871: Mailbag 3/22/24

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, 871 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy.

Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mailbag questions this week, I just wanted to remind you to check out Underdog Fantasy. I've been doing fantasy football drafts over there over the last month or so, and it's giving me a nice early prep on the fantasy football season. They've got a $10 entry tournament right now called The Big Board. That's where I've been drafting. But you can get into $3 drafts, $4 drafts, and $5 drafts too. If you haven't played best ball before, the idea is simple. You draft a fantasy football team, and you can do it in minutes with Underdog. And there's no waivers, trades, or lineup setting. Your team is optimized for you in season based on how your players perform. Drafts are happening right now over there, and you can use the information that I share on here in my Prospect Guide to help you draft. If you're new to Underdog, you want to check it out, 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.

The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at the bobbyduke. It says, Hey JJ, love the show and the prospect guide has been another great one this year. Thank you. My question is regarding Taj Spears. I know most of us groaned once Pollard was picked up by the Titans, mostly due to their similar play style and a more than questionable offense with Levis. But with the sky-high value that he was at in dynasty before the free agency pickup, could he be considered a sneaky buy now? Could this be a good example of an ambiguous backfield situation that benefits Spears' skill set? Not only for dynasty, but even for redraft, could this be a potential Rashad White league-winning type situation? Thanks again, JJ. So I know I talked about Taj Spears on the show earlier this week, but let's get a little bit more detailed about that situation.

I think what's important first is to look at Spears the Prospect. Fortunately, I have these prospect guides now. I can see where my head was at as these players entered the league. This is what I wrote last year about Taj Spears. It says, the reason why the Z-Prospect model, which is now the ZAP model, doesn't like Spears more is because efficiency isn't what drives the model. Spears had one season with more than 130 carries in college, and he never hit a 10% reception share in a single season. And he did this while playing at Tulane. It's not like he was sharing a backfield with Bijan Robinson. There's optimism that Spears could become the next Aaron Jones, a smaller school player who showed off crazy efficiency in college while doing it all on his backfield. The difference is that Jones had far, far more volume at UTEP than Spears saw at Tulane, and Jones' receiving profile was elite too. Tennessee isn't a bad landing spot though. Derrick Henry's 29 years old, and the team's primary backup, Passant Haskins was definitely a worse prospect than Spears. The model agrees too.

Given the lack of touches to his profile and his 201 pound frame, it doesn't seem likely that Spears is going to dominate looks in the NFL. Could he be a really good committee back? Absolutely. That's what we should expect, honestly.

Now, I don't know if the 2023 season should have really changed our minds from that take. There's always a possibility that any capable running back ends up being more than a committee back. Like I had Spears ranked relatively high before free agency started, not as high as the market did, but I recognize the possibility that the Titans could just say, hey, Tyjae, you're the man now. I think that's something that fantasy gamers need to understand more than anything else. We're doing our best as analysts to find talent at running back, because talent will often see volume. But at running back in particular, coaching decisions are going to drive things. Kyron Williams outside of LA probably isn't the same fantasy asset. It's okay to say that there's some volatility in how this all comes about.

But we can use context clues and data to help us be better than our competition at predicting these backfields. Like for Spears, the evidence I used to conclude what I concluded was that he was amazingly efficient in college, yes, but his production profile was good based on efficiency. And volume is what matters more when we're looking to see how a player translates from college to the NFL. And yeah, I'd say the model was still too low on Spears last year, given what we saw in 2023 He's outperformed the model's expectation already. It's not like I was totally right with Spears, but I do think the foundation of what I was saying a year ago about him as a prospect, that's still very valid today. That he can be a really, really, really good committee back. A 1A in his offense. Not necessarily just the one.