1042: Mailbag - Eagles Receivers, Tez Johnson, 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. In this episode 1042 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. There's no better way to get closer to the action than with DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first deposit of $5 or more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code LATEROUND to play free for your share of millions. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER in New York, call 8778-HOPE-NY in Connecticut, call 888-789-7777. 18 plus in most states, eligibility restrictions apply, ends December 31st. See terms at draftkings.com/promotions.

It's mailbag day, question time. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Andre. It says, Hey JJ, now that we're in the second half of the season, what are the larger themes we should be aware of? Rookies starting to break out, unknown league winners, particularly around the playoffs. How should we handle the back half of the season differently than the first half? Thanks. You have to think about what's different now compared to the start of the season. And what's different now is that we have a whole lot more information. We have a general idea of which players are the elite ones in fantasy. And we have a general idea of which defenses, which opponents are good and bad. And we can cater our strategy around those facts. Back in August, we could guess as to which schedules would be best in the fantasy playoffs. But we have more concrete evidence now. So when we're planning for the future, we can do it with a whole lot more confidence than we could six or seven weeks ago. So playing matchups, that's one thing that you can and should be doing differently. We also know, as your question alludes to, that over a large sample, rookies tend to perform much better during the second half of the season versus the first. So the flyers you've been holding on to, now isn't the time to drop those players if you can help it. We're going to see a lot of rookie breakouts that were both expected and unexpected. I guarantee it, because we do every single year. The other thing is just general roster management. Like I said, we know which players are elite and which ones aren't at this point, like at a high level. And in turn, when you look at your own league, when you look at your roster and your league mates' rosters, we know which teams are generally good and generally not good. Now for the great teams, you may want to take a safer, lower variance approach to your lineup construction. You might want to handcuff your own running back or even trade for a handcuff just to be on the safe side. Now on the other end, let's say that you're two and five right now. You're really just crossing your fingers for some crazy stuff to happen in your favor. You probably don't want to roster your own running backs backup. Instead, get a backup from another backfield because if that other backfield starter goes down, it injects a lot more optimism and a lot more upside into your two and five lineup. You really should be adjusting your roster build based on how your team is doing versus the rest of your league. I play pretty aggressively and I play with upside always in mind. But like I have some six and one teams right now where I'm like, okay, maybe I should start thinking about the safety of these teams over the next month or so. And the same goes for trading. If you're on the weaker side record wise, if you really need to change things up, you might need to make an uncomfortable trade. There's no reason not to if your team is not performing objectively. This is the time of year where you really need to evaluate the current state of your team. Then you can attack accordingly.

I actually got this next question a couple of times this week, including from the Spotify comment section. But I picked this email from Alan. It says, hey, JJ, love your work. What was Tez Johnson's ZAP score and what should we expect from him both short and long term? Thanks, Alan. So Tez Johnson had a wonderful ZAP score of 16 That's right, it was basically non-existent. Now, I wouldn't look too far into that specific number. And what I mean by that is, I would just label it as bad rather than comparing a score of 16 to a score of like 25 In the prospect guide each year, I show probability charts. They show you the probability of players in the past within specific buckets, getting different points per game thresholds across their first three years in the league. There are six different categories that I categorize these prospects into. I started doing this this past year because it gives people more context about the ZAP scores themselves. But Johnson falls into the lowest category, the dart throw category. But that category ranges from a ZAP score of all the way to a ZAP score of about 28 And then there's the waiver wire ad category that goes from 28 to about 52 The bottom line though is that dart throws, waiver wire ads, both of those categories, both of those buckets, they very, very, very rarely become something significant in fantasy football. Like, there's not actually some massive difference between those two categories. It's very, very, very minor. The ZAP model tries to predict a player's B2S, which is his best two seasons in PPR points per game across his first three years in the league. So if a player scores 10, 15, and 15 PPR points per game in his first three years, his B2S would be 15 It would be the average of his top two seasons. The model includes all wide receivers who were either drafted or at the NFL Combine since 2011 And just 0.6% of the wide receiver dart throws ended up scoring 12 or more PPR points per game in B2S. Meaning less than 1% of them have averaged 12 PPR points per game in their