pretty low odds of hitting in the first place. I did an episode of the show back in March on the truth about day three draft selections. It's so rare for these guys to be consistent fantasy starters. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't throw those darts. We should, because the alternatives in the late rounds of your draft, the alternatives on the waiver wire, they're not very good either. But we're lucky to have just two or three decent hits from day three each year. Just like we're lucky to have two or three decent hits off the waiver wire for veterans. So those are my thoughts. Hopefully, you were able to take away something from my rambling. I think the general message here is that it's okay to not have an answer for some things. We're making educated guesses based on the information that we have. And with a player like Blue, we basically have no information, aside from the fact that he can't dress. But we have to take the coach's word for it to some degree and not just have take lock forever.