860: Analyzing 2023's Biggest Hits

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason in this episode 860 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in.

When you get something right in fantasy football, it's really easy to just focus on that result. More so than when you get something wrong. When you get something wrong, it's human nature to come up with excuses as to why you were wrong about that thing. When you get something right, you just bask in the glory. You're not going to want to talk down that correct prediction. That downplays what you did, and you want to be right. To me, if you ignore what led to that correct prediction, then you might have a hard time repeating that type of prediction. It's important to see if what you did made sense, if what led to the correct result, if it was logical, or if you just got lucky. Because sometimes you just get lucky. That's how it goes with fantasy football. But I don't know about you, I personally don't want to just rely on getting lucky at fantasy football year in and year out. A week ago, I looked at the things that went wrong for me in 2023 Today, I'll be looking at the things that went right, and I'll be analyzing those things to see what led me to the correct prediction. That way, we can all take that process and hopefully apply it to our drafts in 2024

Now, before getting to those things, I want to send another reminder about the Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's ready for pre-order. The Prospect Guide is information about my prospect models. It profiles every running back and wide receiver who are going to be at the combine. There's stuff on my year two model and more. If you purchase the pre-ordered copy, you'll get the guide to your email inbox in March. Then, when the draft is over, you'll get an updated guide with the updated prospect scores. You can wait to purchase the guide, but it does go up in price from $11.99, which is what it is right now, to $14.99 when it launches in March. Check it all out over on lateraound.com.

In the Late-Round Draft Guide this past year, I did something that I don't typically do. I recommended two running backs from the same backfield. Jameer Gibbs was a player to target for me in that guide, but so was David Montgomery. And it was based on a lot of things.

Gibbs was a dead zone running back. I know he slowly climbed out of that zone as draft season moved forward, but he was a dead zone rookie running back. Typically, a rookie running back getting drafted in the running back dead zone is something that you want to target, not avoid. They perform like end of the second round picks, usually.

Gibbs was also a pass catcher who scored well in my prospect model. So there were a lot of reasons to like him. But David Montgomery was listed as a target as well, because historically, when we've had running backs getting drafted in the middle rounds who had a running back teammate in the dead zone, those running backs have hit at a really, really good rate. Montgomery was also entering a situation where he was likely to take on that Jamal Williams role, that role where Jamal Williams scored a thousand touchdowns the previous season. That role probably wasn't going to see as many goal line rushes as it had in 2022, but Montgomery was a better pass catcher than Williams. So I felt good about his ability to step in and see more work as a receiver. That was whether or not Jamir Gibbs was healthy.

And that health aspect is important. We saw this play out in 2023, but both Gibbs and Montgomery had contingent upside if the other player went down. And both players, they went down at different times of the year. That led to some strong performances when the other running back took over as the lead back. Long story short, according to my numbers, both Jamir Gibbs and David Montgomery, they exceeded average draft position expectation last year. For those of you who didn't listen to last week's show, and if you're not aware, ADP expectation is pretty simple. Every player at every ADP has some sort of expectation. We're expecting them to score a certain number of fantasy points per game based on history. So let's say a running back is getting drafted 48th overall. That's their ADP. We'd expect that running back to score a little over 13 PPR points per game based on history. So once a season's over, we can see if players exceeded or didn't exceed that expectation.