992: Insights From Building Projections

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, 992 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season is right around the corner, and there's no better way to lock in your fantasy dominance early than with Best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, DraftKings is giving all customers a can't-miss offer. Draft one, get one. Enter a lineup in the $15 million Best Ball Contest for just $20, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of $15 million, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week. Across the whole season, every breakout star, every clutch play, every touchdown will count toward your quest for a share of $15 million. I've been drafting over there recently. 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Every April, I build out my player projections. And no, for the record, I don't publish those projections. They're not out there for all of you to consume. I talk about this at length in the draft guide that I do each year, but projections, to me, are more about getting a good grasp on the fantasy landscape, not to have some precise number that I'm forced to draft off of. The truth is, projections take a lot of maintenance for them to be super accurate. When I worked at Numberfire back in the day, we actually had a projection czar, shout out Sam House. He would go in there and would make sure that all I's were dotted and T's were crossed every single day. Like a person dedicated to doing that daily. Considering the variance of fantasy football, that's just not how I personally am going to spend my time. So while I do feel good about my projections and the process I go through in building them, I don't publish them because it just takes a lot of time to stay on top of them. Instead, I kind of want to just go in there and make changes whenever I have free time to do so. But like I said, I still build out projections, mostly because the process of doing so can uncover some really interesting things about the Fantasy Football Landscape. And as usual, it did that for me once again this year. So on today's episode, I'll be talking about 10 things that I found while building projections this year. Some of them are more surprising than others, but they were sort of my biggest takeaways from building them. So with that being said, let's get to item number one. One of the things I've gone on and on about over the last six years or so is how the quarterback landscape has totally changed since I originally wrote the Late-Round Quarterback ebook back in 2012 Man I'm old. There are more mobile quarterbacks than ever before. That raises the floor for so many quarterbacks in fantasy. But those mobile quarterbacks are also great passers. That elevates players like Josh Allen, Jaylen Hurts and Lamar Jackson every single year, and now probably Jayden Daniels too. That makes them both predictable, we know who the top quarterbacks are generally going to be, but also valuable, because they're at least giving you some sort of points-per-game edge. The only way something like this will change, the only way we go back to an obvious late-round quarterback strategy, is if we see an influx of these dual threat passers. Because hypothetically, if we had 12 Lamar Jacksons, there'd be no reason to take Lamar Jackson in round three. You can just wait to get them. We're not there yet, but I bring all this up, because I think the 2024 quarterback class, the one that we just saw for the first time last season, I think there's a chance we see a couple of those quarterbacks give us really strong fantasy seasons here in 2025 Caleb Williams is the one who stood out most in My Projections. You heard about this if you listened to this week's episode of Becoming a Best Ball Bro, but My Projections love Caleb Williams. Like if you'd rather not take a shot on one of the pass catchers in Chicago because you feel like it's a crowded room, at least throw a pick at Williams this year, because he's going to be capturing all of that receiving production anyway. Williams gets the offensive scheme upgrade. They've invested in the offensive line. He's going to be throwing to Roma Dunze, DJ Moore, Luther Burden, Colston Loveland, and Cole Comment. Now, admittedly, just like I've talked about with Adunze, I think we need to at least have an open mind about where things could go with Williams. He had a yards per attempt rate of 6.3 as a rookie. Let me just read you the 300-plus attempt rookie quarterback since 2011, who finished their rookie season with a rate below 6.5. So that's a good bit higher than where Williams was at. Bryce Young, Aiden O'Connell, Kenny Pickett, Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Josh Allen, who was at 6.48 yards per attempt, Josh Rosen, Deshaun Kaiser, Carson Wentz, Blake Bortles, Derek Carr, EJ Manuel, Mike Lennon, and Blaine Gabbard. Like most things in football, how a quarterback performs during his rookie season, it's usually predictive of how things are going to go throughout their career. Usually. But exactly like that gray area fantasy football episode that I was talking about last week, cost has to be a factor here too. Williams right now is being ranked at QB 13 over on Fantasy Pros. Draft King's best ball leagues watch him fall off draft boards at QB 11 Close to pick 100 That's not some insane investment when you look at the upside, because just like his young wide receiver, his potential top target this year, we know that things weren't all butterflies and rainbows for that offense in 2024 And we know Williams has a lot of talent. That's why he went first overall last year. And most importantly in the fantasy discussion, you're going to be looking at Williams among other quarterbacks who don't have the same rushing profiles. Williams is going after Jared Goff and Justin Herbert, according to Fantasy Pros rankers. Which by the way, Jared Goff has to be the most overrated quarterback in every format right now. But I'll save that take for another day. But just last year, Caleb Williams finished ninth in the NFL in rushing yards per game at quarterback. Even without a rushing touchdown, he had almost three points per game with his legs. Combine that with the passing potential with Ben Johnson, I'm going to chase that ceiling outcome all day long with him. Especially when his projection, his median outcome puts him firmly in the top 10 for me. But I'm also going to be in on the other more dual threat second-year quarterbacks as well. Drake May, he didn't project as well as Caleb Williams did, but he averaged more rushing yards and more rushing points per game than Williams last year. And he gets the hopeful coaching upgrade with way better weapons year-over-year. Now, Bo Nix was already a good fantasy asset last year, and quarterbacks who score 17 or more points per game as rookies since 2011, they've given us really good hit rates through the years. Bo Nix was at 18.7, and Nix almost gave us 4 points per game with his legs. And then another second-year quarterback, JJ McCarthy. Now, aside from having an elite first name, he looks really good in my projections too. I think he's undervalued right now in redraft when you consider Kevin O'Connell. He's been in Minnesota for three years now. In those three seasons, the Vikings have ranked 9th, 15th, and 8th in offensive touchdowns per game. And that includes a season where Minnesota started Nick Mullens, Josh Dobbs, and Jaren Hall in nine of their 17 regular season games. They've had multiple quarterbacks, tons of different quarterbacks during that time. That's why McCarthy's projection looks good. Because it stems from the fact that the numbers expect Minnesota to still be pretty good offensively. Overall, I'm just in on these second-year low-end QB1s into that QB2 range. I'm into those second-year quarterbacks. They're the right kind of bets to make, and thankfully, my projections generally see that too. No one probably wants to hear this because of how he burned people last year, but my projections, they love Christian McCaffrey. But then again, why wouldn't they? CMC's problem isn't what he can do when he's healthy. It's that he just hasn't been healthy. Last year was a roller coaster with how things started and ended, but it does feel like people are just burying him right now, that he's done for because of last year, when in 2023, he not only stayed healthy all year, but he completely broke fantasy football. CMC only trails B. John Robinson in my initial projections for 2025 That's it. Now, I'm not ranking it that way, but that's mostly because, again, there's injury worry and there's a potential age cliff too. But with San Francisco being weak defensively, it wouldn't shock me if we see more pass-heavy scripts for the 49ers in 2025 And if that happens, given the fact that Brandon IU could start slow to his injury, Deebo Samuel is now gone, CMC could realistically go nuts, like consistent target shares in the 20 to 25% range. So I think there's just so much upside there to warrant his current cost over on DraftKings, which is often into Round 2, Late-Round 1 I actually think that's kind of a value. But of course, I would understand if you would just rather not.