984: Mailbag - How to Utilize Player Comps, Ashton Jeanty's Testing, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:12)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 984 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast.

Thanks for tuning in. Before we get to the mail back questions this week, I want to send another reminder about The Late-Round Prospect Guide. The Guide's 160 pages of nerdy prospect information. You get to find out what goes into my prospect and year two models. You'll get write-ups on 80 running back and wide receiver prospects, and there's about 40 year two profile write-ups too. There's rankings and tiers and so much more. Best of all, it's updated after the draft, like immediately after the draft. You'll have new write-ups for relevant players, tight end zap scores, updated rankings and more on the final day of the NFL draft. It'll all be finished that night. That way, you're going to be set for your rookie drafts. Learn more about it, get yourself a copy by heading to lateraound.com. For the record, I know that most of you aren't necessarily interested in buying fantasy football content. That's totally understandable. It's not for everyone. But I'll say that if you're consuming this podcast, if my content helps you out, do me a favor and still head to lateraound.com and subscribe to the newsletter. That's absolutely free. It takes 10 seconds to do it. And it helps me get my work across to more people, which in turn helps the late round fantasy football business. So I'd greatly, greatly appreciate that support. Again, that's all on lateround.com.

The first question this week is an email from Ryan. It says, Hey, JJ, I've listened to you for years. I think you're the very best in the game with your data-driven approach to fantasy football, which is why your Ashton Jeanty Elite RB1 ranking confuses me. He didn't test his athletic metrics at the combine or at his pro day. No bench press, no 40 time vertical broad jump, cone, et cetera. That makes me think he's hiding something, perhaps below average athleticism. I know you would say that he doesn't have anything to gain from doing that, but all the dogs of the past tested. Barclay, Bijan, Zeke, McCaffrey, et cetera. They all tested in some form. Why is he still your undisputed number one running back if he doesn't have metrics and KPIs to go off of besides game film? Don't you want a little more transparency from a 101 dynasty pick? Thanks, man. Don't take this criticism as a negative. I'm just curious as his lack of non-transparency is scaring me off a 101 pick. Okay, so first off, thank you for the kind words at the top. That means a lot. But to me, this question is pretty easy to answer. Athletic testing isn't a very big portion of my data-driven approach to prospecting. Production is. You say, quote, he doesn't have metrics and KPIs to go off of besides game film. That's not true. Jeanty has the vast majority of things that the ZAP model looks at. I know what his breakout score is. I know his size. I have his best season reception share. He doesn't have a speed score because we don't have a 40 time from him. So at the moment, I just have a standard score for him. But don't take that the wrong way either. The majority of running backs in the ZAP model, they're neutral for weight-adjusted 40 time, meaning it's not impacting their overall score. So chances are that would be the case for Jeanty anyway. And actually, I'd argue just watching him play that there's a better than not chance that he might have an elite speed score. He's just not testing because he doesn't have to. I mean, just because other running backs in the past have tested doesn't mean that it's a smart thing to do in his circumstance. Like I don't think it means that he's hiding something. He's making a smart decision because he knows it won't impact anything at all. If he runs a fast 40, what's that going to do? It's hard to really improve his draft stock when he's projected to go in the top 10, at least the top 15 Why risk something happening? Like Taylor Swift doesn't need to go on American Idol. She's proven to be a superstar singer. She doesn't need to go on television and promote herself and show everyone how good she is. All that would do is potentially expose her as maybe not being as good of a performer as people thought. Because there's a one-to-one direct comparison. People are going to compare Taylor Swift to other contestants on American Idol. Why would she need to do that? It's not a good idea from a marketing standpoint. Ashton Jeanty has proven to be a good prospect. Teams know that. He doesn't need to do a lot of bench presses to prove that. And he doesn't need to do that for me either. His analytical profile is unbelievable. He has the sixth best top season reception share of any running back in the ZAP model database. His breakout score is 94.3. That's really, really good. He's one of six players in the model's database to have a best season total yards per team play rate above 2.8. If you think my models are about athletic testing, and if you think that I'm evaluating based on combine measureables, then I honestly think that you should read The Late-Round Prospect Guide. And I'm not saying that to just get another sale. I'm saying that because it's quite literally the opposite of how I evaluate prospects. And getting an understanding of that can be really helpful. I don't need Ashton Jeanty to run the 40 for me to know that a studly production profile alongside top 10 draft capital is worthy of the 101 Anything of course is possible. Nothing is certain with prospecting. But the chance that Jeanty gives us crazy good fantasy production, it's very, very high. This next question is from at MT Dynasty FF. It says, hey JJ, how does the rookie tight end model look this year? Loveland versus Warren is an interesting debate at the top. Also Taylor, Arroyo, Ferguson and Fanon could all get solid draft capital. Also I got an email that says, JJ can you talk more about Harold Fanon in an upcoming podcast? Obvious production, but not a power conference and then a slow 40 He seemed to have early hype until the combine and it now seems like people hate him. Would just love to hear your thoughts. Davin. So the tight end model isn't as robust as the ones at Running Back and Wide Receiver, but it does exist. It looks at size, speed score, draft capital, age and some production metrics, mostly per route run metrics. This year's class, it looks really solid on paper. At the moment, both Warren and Loveland are being categorized as elite producers. Warren has the edge over Loveland. But both look really strong. It's not like Brock Bauer levels of good, or even Sam Laporta levels, because the model did like Laporta quite a bit. But both of those players look good in the model. Fanon Arroyo and Terrence Ferguson are listed next as weekly starters. And then the model isn't very high on Mason Taylor. Taylor has the worst production profile versus the other guys. Now, regarding Fanon, I think there's reason to be nervous about that 47-140. He weighed in at 241 pounds, he wasn't that big. And that 40 gave him a speed score of about 98 That's not that strong a tight end. In fact, the tight end model goes back to 2015 We haven't seen a single tight end with a speed score below 100 give us 11 or more PPR points per game in one of his first three seasons. And then if you look at 10 or more PPR points per game, there's only two tight ends with speed scores under 100, Kate Otton and Jake Ferguson. His speed is going to matter in the NFL, at least when it comes to being a strong fantasy asset. There's a reason people have dinged him. The production profile is crazy. There's no doubt. But I definitely worry about that upside. He's going to probably need to find a team like John who Smith did last year, or that team is going to just pepper him with low A dot targets. But even a guy like John who Smith had a speed score that was a good bit higher.