897: Players to Avoid

Rich Hribar (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, 897 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. I talked to Evan Silva last week about some players that we're targeting in season-long drafts this year. This week, it's all about players to avoid. And to help me discuss the topic, I brought on my good friend Rich Hribar of Sharp Football Analysis. We each came prepared with five players who are generally avoiding in drafts this year. And I say generally avoiding because this is entirely dependent on cost. If these guys slip past ADP, it doesn't mean we're still avoiding them. But like last week, we go back and forth through the 10 players. But one thing I want to say is that we recorded this before this past weekend. And since then, some things have happened. Marshawn Lloyd was injured. That makes one of the recommendations less interesting. And at this moment, this is Monday night, before this drops on Tuesday morning, Jamir Gibbs status is totally up in the air. He apparently has a leg injury. That impacts another player that we chat about. But instead of cutting all that out, I think there's still enough to learn about the process here. So we're keeping it all in. I think you'll learn something from this discussion. Now before getting to that discussion, guys, if you're planning on buying the Late-Round Draft Guide to help you out with your drafts this year, make sure you're taking advantage of my Underdog offer. Because it quite literally will save you money. Instead of buying the guide, new Underdog users can sign up on underdogfantasy.com with promo code LATEROUND and get that guide sent to them for absolutely free. Just go and sign up, use promo code LATEROUND, make it a deposit and Underdog will email you the link to the guide. It's that easy. You of course can just go to lateraound.com and buy the guide yourself. And you'll get everything you need to wrap your head around the fantasy football landscape this year. But I had to bring up that offer because you can get a discount on the guide. You get to play some best ball while also getting the Late-Round Draft Guide. So check that all out on underdogfantasy.com.

Sign up, make it a deposit and use promo code LATEROUND. Now, here's my conversation with Rich Hribar.

All right, Rich, this has become a yearly tradition where we do sort of a home and home type deal with our podcasts. This year, we're doing players to avoid on this one. Did we do avoid or target on this one last year?

Rich Hribar (2:45)

We did target on this one last year.

JJ Zachariason (2:46)

Okay, good, good. So I'm flipping it properly and correctly then. So we're doing players to avoid today. I will be doing some players to target on your show next week, but or maybe it'll release around the same time as this one. But regardless, we're going to go back and forth, very similar or identically similar to what happened with Silva and I last week in our conversation with players to target. You name a guy, we talk about it. I name a guy, we talk about it. We each have five players. So let's kick it to you, Rich, with your first player to avoid this year.

Rich Hribar (3:21)

My first guy, I'm going to start at quarterback. I've got a guy at each position. I feel like we always pick it, try to pick a guy at each position for these for both. But I'm going to start with Dak Prescott. You look at Dak and it's the inverse of why he was a buy last year. I mean, he's just do a mountain of negative regression. He had arguably the best season of his career in 2023, led the NFL in completions, touchdown passes. He had the highest completion rate of his career.

You don't get to lead the NFL in passing touchdowns, unless some fortune kind of swung your way in that department. He led all quarterbacks with 9.7 touchdown passes over expectations, or 10 touchdowns if you want to be like, you can't throw a seventh of a touchdown. He, last year, led the, he had career highs and pass attempts inside of the 10-yard line with 49 He led with pass attempts inside of the five-yard line with 21 He had 67 pass attempts into the end zone last year. The next closest player in the NFL had 53 His previous career high in end zone passes was 45, so 22 more than that. And you look at this, how Dak Prescott able to use that to his advantage last year in out kicking his expected touchdown coverage. Over the past decade, 53.4% of all passing touchdowns in the NFL have come on throws that actually went into the end zone. The league great last year was right on par, it was 54.3%. A little dyslexia if you get those numbers into typing. But 75% of Dak Prescott's touchdowns last year came on throws into the actual end zone. His previous high in a season was 56.5%.