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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacheris

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Speaker 1: j J zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen

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Speaker 1: in this episode ten eighty nine of the Late Round

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Speaker 1: Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We're in the

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Speaker 1: thick of it with the NFL Draft. We're talking prospects

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Speaker 1: and we're doing so for both a dynasty angle and

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Speaker 1: a season long angle with best ball, especially redraft is

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Speaker 1: becoming more and more of a year round game. Dynasty

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Speaker 1: has always been that way, but it's becoming more evident

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Speaker 1: in the season long game types two. So, since we're

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Speaker 1: talking rookies and dynasty, let's talk about rookies and redraft

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Speaker 1: as well. You might recall, but last summer I did

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Speaker 1: an episode on the rookie edge and redraft leagues. It

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Speaker 1: was actually episode one thousand of the Late Round podcast.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot of chatter about rookies no longer

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Speaker 1: being good redraft bets because the market now rightfully understands

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Speaker 1: that rookies can be valuable redraft. So I dug into

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Speaker 1: the topic. What I generally found was that rookie wide

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Speaker 1: receivers there were good bets across the board. We were

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Speaker 1: also coming off a season where those rookie wide receivers dominated,

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Speaker 1: so that wasn't much of a surprise finding. And for

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Speaker 1: the record, it's something I've written about in the Late

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Speaker 1: Round Draft Guide each year. For running backs, they were

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Speaker 1: still okay enough picks, but it did appear as though

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Speaker 1: the market was drafting them earlier than usual, and when

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Speaker 1: that's the case, expectations change. They weren't players that you

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Speaker 1: needed to avoid, but they weren't players you needed to

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Speaker 1: aggressively target either. Now, thanks to this past season, it

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Speaker 1: seems like people have been mega turned off by the

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Speaker 1: idea of rookies in redraft. That's a big reason why

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Speaker 1: I wanted to revisit this topic because the results last

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Speaker 1: year were not fantastic. At wide receiver, you had Tetero McMillan,

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Speaker 1: Travis Hunter, Amecca Abuka, and Matthew Golden with relatively high ADPs.

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Speaker 1: Only at Buka was able to outperform his ADP expectation.

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Speaker 1: More on all that in a second. At running back,

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Speaker 1: you had ash In Gentamari and Hanton, Travon Henderson, r

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Speaker 1: J Harvey, Caleb Johnson, Jacorey Krofsky, Merrit camp Skataboo Quinchhot Judkins.

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Speaker 1: They all had top forty five ranks of the position,

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Speaker 1: the vast majority of them within what was considered an

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Speaker 1: elite draft class. Most of them failed to live up

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Speaker 1: to the hype, and all year all we heard was

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Speaker 1: this is why you don't draft rookies high in redraft?

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Speaker 1: But should we really abide by that rule? Was last

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Speaker 1: year just a blip? Today's episode is all about answering

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Speaker 1: those questions. Now. Before get into things, I just want

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Speaker 1: to send a quick reminder to check out the Late

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Speaker 1: Round Prospect Guide. You get info in all the zap models,

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Speaker 1: player write ups, rankings, bad dad jokes, and more, all

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Speaker 1: for nineteen ninety nine. It's over one hundred and seventy

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Speaker 1: pages of content. Learn more over on lateround dot com.

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Speaker 1: So the real question we're asking here is is their

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Speaker 1: value in drafting rookies in redraft leagues? The conclusions from

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Speaker 1: last summer said that generally, yes, there is value, more

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Speaker 1: so a wide receiver than at running back, but over

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Speaker 1: there is some value. I want to expand on those

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Speaker 1: results a little bit today because I think what was

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Speaker 1: described on that episode is more tip of the iceberg

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Speaker 1: than anything else. Being of value comes down to a

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Speaker 1: cost benefit analysis. If a rookie's drafted late and he

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Speaker 1: plays just okay, he might still be a value because

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Speaker 1: he was drafted late, But one drafted early with that

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Speaker 1: same production he's not a value. That cost side of

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Speaker 1: the equation is just average draft position for fantasy football purposes,

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Speaker 1: and overall, it does appear that we're drafting both rookie

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Speaker 1: running backs and wide receivers earlier than we used to.

