895: Mailbag 8/2/24

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 895 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Oh, hey, thanks for tuning in. If you're thinking about getting the Late-Round Draft Guide, but you haven't purchased it yet, consider signing up on Underdog. Because, if you do, you get the Draft Guide for absolutely free. Here's how it works. Just head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. Once you do that and once you make a deposit, Underdog will send you an email with a link to the Draft Guide. That's it. It's a $25 value for absolutely free. You get to play best ball and you get the Draft Guide. Again, that's underdogfantasy.com promo code LATEROUND. Or, you can always just head to LATEROUNDCOM and purchase it for $24.99. But why do that when you can get it for free? Anyway, it's a mailbag day. Let's get to it.

The first question this week is from Travis on Patreon. It says, Do you have a rough order slash tiering of defenses for leagues that draft them? So I don't do defensive rankings because we're not going to likely play the same defense week in and week out during a fantasy season. We should be streaming. And for those of you who think that you can't stream to high-end defenses, you're wrong. Denny Carter and I have streamed defense three, defense four equivalents basically every year over the last decade on my other podcast, Living the Stream, with zero investment at the position. If you can find a defense that becomes a week in, week out starter, that's great. Of course you want that. But it's not necessary to draft into that. So with that in mind, you should be looking at early season schedules for your defenses. I probably should have brought this up on the show earlier this week, but let's do it now. To start, Seattle was a team that I called out on that show earlier in the week, because they get the Broncos and the Patriots in weeks one and two. That makes them a good streaming option. In week one, they're four and a half point home favorites with a pretty low game total. They're road favorites in week two with another low game total. The Chargers are another team that you can focus on. It's another team that I brought up on that episode. LA gets favorable matchups against the Raiders and the Panthers in weeks one and two. Their favorites in both games and both games have low game totals. You could also just look at week one matchups here. Depending on which book that you're looking at, Cincinnati's a nine point favorite in week one against New England. The Saints, they're at home against the Panthers with a really low game total and they're four and a half point favorites. The Bills are seven point favorites against the Cardinals. So those are three more defenses for you. So if you're looking for a last round dart throw defense, I'd look at those teams. Seattle and LA for the first two weeks and then Cincinnati, New Orleans and Buffalo as the remaining ones.

This next question is an email from Patrick. It says, why isn't the market more bullish on Dalton Kincaid? He's the highest drafted wide receiver or tight end from the Bills according to ADP. He's in his second year. He had an excellent rookie year that outperformed expectations. Draft capital is there and he's athletic. He's tied to the QB1 in fantasy football. Targets open up with Diggs and Davis gone. Thanks, JJ. Patrick. So those are definitely the pros to Dalton Kincaid. He was a great prospect. There's room for a high target share. Josh Allen is a top quarterback. All of that is true. But here's the downside case and why I think that he's just properly valued. I'm not really high or low on Dalton Kincaid right now, but that means that he's not some of them targeting heavily. And here's why. Number one, there are a couple of market related trends that don't favor Dalton Kincaid super well here in 2024 Historically, tight end ones by ADP who didn't reach double digit PPR points per game in their previous season, they don't do it very often in the current season. In fact, we haven't seen any of them do it since 2014 Now that's usually just been low end tight end ones. Usually only the low end tight end ones are coming off a poorer season like that. But with Kincaid, he wasn't quite there. Now compared to other tight ends historically, I do think Kincaid gets a little bit of a pass here. Because he was a rookie last year. And again, we haven't seen many tight ends coming off a sub 10 point per game season who then get drafted in the higher end portion of tight end one territory the following year. But it's something to call out. It's something to at least pay attention to. Now the second thing, and I think this is more important than the first one, but it's how pass heavy the bills are going to be. When they changed offensive coordinators last year, when Joe Brady took over, there was a shift in how they operated. They became more run heavy. In fact, each of their final six games showed that they had a drop backs over expected rate south of zero, meaning they were running the ball more than expected in every single contest down the stretch last year. So the volume side probably won't be there, at least compared to other bills teams in the past. Now the final thing here, number three, I think this is the most important one. It's Dawson Knox. Knox missed weeks 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 last year. During those weeks, Dalton Kincaid averaged a 22.5% target share per game rate, and 13.8 PPR points per game. When Knox returned, that target share per game rate fell by 4 percentage points. He scored 7.4 PPR points per game. There was a dramatic shift in his production. Now again, Kincaid was a rookie, but having a capable body next to him, a tight end, that's not a good thing, and it has a chance to limit him. Now like I said, I get both cases. I think Kincaid has a real shot to lead that team in targets this year. He was a great prospect according to my prospect model. But in my eyes, the reason he doesn't deserve to get drafted where Mark Andrews or Trey McBride go is because of these other factors. And unlike a player like Mark Andrews, Kincaid hasn't shown us that season-long ceiling yet. This next question is from Patreon. It's from Jamie. It says, is drafting last year's top skill player at the 101 every year more a prediction that he'll do it again or a risk aversion in the assumption that he's the most likely to be one of the top players this year? Anecdotally, it feels like we just set and forget last year's best guy without much analysis into the future. So probably one of my least favorite talking points in fantasy football is that you shouldn't draft a certain top player, let's say a wide receiver, because wide receivers never repeat as wide receiver ones from one year to the next. I mean, yeah, sure, that's not wrong, because it's really, really hard to repeat as a top player at a position that has a lot of competition. You mean to tell me that you'd be upset if CD Lam finishes the wide receiver too this year, because you drafted him as a wide receiver one? Of course not. We're building projections and looking forward, and we're saying, Lam has the best median outcome of any wide receiver in the game. That's why he's the first wide receiver falling off of draft boards. It's the same thing with Christian McCaffrey. Of course anything can happen, but he literally broke fantasy football last year. Even if he doesn't match what he did a season ago, it doesn't mean that he's not worthy of being the RB1 in fantasy football. 98% of projection systems are going to show Christian McCaffrey as the RB1. Now, I can't speak for the entire fantasy football world, but I don't think that we're just setting and forgetting at these positions based on last year's numbers. It's that we recognize the floor-ceiling combo for these players, and oftentimes, they're players who did really well the previous season because they're good at the game. Like, you should bet against CD Lam finishing as the wide receiver one this year. If you were to give me the field versus CD Lam, you would take the field all day long. That doesn't mean that he shouldn't be ranked as the wide receiver one though, because you're not telling me who you actually think the wide receiver one is going to be. And why does your choice have better odds than CD Lam? Any good analyst is looking at current season inputs. They're not just taking previous season numbers and using them in the current season. They're projecting. And look, you can make arguments for other guys. I'm not saying that Lam and CMC are the absolute wide receiver one and RB one this year. What I am saying is that fading them in those spots simply because of what they did in the previous season, I'm going to need a little bit more than that.