874: A Lackluster Running Back Class

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, 874 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, thanks for tuning in.

On last week's episode, you heard Jim Saanis talk about the quarterback class. This week, we're on to running backs. And I brought on a special guest to help me navigate this year's class.

Noah Hills quite literally focuses on the running back position. He looks at running backs on a deeper level than almost anyone on the planet over on his website, noahmoreparties.com. Noah and I chatted about running back data, his feel for this class, some of his favorites in the class, and more. You definitely don't want to miss his insight. And you'll hear that insight in just a second. First, I just want to remind you to sign up over on Underdog Fantasy. There are best ball drafts happening constantly over there, and I'm actively participating in them. Because it's a great way to not only have a good time, but to prepare for the fantasy football season. As I've been saying, I've got some big content plans this summer that relate to best ball. You won't want to miss out on that. So head over to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app and sign up. When you do, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND. That will give you a deposit match up to $100. That's promo code LATEROUND.

Now let's talk some running backs.

All right, Noah, you've really dedicated a lot of time and energy to the running back position. What made you focus on that position in particular? And what sort of your overall process like that you think sort of differentiates your work at the position?

Noah Hills (1:51)

Yeah, I think I was just kind of predisposed to being interested in running backs. In general, I grew up on like the NFL films, like VHS tapes of like the greatest running backs. And I played running back in football when I was a kid. But also when I when I started like becoming interested in like writing in, you know, the fantasy football or fantasy football, like adjacent space, I perceived like almost like a gap in data centric running back analysis, where so much of what was focused on really had nothing to do with how good players were at running the ball, like speed scores and approximation of, you know, size and speed, obviously. And it's, you know, predictive and draft capital and, you know, dominator rating and target share, you know, these these different measures that we kind of always use that are sort of like signals where we're sort of like feeling around in the dark about how good a player might be. And we do pretty good with those things.

But none of it has anything to do with how good anybody is at running the ball. And so I really kind of focus there.

And and I think that kind of led to like kind of why my process is a little bit different. I have sort of like a film based or a film like approach to like the data side of the analysis, where I'm really looking for looking for like traits and trying to like isolate and contextualize like on field data as much as possible to to be revealing of traits, whether that's, you know, tackle breaking metrics or, you know, isolating things to how running back performs in the open field or, you know, kind of consistency versus efficiency being a signal for like, you know, stylistic differences in players. And I also think I have kind of a data centric approach to film analysis, where I have kind of, you know, kind of inspired by, you know, like PFF or Matt Waldman. I've, you know, kind of systematized everything so I can chart things and derive metrics and data from the film that I'm watching. So, yeah, I think that's kind of the approach I kind of like a two-sided approach to a problem that I perceived, I guess.

JJ Zachariason (4:01)

Yeah, you know, one of the problems that I've had with running back data in particular through the years is that I just I think a lot of it is just like insanely descriptive, right? Like like so much of it is this is what happened under these circumstances, but we know that future circumstances are not necessarily like that. And it seems as though and this is through a little bit of testing and stuff, too, but it seems as though we don't really get that great of an idea of the kind of running back we're dealing with until we get a large enough sample size with some of the data that I'm speaking to here.