917: Mailbag 9/27/24

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 917 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the mail back questions this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Over on Underdog right now, you can play Pick'em, but there are some really cool best ball contests, like their new best Ball resurrection Tournament. If you sign up over there with promo code LATEROUND, you'll get a nice deposit offer, a free pick that will help you win some cash, and then also my rest of season rankings. Those rest of season rankings are updated every tuesday through the end of the season. You get access to all of those updates. Make sure you take advantage of these offers, head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app. And when you sign up, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND.

The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Matthew. It says, With the recent news coming out of McCaffrey's visit to Germany, do you think he will be out for the rest of the season? Or if he has a chance of coming back, would there be any elite tier players you would trade for him? Thanks, JJ. Now, I'm not surprised by it, but a ton of people were asking me this week about Christian McCaffrey. And I've got to say, you guys, there are some questions that I get where I just legitimately have no idea. I have no real answer for it. I don't even think the 49ers know the answer to this question. So for me to sit on this podcast and pretend like I have a clear answer would be stupid. I tell people all the time that I like to make moves. I like to trade when it's related to something that I can actually control. I can't control Christian McCaffrey situation, but I can control how I evaluate talent. Like, I saw one breakdown where they said that he might be back week 8, but there's a better chance he was back week 12 Now, this isn't a diss to the person who said that. It's that there's so little information about what's going on, not just because of the media and the 49ers and how they're handling it, but because it's clearly not an injury that's got some set timeline to it. I don't know. Whether you go for Christian McCaffrey depends entirely on your own risk tolerance. Period. That's it. I will say though that I don't think this Germany stuff is necessarily a bad thing. It sounds like he's trying to get treatment that he can't get in the United states because he wants to speed up the recovery process. That's not a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if you thought that he would be back in like week six. So anything CMC related, I honestly can't really help you with it. I know as much as you do. All I can say is that if you want a high variance player, one who could sink your team, but also win you a championship, then feel free to target him. If you don't want to invite that kind of variance on your team, which I totally totally understand, then don't trade for him. I know that's an obvious answer, but that's the true answer. It's honestly how I feel about this situation. I don't want to sit on this podcast or sit on social media or on my Patreon and act like I have answers that I don't have. That's disingenuous.

This next question is from at RK Davidson 13 on Twitter. It says, is there any data or even hope to think Javonte Williams can turn things around and get back to being a productive fantasy running back? So a lot of people are tilting about Javonte Williams, and Jaleel McLaughlin to some degree. I was high on McLaughlin in particular entering the season. I know a lot of you are ready for my perspective on the situation, especially the haters. Now this is trending towards an L, but I think there are two pieces of data that we can point to to make us feel a little bit better about this situation. First, Denver's offense has been predictably bad. They have three offensive touchdowns this season. Their bottom ten in yards per game, their bottom ten in EPA per play, and both Javonte Williams and Jaleel McLaughlin have been insanely inefficient. That's especially true of Williams, who basically has only been better than DeAndre Swift this year across the league. Now I think this was expected to some degree. I've talked a lot about how running backs on teams with rookie quarterbacks usually don't become huge league winners. The reason I was okay with going heavy with Jaleel McLaughlin, and why I started to buy into Javonte Williams a week or two before the season started, or at least buy more into him, was because of pass catching. Sean Payton's teams from 2011 to last year had never ranked worse than sixth in running back target share in a single season. Now you can say that that was all personnel based, but they were first last season. Look at the running backs they had last year. You can say it was all Drew brees being a check down king, but Russell Wilson was a check down king for Sean Payton. And Russell Wilson's teams in Seattle typically ranked in the 20s in running back target share. This is a Sean Payton thing. And not only were those offensive tendencies there for this offense, but Bo Nix seemed like the right quarterback to pair with that. So far this year, Denver ranks below average in running back target share. Their running back target share is almost half of what it was last year. That's a huge, huge problem. That's literally the reason that any of us were bullish on them, whether it was McLaughlin or even Javonte Williams. Now you're probably thinking, where's the hopeful data then, JJ? Well, the hopeful data is that we've only seen three games. It started poorly, but rookie quarterbacks tend to get better. And I do think that we're still likely going to see more running back targets moving forward, given what we've seen historically. So it's been bad. It's been no doubt bad. And in most leagues, you're not confidently playing those Denver running backs right now. But that's how you can think about things more optimistically.