971: Sell Candidates

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, 971 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Last week on the show, I talked about some players you might want to consider buying in your dynasty leagues this offseason. On today's show, we're looking at the opposite, or players you might want to sell. Naturally, these guys are going to have some bigger names than some of the ones that I talked about last week. Because in order to want to trade someone away, that player will need to have some sort of value. We're not throwing darts anymore. I also want to choose a nice variety for today's show. I can make arguments for a lot of players to be on today's list. But I don't think just talking about old guy after old guy is really helpful, or only talking about the same archetype of player is not helpful either. And for the record, I know that these shows may not be totally applicable to your dynasty teams. But I hope that they are at least helpful. You can see the process and see how I'm thinking about players and maybe apply that same thought process and same logic to a different player. But I've got some names to go through today. So let's get to them ASAP. But first, the 2024 season is now officially over. Congrats to the Eagles and all their fans on winning the Super Bowl. But fantasy football, it never ends. Over on Underdog right now, you can enter drafts for the 2025 season. If you know prospects well, if you have a good grasp on free agency, you can really have an edge against your competition. If you want to check it out, head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up. When you do, use promo code LATEROUND to get up to $1,000 in bonus cash. That's underdogfantasy.com. Also, make sure you're checking out the Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's currently for sale over on lateraound.com. This year's guide is some enhancements, and you'll also get profiles for both prospects in this year's class, as well as second year NFL players. It's all for $14.99 if you pre-order, but that's only if you pre-order. Do that now before it launches on March 10th to get that price before it jumps up by $5. The guide is then updated the final day of the NFL draft, so you'll get everything you need to crush your rookie drafts right away. That's all at lateraound.com.

So similar to last week, I compared my rankings to what we're seeing over on keeptradecut.com. That at least gets me an initial list of players to talk about on today's show. And one player who I'm lower on versus the market is someone I talked about a couple of weeks ago on a mailbag episode, and that's Terry McLaurin. Like I said on that show, I of course don't think McLaurin is a bad player. Quite the opposite. And even though he's going to be 30 next season, he probably does have some time left to be a decent option in fantasy. But I also think we just saw a season from him that we probably won't see again, which is the kind of thing to sell in dynasty. Let's first look at the peripherals. McLaurin had a 23.3% target share per game rate last year, which was pretty much in line with what he'd seen throughout his career. So, there's nothing special or out of the ordinary on the volume front. McLaurin's yards per route run was 1.98 in 2024 according to PFF. That was better than 2023's rate, but he'd been above 2 yards per route run twice in his career. He's usually in like the 1.8 to 1.9 range, so it was an above average season. But again, it was nothing out of the ordinary. And with his target share being what it was, his targets per route run wasn't an outlier either. So why did McLaurin give us his first season ranking higher than 20th in PPR points per game? His first season with more than 15 PPR points per contest. Touchdowns. Everything was driven by touchdowns. I mentioned this a couple weeks back, but McLaurin accounted for over 44% of Washington's receiving touchdowns this past year. We've only had 34 seasons since 2011, where a wide receiver hit a 40% touchdown share. McLaurin was well above that mark. And of those 34 players, the only guys to do it more than once since 2011, Mike Evans, DJ Moore, Devontae Adams, Deandre Hopkins, Des Bryant, and Brandon Marshall. Those are some historically good touchdown scorers. And then there's DJ Moore in that list while scoring 7 and 8 touchdowns. But his touchdown share was high because the teams that he was on were just bad. McLaurin ended up scoring 13 times last year when PFF's expected touchdowns had him at 7.7. He was 15th among all pass catchers in expected touchdowns. Now, the obvious reason to not care too much about this, to care too much about the fact that McLaurin outpaced his touchdown expectation is Jaden Daniels. He should only get better. If the quarterback situation improves even more, the McLaurin can possibly maintain high touchdown totals. Now, I would agree with that to a degree, but Washington was already really good in 2024 They were sixth in offensive touchdowns per game. They were top 10 in passing touchdowns. Daniels can improve while also throwing a similar number of touchdowns. And with McLaurin unlikely to maintain such a large share of those scores, his fantasy total is probably going to drop. Not only that, but look at the Washington wide receiver depth chart right now. There's a very real chance that they add to that room. That has a shot to lower McLaurin's target share by a couple of percentage points. McLaurin will still score points. I'm not selling him because he's bad. I'm selling him because he's a regression candidate. He's going to be 30 years old next year, and he's fluctuated in the market. He's been a low-end wide receiver too at times this offseason. And that seems too rich for an older wide receiver coming off a season that he's going to have a hard time repeating.