973: NFL Draft - Running Backs With Studly Profiles

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 973 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. We got the official list of NFL combine invites last week, which means it's officially prospect season. I know some of you aren't as interested in that side of fantasy football. You'd rather just wait and see where these guys get drafted rather than learning about them over the next couple of months. And I get that. My prospecting work won't be for everyone. But I do think having a general understanding of the incoming rookies each year can help you in any fantasy format. Of course, it's going to be helpful in dynasty for your rookie drafts, or some of the best ball contests going on right now over on Underdog. But even in your normal redraft leagues, having an understanding of these players is crucial. Not just during your drafts, but with waiver wire management as well. Now, I do a series of episodes each year, with this one being the first, as sort of an introduction to the class. Today's episode is about running backs. Next week, it's going to be all about wide receivers. But the concept is pretty simple. I look at successful NFL players at those two positions, and I see what kind of collegiate production traits those players shared. Then, I look at the current class, and I see if any of the draft hopeful players appear to be studs based on their collegiate production. But we'll talk through all of that in just a minute. First, the Late-Round Prospect Guide. It's available for pre-order right now. You should check it out. This year's guide is even more information than ever before. You get info on everything that goes into my prospect and year two models. You get profiles for every running back and wide receiver at this year's combine. You get year two profiles for about 40 second year running backs and wide receivers. And I've added what I'm calling categories to the model this year that help categorize players into these buckets depending on their overall scores in both the ZAP model and the year two one. I'm putting a lot of work into this. I think you guys are going to enjoy it. You can pre-order it right now over on lateround.com. It's $14.99. On March 10th when it launches, that price is going to go up by $5. Also even though the fantasy football season is over, is it actually over? Because 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 on your competition. And you can use today's episode to help you out. If you want to check it out, head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up. When you do, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND to get up to $1000 in bonus cash. That's underdogfantasy.com So the goal today is to look at successful NFL running backs in recent history and see if their college production marks match up with any of the prospects in this year's draft class. Because whether people want to believe it or not, college production can be predictive. Who would have thought when a player is successful in college, he has a higher likelihood to be successful in the NFL. This is really where my ZAP model comes into play, where it stems from. I've worked on the wide receiver and running back ZAP models for years now, and I update them with new ideas every offseason. Those models are based on things like draft capital, certain college production metrics, player size, program strength, and so on. Again, all of this is outlined in the prospect guide.

I made a semi-substantial update to the running back model this offseason that allowed it to get more signal and be more predictive. I was a little hesitant to do it, but I do think it makes sense. It's just going to confuse literally everyone when I say this, but here goes. The running back ZAP model no longer includes any rushing metrics. How is that possible? Why would a running back model not use rushing related metrics? Well, it used a couple of pass catching metrics. So college production isn't just totally tossed out the window. But what I've realized is that a lot of the rushing marks are just simply captured in other things that the model is looking at. Draft capital being that top thing. You see, these ZAP models are not attempting to predict where a player is going to get drafted, or what round he'll be drafted in. Instead, they're mostly telling you post-draft when you should deviate from draft capital. And it seems like for purposes of fantasy football, teams aren't factoring in receiving enough at the running back position. It's not that they don't care. It's just that the game of fantasy football at the running back position, it's very pass catching driven. I'm measuring against full PPR output, so the receiving angle matters even more. But it matters in any format. Not only that, but when a player has a more robust receiving profile, it's signaling to us that they may be pretty talented. We should assume that the majority of these running backs saw a pretty good amount of work on the ground. To then also be good through the air, tells us that they might be pretty well rounded. And when you're well rounded, you're talented, you're good, you're going to score more fantasy points. That's my guess as to why the receiving stuff matters so much. So the two main production metrics that the running back model now uses are best season reception share, which is prorated for games played, and then a metric I use called breakout score. Breakout score used to be based on yards per team play by a running back, which would include both rushing and receiving yards. But now it's just based on receiving yards per team pass attempt, which is the exact same thing that the wide receiver model uses. It's called breakout score because it's looking at that from an age adjusted perspective. I won't bore you with all the details here, but it looks at the age of a player when he does certain things in the receiving yards per team pass attempt metric, and then it adjusts for strength of opponent. Breakout score gets pretty good signal in the running back model, especially when attached to all the other stuff that goes into that model. Standalone though, it wouldn't make that much sense for me to only talk about receiving metrics on today's show. Because remember what the goal is here. We're looking at stud NFL running backs and seeing how their collegiate production compares to the guys in this year's class.