863: Sell 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, 863 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

Last week on the show, I talked through some players you might want to consider trading for in your dynasty leagues this offseason. On today's show, I'm doing the opposite, looking at players to sell. It's pretty straightforward. I'll be using different average draft position sources like Keep Trade Cut and Dynasty League Football, and I'll be talking about some guys I seem to like less than the market does. They're players you might want to trade away. Before getting to those candidates, though, I want to shout out the Late-Round Prospect Guide. The guide is exactly what you need to dominate your rookie drafts this season. You get information about what goes into my prospect models. You get prospect profiles, prospect scores, year 2 model information, year 2 scores, year 2 profiles, and more. I don't think you'll regret the purchase. And speaking of purchase, you can pre-order it right now for $11.99 over on lateround.com. Once it launches in March, that price will rise to $14.99. So get on it now and get ready for the NFL Draft.

The first player I want to shout out today, Romeo Dobbs. I was pretty surprised to see Dobbs at wide receiver 37 over on Keep Trade Cut. He's one spot below Christian Kirk. He's one spot ahead of Keenan Allen. He's multiple spots ahead of Deontay Johnson, Calvin Ridley, and Marquise Brown.

Dobbs has a more attractive age than all of those players, but he's also sitting in a less desirable situation. I've talked about Jaden Reed plenty on this show over the last few weeks. He's a threat to dig into Romeo Dobbs' target share. Deontavian Wicks currently has a year-two score of 85 That tells us that he at least has a decent shot to be a consistent wide receiver three in fantasy. Christian Watson is there. The young tight ends that the Packers have, both of them showed out and performed well in 2023 Dobbs could end up being a 20%, 22% target share player in an offense that lacked alternatives for sure. He's not a bad player. But when you have a non-elite asset, and I used the same argument for Reid a couple of weeks back, but when you have a non-elite asset, that asset isn't going to command a difference-making target share.

Look at what Dobbs has done so far in the NFL. He's played two years. In those two seasons, he's had a 16% and 17% target share. His yards per route run actually dropped from year one to year two. It went from 1.36 to 1.32. That's really not good at all. Especially when in 2023, Jaden Reed and Don Tavian Wicks both had yards per route run rates over two.

Like, I'll be honest, I actually find it kind of fascinating that Romeo Dobbs has ranked 15 wide receiver spots over Don Tavian Wicks. Wicks' younger has played just one season in the league, and according to my year two model, Wicks is entering his second season in the league with a better year two score.

Wicks is at 85, like I said earlier. Dobbs, with my upgraded model, he had a year two score of 81

I think this ranking is just really coming down to recency bias, because Dobbs performed well in the playoffs. Maybe that carries over, but I'd much rather bank on the larger sample size that suggests that Romeo Dobbs may not even be a top three wide receiver on his own team.

I'm not as into Jerome Ford as others are. According to Dynasty League Football's January ADP, Ford is at RB 26 He's RB 33 on keep trade cut, so he's lower there, but I actually have him even lower than that in my dynasty rankings.

I just don't think Ford was special in 2023 According to NextGen stats, Ford was actually worse than Kareem Hunt in both EPA per rush and success rate, like by a good margin. Ford also ranked last in stuffed rate last year. Among backs with 100 or more carries, Ford was worst at gaining positive yardage. He failed to do so on 27.5% of his rushes. Like, what are we expecting moving forward? I'd agree that he can generate big plays, but didn't he just walk into one of the best situations he could have possibly walked into this past year when Nick Chubb went down? Not only was he a high-end RB3 in PPR points per game, so nothing league-winning at all, but he still wasn't seeing a bell cow workload in that backfield. He was losing significant work to a running back past his prime.