876: Mailbag 4/19/24

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

Thanks for tuning in.

It's been a minute since the last mailbag episode, so I'm excited to get to this one. Before getting to the questions though, I'm sending you another reminder to check out what's going on over at Underdog. They've got best ball drafts going on constantly, and you can enter them anytime you want. For those of you who are unfamiliar, with best ball leagues, you draft a team and then you're done. There's no team maintenance. Your lineup gets optimized each week during the season based on player performance. There's a lot of strategy involved with best ball, and I have content that I'm planning for this summer to help you and me get better as best ball players. So make sure you're signed up on Underdog now for when that content drops. You can head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app. And when you sign up, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND. That will give you a deposit match up to $100. That's promo code LATEROUND.

The first question this week is from my friend Hutchinson Brown or at hutchinsonbf on Twitter. It says, Any thoughts on Georgia running back Kendall Milton? I think he's an interesting later round prospect. So I obviously have covered every relevant prospect in the prospect guide, at least at running back and wide receiver. But I definitely haven't been able to get to every player on this podcast. Kendall Milton, that's one that I haven't talked about at all. So I thought not only could I talk about this question on the show and hopefully give you an answer, but by giving you that answer, I can talk through my prospecting process a bit.

The things I'm looking for in a running back prospect is a combination of size or weight, good speed, and a strong age-adjusted production profile. I also just don't want my prospects to be old in general. Now Milton's just a little over 22, so that's fine. And he's definitely got size because he's 225 pounds. But his production profile is really, really lacking. And that's a huge red flag. Now I know he played at Georgia, and he competed with Pro Caliber backs. And we've seen Georgia running backs in the past not have these robust production profiles. But even when you account for that, even when you account for teammate competition and the fact that Georgia might not use Belcal backs, that still doesn't excuse his production profile. People will look at his senior season, and they'll say, not bad, 121 rush attempts, 790 rushing yards, and 14 scores on the ground. Well, from all the research that I've done, yards, and more importantly, yards within the context of a player's offense, that's more important than touchdowns. On top of that, receiving, that's unbelievably important at the running back position. And Milton had a total of 12 receptions in college. His top season and pro-rated reception share was under 2%. Now, let me give you some context as to how low that number is. Consider this, and this is something that was in a newsletter that I sent out earlier this week. You can subscribe to those newsletters for absolutely free by just going to lateraound.com. But consider this, since 2011, 52 running backs in my model's database have hit 14 or more PPR points per game in one of their first three years in the league. So 52 running backs have given us like RB2 type numbers. The lowest best season reception share among that group came from Jordan Howard, who was at 5.9%. Again, Kendall Milton is below 2%.

Not only that, but because Milton didn't have that much of a receiving profile, his total yards per team play rate is really, really low. And that's what drives breakout score in the running back model. His breakout score is actually zero. And only five running backs from that group of 52 were able to produce an RB2 season without a breakout score.

Like anything in fantasy football, I look at prospecting through the lens of probability.

And I think probability says that it's very unlikely that we'll need to be concerned about Milton as a fantasy asset. Could he be an early down guy in the NFL and maybe come in as a handcuff? Sure. But I think a lot of backs are capable of doing that. We need more of a ceiling from these guys. So to me, there are better darts to throw at the end of your rookie drafts.

This next question is also from Twitter. It's from at real internet me. It says, Do you believe there are trends that will translate to redraft an ADP of ongoing best ball drafts like Underdog? Or is the format too specific slash the type of people grinding drafts in April too different to find reasonable predictors of what we may see come August in home leagues?