1104: Mailbag - Optimal Redraft Strategy, Jaylen Warren, 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 11.04 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, hey, thanks for tuning in. As a reminder, there's a new lateround.com. We're slowly but surely moving off of Patreon for our members, and replacing that is our brand new Members Hub. That's where you can get my rankings. We have live stream Q&As once we get closer to the season and in season. There's going to be data dumps. There's access to our awesome community on Discord and more. You can become an All Access member right now, where you get members access along with free LateRound prospect and draft guides. Or if you just want the draft guide, that's available for pre-order right now over on that site. So check it all out, lateround.com. Now, let's get to these mail back questions.
The first one is from Bryant VRR Members Hub, which is where people can now submit mail back questions. It says, Hi JJ, big fan of everything you do and I'm dying for you to unpack something for me. Why is the community so scared and seemingly totally out on RJ Harvey? His price seems reasonable. He scores touchdowns and catches passes in a good offense. Using a metric a super smart analyst said to focus on with middle round running backs, Harvey had an awesome yards per route run last year. Some football people have said his film didn't look good and he's in a committee, but it seems like he's really good at the things that score fantasy points for us. Please help. Thanks man. Okay, so first off, I do want to remind people that the yards per route run thing is more of a red flag thing than a green flag thing. It can be a green flag thing, but very rarely do players have the right kind of yards per route run rates in the previous season, who are then drafted in the middle rounds.
Like, RJ Harvey's yards per route run last year was 1.36, according to PFF, which is strong, but usually we get signal when it's a little bit higher than that. But I generally agree with the overall sentiment here, which is crazy because I was not buying RJ Harvey at the beginning of the off season. I wouldn't say I'm totally in, but I'm not out like I thought I was going to be. With these middle round running backs, we're generally looking for players in ambiguous backfields who have pass catching roles, and younger players are generally better bets in fantasy football. In fact, when looking at top 12 running backs historically, 43% of them over the last 10 plus years have been in year 1 to year 3 of their NFL career. Now, I don't think Harvey has that kind of upside at this point, but everything you said in your question is how I'd basically answer this question. The problem is that I think you could make a very similar argument for Jaylen Warren in that exact same range, and in best ball, it's a good quarterback zone. Not only that, but Jonah Coleman, in my eyes, is a legit threat to both JK Dobbins and RJ Harvey. He can do everything just right enough. He's not a lead at anything, but he can do everything. But that might be attractive to a team like Denver, who just needs some stability behind Dobbins, and maybe they want a little bit more from Harvey too.
But the upside for Harvey to me is that he has a role in that offense. He does something very specific, and he's the most explosive player in that backfield. So, I have no problem drafting him right now, because he's a few rounds later than he was just a couple of months ago.
This next question is also from the Members Hub. It's from Jake. It says, Hey, JJ, love the new site. You and the team continue to do great work, even kitchen. Thank you. I wanted to ask about the Pittsburgh backfield, particularly because Aaron Rodgers creates a unique environment for fantasy production. At this stage in his career, it's not in bad faith to call him contact avoidant, with a proclivity for checking down. While I won't make you bang your head against your desk by suggesting there's a Kenneth Gainwell role, it's hard to not think there's a significant amount of running back targets up for grabs this year. Do you see this as a clear split between the incumbent Warren, who Rodgers has favored, and newcomer Dowdell, who McCarthy has a history of success with? Is there an opportunity for one of these backs to dominate the pass work while the other primarily gets low-calorie base rushing work? Is it Caleb Johnson's season? LOL. Thanks, JJ.