989: Post-Draft Rookie Rankings

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, 989 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. It's not too late to purchase The Late-Round Prospect Guide. I know a lot of you are in the middle of your rookie drafts. Some of you haven't even started yours yet. The Late-Round Prospect Guide is perfect for you. In it, you get 165 pages of information. There's detail on what goes into both my prospect and year 2 models. There are 80 prospect profiles, tons of year 2 player profiles, zap model scores for every player, and so much more. People have been loving the enhancements to this year's guide. I think you will too. I put a lot of time and effort into it. You can get your copy right now over on lateraound.com for $19.99. And while you're on the site, at the very least, do me a solid subscribe to the newsletter. It's absolutely free. That's all over on lateround.com. Now inside that prospect guide, you're going to find my rankings. And since the final version of that guide was published, the rankings haven't really changed. Sometimes you get small changes here and there, but I feel decent about where things are at. Today I'm going to talk through some of those rankings. And unlike the pre-draft version of this episode, rather than just going through the first round of single quarterback rookie drafts or the top 12, I'm going to talk through my top 5 tiers of drafts, which this year, it actually includes 16 players. I'll talk about why I rank the players where I rank them, and I'll give more detail on some of the game theory things that are going on through my head during rookie drafts this year. So without further ado, let's get to that first tier.

Ashton Gentry started as the 101, he's still the 101, and he's still in a tier of his own. The ZAP model absolutely adores Ashton Gentry. When it was all said and done this year, Gentry ended up with the second highest score in the model's history behind only Christian McCaffrey, and that's at running back. As I talked about a couple of weeks ago in the pre-draft ranking show, he pretty much just checks every single box, and then some. The only question mark you might have with Ashton Gentry is that he's a little bit shorter. But that's not even something that goes into the ZAP model. And Gentry landed in a spot for great immediate production. The Raiders offense, sure, there's some question marks, but they address quarterback with Geno Smith, and the backfield doesn't have any existing running backs that we need to be concerned with. Not that we would be anyway with someone like Ashton Gentry. Gentry came out as the RB5 in my early projections. I think he's a clear first-round pick in redraft leagues this year. I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes when I said that, because how could you possibly draft a rookie that high in your redraft league? But rookies with that kind of ADP historically have actually done quite well. We just remember the misses like Clyde Edwards-Alair. And objectively, Ashton Gentry is not Clyde Edwards-Alair.

Now after the Genty tier in single quarterback leagues, I have three players. The first in this tier is Amarion Hampton. I talked a lot about Hampton leading up to the draft, and how he seemed to have an edge over the non-Genty backs within the zap model. And post-draft, that was also the case. He had a zap score of 98.2, which set him above the Ohio State backs. Hampton got first-round draft capital, and as I said in the Prospect Guide, history really does favor him. Five of the nine bottom-half first-round running backs since 2011 have given us RB1 seasons in the NFL. And that trend continues when you look at the early parts of round two. Prior to this year's draft, just four running backs with top 100 draft capital had a speed score of 110 or better and a best season reception share above 15%.