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Speaker 1: Is a little bit easier to explain a wide receiver,

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Speaker 1: so let's start there. My average draft position data, it

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Speaker 1: sourced from Fantasy Data, goes back to twenty fourteen. Since

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, we've had just one top twelve wide receiver

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Speaker 1: by ADP, and I'm looking only at positional ADP here

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Speaker 1: since overall ADP it can shift more depending on the

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Speaker 1: source and depending on the type of league that we're

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Speaker 1: looking at. But that one top twelve wider recce was

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Speaker 1: Marvin Harrison Junior. Since twenty fourteen, we've had four top

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Speaker 1: twenty four wide receivers by ADP. Three of those four

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Speaker 1: have come over the last two seasons. We've had ten

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Speaker 1: top thirty six wide receivers by ADP. Four of those

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Speaker 1: ten have come over the last two seasons. I mean,

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Speaker 1: just from that you get the picture. We've been drafting

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Speaker 1: wide receivers earlier over the last couple of years, even

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Speaker 1: top forty two wideouts. We've had twenty four rookies drafting

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Speaker 1: the top forty two wide receivers since twenty fourteen. Nine

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Speaker 1: of them have come over the last two seasons. Now,

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Speaker 1: it could be that the last two draft classes have

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Speaker 1: just been really good, and while they haven't been bad,

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Speaker 1: the ZAP model doesn't really see them as substantially better

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Speaker 1: than some other seasons. Like if you look at the

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Speaker 1: top two categories in the ZAP model legendary performers and

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Speaker 1: elite producers, we've had five of them, and four of

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Speaker 1: them over the last two years. In the ten years prior,

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Speaker 1: we had four point one per season, So we're right

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Speaker 1: at that. Afterge the high end, the higher parts of

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Speaker 1: the position have been mostly the same from a ZAP

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Speaker 1: Model perspective, And that's not the end all, but it's

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Speaker 1: at least telling us it's not like these last couple

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Speaker 1: of classes have been unbelievably great. Now, at running back,

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Speaker 1: it's always kind of been common for rookie running backs

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Speaker 1: to have better draft capital to have better eightps, like,

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Speaker 1: we've had eight of them drafted as RB ones within

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Speaker 1: this data set top twelve running backs. One of those

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Speaker 1: was last year with Ashton genty. We've had twenty two

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Speaker 1: of them draft in the top twenty four. Four of

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Speaker 1: those have come over the last two years, all four

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Speaker 1: of them happening last season. What's kind of interesting is

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Speaker 1: that last year tied for the most top thirty six

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Speaker 1: rookie running backs that we've seen since twenty fourteen, and

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Speaker 1: it tied for the most top forty two rookie running

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Speaker 1: backs too. And you might be saying, well, yeah, it

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Speaker 1: was a good draft class, and yes it was. You

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Speaker 1: could very easily argue that drafters were pushing rookie running

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Speaker 1: backs up the draft board a little bit too much

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Speaker 1: when you compare ZAP model scorers to ADP. For instance,

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Speaker 1: when looking at the top three ZAP score categories, which

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Speaker 1: are legendary, Performer, Elite producer, and weekly starter, we had

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Speaker 1: five of those in last year's class, yet we had

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Speaker 1: seven top thirty six running backs by ADP. That type

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Speaker 1: of proportion is not normal. When we had seven top

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Speaker 1: thirty six running backs before back in twenty twenty, we

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Speaker 1: had eight running backs in one of those top three categories.

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Speaker 1: What I'm generally getting at here is that the market

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Speaker 1: is behaving a little bit differently with rookies. The last

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Speaker 1: couple of years has really seen wide receiver shoot up

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Speaker 1: draft boards, and when you consider the quality of running back,

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Speaker 1: I generally say that we're drafting running backs earlier as well.

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Speaker 1: And for the record, I'm not talking tight ends on

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Speaker 1: today's episode, just because there's not that much data to

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Speaker 1: look at, and I think people were generally on the

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Speaker 1: same page with rookie tight ends anyway. But look, what

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Speaker 1: all this means is that in order for these players

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Speaker 1: to live up to the hype, to live up to expectation,

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Speaker 1: they need to be even better than they used to

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Speaker 1: because their cost is higher than it used to be.

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Speaker 1: So now the question becomes, are these positions performing worse

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Speaker 1: against expectation? Yes? And no. Let's start at wide receiver first.

