899: Risers and Fallers

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

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

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode 899 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. I really start my redraft research, my season-long fantasy football research, in early May. The winter months are spent figuring out the NFL draft and doing some dynasty research. But once the draft is over, things flip. My brain goes into redraft mode. I start really working on the draft guide, and the content that you consume on here is geared towards that particular season. That starts in May. By the time the season kicks off, it's early September. A lot can change in those three or four months, and that's why I feel this episode is necessary to do each and every year. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about the players who have gone up the most in my rankings over the last weeks and months, and then I'm going to talk about the guys who have fallen the most. That way, we're on the same page as we approach the fantasy football season. Now, before getting to things, I want to send another reminder about signing up on Underdog Fantasy. Underdog is awesome. They've got best ball drafts and tournaments going on all the time for this year's fantasy season, and those drafts are at all entry points. You don't need tons and tons of money to play. You can join tournaments for $3 and $5 entry fees, too. I've been becoming a best ball bro this off season, and while you don't need to go that hardcore, you can still use those episodes in the podcast feed to help you out, to make you a better best ball player. And I've got a special offer for you, too. If you sign up on Underdog Fantasy with promo code LATEROUND, not only will you get a nice deposit offer, but Underdog will send you a free Late-Round Draft Guide. You can make a $10 deposit and get the guide. The guide costs $25. You're literally saving cash by taking advantage of the offer. Just head to underdogfantasy.com, sign up, and use promo code LATEROUND when you do. Once you make a deposit, the guide will be sent your way. Now let's get to this year's big risers and fallers.

The Chief's wide receiver room has been kind of a roller coaster this offseason. You had all of the Rashii Rice stuff go down earlier in the year. They signed Marquise Brown. They drafted Xavier Worthy. Then Marquise Brown got hurt, and it's looking less and less likely that Rashii Rice is going to be suspended this year. All the while, Xavier Worthy has looked the part so far in camp and in the preseason. Now I'm not that surprised by that last note. Worthy was something that my model really liked. He's someone that I'm into. I did have some concern about what his target total might look like in year one, but I've become less and less concerned about that when looking at how they've deployed him in the preseason. Not only that, but Hollywood Brown is banged up already. In the early parts of the season, that could very easily force more looks to these other two young wide receivers. So Brown was looking really good in like June. He was competing with Worthy for targets, and there were some real questions as to how the Chiefs might use Worthy here in year one. But that's at least been squashed to some degree. And then all the while, this Rashid Rice suspension is looking more unlikely for 2024 And then Marquise Brown got hurt. So things have gotten really south for Brown. He's seen a pretty big drop in my rankings. The other two wide receivers have risen. Rice is interesting because the market still clearly has people who believe that he can be suspended. That's why I added him as a player to target in the draft guide just a couple of weeks ago. And while I'm with some people who are a little bit afraid of Rice's true ceiling in the league after what we saw last year, and last year was this low A-dot role where he generated a lot of yards after the catch, he likely saw a bump in target share last year due to lack of competition, I get all of that. I don't think we can just dismiss, though, the idea that Rice just gets better as a second year player. He scored well in my year two model. He was in the range where we see a lot of elite players. And just look at history. Rice hit 13.3 PPR points per game last year. There have been 19 wide outs since 2011 with next season data who hit 13 or more PPR points per game as a rookie. Of those 19, only three of them ended up scoring fewer than 14 PPR points per game, it was actually 14.4 during year two. That's a wide receiver two season. 16 of the 19 wide receivers were wide receiver twos during their sophomore year in the NFL. Now, like I said, I've had my own concerns about Rashid Rice the player. He didn't really play a typical wide receiver role last year, it was sort of Jarvis landry-esque. But that doesn't mean that he can't improve or that he won't still see a relatively decent target share even with more offensive weapons in Kansas City. So basically, I'm higher than the market on Rice and Worthy now, and I'm more concerned about Hollywood Brown. That's been a shift in my rankings.