949: Mailbag 11/22/24

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 949 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the mail-back questions, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Right now over on Underdog, you can draft teams for playoff contests. That's right, it's November, so you may feel like it's a little bit early for this, but you can get ahead of the field if you have a good grasp on which teams are going to make the playoffs and which ones won't. To check out those contests along with a ton of other variations, head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. That will get you a nice deposit offer, and it will also get you a link to my rest of season rankings. That's if you sign up with promo code LATEROUND, make a deposit, and start playing. The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Joey. It says, What factors are important to consider when stashing a defense versus insurance running backs this time of year? Have good odds of making the playoffs and a pretty solid crop of running backs in Bijon Robinson, Chase Brown, and Tyrone Tracy? So I talked about this a little bit on my Patreon-only livestream this week, which I do every week for the record. But I almost feel like people have taken defensive stashing like way too far. There's a lot of volatility with defenses. Part of the reason that you can stream them is because of that volatility. The defensive performance itself is largely driven by the matchup that they're facing. So you'll get bad defenses doing well in a given week all the time. That makes defensive rankings pretty inconsistent from one week to the next. You're also only starting one of them in your lineup. So a whole lot of defenses are usually available. Each team is usually only rostering one, especially early on in the season. Just for some proof that defensive streaming works, I do another podcast every week during the season called Living the Stream. And on that show, me and my co-host Denny Carter, we keep track of our streaming picks. Our Frankenstein defense each year usually ends up as the equivalent of like the third best defense in fantasy football. It's on a point per game basis. That's by only using defenses rostered in very few leagues. Some of that is because you can find defenses in plus matchups and just use them. But some of it is just because the same defenses aren't performing well every single week, because there's a lot of variance. So it's just simply not that hard to match higher end defenses. Now, I get why people are stashing defenses. I do it too. You want to feel good about that starting spot in the playoffs. But right now, we're sitting 3 weeks away from the start of the fantasy playoffs. Just because you're in the playoffs doesn't mean that your team can't get worse as we get closer to the playoffs. Injuries can still happen. And if an injury does happen, let's say to your starting running back, there's absolutely no doubt that a backup running back is going to be more valuable in that scenario than a defense. You're going to get some production from that backup running back more than likely, especially if he's a high-end handcuff. But even if you don't have a defense for the playoff weeks, like here in week 12, if you don't have a defense for weeks 15, 16, and 17, I would bet that there's still going to be a defense or two that you can get off the waiver wire when those weeks hit. And I bet that there's less competition for those defenses, because fewer teams in your league are actually playing in the playoffs. There's less competition on the waiver wire. So why go out of your way and stash defenses right now when there is an opportunity cost? Like I couldn't imagine stashing a defense over someone like Braylon Allen right now. If Breeze Hall goes down, Allen's an RB2 in fantasy football. Maybe people would say that's not even high enough. He'd have at least predictable volume, and the Jets have a gorgeous playoff schedule. You're going to stash the Buccaneers defense over that? When you could get to week 15, week 16, and week 17, and probably find a good enough defense during those weeks anyway? It's not like you're guaranteed the points from the defense that you're stashing. And defenses are not super predictable. You're not guaranteed points from Braylon Allen, sure, but it's a much more important position. And that volume and that production is going to be more predictable. So, I'm much more likely to keep decent handcuffs than defenses. There are still going to be instances where I'm stashing a defense, but the upside exists with running backs. There's no doubt in my mind. And something related to this are the questions that I get about which defense is best to have for the playoffs. Now, I talked about this a bit last week on this show, on the mailbag, but you shouldn't have the mindset that you're playing one defense throughout the fantasy playoffs. You're not doing that during the regular season. Why would that change during the playoffs? I don't understand. Why are you changing up your strategy? Nothing has changed. You're still playing the game of fantasy football. I just think that we've gotten to the point where we're totally overanalyzing this. Stashing defenses is fine. What I think is not fine is doing it over very valuable assets who play much more important positions that don't have as much variance. Because remember, in a worst-case scenario, when you get to week 15, when you get to week 16, in most leagues, you'll still be able to find a streaming defense, even if you don't feel as confident in that defense as the one that you would have stashed. The true difference between those two defenses won't be that significant, at least from a probability perspective.