933: Mailbag 10/25/24

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 933 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. I know a lot of you are football fans, but I know a lot of you are basketball fans too, and the NBA is back. To celebrate, Underdog is offering a boost on all NBA-only pick-up entries through October 27th. That's on top of the Boosttober promotion that's been running throughout the month. You guys should go check it out. And if you're on the site and you're ready to join, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you're signing up. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus. You'll also get access to my rest of season rankings. Their email due after you sign up, deposit and play. That's on underdogfantasy.com or through the Underdog app. And that's promo code LATEROUND when you sign up. It's a mailbag episode. Let's get to it.

The first question is from Patreon. It's from Heightweight Speed Quarterbacks Only. It says, huge fan of your work. Thanks. Zooming out from specific players. What's your process when evaluating midseason trades? So honestly, it's the same as my process for evaluating any addition or subtraction to a lineup, which includes when injuries occur. From a projection standpoint, you have to think about the team level first. How could this player impact the team? You're not going to see multiple touchdown differences in projections or anything at the team level. But just think about what a player might be able to do to a team's bottom line. And more importantly, think about what a player might do to a team's tendencies. Like DeAndre Hopkins, he goes to Kansas City. We'll get to that in a second. But do the Chiefs get more run heavy? I mean, it's possible that GameScript would get better if the Chiefs get better. But if the Chiefs get better, that at least means that the passing attack is more efficient than it was before. In general, this is probably a move where the Chiefs throw the ball a little bit more now. They lean on Mahomes a little bit more than they have. It may not be dramatic. In some cases, it's not. But it's something to think about. And then you think about the player and his fit on the team. This is where I think just having a really methodical mathematical approach, when people don't have a qualitative bone in their body, this is where it can ruin analysis. Forecasting football, it's not just a numbers driven process only. There's an art to it. And the art comes in the form of understanding how teams might want to use certain players. It's about, for lack of a better term, just generally understanding ball. You can use data to help you get to those conclusions too. Don't get me wrong. A good example of this is with the Buccaneers right now. Like I said, injuries can also make you go through the same exact type of process. And the Bucs lost Chris Godwin and they lost Mike Evans. Now we have to figure out what's going to happen in this offense. Sometimes we don't fully know. We're just making educated guesses. But my educated guess is that maybe the Buccaneers, maybe they drop their neutral script pass rate a little bit and lean more on the run, which means there's a potential for less passing volume. And then you look at the wide receivers on their roster, and you think about the roles that those wide receivers might play based on their skill sets. And I said it all week, but the Bucs are currently looking at just like a bunch of slot wide receivers or guys who play best in the slot, which makes it more difficult to know exactly how these players are going to be deployed. I mean, this is why the Jalen McMillan pick was so interesting for them, because he played like 90% of his snaps in college from the slot. But they clearly were making a point to use Chris Godwin there this year. They talked about that during the off season. And they've been using McMillan on the outside on the perimeter all year, when his much more natural position is as a slot receiver. That's where he thrived at Washington. But then there's Sterling Shepherd. Shepherd hasn't only been a slot player throughout his career. He started his career that way, but like in 2020, he only ran 32% of his routes from the slot. He's seen his slot rate actually kind of go down as his career has gone on. But again, I think if you look at him, you look at his archetype and where he's at in his career and how the Buccaneers have used him at times this year, you say to yourself, Oh yeah, he could play that role. He could play the Chris Godwin role. Even Trey Palmer last season, his rookie year, 57% of his routes run came from the slot. So my point is that some of these projections, some of these forecasts, they're going to be a little bit more difficult than others. I've said to Ad Macmillan, because he has the most unknown upside, and I liked him as a prospect. But like I mentioned on yesterday's Sleepers episode, Shepherd, he might be the one who takes that Godwin role, which could be really helpful in fantasy. Meanwhile, you look at Kansas City, and it's obvious they need a real X receiver. You could hypothetically put Hopkins there. I think he has a chance to play some X, but also we've seen some slot work from Hopkins in the past. And in this lower A-dot offense that Kansas City has been running, I wouldn't be surprised if Hopkins plays out of the slot a little bit too, which is the Rashid Rice-Juju Smith-Schuster role, just because of how this offense has operated basically since Tyreek Hill left. So from a projection standpoint, maybe it lowers Travis Kelcey's target share a little bit. Everyone's target share is going to take a hit when you add a player like this to the offense. And Xavier Worthy, he was a buy this week before all this news went down. I would say that's less of the case now, but there's also a chance that the market's just completely off of Worthy now. So you could always do a bench trade. But yeah, once you get that general understanding of how teams deploy their players, you can start divvying things up like backfield share and target share. That gives you your general projection. And you're coming up with those target share numbers based on historical figures and what's logical for the current situation. So hopefully that helps. I think people want this to be more analytical than it actually is sometimes. I do think it's analytical from the standpoint of having a general understanding of how teams divide their work and what types of players see what types of target shares. But to be accurate with your forecasts, you still need to understand how the game of football works.