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Speaker 1: We really don't have a large sample of wide receivers

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Speaker 1: to work off of when looking at top thirty players

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Speaker 1: of the position by ADP, so we'll focus solely on

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Speaker 1: top forty eight wide receivers by ADP. Here I alluded

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Speaker 1: to this earlier, but I calculate how players perform versus

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Speaker 1: eightyp expectation. Essentially, if a player's drafted fiftieth overall, then

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Speaker 1: that player has some sort of expected PPR points per

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Speaker 1: game number based on what we've seen historically from other

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Speaker 1: players with that draft slot. So maybe a fiftieth overall

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Speaker 1: wide receiver is expected to score twelve and a half

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Speaker 1: PPR points per game. But then what if he finishes

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Speaker 1: with thirteen and a half PPR points per game? That

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Speaker 1: means he ended up exceeding that expectation by one full

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Speaker 1: PPR point per game. This isn't the only way to

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Speaker 1: evaluate how well a player performed, but it's at least

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Speaker 1: an interesting way to factor in cost when doing that evaluation. Historically,

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Speaker 1: if you look at top forty eight wide receivers who

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Speaker 1: at least eight games in the season, and this is

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Speaker 1: positional ADP, so someone who's drafted wide receiver forty six

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Speaker 1: is part of this data set, Rookie wide receivers have

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Speaker 1: actually outperformed non rookies when you look at sealing outcomes.

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Speaker 1: For instance, with looking at top forty eight wide receivers

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Speaker 1: who outperform expectation by four more PPR points per game,

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Speaker 1: fourteen point three percent of the rookie wideouts in that

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Speaker 1: group have done that since twenty fourteen. For non rookies,

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Speaker 1: it's thirteen point six percent. If you look at how

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Speaker 1: well they exceed expectation by two or more PPR points

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Speaker 1: per game, rookies almost thirty two percent, non rookies twenty

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Speaker 1: six to twenty seven percent. So when looking across the

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Speaker 1: entirety of the season, rookie wide receivers drafted in the

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Speaker 1: top forty eight are generally outperforming non rookies versus expectation

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Speaker 1: at the high end. This type of analysis has been

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Speaker 1: the Late Round Draft Guide every single year that I've

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Speaker 1: done the guide, and it's not gonna be any different

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Speaker 1: this year. However, something that I haven't touched on very

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Speaker 1: much in that guide is downside risk, and that's a

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Speaker 1: key point that I want to talk through today. Fantasy football,

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Speaker 1: from my perspective, is one with upside. Upside is everything

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Speaker 1: you want to chase sealing outcomes and not worry that

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Speaker 1: much about floor outcomes because as Nelly one said, two

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Speaker 1: is not a winner, and three nobody remembers. We just

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Speaker 1: want to get first. But I think it became very

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Speaker 1: evident last year that floor outcomes can matter when managing

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Speaker 1: a team week to week, at least to some managers.

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Speaker 1: So in the name of transparency, let's not only look

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Speaker 1: at these sealing outcomes or exceeding expectation by two or

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Speaker 1: four PPR points per game. Let's look at floor outcomes

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Speaker 1: two and that's where things look different for rookie wide receivers.

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Speaker 1: Among top forty eight rookie wide receivers since twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: they've underperformed versus expectation by four more PPR points per

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Speaker 1: game at a seventeen percent rate. For non rookies that

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Speaker 1: numbers thirteen percent. It's lower. You can do the exact

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Speaker 1: same thing when looking at players who are underperforming by

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Speaker 1: two or more PPR points per game. Rookie wide receivers

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Speaker 1: thirty four four percent, non rookies thirty percent. To put

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Speaker 1: that another way, rookie wide receivers over the last twelve years,

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Speaker 1: they've given us a higher ceiling versus cost, but they've

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Speaker 1: also given us a lower floor versus cost. And to me,

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Speaker 1: this is exactly why we have these strong opinions about

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Speaker 1: rookies in redraft because look, the average fantasy manager, they're

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Speaker 1: not doing this kind of analysis. I wouldn't expect them to.

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Speaker 1: They shouldn't be doing this kind of analysis. I'm a

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Speaker 1: sick individual. This is not their job. They're gonna go

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Speaker 1: off their own experiences. Maybe someone drafted a rookie wide

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Speaker 1: receiver with a single digit round pick three years in

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Speaker 1: a row, and there's a chance that all three of

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Speaker 1: those rookies really busted, and that shapes that manager's opinion

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Speaker 1: about rookies in general, whether fair or not. The same

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Speaker 1: thing happens on the other end. We get these really

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Speaker 1: high end outcomes with rookie wide receivers, and people who

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Speaker 1: landed those players in their drafts they love it, and

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Speaker 1: whether fairly or unfairly, that shapes their own perception of

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Speaker 1: rookies and season long leagues. The truth of the matter

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Speaker 1: is that what we think is the most obvious answer

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Speaker 1: actually is the most obvious answer. Rookies are volatile. There's

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Speaker 1: a wide range of outcomes. To me, that's a good thing.

