1119: Mailbag - Chicago's Pass-Catchers, Going Against ADP, 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, and this episode 1119 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, tuning in thanks for. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, 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 as well, and I'm now updating that guide twice a week up until football season. You get an update of the rankings on Wednesday, and then you get the update of the rankings again on Friday, alongside the players to target, players to avoid in late round dart throws. So if you're listening to this mailbag episode on a Friday, which is when it releases, you should have that updated guide in your email inbox. You can learn more about it, check it out over on LATEROUNDCOM.
The first mailbag question this week is from Eric from the Members Hub on LATEROUNDCOM. It says, Hey JJ, appreciate another great season of draft content. Love the work you've been doing with Market Score. Thank you. With three pass catchers from the Bears going so high, I'm curious that there have been similar seasons in the past where three pass catchers from the same team were all drafted in the top 70 And if those players all met or exceeded their ADP expectation. I'm wondering if this would provide meaningful context for understanding the range of outcomes with these Bears players. Thanks.
So, I dug into this. I looked at all teams since 2014 who had three pass catchers, some combination of tight end and wide receiver, drafted in the top 72 overall. That gives us through round 6 and a 12-team league. There have been 11 teams where that's been the case. Now we'll get to the results in a second. First, as a lot of you know, I often analyze through the lens of average draft position expectation. At every spot in a draft, at every ADP, there's some sort of expected points per game for that player, and that's all based on history. So a player drafted 50th overall might be expected to score 13 PPR points per game, or something like that. If that player then scores 14 PPR points per game, then he exceeded that expectation by one PPR point per game. When we look at the 11 teams who met this criteria of having three pass catchers with high ADP, it's been rare for all three of those players to exceed expectation. In fact, it's only happened once. The 2023 49ers saw it happen with Debo Samuel, George Kittle and Brandon Iuke.
The good news is that six of the 11 teams saw two of the three players exceed expectation. Three of the 11 saw one, and then Washington in 2017 when they had Terrell Pryor, Jordan Reed and Jameson Crowder. Talk about names that we haven't heard in a while. All three of those players got destroyed. They were terrible versus ADP expectation, especially Terrell Pryor.
So you can interpret this a lot of different ways. On one hand, I do think odds are against seeing all three of these Bears pass catchers beat expectation. On the other hand, the most likely outcome here, just based on this small sample, is that two of the three do well against expectation. Keep in mind though too, this is against expectation. When ADP is higher, expectation is higher. It doesn't mean that all three of these players will just be unusable in Fantasy Football, or one of them will be unusable. For example, when we have tight ends in this sample, because some of these teams only have wide receivers, 86% of the tight ends hit 10 or more PPR points per game. Almost 60% of the wide receivers get to 14 or more PPR points per game. I don't think this means that we have to fade one of the three pass catchers in this offense. Because remember, we're playing a game of probability. If you miss out on Luther Burden and Colston Loveland, and you think those are the two players who are likely to hit in this offense, it doesn't mean that Roma Dunze is an automatic fade. We know this can go in a lot of different directions. We know there's a chance that Loveland is the odd man out, or Burden's the odd man out.
So yeah, I'd say the likely chance here just based on our limited sample is that two of the three end up as good picks. You hear that, it might freak you out a little bit. But keep in mind, players that aren't in this kind of situation, they're going to bust too.