Demarco Murray is one of them, Todd Gurley is another one, and then there's also Saquon Barkley and Jamir Gibbs. Amari and Hampton is now on that list. Now if you want to look at the downside with Hampton, it's probably short-term and situation-based. Now, everyone is rightfully excited about the general fit with the Chargers. Greg Roman loves his power backs. That's exactly what he's getting in Amari and Hampton. But the Chargers did sign Najee Harris this offseason. And like I talked about during the free agency period, Greg Roman offenses are better for a running backs floor than his ceiling. They'll get a lot of ground game work, but his backfields have averaged a target share rank of 26.3 during his time as offensive coordinator. Meaning, his backfields rank 26th to 27th in target share on average. And Roman's actually never had a team backfield that ranked in the top 10 in PPR scoring. I don't think that means you avoid Amarion Hampton or anything. I think he's a near lock to give you an RB2 season across his first 3 years in the league. I'm just trying to give you both sides of the argument here. For me though, given his zap score and what we've seen historically from players like this, he's my 102 But look, I wouldn't fault you if you went with Travis Hunter or Tett McMillan in that spot. Two players with top 10 draft capital. Travis Hunter ended up having the best score in the zap model at wide receiver, largely due to draft capital. I've talked about it on the show in the past, I won't get too far into the details here. But his collegiate production, it was just good, not great. His breakout score was well below average for a first round wide receiver, and his per route run profile, that wasn't anything special either. With that being said, I've been open, I've been transparent about being totally fine with kind of throwing some of that out. Because Hunter is such a unique prospect. He not only played in an offense that featured a whole lot of wide receivers in the field at once, which is naturally going to lower some of these numbers, but he also didn't prepare like a normal wide receiver would. There's reason as to why his numbers are lacking a little bit, more than any other wide receiver that we've arguably ever seen. The landing spot in Jacksonville, it's really not a bad one in my eyes. I see people saying, but he can't be the team's top wide receiver because they already have Brian Thomas. But projections don't really work that way. It's about target share opportunity. And there's plenty of that for the Jags in the short term. Just look at their depth chart. Not only that, but we see multiple teammates with strong fantasy seasons, frequently a wide receiver. Since 2011, we've averaged 4 to 5 instances per year, where we've had teammate wide receivers rank in the top 24 in PPR points per game. That's with a minimum 8 games played. When looking at top 12 seasons, we get one or two of them per year. To assume that Hunter can't live up to expectation, and especially provide spiked weeks, that's a little bit foolish when you consider the type of prospect that we're working with here. And if you're buying into Liam Cohen's offense the way I think you should, then there's even more reason to be bullish. Now obviously, we don't know exactly how much wide receiver Travis Hunter is going to play, but it sounds like the Jags see him primarily as an offensive weapon who can then help on the defensive side of the ball. That's exactly what we needed to hear from a fantasy perspective. And then like I said, Teterow and McMillan, he's also in this tier. If you want to go with Tet over Travis Hunter, I have absolutely zero problem with that. That's why they're in the same tier. But McMillan lands in Carolina where we should feel pretty good about his immediate upside. Xavier LeGette was an overvalued prospect according to the ZAP model. That's not just hindsight bias. And his year two score, it's not anything special either. Jalen Coker, he had an undervalued rookie season, but he likely wasn't going to be some super high volume earner. And then Adam Thielen, he's going to be 35 years old in August. McMillan can play all over the formation. He immediately becomes the most talented player in that offense. And to me, it's not really close. So while there may be somewhat of a ramp up period to start the year, I fully expect Teterill Macmillan to be the top target earner in Carolina by the time the season ends. Now with Macmillan the player, I've said it all off season, I don't think he's quite on the same level as like Drake London. And that's a player he often gets comped to. And there is this too, prior to this year's draft, the only wide outs in the ZAP model who were selected in the top ten with a breakout score below 90 Macmillan's is 83, which is kind of average for a first round wide receiver. But those top ten wide receivers were Tavon Austin, Kevin White, Corey Davis, John Ross, and Mike Williams. That's not great. That's not who we want Tett Macmillan to be associated with. And I've seen some people take that stat and kind of run with it. That's not the intent though. That's not why I shared it. I think it's important to see all sides of these players analytically. I want to talk about the pros and the cons. Don't look at breakout scores being more predictive than the players' actual ZAP score. And Macmillan's ZAP score is 96, which is extremely good. He's in the elite producer category, and players from that category give us wide receiver 1 and wide receiver 2 seasons at a very, very high rate. I just want people to know that Macmillan isn't the kind of lock that I felt with someone like Drake London. He can still hit that ceiling. But I think there are more flaws to his overall analytical profile. Overall though, he's a fantastic prospect, and he landed in a pretty solid spot in Carolina.