855: Mailbag 12/22/23

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 855 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, I just want to remind everyone that I'm not going away during the off-season. I'll take a little break after things settle next week, but then I'll be right back to work. I do a lot of analysis looking back on the season in January, I start my prospecting work, and then the prospect guide is going to be released in early March. I'm really excited because I have a lot of changes happening this year with my prospect work. The Patreon will still be going strong during the off-season, too. There's dynasty rankings, live stream Q&A's, and a lot of just back and forth conversation about anything and everything fantasy football. The Discord community is still very active during the off-season. What I'm saying is, stick around, don't leave me. Make sure you're staying on top of things by checking out lateraound.com. Subscribe to the newsletter for free. Join the Patreon. Make sure you're subscribed to this podcast. It's going to be a great off-season. But the off-season hasn't hit just yet. We've still got two more weeks of the fantasy football season. So let's get to some mailbag questions.

The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Kevin. It says, Thank you, JJ. I'm in the semi-finals in all four of my leagues due to your draft guide. That's awesome to hear. Can we trust Dalton Kincaid this week over someone like Tucker Kraft? With Kincaid being a little banged up and the Bills run heavy game plan, he only played 49% of the snaps and received two targets last week. The Bills are playing the Chargers this week. Wouldn't you expect them to have the same run-heavy script like they did against the Cowboys? So I don't answer start sick questions on the Mailbag shows. You guys know that by now, but I think this one's a little bit different. This is more about Dalton Kincaid and his situation. I think we have to recognize that it wasn't just game script that dictated last week's run-heavy game plan for the Bills. According to FantasyLife.com's data, against the Cowboys, the Bills' drop-back rate was just 29%.

Their drop-back rate over-expected was minus 10%, meaning they were extremely run-heavy even when you adjust for their situation and for game script. That was the lowest drop-back over-expected rate of their season. The previous week against Kansas City, that rate was plus 10%. That alone shows you that we're looking at an offensive coordinator and Joe Brady that's going to allow match-ups in situation to dictate play style. He said as much in an interview, too, that he didn't anticipate running the ball 49 times against the Cowboys. It's just what was working.

Now, I know that you can make the argument that it could work against the Chargers, too. But the expectation absolutely cannot be that the Bills are going to throw the ball 15 times every game moving forward or every game where their favorites. It's just not going to happen. Now, regarding Kincaid's usage, number one, I do think that he was just kind of bad in that game. If you watch that game, you saw it. That's going to happen though.

Number two, I still don't know how much we can really take away from that game because it was a clear outlier game. Throwing the ball 15 times and running it 49 times, that's an outlier. In fact, just in 2023, there have only been three instances where a team has thrown the ball 20 or fewer times while running it 40 or more times in a single game. And the Bills were at 15 pass attempts and 49 rush attempts.

I'm still betting on talent with Dalton Kincaid. It's still a good matchup on paper for him this week. I don't think he's nearly the same kind of lock that he was four or five weeks ago, but at a weak position at tight end, I think he's still someone that you can trust.

This next question is from Twitter. It's from at EFN57. It says, To turn a slight bit towards 2024, who are 2023 rookie running max in the Kyron Williams mold slash situation that you are ascending to some degree due to circumstance coaching, etc.

So I'm recording this before Thursday night's game, but regardless of how that game goes, I think it's important that we recognize that Kyron Williams is not a normal situation. What he's doing this season, the workload the Rams are giving him, his journey to get here, quite literally an outlier. We should not expect this to happen year in and year out. And props to Williams. He's looked far better as a player than the limited action that we saw from him last year. And he's just doing more than I thought that he would do in the NFL. I always saw him more as a satellite back, who could maybe have some upside if he was called upon. But he clearly put in the work, and we should be giving him lots of props. He's doing great. Now, if there were rookie backs who I think were underutilized this year, who could maybe surprise next year, if we want to frame this question that way, I guess Kendre Miller comes to mind. It's not a totally similar situation to Williams, but Miller hasn't been able to stay healthy this season and he wasn't a terrible prospect. Now, others did like Miller more than I did. I thought his receiving profile was a little incomplete and I'm a sucker for receiving numbers. But he was one of the youngest backs in this year's class and he has the right size for the NFL. But my true answer to this question is that I don't think we're going to get a running back like Kyron Williams in this class.