1058: Mailbag - Bucky Irving's Outlook, Bo Nix's Struggles, 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, 1058 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I've got nothing for you to kick off today's show. Just make sure you subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the newsletter, and make sure you're not yelling at me when I inevitably get a ton of stuff wrong on today's show. Nothing but love for all of you. Let's get to these questions.

The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at TLWTravis. It says, how are you viewing Baishal Tooten, Kyle Menungai, Sean Tucker, and other similar running backs who appear to be earning more work approaching RB1B for their teams? Who do you like best rest of season to put on your bench? So it's kind of hard to know which other similar running backs you're talking about here, but I can at least talk through those three guys and give you an idea of where I stand. I say this to late round subscribers almost weekly when I do my rest of season rankings, but the hardest part about those rankings is balancing upside with immediate production. Like, Brian Robinson has a decent amount of upside, but his immediate production is not going to be there. Like, I'm ranking Alvin Kamara ahead of Blake Corum this week. I believe Kamara is going to score more points, but Blake Corum undoubtedly has more upside rest of season than Alvin Kamara does. If Kyron Williams were to get hurt, we're talking about a lead back in one of the best offensive environments in football. So how do you rank them? I mean, I could argue strongly that there are some teams out there that would actually be better with Blake Corum than Alvin Kamara, that that's a better option for their bench. And I feel the exact same way when looking at questions like this. I at least go through a very similar exercise. Bayshaw Tutin and Kyle Menungai are actually in pretty similar situations at this point. And that's if we assume that Tutin is going to continue to see a lot of work in that backfield like he did in week 11 before he got hurt. But if he keeps seeing that kind of work, his backfield split might look like Chicago's. But either way, you're not like starting Kyle Menungai every single week as long as Deandre Swift is back and healthy. Even if Menungai has like a one or two point edge in weekly projection versus Tutin, it still doesn't make him something that you want to start each and every week. So from that perspective, you're probably just looking at the upside case. And the upside case is that Tutin is a better prospect, in my opinion, of course, who's in a pretty comparable situation overall. Maybe it's slightly worse because the Bears have averaged like 0.3 more PPR points per game as a backfield this year, but it's overall comparable enough. And I also think that Tutin has more big play and receiving ability. That's why I have Tutin ahead of Kyle Menunggai rest of season. Now, I had Sean Tucker a decent bit below those two running backs in my rest of season rankings this week, because those rankings made the assumption that Bucky Irving would be back soon. But we've been saying that for like a month now. And it's not like things have gotten that much more optimistic this week. I think Tucker has worked himself into a bigger role. And as I'll talk about in a second, Tampa Bay is a pretty nice rest of season schedule. The weird thing with Tucker is that if everyone's healthy, I'd have him last on this list probably, because he does need multiple things to happen in order for him to be like that true RB one in his backfield, that bell cow. For Tutin and Menunggai, we only need one injury. And we saw that earlier this year with Kyle Menunggai when Deandre Swift was out. But I think there's a very real chance that we get more immediate production from Sean Tucker, given this Bucky Irving situation. So given everything I just said, you can look at your team, evaluate your team, and see what you need. Because that will dictate which one of these running max you should be rostering. And speaking of Bucky Irving, let's talk about this next question. This next question is from Twitter, and it's from Atlutijabuti. It says, What kind of production do you expect from Bucky Irving if he reverts to a 55% or so snap share player? He was a league winner last year on a similar share, but I have a hard time convincing myself he can repeat, and re-injury risk seems high. Perhaps he's a sell on the positive news. Well, since this question was sent to me, there hasn't been that much positive news with Bucky Irving. That's not your fault. Things have just changed over the last 24-48 hours. Not only is Irving's status still totally up in the air, but now we're getting reports about him being on more of a snap count when he does return, a ramp up period. But I got about a thousand Bucky Irving questions this week. So let's just talk about him. And let's first talk about his usage when he is healthy, when he's been healthy. Forget all the injury stuff for a second. Bucky Irving's usage before he went down this year, it was awesome. He saw no worse than a 13% target share in his four games, and he was averaging a 75% running back rush air per game rate. I mean, that's truly an elite combination. And that was not on a 55% snap share. He was closer to 70-75%. The snap share stuff from last year, and the difference between that and what we saw at the beginning of this season, it was really the pass catching. Like Bucky had a much more impactful receiving role to start this season, which is why he was in such a good spot. Just as an example, so you guys can wrap your head around this, Bucky hit a 50% route share just three times last year. He's done that three times this year, and it probably would have been all four of his games had he not gotten hurt. So his increased snap share isn't just him taking on more work on the ground. It's mostly that they were using him more as a receiver. We have to hope that that would continue, because that's going to be more sustainable and more valuable for Bucky Irving. Because yes, what he did down the stretch last year, not going to be super easy to repeat. When you're as efficient as he was last year, that's not easy to do year over year. But like, I don't see why Bucky Irving can't be a 60% running back rush air player with a 10% target share. Those are lower numbers than where he was at earlier this year, so we're banking on some of the injury stuff. We're embedding that in his projection. But that's still very strong within a good offense. Because his workload looks so good to start the year, that shows intent on the Buccaneer's end. Now, obviously, things have changed with this injury. But I don't think that means that Bucky Irving is like a total 50-50 player with Sean Tucker rest of season. As long as he's fully healthy. Now, obviously, the elephant in the room is that he's not healthy right now. If he was healthy, he would definitely be playing this week. At the time of this recording, I have no idea if that's the case. And honestly, it sounds more pessimistic than optimistic. And this is one of those cases where I know just as much as you guys do. I don't have any inside information on Bucky Irving's injury. And when he's back, like the report sent on Thursday, and how we would just generally view this kind of situation, there's going to be a ramp up period. And that's a good thing for someone like Sean Tucker, and why I talked about Tucker having better immediate production than Bayshaw Tutton and Kyle Menunggai, at least Kyle Menunggai. Here's the thing though, if I'm sitting there and I'm a playoff team, I don't think I would be selling Bucky Irving. If I need to win right now, sure, I can totally understand that. And then on the buy end, I might buy Bucky Irving if I could send bench assets for him. So buying him isn't out of the question either. It's just one of those scenarios where you have to know what's happening with your individual team. We're late in the season now. This isn't just one of those situations where it's week four and we're taking a chance for rest of season value. We know right now where our teams stand. A lot of you have bi-weeks already locked in. You know you're going to be a bi-week team. And if that's the case, it's a little bit easier to have Bucky Irving on your bench. But if you're a five-win team, then Bucky Irving is not helping you at all. But overall, I do think that there's still a decent chance that we get really good production from him in the fantasy playoffs. The Bucks get the Falcons, Panthers and Dolphins in weeks 15, 16 and 17 Right before that, they get the Cardinals and the Saints. So after this week against the Rams, the five remaining games for Tampa Bay in this fantasy season, they're all pretty much average to above average matchups for running backs. So overall, I think the sentiment here is to hold tight with Bucky Irving. Scared money don't make money. But if you absolutely need to sell because you need to win immediately, I totally get that. But if you're set, I wouldn't be aggressively trying to sell low. And maybe that comes back to bite you. Maybe you could get value right now and he's just going to be out rest of season. We don't know that. We don't have that answer. But what we do know is how they were using Bucky Irving earlier this year. And what we do know is that Bucky Irving is a very good running back. The Bucks are a team that need to stay competitive. And Bucky Irving is their best running back. So even if he reverts back to some of his usage from last year, because of this schedule situation, as long as he is healthy, I still think he's going to be pretty useful.