844: Mailbag 12/1/23

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This is The Late-Round Podcast, with your host, JJ Zachariason.

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 844 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

What's up? Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, I wanted to send a reminder about The Late-Round Fantasy Football Newsletter. I've been sending emails out to subscribers all season long, mostly the 15 transactions column. But with the season getting closer to ending, things are going to be changing during the offseason. I often send email blasts about prospects, the kinds of things I'm working on with my prospect models, and more. To get an idea, you can check out the newsletter archive on lateraound.com, and while you're there, subscribe to the newsletter. It's totally free.

The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at Brandon underscore Warn. It says, If I need a quarterback in redraft, who do you think I should target as best value for the price in a trade? So I've got two answers for this one. The first is that I'm still buying Brock Purdy. I know the last time that we saw him, he only scored 10 and a half fantasy points. But San Francisco just happened to score three of their touchdowns on the ground in that game against Seattle. It was also kind of a weird game script overall. When you look at playoff schedules, the 49ers do have a tough week 16 against Baltimore. But their week 15 and their week 17, it's against Arizona and Washington. So maybe find a replacement for that week 16 game. But leading up to that point in time, they get the Eagles this week. That's a good matchup for quarterbacks. And then it's Seattle again next week. Purdy is just a solid option. The schedule is still pretty favorable. So he makes sense coming off of a down game. Now the other quarterback that I want to bring up, Justin Fields. And it leads me to a question that I got on Patreon from Austin. He asked, Hey JJ, how are you treating Justin Fields in dynasty right now? Is he a sell or a hold? I have him and Deshaun Watson as my quarterbacks in a one quarterback league.

So since I'm talking about Justin Fields here, I figured I'd answer that question too. I think Fields is a screaming buy candidate in redraft. And I don't like to throw this term around loosely, but Justin Fields is a potential league-winning buy in season-long leagues. And I say that from the perspective of ceiling, of course. And I also say that from the perspective of how he's being viewed right now, coming off of a bad game.

Since returning from his injury, he's played two games. In those two games, Fields has run the ball 18 times and 12 times. He scored 21.2 and 10.6 points in those two contests. So he had one good performance and one bad one. Mobility at quarterback is very important in fantasy football. And let me just give you a very easy example as to why. From 2011 up until now, we've had 161 instances where a quarterback ran the ball more than 10 times in a game while throwing it 15 or more times. 15 pass attempts is not that many in a game at all. Fields has been at 23 and 37 pass attempts over his last two games, for example. Using that threshold was just remove any weirdness from the sample. So 161 instances where a quarterback ran the ball more than 10 times, essentially. Of those 161, what do you think the average points per game is? So since 2011, when a quarterback ran the ball more than 10 times in a game, how many fantasy points do you think that those quarterbacks scored on average? You ready for the answer? It's 23

Now take this with a grain of salt, for sure. In that sample, you have players like Jalen Hurts and Lamar Jackson. They're going to score a lot of fantasy points. But even if you want to just limit that sample to only Justin Fields and games where Justin Fields has played where he hit those marks, you're looking at 23.5 points per game. Now we can't guarantee that Fields is going to run the ball more than 10 times per contest moving forward. My point is that he is running the ball a lot. He's run the ball 30 times over his two games since his injury, and he's done it in half of his games this year. That's going to give him a really nice floor-ceiling combo. And then on top of that, the Bears have a really good week 16 and 17 schedule. They get Arizona and Atlanta. Those are two teams that we shouldn't be scared of. So Fields could really come through big time this year for your fantasy teams. Now, as it relates to dynasty, in a single quarterback league, like this question is asking, you're asking if he's a sell or a hold, right? You asked me if he's a sell or if Justin Fields is a hold. I think he's a buy.