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Speaker 1: That's the way that I play fantasy football. I embrace

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Speaker 1: that volatility to get that league winning player. But to

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Speaker 1: some they don't like that. They want more of a floor.

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Speaker 1: That's the way they like to manage their fantasy teams.

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Speaker 1: This dynamic has only been emphasized in more recent years.

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Speaker 1: If you split up this ADP data and you look

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Speaker 1: at twenty fourteen through twenty twenty, and then twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: one through last season, so twenty twenty five, you get

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Speaker 1: some very clear trends. Over the last five years, twenty

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Speaker 1: one percent of rookie wide receivers drafted in the top

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Speaker 1: forty eight have underperformed versus expectation by four more PPR

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Speaker 1: points per game. That number is just twelve and a

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Speaker 1: half percent with the earlier grouping or rookies drafted from

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen through twenty twenty. But if you look get

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Speaker 1: the rookie wide receivers who outperformed expectation by four more

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Speaker 1: PPR points per game from twenty fourteen through twenty twenty,

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Speaker 1: just six percent of the wide receivers six percent of

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Speaker 1: the rookie wide receivers were able to do that. But

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Speaker 1: over the last five years, rookie wide receivers have outperformed

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Speaker 1: expectation by four more PPR points per game at a

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Speaker 1: twenty one percent clip. That is insane. The ceiling outcomes

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Speaker 1: have been crazy. So now we've got this recency bias

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Speaker 1: at play. Take everything I just said about the individual

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Speaker 1: fantasy manager and how they might view rookies, multiply that

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Speaker 1: by one hundred, because we've had this really polarizing five

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Speaker 1: year window of rookie wide receivers. The overall bottom line here, though,

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Speaker 1: is that rookie wide receivers in some they've had better

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Speaker 1: cost based outcomes than non rookie wide receivers have since

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. The problem, though, is that they've also had

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Speaker 1: lower floors. Now at running back, it's not as straightforward.

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Speaker 1: I've written about this in the guide as well, but

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Speaker 1: there are other career years other than rookies that are

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Speaker 1: much more advantageous to draft versus costs. At running back,

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Speaker 1: rookies have just usually been fine, nothing special, just fine.

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Speaker 1: And if you look at history or since twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: across the board, you're generally gonna find non rookies outperforming

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Speaker 1: rookies at running back. It's just really close. Usually. For example,

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Speaker 1: among top forty eight rookie running back since twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 1: sixteen percent of them have exceeded ADP expectation by four

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Speaker 1: more PPR points per game for non rookies. That's seventeen

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Speaker 1: and a half percent. It's not a massive difference. Both

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Speaker 1: groups have exceeded two or more PPR points per game

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Speaker 1: at the exact same rate, basically, but you guessed it.

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Speaker 1: The downside risk is very evident with rookie running backs

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Speaker 1: when looking at how frequently they underperform by four more

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Speaker 1: PPR points per game, rookies are at a twenty three

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Speaker 1: percent rate, non rookies just fourteen percent. For underperforming by

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Speaker 1: two or more points per game, it's thirty nine percent

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Speaker 1: versus thirty percent, And the exact same trends exist for

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Speaker 1: top thirty running backs too. We can look at top

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Speaker 1: thirty running backs because our sample size is large enough

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Speaker 1: to work with, it's not big enough at wide receiver

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Speaker 1: to draw any meaningful conclusions. So to put all this

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Speaker 1: another way, we found that rookie wide receivers they had

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Speaker 1: higher cost based ceilings than non rookies. They've also had

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Speaker 1: lower cost based floors. For running backs, they've had similar

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Speaker 1: season long ceilings, but they've had lower floors. That's not

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Speaker 1: the combination you want to see. However, with all of

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Speaker 1: this analysis, I'm looking at season long numbers, but fantasy

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Speaker 1: football isn't just a season long game, it's a weekly one,

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Speaker 1: and it's a weekly one where the end of the

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Speaker 1: season matters most, since that's when the playoffs start, and

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Speaker 1: in a lot of leagues, half the teams are making

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Speaker 1: the playoffs with rookie running backs. Yes, season long wise,

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Speaker 1: you're gonna get a similar ceiling outcome as a veteran

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Speaker 1: while getting a worse floor, And that is bad. It

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Speaker 1: is objectively bad. But if you focus strictly on the

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Speaker 1: second half of the season, that equation starts to shift.

