1113: Mailbag - De'Von Achane's Situation, Bhayshul Tuten's Upside, 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 1113 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Before getting into this week's Mail By Questions, I just want to send another reminder to check out The Late-Round Draft Guide. There's over 270 pages of content that includes game theory, strategy, ways to spot breakouts and busts, players to target, players to avoid, and more. You get cheat sheets in the guide, which includes a cheat sheet of our new market score metric. It's all updated weekly directly to your email inbox. Check it out and learn more over on lateraound.com.
The first question this week is from Troy from the Members Hub. It says, Hey, JJ, sorry for the lengthy question. I have picked 12 in my 12-team league. In these early mocks, I often find myself taking some combination of Gentie, Barkley, Hampton, Chase Brown at the 1-2 turn due to there being much more quality running backs there than wide receivers. At the 3-4 turn, I'm often taking De'Vante, Flowers, Ladd, Higgins, Burden. My question is, do you feel comfortable going into the season with your top wide outs being from that tier? The short answer is yes, I'm fine with that. I'm a huge fan of that tier of wide receivers for upside purposes. So if you're throwing multiple darts at it, you're increasing your odds of hitting on one of those players. I also think double tapping running back at the back end of drafts this year is a super strong approach. You've got to spend money to make money at running back. I say it in the draft guide every year. The elite players of the position, the ones who are giving you a huge edge in fantasy football, they're almost always drafted early. Now you get a similar dynamic at wide receiver, don't get me wrong. But as you noted, the quality of fantasy player at that stage in the draft is much more attractive at running back than it is wide receiver.
Now scoring, line up settings, that all should dictate which direction you go in. But let it be known that you shouldn't feel uncomfortable with this approach given the upside that you can get at wide receiver in that three, four turn area. Not only that, in non-best ball environments, you'll have a chance to potentially get another good upside receiver in round five. That's honestly how I would approach a lot of normal drafts from the 11 or 12 spot this year.
This next question is also from the Members Hub. It's from at ilmatic27. It says, Hi JJ, I have a question. What's your take on drafting two quarterbacks in redraft leagues that start only one quarterback? Say the rosters one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, one flex, and six bench spots. Is it worth using a bench spot on a second quarterback in this type of league? So under what circumstances? For example, if I land Alan or Lamar, I feel like grabbing another one late isn't worth it. But if I take Malik Willis at the end, would it be better to pair him with a high floor quarterback like Gough or instead go for an upside guy like Tyler Schuck or Cam Ward as a second quarterback? Thanks. I feel like there's an idea out there because I hear about this a lot, that I'm totally against rostering two quarterbacks in fantasy football. It couldn't be further from the truth. I've even had seasons of the draft guide where I wrote about doing this exact same thing, getting two later round quarterbacks as opposed to spending up on one. When you take a quarterback early, you're taking on a massive opportunity cost. That's obviously the downside. It's not that we don't want Josh Allen on our fantasy teams. It's that drafting Josh Allen means you're missing out on some really good running backs and wide receivers. But this is a little like the question before. You can take multiple players at a discount at a particular position, and when you take multiple players, you're increasing your odds of hitting on one of those players. This is why we don't just roster fill when we're drafting our fantasy teams. You'll see in a lot of inexperienced rooms where people just draft a running back, they draft another one, they get a couple of wide receivers, and then they say, oh, I've got to get my quarterback in tight end because they're in my starting lineup. I'll draft them right now. The obvious problem with that is that they're not considering hit rates and where they can get the same caliber players later in the draft.