861: Buy Candidates

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 861 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. It's a fantasy football offseason, which means we're fully in prospect season. The NFL draft is just around the corner. It also means that we're fine tuning our dynasty rosters. We're looking for players to trade for and to trade away.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be talking about some players you might want to buy, and then some players you might want to sell. Today, we're talking buy candidates. Next week, it's sell candidates.

I do want to say that with these shows each year, I really don't want to be obvious. I want to take the market into sincere consideration. Like, it would be pretty easy for me to just sit here today and say, buy Tajay Spears. We're all aware that Spears is probably going to score more fantasy points in 2024 than he did in 2023 It's the same deal for someone like Kendre Miller, just to a lesser scale. But the fantasy football market has gotten smarter. All of that is baked into these players' costs at this point. Maybe a Spears manager isn't aware of his situation, but that seems doubtful.

I want to talk about players who I feel like are more sincere buy candidates. When I look at them listed on a site like Keep Trade Cut, and I compare where they're sitting to where I have them ranked, I want to find the guys that my rankings seem to like more. And by the way, you can get my rankings in the Late-Round Fantasy Football Patreon. Check it all out, lateround.com. There aren't like tons and tons of obvious players to choose from here. But I did pick out a handful of players that I think you can buy low right now. And we'll get to those players in just a second. First, I've got to let you know that the Late-Round Prospect Guide is available for pre-order. The guide goes through my updated models at Wide Receiver, Running Back, and Tight End, and then it profiles every Running Back and Wide Receiver who are going to be at the Combine this year. You get prospect scores for all relevant players too. And there's an entire section on my Year 2 model, which I'll talk about on today's show. But that section has player profiles as well for the relevant guys entering the second year of their NFL careers. You can learn more about it, and you can purchase it over on lateraound.com. And by the way, while you're there, while you're on the website, check out the Late Round shop. I've got a couple of t-shirts and hoodies for sale after getting requests for them. So go ahead and check that out too and rep the brand. All at lateraound.com.

I'm going to jump all over the place today, so there's no order to this list of buy candidates. But I want to start with someone who I liked in 2023, and he didn't really come through, and that's Drake London. Now, I do think the market is going to be more bullish on London now that Arthur Smith is out of the picture in Atlanta. I know it might seem like he's one of those guys who's sort of a more obvious pick here, but I'd be willing to bet that I'm still a good bit higher on London versus the market even after this coaching switch.

As a lot of you already know, London looked really, really good in my prospect model, and he looks good in this new iteration of the prospect model too. He has a score of 98.2, and then his year two model score, which factors in a player's prospect score alongside rookie season numbers, his year two score was 98.7. The year two model is attempting to predict how well a player is going to perform in year two and year three of his NFL career, and that's by looking at max season scores by points per game during those seasons historically.

Among players sort of in that elite tier since 2011, that elite tier at wide receiver, their hit rates are amazing. Of the wide outs with a year two score from 95 to 100 since 2011, 84% have given us a season of 14 or more PPR points per game in either year two or year three. 60% of them have given us a 16 plus PPR point per game season. 40% of them have given us an 18 plus PPR point per game season. You essentially have better than 50-50 odds of getting a wide receiver one season out of these guys. Now, Drake London hasn't gotten you that at all. He only scored 10.9 PPR points during 2023, his second year in the league. Now, I don't usually do this because it's not like I have a year three model or anything, and no, I'm not creating one either. But there are some interesting comps for a player like London. Let's look at players drafted from 2011 to 2021