978: Mailbag - Najee Harris' New Home, Quinshon Judkins' Receiving Profile, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 978 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. You can consume The Late-Round Prospect Guide right now. All you have to do is head to lateround.com to check it out. The guide includes 160 pages of information on my prospect and year two models. It's got 80 prospect profiles. There's about 40 year two profile write-ups. There's rankings and more. And with the purchase, you not only get the pre-draft version, but you get the post-draft version as well. And that post-draft version, it's updated the final day of the NFL Draft. It'll be in your inbox that night. I know you have rookie drafts, and I know that you're ready to dominate them. Learn more about it over on lateround.com. And if you're on the site, subscribe to the newsletter, too. It's absolutely free. You get content straight to your email inbox. Plus it's an easy way to support Late-Round Fantasy Football. But that's all on lateround.com. Now let's get to these mailbag questions.

The first question is from Twitter. It's from at tneumann12. It says, As it stands now, do you like Jaylen Warren or Najee Harris more? Steelers may add running back depth, but I assume Warren now has the lead role. So I asked if this was for redraft or for dynasty, and the person responded and confirmed that it was for redraft purposes. Now I'm going to be doing a free agency podcast at the beginning of next week. So I'm not going to get to every free agency signing on today's show. But I do want to talk about this. Right now, I think it's probably Najee Harris over Jaylen Warren, but I actually do think it's kind of close. Now I haven't built out my projections yet, so I can't lean on that that much. I'll be doing that over the next few weeks, but I do think it's Najee Harris over Jaylen Warren right now. But I do want to talk about this a little bit further. This time of year, especially with this running back draft class, you've got to think about range of outcomes even more than usual. When we usually think about range of outcomes, we're doing it knowing what our limitations are. We know who the players' teammates generally are, and what that situation generally looks like. That's because most range of outcomes conversations are happening in like late July and in August when we're drafting our redraft teams. We're not there with Jaylen Warren and Najee Harris. Warren now has Kenneth Gainwell and Cordero Patterson to fight off, which means we very easily could see the Steelers getting someone in this year's draft. You could very easily argue that LA's competition for Najee Harris is even worse. It's Hassan Haskins and Kamani Vidal. Strictly based on the team today, Harris is probably in a better spot than Jaylen Warren. He's the safer bet to see work. He'd be more of a bell cow. There are more question marks around the Steelers at the time of this recording too. I have no idea right now who their starting quarterback is going to be next year. But I've been really surprised, and this is why I really wanted to talk about this. I've been really surprised seeing the reaction to Najee Harris signing with the Chargers across the fantasy space. Everyone seems to think that he's like a locked-in mid-range RB2 now. And while I do love the landing spot for him, I think context is needed. The Chargers signed him for about five million dollars in guaranteed money. That's not that much, and it's a one-year deal. You can sit there and say that Jim Harbaugh really loves a running back like Najee Harris, and he specifically loves Najee Harris. And I do agree that Harris is a really good fit in this Greg Roman offense. But the money that they gave him, the commitment that they gave Harris, it's not strong at all. And meanwhile, at the very least, they need some depth at running back. And beat reporters, they're already talking about adding more players, adding more pieces to that backfield. Daniel Popper of The Athletic, he said, Harris is not a home run hitter, but the Chargers have other means of adding that juice to the running back room. AKA, there's a chance that they go into the draft and they get more explosiveness. Maybe they try to replicate what we see in Detroit with the Sonic and Knuckles thing, where Najee Harris is the Knuckles. Like, I know that people have to create content, and I know that it's very important to generate clicks and to generate views. I get it, I run a business too. But it's wild to me seeing all these videos and all these takes out there saying that Najee Harris is automatically now their bell cow. I actually said this in the Late-Round Fantasy Football Discord the other day. You can join via the Patreon. But I'm never going to buy into an elite workload, a projected elite workload for a non-elite player, when there's so much that can change from now until the start of the season. Now, could Najee Harris walk into the 2025 season and see a ton of work for the Chargers? Of course, I think he is going to see a lot of work. But I don't know if it's going to be a true bell cow workload. And when he's not the most efficient back in the world, when he's not the most explosive back in the world, that does matter. That matters for sealing purposes. And when you look at that depth chart, it's not strong at all. We're talking about Hassan Haskins, who's been a journeyman, and Kamani Vidal, who was a day three back last year and didn't show us that much as a rookie. Why should we assume that this team is done at running back? And look, the same thing goes for Jaylen Warren. I think the difference between Harris and Warren, though, is that Warren does have that floor from a receiving perspective. Greg Roman offenses have not been friendly to running backs through the air. And you can sit there and say, oh, it's because he had Lamar Jackson or Colin Kaepernick or whoever. Last year, with Justin Herbert, they were 31st in the league in running back target share. Really, what I'm trying to say here is that it's March. We need to be open-minded to a lot of different outcomes. There's an outcome where Najee Harris does get a good workload. There's an outcome where Jaylen Warren does too. But I think if you objectively look at these backfields, neither one of them look very complete. So right now, I'll probably just lean Najee Harris because I do think he's going to see some work in that backfield, and we have more of a backbone of him seeing a lot of work. But I don't think this case is closed at all. I think this can still go in a lot of different directions. And I'm definitely not ready to crown either one of these players with this awesome draft class coming up.