905: Mailbag 9/6/24

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and in this episode 905 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the mailbag questions this week, this is your final reminder about the Underdog offer that I've been talking about all summer long. If you sign up on Underdog Fantasy with promo code LATEROUND, when you make a deposit, you'll get a free copy of the Late-Round Draft Guide. Some of you are still drafting this weekend, so make sure you're taking advantage of this offer. Signing up also gets you a free pick and a first-time deposit offer up to $1,000 in bonus cash. Underdog Fantasy is the easiest place to play fantasy sports. It's also the fastest growing fantasy app in the industry. It's a great place to play. Check it all out at underdogfantasy.com. And remember, when you sign up, use promo code LATEROUND.

The first question this week is from Twitter. It's from at LloydRage. It says, what are your thoughts on Purdy now that Williams and Aiyuk got paid? Your email was talking about no Trent, but that has changed. Yeah, so I'm going to clear this up, because after that 15 Transactions article was emailed to you guys, after you guys listened to that episode earlier this week, Trent Williams got his contract, so Trent Williams is part of the San Francisco 49ers this season. I didn't really expect that not to be the case. And honestly, I almost wish that I wouldn't have talked about Williams when talking about Purdy on the 15 Transactions episode, because it took the focus off of the most important thing, which is just general regression. I had some comments this week saying how it doesn't make any sense that Purdy would regress, because he's got another year in this system. His weapons are essentially the same, if not better. Why would he be worse this year? Well, that's just not how regression works. Purdy himself can be just as good of a player as he was last year, maybe even a better player. But his numbers can still take a step back. I mentioned on 15 Transactions that he had a 7% touchdown rate last year. That's something that no quarterback in the history of the NFL has maintained. The other thing I didn't talk about was how Purdy finished last year with a yards per attempt rate of 9.6. Among 300-plus attempt quarterbacks ever in NFL history, that number has been hit a grand total of three times. Kurt Warner did it in 2000, Chris Chandler, he did it in 1998, and then Brock Purdy did it in 2023 Now, Purdy may see more volume. He should see more volume this year. But volume generally doesn't offset those numbers enough. Let me just run through an example. This is just straight math, and it's where this entire take really stems from. Let's say that Purdy sees his touchdown rate fall to 6%, which is still really high. And let's say his yards per attempt rate goes to 8, which is also still quite high. Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback of this era, has a career yards per attempt of 7.9. He has a career touchdown rate of 6.1%.

So we're basically saying that Brock Purdy will be Patrick Mahomes in this hypothetical, which is obviously not a given. Now last year, Purdy averaged 18.5 points per game through the air. When you count only his yards, his passing yards and his touchdowns. So I'm ignoring the variance of interceptions. I'm ignoring what he might do via rushing, because that's going to have a little bit of volatility, given he's not a mobile quarterback. Let's just look at his passing touchdowns and his passing yards. If Purdy has a yards per attempt rate of 8 instead of 9.6, and a touchdown rate of 6% instead of 7%, in order for him to maintain that 18.5 points per game mark, he's going to need to see his pass attempts increase by over 5 attempts per game. Across the season, we're talking 85 more pass attempts. With this team, and the fact that they're likely going to win a lot of games, it's going to be very hard to see that high of a total. That's almost 580 pass attempts. The 49ers have been at 491, 512, and 514 pass attempts over the last 3 years. And remember, that's with a good yards per attempt and a good touchdown rate. And guys, that's still just to get to low-end QB1 numbers. Anything is obviously possible, but my point with selling Purdy and not drafting him at cost this year is that there are other pocket-passing quarterbacks who can match his ceiling. This is exactly what I mean when I say that. I would much rather throw a dart late at some of those guys than pay up at the top of a tier for a player like Purdy. And this has nothing to do with how I feel about Purdy the player. I actually like Purdy and I think that he's unfairly scrutinized. This is strictly math. This is strictly about how the game of fantasy football is played and how it's scored.