1109: Mailbag - Ashton Jeanty's Outlook, Slot Targets, 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 11.09 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. The Late-Round Draft Guide is officially done. It's out there. If you pre-ordered, you should have it in your email inbox. If you haven't, you can still order right now to get some game theory breakdowns, ways to spot breakouts and busts, rankings and tiers, and so much more. Those rankings and tiers and my players to target, my players to avoid, the Late-Round darts list, they're going to be updated every single week up until the final Friday before the start of the season. So check it all out over on lateround.com. It's a mailbag week though, I've got some good questions to answer, so let's get to it.
The first question this week is from at true0654. It says, what are your thoughts on Ashton Jeanty this season? He was an amazing prospect in a terrible environment last season. Is it improved enough to be worth his ADP this year?
So my overall stance is that I'm higher than the market on Jeanty. But there's some detail that we need to talk about here. First off, one of the things that people have come to me about with Jeanty and Bowers too is the stuff that I talked about on this very show about the impact of rookie quarterbacks and the impact they have on the personnel on their team. I've done episodes on this in the past, where rookie quarterbacks tend to result in players underperforming in fantasy football, players on their team. But I think it's important to be clear why we see what we see. It's because the offensive environments of rookie quarterbacks are usually pretty poor. It's just shorthand for basically saying that, that we, as a market, are often too bullish on what first-year quarterbacks are going to do for their offenses. This is not a foolproof thing. Not every player who plays with a rookie quarterback ends up underperforming. Essentially, it's like a proxy for understanding which offenses might not be that good. But if a player is in a bad offense or an underperforming offense, what's the way they can still be useful in fantasy football? It's volume, right? This is why I actually can get behind both Jeanty and Bowers this year. Chances are, if you were to pull a thousand fantasy football players, I'd be more pessimistic than optimistic about this Raiders offense. I see the upside, I see the intrigue. Clint Kubiak is there now, they signed Tyler Lindnerbaum, they got Colton Miller back at tackle, and they probably are going to have a hard time being worse in the passing game than they were last year. But chances are, this is not going to be a studly offense. But they're studs, they're probably going to see just an insane amount of volume. People pay way too much attention to efficiency metrics at running back or previous season rushing production. I legitimately don't care about Ashton Jeanty's 3.7 yards per carry rate from last year. There is zero predictive power to that singular number. It doesn't mean that he's going to be great, it just means that that specific reasoning for his demise is completely overblown. Especially when Jeanty was 2nd worst in yards before contact per attempt. The Raiders offensive line ranked 30th according to PFF's run blocking grades last year. Jeanty's coming off a rookie season where he saw an 87% running back rush share, and all Vegas did with their running back room was add an athletic specimen with an average at best age-adjusted college production profile in Mike Washington. Meanwhile, their number one wide receiver is who, Trey Tucker, Jalen Naylor?
That can and it will have an impact on Jeanty's target share. I'm not a believer in straight up vacated targets the way that others are, because targets are earned and situation changes from one year to the next. But target share is always a 100% pie for every team. If players are incapable of commanding high target shares, then that provides a higher target share ceiling for the guys who are capable. There's only been one other rookie running back since 2011 to hit 80% running back rush share in a target share as high as Jeanty's last year, and that running back was Saquon Barkley.
Volume dictates future volume, and there's such a lack of competition on this Raiders team. It only seems reasonable to project Jeanty with a really high workload. And even in a mediocre to bad offense, that can be fine. But what if the offense surprises? What if they exceed expectation? That's where the ceiling outcome can really come into play.