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Speaker 1: I did this same analysis, but instead of looking at

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Speaker 1: running backs who played eight games across the entire season,

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Speaker 1: I looked at running backs who played five games during

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Speaker 1: the second half their season or past week eight. I

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Speaker 1: then categorize those players as rookies and non rookies. All

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, everything looks a whole lot better for

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Speaker 1: the rookie running backs. Not only do rookie running backs

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Speaker 1: during the second half of the season have better ceiling outcomes,

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Speaker 1: but they have better floor outcomes too. Across the board,

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Speaker 1: the rookies exceeded expectation by two to four PPERO points

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Speaker 1: per game at a better rate than the alternatives, and

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Speaker 1: the veterans are underperforming at a higher rate as well,

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Speaker 1: by four or five percentage points in almost every bucket. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is counterintuitive because we've been taught for years that

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Speaker 1: running backs are able to perform right away in the NFL.

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Speaker 1: You can just drop them in an offense and they'll

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Speaker 1: be fine. Wide receiver needs a little bit more time. Now,

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Speaker 1: this is all still true, but my guess is that

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Speaker 1: teams are still just hesitant to make these rookie running

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Speaker 1: backs belcals right away, even if they're capable, and so

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Speaker 1: as the season goes on, they not only get experience,

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Speaker 1: but other injuries might occur to that backfield to allow

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Speaker 1: them to get a bigger workload because remember, generally speaking,

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Speaker 1: there's only one running back on the field at once.

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Speaker 1: At wide receiver, a rookie can probably find the field

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Speaker 1: in run routes and if he's good enough, he's going

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Speaker 1: to earn targets. But it's funny because I don't think

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Speaker 1: there's a better example with this than last season in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Ashton Genti was a little bit better

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Speaker 1: in fantasy football. During the second half of last year,

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Speaker 1: Traveon Henderson was better. R J. Harvey was better. Like

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Speaker 1: we saw this really come to be with three of

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Speaker 1: the top rookie running backs from last year, all for

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Speaker 1: one reason or another. And I think this is the

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Speaker 1: consideration that you have to make when you're drafting your teams,

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Speaker 1: whether it's a managed league or whether it's best Ball,

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Speaker 1: you have to understand that historically we do see rookie

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Speaker 1: running backs providing us a scary floor, but we're taking

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Speaker 1: that on in our drafts knowing that and a ceiling

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Speaker 1: might eventually come. What that means is that a balance

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Speaker 1: is really necessary. If you find yourself drafting a lot

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Speaker 1: of rookies early on, that's not a horrible thing necessarily,

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Speaker 1: you just really need to cover yourself later on in

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Speaker 1: the draft as the draft unfolds, and you need to

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Speaker 1: cover yourself for the early part of the season. And

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Speaker 1: there are backfields where you can find some that early

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Speaker 1: season production from non early round players, But at running back,

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Speaker 1: if you do go the route of a rookie, you

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Speaker 1: really should have that balance top of mind. And that's

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Speaker 1: something that it's my bad I have not talked about

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Speaker 1: that enough through the years. At wide receiver, like I said,

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Speaker 1: they're just volatile bets, especially in recent years, your own

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Speaker 1: risk tolerance can really dictate how heavy you want to

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Speaker 1: go with rookie wide receivers. And again, this is something

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Speaker 1: that I should speak to more because not every fantasy

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Speaker 1: manager is okay with playing fantasy football the way that

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Speaker 1: I do, which is really searching for those ceiling outcomes. Look,

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Speaker 1: some of this is pretty intuitive, but it's nice when

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Speaker 1: data can guide us in these intuitive directions. There's comfort

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Speaker 1: in that. And what the data says is that anyone

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Speaker 1: who claims that rookies in redraft are terrible bets that

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Speaker 1: just hasn't been the case yet. There's just more nuance

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Speaker 1: than saying draft rookies no matter what. That's it for

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Speaker 1: today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening.

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Speaker 1: If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast,

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Speaker 1: make sure you are by strooting for it pretty much

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Speaker 1: anywhere podcast can be found, and follow me on Twitter

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Speaker 1: and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. I'll be

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Speaker 1: back in your ears on Wednesday on YouTube with the

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Speaker 1: Late Round Fantasy Football Show, and then later this week

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Speaker 1: we've got another episode of Late Round Perspectives. I'll talk

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Speaker 1: to you guys then