865: Mailbag 2/23/24

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, 865 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast.

Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into this week's mailbag questions, I want to send another reminder about the Late-Round Prospect Guide. The guide will be dropping in just a couple of weeks, so make sure you take advantage of the pre-order price. It's currently $11.99. It'll go up to $14.99 on March 11th. The guide gives you everything you need to dominate your rookie drafts. You get information on my prospect models, you get prospect profiles, prospect scores, profiles for year two players, and so much more. It's almost 150 pages of content. You can pre-order now by heading to lateround.com.

The first question this week is an email. It says, Hey JJ, I was curious as to how the top ranked prospects perform throughout their career relative to their dynasty rookie draft ADP. Looking at each top positional rookie from the past 11 years, highest drafted quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, and rookie draft ADP, I was very surprised at the results. Turns out the highest correlation was at running back, at which six of the 11 running backs reached RB six or higher in at least one season, and 10 out of 11 hit a top 24 season. Tight end was alright too, with 9 out of 11 having a top 12 season, but only 1 out of 11 had a top 3 season. Quarterback was hit or miss, with 6 out of 11 having a top 12 season. The biggest surprise of all though was wide receivers. Only two of the top ranked wide receiver prospects since 2013, according to Dynasty ADP at least, ever had at least one top 12 wide receiver season, and five never even reached the top 36

With all this information, what do you think we should do with highly rated rookie wide receivers? It seems foolish to fade great prospects simply because of history, but with such a low hit rate, it makes me hesitate more on a guy like Marvin Harrison Jr. because for as great as he might be, the past number one wide receiver prospects also include Nikhil Harry, Corey Davis, Corey Coleman, and Tavon Austin. Is it smarter to trade back and just take more chances on later round wide receiver picks and rookie drafts as opposed to trading up for a high end wide receiver? Thanks as always. Can't wait to hear what you have to say about all of this mess. Jacob.

So I don't think these results are all that shocking. Let me explain why. The first thing to note with something like this is that sample sizes aren't very big. We're only analyzing 11 running backs and 11 wide receivers here, and I'll keep things simple and just answer by focusing on those two positions. But 11 players isn't that many players. Funky things can happen. But even still, I don't think the results are that crazy, and it goes back to something I've talked about a lot on this show. Running back talent, it matters in that we want our running backs to carve out roles for themselves, and hopefully a running back does that through talent. If he's good, a coach puts him on the field. He starts to see more volume. When he sees more volume, he scores more fantasy points.

When you're talking about the top running backs in a given class by ADP, you're generally talking about round one running backs, guys who were drafted in the first round, or at least the early second round, right? From 2013 to 2023, which is what you're dating this back to, 8 of the 11 drafts you're looking at had a first round running back selection. And I would assume that the vast majority of rookie drafts then saw those running backs as the RB1 in their class. Well, when a running back gets drafted in the first round, he's almost guaranteed some production. It's extremely rare for a first round running back, especially in today's NFL, to not get production over the first couple of years of his career. He usually sees a lot of work right away, because at the end of the day, a coach can simply say, this guy's talented, I'm going to put him on the field. Even if he's not that talented, like let's just say Najee Harris, then that player can still be fantasy relevant. Essentially, a first round running back is telling us that a coach is more likely going to give him volume. Whether that's true or not, that's the correlation, right?

That's not the case at wide receiver. Wide receivers need to get open. They need to be good in order to see the rock. The talent profile, it needs to be there more than it does at running back. And that can cause some natural volatility, because instead of it being pretty obvious as to which players are going to get volume like it is at running back, it becomes slightly less obvious.