1118: Risers and Fallers

**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 1118 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. As a fantasy football analyst, you can't be afraid to be wrong, and you can't be afraid to change your opinion when new information is presented.
I think that goes for anything in life. We have some belief, we get more information about that belief, and then hopefully with that new information, our belief changes. I'm sure you've been to a restaurant before, you said it was the best meal of your life, and then you went back there and you didn't have quite as good of a meal. Or you went to another restaurant and you realized, no wait, that was the best meal of my life. We should adjust our priors when new information is presented. We can't be afraid of being wrong in this game. It's dynamic. It's filled with variance. We need to accept the fact that our predictions won't always come to fruition. When you accept that as a fantasy football manager, as a fantasy analyst, whatever the case may be, I guarantee you'll become a better player.
And that's sort of what this episode was about each offseason. Back in May, I produced my first set of redraft rankings. My work isn't close to being done. I still have a ton of research to do. I still want to watch these players play. I want to read certain beat writer reports. Those rankings are almost vibes-based. But by the time mid-to-late August hits, I'm feeling a lot better about where players are ranked. So on today's episode, I want to talk about players who have risen and fallen in my rankings, and more importantly, why.
This is me basically saying, hey, back in May and early June, I was wrong about this guy. I actually view him differently now. And that's going to happen. Sometimes it's really frustrating when it happens. Sometimes you make a trade, you make a rookie draft selection or something that you regret, but you don't want to double down on a bad take when new information arises. That's what this episode is all about. Now, before getting to things, 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 with the guide, and that guide is now being updated twice a week. You get a Wednesday update where rankings are changed up, and then a Friday update where those rankings are updated again, but so are the targets, avoids, and dart throws lists. You can learn more about it over on lateraound.com.
Let's start today's show with probably the biggest riser for me this offseason, and that's Dejan Stribling. He's been crushing it in camp. He's been crushing it in the preseason. He has good length. He's a good athlete. He certainly looked the part thus far. Now, I most definitely had my concerns with Stribling from a prospecting standpoint. As you know, the way I prospect is through looking at trends. Finding what's worked in the past has actually helped us tremendously in figuring out what's going to happen in the future. Now, of course, prospecting isn't easy to do. There's a lot of volatility to it. Even NFL teams get stuff embarrassingly wrong every single year, and they're not doing this from mom's basement like I am. I look back at the prospect profile for Stribling, and there were some serious red flags. He had a 31st percentile breakout score, which is really low for an early day-two pick. His career yards per outrun rate in college ranked in the 20th percentile. I mean, I could go on and on here, but there was nothing production-wise that made Stribling really, really stand out.
The one piece where I do wish I was a little bit more thoughtful about back in April, back in May, was his YAC profile. He was above average in yards after the catch numbers and avoided tackles per reception.
And that's the kind of profile that Kyle Shanahan and his system looks for. We saw that in a player like Brandon Iyuk and obviously Debo Samuel. But Stribling undoubtedly needs to be an outlier analytically to really hit. Now, I understand the draft capital argument, trust me. I've been a draft capital bro for years now, pushing against people who don't factor it into their process. So let's factor it in here. Let's look at all top 100 picks. So this includes first-round players too.
All top 100 picks who had a breakout score below 40, which is about the 50th percentile. So a breakout score below 40, and a career yards per outrun rate below two yards. And we'll look back to 2018 when this data is most reliable. For the record, Stribling is well below both those marks.