967: Analyzing 2024's Biggest Misses

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 967 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. I say it every year, but this is always a tough episode to do. I'm human, just like you. And being human, I don't want to be wrong about things. I think some people can handle being wrong better than others, but no one wakes up in the morning and says, man, I can't wait to screw up today. That's kind of what I'm doing here in front of thousands of people. But this is important. You need to evaluate both your rights and wrongs if you want to get better at something. And I think that's especially true with the things you get wrong. So on today's show, I'm going to talk through a handful of things that I did incorrectly during the 2024 season. And instead of just saying, Hey, JJ, you're an idiot. I'll say that while also seeing if it was a process thing that was wrong or if it was just the result. Now, before getting to those things, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Underdog is the easiest and best place to play fantasy sports. And with the conference championships happening this weekend, there are plenty of contests to choose from to get in on the action. You can always throw some pick-em selections out there, too. Check it all out at underdogfantasy.com, and if you're new to the site or new to the app, sign up with promo code LATEROUND. That'll get you a nice deposit offer. Also, make sure you head to lateround.com and pre-order the Prospect Guide. It's currently available for $14.99, and that price will jump to $19.99 when the guide launches in March. The Prospect Guide includes a write-up of what goes into the ZAP model, profiles of every running Mac and wide receiver who will be at the NFL Combine, results of the tight-end ZAP model, a write-up of the Year 2 model, and profiles for relevant running Macs and wide receivers in that Year 2 model. Last year's guide was 140 pages long, just to give you an idea of the information that you'll get in it. That's all at lateround.com. Just click Guides at the top. All right, now let's look at how stupid I was during the 2024 season.

One of the easier places to start today's show is with Kyler Murray. I talked about Murray being a miss during a Mailbag episode a little while back, but we have to bring it up today, because Kyler was easily my biggest miss at quarterback. Now, what's kind of interesting is that according to what Kyler was expected to score this year at his ADP, he actually wasn't that gigantic of a miss. He was the QB8 according to Fantasy Data's ADP, and him going 74th overall meant that he would have been expected to score 18 standard fantasy points per game. That's based on what we've seen historically, or since 2014, which is when that ADP goes back to. He scored 17 and a half points per game. So he only played half a point per game under expectation. Players like CJ Stroud, Patrick Mahomes, Anthony Richardson, they were way worse picks. But that's still a pretty bad L when you consider I went around saying he was a top value at quarterback this year. So what happened? Well, in my opinion, there were two main things. The first is that I had some faulty analysis. One of the things that I brought up time and time again with Kyler was that he had a good rushing floor, to the point where players historically with Kyler's rushing floor had almost always given us a solid fantasy season. This is straight from the Late-Round Draft Guide. I wrote, Murray got by last year with rushing, even off a major injury. He scored 5.3 points per game on the ground. He's now reached 4.9 points per contest via rushing in all five seasons in the league, and four of his five years were over the 5 mark. Since 2011, we've had 35 quarterbacks hit 300 pass attempts in the season while running to a five points per game mark. Of those 35, each of them scored at least 17.7 points per game. 31 of them hit 18 points per contest, and 20 of them got to 20 points. So you may be wondering, why is that faulty analysis? Well, using five as the baseline for Murray probably wasn't very fair. Murray got to 5.1 this year, 5.1 points per game via rushing. But that data should have included guys who were just under the 5 mark, not only players who were over it. Now, even with that being said, Kyler still finishes the worst quarterback since 2011 to hit 300 pass attempts and have five points per game via the rush. Like, he had a bad season outside of that one thing. And that's where the second mistake lies. I made a bad assumption. In 2023, Kyler was coming off that ACL injury. That season, he had a 3.7% touchdown rate, with some relatively bad weapons around him in a new offense. The assumption was that he'd improve pretty dramatically as a passer in 2024 He'd be getting Marvin Harrison Jr. He'd be healthier. He'd be another year in this offensive system. And that assumption was wrong. Murray had a slightly better touchdown rate in 2024, but it was still below 4%. His interception rate increased, his average up to target was nearly the same, and while his yards per attempt did get better, it just wasn't enough to give us more than just a floor. I talk about that a lot each year, but mobile quarterbacks are more about floor than ceiling. A run-heavy quarterback will hit a ceiling when his passing numbers are also good, when he's a unicorn player, like Lamar Jackson or Josh Allen. That didn't happen for Kyler, despite having multiple seasons with a way better touchdown rate than he had this year. If I'm being totally honest here though guys, I'm not sure I'd change this process up dramatically. I think the storytelling definitely does need fixed. The stat about 5 points per game via rushing, that needed broader parameters. But Kyler Murray had two top 5 finishes in his career. And one of those finishes came during a year where he didn't have some outlier season and rushing touchdowns. Meanwhile, he was a year healthier from his knee injury and his weapons were improved. The problem with Murray was that there wasn't any progression. Everything basically stayed status quo. And at quarterback, you can't have that in fantasy. Because once you get past the first few elite guys, everyone kind of becomes the same. There's not a huge edge. You need your quarterback to become that kind of elite player. So process-wise, I'm not going to beat myself up over this one too badly. This is the kind of profile that you generally want to target. Would have been nicer if you got them in like the double digit rounds, of course. But the bottom line is that things didn't look nearly as good in Arizona as I expected. That's just a team and personnel evaluation thing. And that's going to happen in fantasy football.