892: Mailbag 7/19/24

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

Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the questions this week, I just want to remind you that you can get a Late-Round Draft Guide for absolutely free. Here's how it works. If you're new to Underdog Fantasy, go to underdogfantasy.com and sign up. Use promo code LATEROUND when you do sign up, and then make a deposit. After doing so, you'll get an email to your inbox from Underdog that has a link to the draft guide. That's a $25 value for absolutely free. You can save money by doing this, all while playing some best ball. That draft guide has everything you need to crush your drafts this year. About 80% of it is game theory driven. The final 20% gets updated weekly. That 20% includes players to target, players to avoid, late-round dart throws, and my rankings and tiers. And those rankings and tiers now include auction values. You can purchase the guide for $24.99 on lateround.com, but like I said, you can get it for free by heading to underdogfantasy.com and using promo code LATEROUND to sign up. That's promo code LATEROUND.

The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from at gbpackfan3. It says, Hey JJ, we know your prospect model is based on a player's breakout potential in their first three seasons, but have you looked at the historical data on a player with a high-end year two score that didn't give us the elite production in that window, but was able to produce wide receiver two or better seasons later in year four or after? I'm holding on strong on Elijah Moore in hopes that he can find a better situation once he likely hits the open market next offseason. Thanks. So for those of you who are unaware, the year two model looks at a player's prospect score, sees how well he performed as a rookie, takes some of those rookie season inputs, and then spits out a year two score. That year two score is looking to predict how well the guy's gonna perform in year two and year three of his NFL career.

Elijah Moore was some of the prospect model liked, and then he had a really strong rookie season. Now admittedly, with the newest iteration of the model, Moore's year two score wasn't as good as it was previously, but it was still 92.3, which is very, very good.

Throughout the model's history, which dates back to 2011, a lot of great hits have come from that 90 to 100 range. But there have been plenty of guys who hit that range who didn't give us great careers. Chase Claypool, Jerry Judy, which I guess we still don't fully know, Kelvin Benjamin. Benjamin was someone the prospect model didn't like as much as his draft capital, but then he had a really good rookie year. So his year two model looked pretty good.

Regardless, when you look at wide receivers from 2011 to 2020, there are 15 wide receivers who had year two scores in the 90 to 100 range who then failed to reach 14 PPR points per game or more in year two or year three. So it ended up being bad projections by the model. I'll just read you those names. That way you can judge for yourself if any of these guys end up turning their careers around. Greg Little, who had a year two score of 90 after a 119 target rookie season, that's the first one. Torrey Smith, Chris Givens, Justin Blackman, Kendall Wright, Terrence Williams, Kelvin Benjamin, Tyler Lockett, Sterling Shepard, Christian Kirk, Darius Slayton, Brandon Iyuk, Chase Claypool, Jerry Judy and Loviska Chanult. To be perfectly clear, the only players on that list who had a year two score above 95, which is where the elite players sit, the only guys are Blackman, Benjamin and Iyuk. Now clearly there were some hits in there post year three. Tyler Lockett didn't really get going until year four of his career, when he scored 10 touchdowns. Brandon Iyuk had that awesome rookie year, and then his year three, that was fine too. But last year, his fourth season, that was really his breakout.

Christian Kirk was always solid, but he hit more of a ceiling when he went to Jacksonville, when he got that change of scenery.

So it's certainly possible, but overall, even though it could happen, a late breakout from these guys is still pretty unlikely.

And it seems like of the players who do break out late, they had more of a production backbone from year one to three. Tyler Lockett still had some production. Brandon Iyuk had some production. Christian Kirk had some production. It's not quite there for Elijah Moore, at least not yet.