851: Mailbag 12/15/23

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is the Late Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zacharissa.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 851 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in. We've got a mailbag episode today, but before getting to the questions, I want to remind you to check out Late-Round Fantasy Football on both Instagram and YouTube. The Instagram account has videos and data nuggets posted every single day, and it's at Late-Round FF. The YouTube channel can be found at youtube.com/ at Late-Round FF. This was year one of just feeling things out with those platforms, but there's going to be more in year two, so you'll want to be following before things get bigger and better. Now let's get to these questions.

The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Derrick. It says, How much should we value immediate opportunity in dynasty drafts? Fantasy Calc recently tweeted value movements, and many of the players who increase in value had immediate opportunity, like JSN and Quentin Johnston versus Zay Flowers and Jordan Addison. Clearly, there's hindsight bias, but with how reactionary the dynasty community can be, should we value early opportunity more?

So yes and no, this is going to be a really long answer. This is going to take up a lot of today's show, but I think it's a really important thing.

I think when there are obvious situations where a player isn't going to play in year one, or at least not play for a long time during year one, you should devalue that player. Jameson Williams last year is a great example of that. He was being selected in rookie drafts ahead of some really, really good wide receivers, even though we all knew that he wouldn't play for a while coming off that ACL. It's why I personally had him at the bottom of that round one wide receiver tier in my rankings. Because we want players to immediately appreciate in value, and Williams was more than likely just going to maintain at best, at least to start the year.

Now the reason I say obvious situations is because the idea of immediate opportunity, it's not very clear cut. Like look at your question. You mentioned Quentin Johnston as someone who didn't see immediate opportunity, bucketing him with Jackson Smith and Jigba. Johnston has played most of the year without a wide receiver too for the Chargers. He's just been bad, so his value hasn't risen. And for the record, I'm recording this before Thursday night's game. Meanwhile, JSN has been buried behind Tyler Locken and DK Metcalf. And we all kind of knew that there was this possibility that JSN wouldn't be some stud in year one. It's why despite being most people's favorite wide receiver from the 2023 class, he was still drafted as more of a wide receiver for and redraft. His projection didn't look stellar, but he did have upside if number one, he just ended up being a really, really good player, like an amazing player. Or number two, he had injury upside. If one of two players got hurt, and I talked about this all season long, if either Tyler Lockett or DK Metcalf got hurt, so there were two outs here for JSN, he would see an uptick in production.

But knock on wood, DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett have stayed relatively healthy this year.

What I'm really getting at here is that talent is what drives opportunity. When a player has undeniable talent, he'll at least create some sort of opportunity for himself. And it doesn't have to be some league-winning opportunity either. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that they show us something. They're able to not be labeled as busts right away.

Talent drives opportunity, especially at a position like wide receiver. The examples that you're showing, I don't think it's hindsight bias per se. I think it's sort of selection bias. You mentioned Flowers and Addison as guys who appreciated in value because of that immediate opportunity. But what about someone like Jonathan Mingo? Mingo has shown us very, very little, and he's competing with a 33-year-old slot receiver.

A player still needs to be talented to shine. An example like Jackson Smith and Jigba, it's honestly pretty unique. Those circumstances don't pop up very often. So focusing on that, I don't think that's the right thing to do.

But I also think a lot of this is more specific for earlier round picks because earlier round picks are generally being drafted on need. A team is getting a wide receiver in the first round, generally speaking, because they need a wide receiver. This is why the JSN example is unique. The Seahawks needed a wide out longer term, yes. They could have used help in 2023, yes. But not many expected a first round wide out.