979: Free Agency Fallout

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 979 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. The NFL's free agency period started last week. We've got a lot of players on new teams. Now, I won't be able to get to all of those players on today's show. But I've got a list of guys and situations that I want to talk through. So we're going to get to that today. It's not nearly as nerdy and hard to follow as last week's Draft Capital episode. But first, before getting to these players in new places, remember that you can consume The Late-Round Prospect Guide right now. All you have to do is head to thelateround.com to check it out. The guide includes 160 pages of information on my year 2 and prospect models. It's got 80 prospect profiles, there's about 40 year 2 profile write-ups, there's rankings and more. And it will be updated once again for you the Saturday of the final day of the draft. That's going to have updated write-ups, so you're ready to crush your rookie drafts immediately. Learn more about it on lateraound.com, and if you're on the site, make sure you also subscribe to the free newsletter. You get content straight to your inbox. It's an easy way to support Late-Round Fantasy Football. But that's all on lateraound.com.

I'll kick off today's episode with an extension of last week's mailbag, where I talked about Najee Harris. As I said last week, I've found it interesting how a lot of people in the fantasy football world are crowning Harris as this rock-solid RB2 in fantasy. I think there's still a decent bit in his way to get there. Right now. One of the things in his way is the current depth chart. It's not because of Sonn Haskins and Kamani Vidal are going to steal his job. It's because the competition is lacking. So there's a very real chance that the charger still adds someone from this loaded running back class. That someone is probably going to be a little bit more explosive as a compliment to Harris. The Sonic to Harris being the knuckles, like I said last week. So that could be a threat to Najee Harris. But so is this Greg Roman offense. I think people just assume that Greg Roman's offenses, that means good things for running backs. Well, what if I told you that over his 10 completed seasons, his offensive coordinator in the NFL, his backfields have never ranked in the top 10 in PPR scoring, like as total backfields. You could sit there and say that it's because those offenses had mobile quarterbacks and those mobile quarterbacks still work from the running backs. Okay, well, last year, the backfield was 23rd in PPR points. What's really driving this is the fact that he doesn't deploy his backs that much as receivers. They've ranked no higher than 19th in running back target share during this time frame. Their average rank has been 26.3, meaning the average Greg Roman backfield, this is since 2011, the average Greg Roman backfield has had a target share rank of 26th to 27th across the league in a given season. And again, it's been no higher than 19th. We can sit here and we can say this is a great fit for Najee Harris. I would agree with that. Harris is a power back. Roman is going to get the most out of him. But with his backfields not being as fantasy friendly as people realize, and with the Chargers still needing to add more to that depth chart, I'm just not ready to give Najee Harris like an RB 15 ranking, or even an RB 18 one. Now like I said last week, I haven't built my projections yet. But considering the fact that this may not be as desirable as a spot in fantasy as people realize, and considering the Chargers are almost definitely going to add to that backfield, it's just hard today in March to be super bullish on Najee Harris. As I said last week, for non-elite running backs, which I think we'd all agree, Najee Harris is not elite. We shouldn't assume elite workloads this time of year, especially with this running back class. Even if he does get that workload, I'm not sure it's going to give him some massive, massive league-winning ceiling anyway.

Now, with Najee Harris out of Pittsburgh, the Steelers' backfield looks to be mostly Jalen Warrens at the moment. And the Steelers also went out, they traded for DK Metcalf. So let's just talk about the Steelers' offense. As of right now, I have no idea who's going to be starting a quarterback for Pittsburgh. I think the chance that they're a run-heavy team is pretty high though, given Arthur Smith's tendencies. Smith's offenses have ranked 29th, 30th and 29th in pass rate when he's been an offensive coordinator. As a head coach in Atlanta, those ranks were 8th, 31st and 29th. So his offenses have ranked bottom five in the league in pass rate in five of six seasons as either offensive coordinator or head coach. That's why it's kind of tough to be super excited about DK Metcalf. Again, we don't even know who the quarterback is right now, but Metcalf has been above a 25% target share just twice in six seasons. We very easily could see a season from him as long as George Pickens is still in Pittsburgh with under 120, 125 targets. And if that's the case, we're going to need really strong efficiency for Metcalf to maintain his fantasy value, at least his pre 2024 value. But Metcalf has always been a little bit overvalued as a fantasy asset, and that just scares me even more so about this match in Pittsburgh. Now, I think the biggest question is what they're going to do with this backfield. If they don't move George Pickens before the draft, we're looking at the Steelers without a second round pick this year, because they spent that to get DK Metcalf. So the two very impactful picks for them are 21st overall and 83rd overall. They added Kenneth Gainwell, but they're still candidates to add to that backfield with Warren Gainwell, who's sort of a redundant piece, and then Cordero Patterson. This class is deep though. I think the likely outcome here is that Pittsburgh uses maybe their fourth or their fifth rounder on a running back. That would give Jalen Warren a nice workload or at least potential workload in 2025 We know that Warren can be a high target share guy, but if he sees goal line work and more like a 50-55 percent running back rush share, he could finish as an RB too in fantasy. That Metcalf trade made the likelihood at least a little bit better for Jalen Warren because the Steelers have less capital to spend on a running back. It's what I've been talking about a lot this offseason. We shouldn't make any assumptions about any backfields until after the draft, because this class is loaded. With that being said, we still need to investigate the kind of ammo that each team has in the draft to help calculate the probability of something happening. Could the Steelers spend their first round around a running back? Of course. They just went through that with Najee Harris though, so I'm not sure if they want to go that route again, especially with other needs. And I do think the market is just kind of making some assumptions with Jalen Warren, which is why I'd still lean more buy than sell, even after Najee Harris signed with the Chargers and his cost rose, Jalen Warren's cost. Even if they get a running back, Warren could still play a role given his skill set. And then what happens if they don't get a running back? What happens if they don't spend a first, a third round pick on a back? Then it's rocket ship emojis for Jalen Warren. I think it's going to be a really fascinating situation to watch for fantasy purposes.