866: Wide Receiver Prospects Who Produced Like Studs

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 866 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in.

As I said last week, my prospect model's got a little makeover this offseason. A lot of the same metrics are still used in them, but there are some changes too. And I'd argue that there were more changes done to the wide receiver model than the running back one. The wide receiver model, which has been named the ZAP model like I said last week, but the wide receiver ZAP model has a handful of different factors that go into it. The goal of the model is to predict fantasy output for an incoming rookie across his first three years in the NFL.

There are a handful of inputs within that model, but three of those inputs are production related. One of them has been a staple of the model, and that's Collegiate Yards Per Team Pass Attempt. It takes a player's receiving yards and it divides that by his team's total pass attempts.

Now, historically, the model had just looked at a player's top season in yards per team pass attempt. The metric breakout age, that used to be an input in the model, so age adjustments were happening elsewhere. All that mattered, though, was the best season in yards per team pass attempt. The ZAP model is a little bit different. Rather than taking that singular number, it creates a breakout score that's based on yards per team pass attempt. This is similar to what I talked about last week with breakout score at running back. Essentially, breakout score is my way of showing age-adjusted production. Rather than using something like breakout age, which is pretty binary and works off of dominator rating, a metric I don't really love in the first place, breakout score looks at a handful of thresholds that a player can hit in yards per team pass attempt. And it looks at a player's age when he gets to those thresholds. It then scores that player's breakout out of 100

Breakout score is entirely driven by yards per team pass attempt. It's adjusted for strength of program too. But it's the most important production-related metric in the ZAP model at wide receiver. But there's also now a fantasy point score. This is a new one. And I now realize that when you say that out loud, it sounds like I'm saying fantasy point scored. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying fantasy point score.

A player's fantasy point score is also out of 100 It's not age-adjusted like breakout score, but it adjusts for how many past attempts a team had, and it adjusts for the school that a player went to. Because obviously, it's easier to score more points at South Alabama compared to Alabama. So it's basically a market share number, but with fantasy points.

So we've got breakout score and fantasy point score. The last input is rushing production. That's the last production-related input. Players get extra love in their ZAP score if they had rushing production in college. Now, where am I getting at with all this? Well, on today's episode, I'm going to look at the various production profiles from this year's draft class. And by production profiles, I'm talking about how these players look within the production metrics in the ZAP model.

I'll just be focusing on breakout score and fantasy point score, though, because those are the two bigger inputs in the model.

Like last week, I'll be comparing this year's draft class to successful wide receivers that we've seen in the NFL. Because these scores that I'm talking about are there to help predict NFL success. And if that's the case, then successful NFL wide receivers probably did pretty well within those scores, right? Hopefully, at least. The question we're asking is, which players from this year's class produce like studs? That's what we'll be looking to answer. Before getting into things, I want to remind you about the Late-Round Prospect Guide. The guide is currently available for pre-order on lateraound.com, and it has everything you need to crush your rookie drafts this year. You get information about what goes into these ZAP models, there's prospect profiles, year two model profiles, and so much more. You can learn more about it over on lateraound.com.

Okay, so just to reiterate, I'm going to be comparing the wide receivers from this year's draft class to successful fantasy wide receivers in the NFL. That way we can see if there are any studs from this class. And by this class, I'm referring to the 39 wide receivers who were invited to the NFL Combine this year. By successful wide receivers, we've got to define that. What does it mean to be a successful NFL wide receiver from a fantasy perspective? Well, I'll be using similar parameters as I did last week on the running back episode. I'm defining successful wide receivers as wide receivers in the NFL who gave us multiple seasons since 2011 of 15 or more PPR points per game, with a minimum eight games played for a season to qualify. So those are seasons where the wide out hit at least wide receiver two status, but more than just a low end wide receiver two. Using those qualifiers, you get 50 wide receivers, but a lot of those wide receivers entered the league a long time ago. We're dating this back to 2011, but some of those wide outs entered the league long before that. The ZAP model goes back to 2011, so not all of those wide receivers have readily available data to work off of. When you remove those players, you get 30 wide receivers, or 30 successful wide outs.