1098: Post-Draft Rookie Rankings

**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 1098 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I went over my pre-draft rookie rankings right before the draft, and then my post-draft rookie rankings were immediately in the prospect guide when that draft ended. But I don't do this post-draft rookie rankings episode right away. I let it sit for a minute. That's why you heard the analyzing front office decision making episode last week. That allowed me to talk more about these situations across the league and across the draft. But we're back with the rankings today. I'll be going through the first round of single quarterback rookie drafts, though I can tell you where I'd throw Fernando Mendoza and Ty Simpson in Superflex as well. It's a straightforward episode, but now that we have landing spots, we can talk about how I'm letting those landing spots dictate things.
Before getting to the post-draft rankings, I just want to send another reminder about the Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's all updated, it's ready for your rookie drafts. Over 170 pages of content, including a background on the ZAP models, prospect write-ups for every guy who is at the combine, year two profile write-ups, rankings, and more. You can find it over on lateround.com, and it will deliver immediately to your email inbox after you purchase. Again, that's lateround.com.
Unsurprisingly, my 101 didn't change pre to post draft. It's still Jeremiah Love. I don't need to go crazy talking about how good Jeremiah Love is as a prospect. I talked about that a couple of weeks ago, but the TLDR, 88th percentile career avoided tackles per attempt rate, 75th percentile explosive run rate, 96th percentile yards after contact per attempt, 94th percentile age and schedule adjusted total yards per team play in his best season, the list goes on and on. If there's anything that you might point to and say that could have been slightly better analytically, it's probably his 12 percent best season reception share. That's a 65th percentile number in the ZAP model. But you add all of the context on top of him being a great athlete and sharing a backfield with someone who ended up going round one, it's an awesome profile. People are going to hate the landing spot. Yeah, I would have liked a place like Washington more than Arizona.
We could very easily see another Ashton Gentey-like season here, where Love is maybe losing some work to start the year, probably to Tyler Algier, especially at the goal line, but then he's fed later on in the season. I do think that the Algier factor is something to consider in the short term, only because we've seen him share a backfield with a stud in the NFL, and he's taken work from that other player, Bichon Robinson. Algier saw 10 goal line rushes last year. He's not bad in that role, but admittedly, he's just been average when it comes to converting those part of the 15-year average of running backs converting goal line carries. Now, that probably doesn't truly matter from a coaching intent perspective. The Cardinals could very well see him in that role given his size. Let's be honest, Arizona probably won't be very good this year. They may not want to even drive Jeremiah Love into the ground, knowing that they want to get more out of him in 2027 and beyond. The good news is that I do expect Love to play a pass-catching role for the Cardinals this year, and that's in an offense that should see plenty of negative game scripts. You can feel bearish about the short-term landing spot, and I get it, but players like this, they typically find a way.
The next tier of players for me consists of Jordan Tyson and Cardinal Tate, and you can throw Fernando Mendoza in here in Superflex as well. I talked about him already in the pre-draft show, and we knew his landing spot, so nothing really changes there. I do have Tyson over Tate in my rankings though, which goes against consensus. I'm keeping them in the same tier, but the ZAP model does have a decent enough gap between Tyson and Tate in favor of Tyson. And I actually don't mind the landing spot for Tyson at all. I said it last week, but Chris Alave complements Tyson pretty well in my opinion. He's a man-beater. Tyson does well against Zone. I think Matt Harmon's reception perception work really shows that. The Saints may want to run the ball more. They actually had a minus 3% pass rate over expected last year. But number one, they're not strong enough defensively to not find themselves in negative game scripts consistently. And number two, Kellan Moore coach teams, they always run faster. They run a lot of plays.