best two seasons across their first three in the league. Now that obviously is sustained success or decent success. And remember too, that points per game equals points divided by all games played. So Tez Johnson's would include games where he wasn't getting that much run. There's no perfect way of doing this. But regardless, that alone tells us that his odds of hitting big are not super high. And realistically, the model is going to care a lot more about that sustained wide receiver one, wide receiver two, maybe even wide receiver three production versus someone who could be a fill in when things break a certain way. But just to reiterate, I wouldn't even go crazy looking into that individual score. Because even the Waverwire ad group, the tier right above the Darthro one, just 1.5% of them have had B2S's of 12 or more PPR points per game across their first three in the league. If Tez Johnson becomes a legitimate fantasy starter long term, he'd be a pretty big outlier. The thing is though, even if I know that to be true, even if I know that the probability is not on Tez Johnson's side, the cost to acquire is not significant. This is the kind of stuff that always gets missed in outlier analysis. People think that if you're evaluating via analytics or via numbers, that you can't spot outliers. That's not it at all. No one can spot outliers. That's the point of them being an outlier. What we should do is look at range of outcomes, recognize that there's a higher ceiling with a player, and then look at the cost of that player. Look at the cost to acquire that guy in fantasy football. Like, this is how I felt about Kyle Menunggai this offseason. Menunggai was someone the model didn't really care for, but it's not like I had to pay a second or even third round rookie pick to get Menunggai. So I still drafted him even though the model said that he was pretty mid. I was way overweight with Kyle Menunggai in best ball this year. Because in the end, we have to remember two things with this stuff. Number one, this model is far from flawless. It's a guide. It's been really helpful for me through the years, but it's missed on plenty, and it'll miss on plenty more. We have to be open to that when the cost to acquire is not high. Number two, these are NFL players. When opportunities arise in the league, like we're seeing right now with Tez, given all these injuries, a lot of players have the ability to take advantage of that opportunity in some way. Like, let's go back to Kyle Menunggai. When we went into that 2025 NFL draft, we knew that whoever the Bears would take had a shot to be fantasy relevant, right? We were hoping for a day two pick, but there's a reason that day three backs from ambiguous backfields are the day three rookie running backs who hit most frequently. Because there's opportunity, even if that player is not spectacular long term. And I think Tez can be that kind of player. Now, the drawbacks to his ZAP model profile were that he was tiny and wide receiver weight is an input in the model, and then he actually didn't have the best production profile in the world. It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. His breakout score was just below 50, so that was below average. He was purely a slot player in college. He ran 87% of his routes from that area of the field. He maxed out an adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt at 2.39. That's adjusted for strength of opponent. The average in this class was just a little bit below that. But Tez Johnson also had five collegiate seasons to get there. And then obviously, he was a seventh round pick. He didn't get the draft capital. But now that we've seen him in the NFL, I think some of his athleticism, some of that twitchiness, it's translating. And my guess that his slow 40 time was also the result of him wanting to be bulkier at the combine to not weigh 140 pounds. And I've said this before about the Buccaneers. I said it with Emeka Ibuka when they drafted him. They don't really care about wide receiver alignment. On almost any other team, Tez Johnson would be purely a slot guy. I mean, the fact that Josh Downs and Jaden Reed are largely just slot guys tells you that teams operate that way. But this season, Johnson has a 47% slot rate. That's not low, but it's definitely not high. In week seven alone, Tez ran a lower percentage of routes from the slot than Sterling Shepherd. And I don't think this is just because they have a slot player in Sterling Shepherd, also now getting more run in this offense. Because last year, Sterling Shepherd had a 47% rate. They just rotate their wide receivers and they want gamers. That's what they probably see in Tez Johnson. He's a gamer. But I don't know if he's going to be a super high volume receiver at the next level. Like keep in mind, he still hasn't hit a 20% target share in a game yet, despite those nine targets on Monday night. So my stance is that I don't think we're looking at like some super legit long-term solution. He's more than likely a bench-asset long-term. Short-term, given what I've seen, he can be a reasonable wide receiver 3, wide receiver 4 during these bye weeks. And he has the ability to generate some big plays, so he can have some spiked weeks. And then as players get healthier, like if Jalen McMillan is feeling better, or if Chris Godwin is back, then Johnson becomes less relevant in fantasy football, unless he really, really breaks out over the next few weeks. And that's a big if. We haven't really heard anything about Jalen McMillan or Chris Godwin. I do think Tez Johnson is a really fun player though. I want him on my fantasy rosters right now. But those are all the reasons I don't see him as like a super legit long-term solution in fantasy, and why his zap score was as low as it was.