862: Mailbag 2/9/24

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

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

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason in this episode 862 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, I want to send another reminder about The Late-Round Prospect Guide. The guide is filled with all the information that you need to crush your rookie drafts this year. You get a breakdown of what goes into my prospect models, and then I profile every running back and wide receiver who will be at this year's NFL Combine. There's also an entire section about my year two model with profiles of over 30 players who are entering year two of their NFL career. So I'll help you out with what to do with players like Zay Flowers or Jackson Smith and Jigba. The guide is available for pre-order right now over on lateraound.com. So check it out. That's lateraound.com.

The first mail back question this week is from Jerry on Patreon. It says, Hey JJ, how do you think the Chargers hiring Greg Roman affects Justin Herbert's dynasty outlook? Is a probable run heavy offense a net positive if their passing efficiency increases? How do we weigh efficiency versus raw volume for pocket passers? Yeah, so look, on the volume front, this is not a good thing for Justin Herbert. It's easy to overstate the impact of passing volume on a weekly basis in fantasy football. I will say that. But generally speaking, I'd still rather have my quarterback throw it around 50 times per game than 25 times per game. Volume matters a lot more wide receiver and running back since most quarterbacks are getting 25, 30 pass attempts per game. But I'd still rather have a quarterback get like 55 pass attempts per game.

And we know that Greg Roman, as you noted, comes with a run heavy offense, and that's a little bit scary for Justin Herbert. Roman's been an offensive coordinator for three NFL teams. He was one from 2011 to 2014 with the 49ers. He then was with Buffalo in 2015 before being fired early in 2016, and then he was Baltimore's OC from 2019 to 2022 That's basically nine years that we can go back, look at, and analyze.

During that time frame, Roman's offenses never ranked higher than 23rd in overall pass rate. They were over 27th just once, and they finished in the bottom three in pass rate and seven of nine seasons.

Some of his teams were good, so GameScript dictated some of that. But even when you just look at his offense's pass rates when games were within six points, his neutral script pass rates, we're looking at a pretty similar story. His highest rank in neutral script pass rate was 21st. He ranked higher than 27th just twice. His average rank in neutral script pass rate through the years, 28th. In other words, his offenses averaged, they averaged being the fifth run heaviest team in football. Combine that with Jim Harbaugh, and yes, the Chargers are going to one to establish the run. Now, can Justin Herbert be more efficient? Of course. Lamar Jackson won an MVP with Greg Roman as his offensive coordinator. Now, I know he's going to win another one this year, at least it seems like he's going to without Greg Roman, the first year without Greg Roman, but even still, he got an MVP with Roman as his offensive coordinator. It's possible for a quarterback to be efficient under Greg Roman.

I think the better cases are with what Greg Roman did with Colin Kaepernick and Tyrod Taylor. Is it Tyrod or Tyrod? I don't even know these days.

Taylor had the best season of his entire career under Greg Roman in 2015 Colin Kaepernick, he thrived under Roman. So yeah, it's a very run-heavy offense, but it's one that's generally been fine for quarterbacks in that offense. He's gotten at least something out of his passers, and a main reason for that is because Roman's offenses pushed the ball down the field. And that's where I think this could really impact Justin Herbert. In 2012 and 2013, Colin Kaepernick had averaged at the targets above 10 yards. Those were the highest marks of his career. Taylor in 2015 had an A-dot of 10.7. During seasons where he threw the ball 300 or more times, that was also the highest mark of his career. Now Lamar Jackson had a pretty similar A-dot with and without Greg Roman, but in 2023, his only season without Roman, he also had far better weapons to throw to. Throughout Justin Herbert's career, he hasn't been a high average depth of target thrower. It's been a critique that many have had of Justin Herbert. He's been above an 8 A-dot just once, and it came this past year. And for the record, his A-dot of 8.3 in 2023, it's still ranked just 19th in the NFL.