1117: Players to Avoid

**Rich Hribar** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

**JJ Zachariason** (0:11)
What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1117 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. On last week's show, I talked to Evan Silva about a handful of players that we're targeting in drafts this year. That's just based off of where we have them ranked and where they typically get drafted. Today, we're doing the opposite of that. We're looking at players to avoid. To help me out, I brought on my friend Rich Hribar of Sharp Football Analysis. I brought five players to the table, he brought five players to the table. It's not that we're fading these guys no matter what, but we do think they're a little bit overvalued by the market.
Now, before getting to that conversation, I just want to send another reminder to check out the Late-Round Draft Guide. There's well 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 with the guide as well, and everything is updated weekly. Check it out, learn more, lateraound.com. Now, let's get to these 10 players to avoid with Rich Hribar.
All right, Rich, welcome back. Another year of targets and avoids. This year, you are on the Avoid Show, always the more difficult show to do. It's a little bit tough to talk avoids because people come after us a little bit more with these.
It's a tougher topic to dig into. But again, these are simply players that we like a little bit less than what the market does, right? That's what this really comes down to. It's not even a full fade situation. If these guys are available at the right spot, we'll still take them. But yeah, these are players that generally we're not drafting a ton of because we don't think they should be going as high as they are. So with that being said, Rich, give us the first player that you're generally avoiding.

**Rich Hribar** (1:59)
Yeah, I also think too, the avoids have gotten a little tougher in over the years just because I think the general consumer is a lot sharper in the markets. It's just being set a lot better in fantasy football. But yeah, I'm going to start off with a couple higher priced guys here. And it's not like you said, it's not that they're necessarily avoids, it's that I think that they're a little bit overpriced or like players that are typically go after them more than them.
So yeah, I'm going to start with Jonathan Taylor. And I think that that one might be a little bit surprising to people. The guy that led the NFL in rushing attempts, rushing touchdowns and had 85 percent of the Indianapolis backfield touches really doesn't have any competition again this year. Those are all very high notes for Jonathan Taylor. He's finished as an RB1 scorer in four of his six seasons. The only blemish was something that we saw at the end of last year, even with Dan Jones' starts that's gone on for his career, it's that when the Colts struggle as a unified team in winning games, this is where Jonathan Taylor typically slows down. He's the highest correlated running back in terms of winning and losing.
That's been a thorn for his entire career. He's averaged 22.7 PPR points per game for his career and wins. That is the most of any active running back since he entered the NFL. He was the RB15 in losses. Last year, he averaged 32 points per game and wins. That's 12.3 PPR points per game in losses. And even if we remove all the Philip Rivers, all the Riley Leonard stuff and his four losses that Daniel Jones played in full, he was the RB21, RB29, RB28, RB18 in those games. And why that is noteworthy as we head into 2026, we've got Daniel Jones returning from an Achilles injury, Michael Pittman's gone, Braden Smith's gone. We don't know when Alec Pierce is coming back at this point. Alec Pierce is a pretty big deal because he's the only guy in the offense that can stretch the field. Over the past two years, Jonathan Taylor has faced eight or more defenders in the box on 43.2 percent of his runs with Alec Pierce off the field. That's 155 attempt sample too. It's not like 25 carries or anything. And then with Alec Pierce on the field, it goes all the way down to 28.7 percent because you have to respect Alec Pierce, stretching the field, occupying a box defender. Right now, the Indianapolis Colts are only favored in six games on their schedule. That's 21st in the league. They have a really tough opening gauntlet. They go Baltimore, Kansas City, Houston. They have an international game in Washington, which we're not scared of. But then after that international game, they forego the bye week and on a short week go to Pittsburgh.