896: Players to Target

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason in this episode 896 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. Over the last couple of years, I brought on the same guests for my yearly Players to Target and Players to Avoid episodes. Those guests being my friends, Evan Silva and Rich Rebar. We're running it back again this year. Evan is the guest on today's episode, where we each talk through five players that we're targeting in fantasy drafts this year. And then Rich and I will discuss players to avoid next week. Now, some of you may wonder why this isn't just a Late-Round Perspectives episode. And a simple answer is the one that I gave back during NFL draft season. We're talking about a very specific topic today. Perspectives is for back and forth conversation. And we kind of let that conversation dictate the topics a bit. This is specifically all about players to target. But like I said, Evan is on today's episode. He doesn't need much of an introduction because 99% of you know who he is. But Evan Silva is one of the co-founders of establishtherun.com. He spent over a decade at Roto World where he became known for his crazy football knowledge through his weekly matchups column. On today's episode, Evan and I run through some of our favorite values and fantasy drafts. Now, before getting to our discussion, just a reminder, if you're thinking about getting the Late-Round Draft Guide but you haven't yet, consider signing up on Underdog because if you do, you can get that 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 have the draft guide. You can always get the guide over on lateround.com as well, but it's much easier and cost effective to do it through Underdog. That's underdogfantasy.com promo code LATEROUND. Now, here's my chat with Evan Silva. All right, Evan, you've done this for, I think this is your third year now where you either come on and we talk about players we're targeting, players we're avoiding. You know the drill at this point. We'll just go back and forth. We each have five players. You sent me your five, so I picked five that there's no overlap. You kick it off. Give me a player that you're targeting because you like this guy versus average draft position.

Evan Silva (2:42)

I'm going to start off with a guy who's already high up in the ADP, Devon Achan. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly because the pronunciation seems to change from day to day. However, that's not what matters here. I remember back in the heyday of Roda World, I was doing content with Chris Westling primarily. Greg Rosenthal was overseeing us. There was a player by the name of Chris Johnson, who was drafted out of East Carolina. And Chris Johnson had, it was a late first-round pick. He had a really nice rookie season. He showed special capability. And Chris Westling, just RIP, just pushed all of his chips in on Chris Johnson, entering his second season, when Lindell White was still a big factor at that time, theoretically.

And I remember coming out with my first 150, like right after the NFL draft, entering Chris Johnson's second season. And I had Lindell White ranked ahead of Chris Johnson. And Chris Westling goes, dude, what are you doing? You need to change that. The rest of your rankings are really nice. You need to change that. And I did. And I got Chris Johnson, like I think he was like a second round pick maybe. I bumped him up to that. He ran for 2000 yards the next season. I think that this is a similar situation potentially between Raheem Mostert and Devon Aitchin. Now, no one's ranking Raheem Mostert ahead of Devon Aitchin. But I think that the upside for Devon Aitchin is like generational, you know, legendary season. I think that he has that within his range of potential outcomes. So, the way that I am ranking Devon Aitchin is I have him, I think, 12th overall. And I think his ADP is somewhere in the second round, maybe. I just, I want my readers, my audience to get Devon Aitchin on their teams. And so, I'm being hyper aggressive with him. I don't think he's going to run for 2,000 yards like Chris Johnson did in his second year. But I do think he has 1,500 yard, 50 catches, double digit TDs, especially in that offense. He's such a great fit for that offense. They've been using him, lining up in the slot a bit during training camp. Just, we really want to aim for big time difference making league winners. And Devon Aitchin definitely has that in him, I believe.