869: Bailing on Unproductive Rookies

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is the Late Round Podcast with your host, JJ. Taqueriza.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 869 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, thanks for tuning in. To anyone who pre-ordered The Late-Round Prospect Guide, first off, thank you. I greatly appreciate your support. But second, the guide should be in your inbox. I send it out on Sunday to everyone, and anyone who now goes to lateround.com to purchase it, you're paying the full price of $14.99. But the pre-draft version of the guide can be instantly downloaded. Once the NFL draft is finished, if you had purchased the guide, you'll get an email with the updated version of the guide. That updated version will go out the weekend of the draft. One of the things that's featured in the Prospect Guide is my Year 2 model. I feel like I've mostly been talking about the Prospect stuff over the last couple of months, but the Year 2 model is super important too. That model was built with an old Late-Round Podcast episode in mind. Back in the day, I did an episode called Bailing on Unproductive Rookies. It was episode 343 The concept of that episode was about how we as fantasy managers might want to consider getting rid of second-year players who were very unproductive as rookies. And when I say unproductive, that's in the context of other rookies. Because essentially, when players had bad rookie seasons, when they performed below expectation, they very rarely turned into huge league-winning fantasy football assets. Rather than just guessing which second-year players we should trade away, I eventually built the year 2 models. They give me a score that tries to predict how well a player is going to perform in year 2 and year 3 of their NFL careers. If the score is low, then I know based on history, that player might struggle. If it's high, the opposite happens. I'm going to be talking about that a little bit more today as sort of a rebrand of that older episode that I once did. Because through the years, my analysis has changed. The way I approach things has changed. So it's a topic that I think is important to revisit. Before getting to all that stuff though, don't forget to check out Underdog Fantasy. It's the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports. You can draft a fantasy football team in minutes, and with their best ball format, there's no waivers, trades or lineup setting. There's no league management after you draft. You can sit back and relax. Drafts are happening right now over there, and you can use the information that I share on this podcast or in my prospect guide to help you draft. If you're new to Underdog, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you sign up, and you'll get a deposit match up to $100. That's promo code LATEROUND. Head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog Fantasy app to sign up.

I want to start out today's discussion by talking about the Year 2 model at a high level, because I think when I share some of these probabilities, you're gonna be pretty surprised when you really dig into these results. The Year 2 model, both at running back and wide receiver, it looks at a player's prospect score, and then it looks at a bunch of metrics from his rookie season in the NFL. It combines all of those things to get a Year 2 score, and like I said, that Year 2 score is trying to predict how well a player is gonna perform in fantasy football in Year 2 and Year 3 of his NFL career.

I've got some cool charts in the Prospect Guide that show historical hit rates at different Year 2 model scores. For instance, of the wide receivers drafted from 2011 to 2021, and I'm stopping at 2021 here because those players have now played 3 years in the league, but of the wide outs drafted from 2011 to 2021, of the ones who had a Year 2 score between 95 and 100, 60% of them gave fantasy managers a 16 plus PPR point per game season in either Year 2 or Year 3 of their careers. 40% of them posted an 18 plus PPR point per game season, which is a very, very good season at wide receiver.

When you look at the 90 to 95 group, their rate of scoring 16 or more PPR points per game in either Year 2 or Year 3, it drops to 32%. So it's 60% for the elite group and then 32% for this next one. Then that number continuously falls as you get lower and lower in Year 2 score. What's wild is that the Year 2 database has never seen a wide receiver who had a Year 2 score below 80 get to 16 or more PPR points per game in their second or third year in the league. For context, 16 PPR points is usually a low-end wide receiver 1 high-end wide receiver 2 season. So anyone since 2011 who's been below that 80 mark, you can kiss upside goodbye. The biggest name from last year's class that's right there that's right at 80 is probably Jonathan Mingo. Trey Palmer is under that 80 mark as well.