The Overreaction Episode! + Fantasy Fallacies, BOOM-tacular - Fantasy Football Podcast for 5/19

Yeah, that's not a fun one. The quote was, his expectations are to play week one. We're not going to rush it. When he's ready, he'll be on the field. And one of the things in the ultimate draft kit, we have an injury report talking about all of those late season injuries we're talking about. And here is what our injury expert said about Moster's injury. Suffered a cartilage injury, which required surgery, notable for having relatively good short-term success.

but can cause intermittent swelling and irritation if there's too much stress. Basically, he can't necessarily tolerate a full workload, which is also the story of Rahim Moster's entire career. Yeah. So you stack that up with the injury and you look at Moster as probably not a difference maker in fantasy. Yeah, and this is why the Sony Michelle signing was a little bit interesting as well. Just.

You know, they have the inside scoop on where he's at and what his progress is and their worries through the season. So they're all three going to be involved and it's going to be not delightful. All right. That is it for news unless you got something breaking there, Brooksie. I don't. Okay. Well, good. Good. Let's move on. I'm not going to do what you all think I'm going to do, which is just flip out.

Mike Park caught on fire. I know most people are just listening and thank goodness for that. But if you happen to be watching on YouTube, look, the PowerPoint. Animation. Animation to introduce that segment. That's a little data there, Brooksie. Can we put the squad on it, you think, for next year? Maybe. Maybe. I mean, I could probably do something in a few minutes. That took years, Andy. All right. We're talking about.

overreactions. I mentioned it at the top of the show. Things that fantasy football players may react to excessively. There are a lot of ways that this can go, right? I mean, players react for a number of reasons. The way somebody finishes a season could drive up their ADP. Playoff performances, right? Joe Burrow, going to the Super Bowl, that can drive up a player's average draft position. We're in the middle of going through these UDK player profile videos, and a lot of that is coming up saying, hey,

I like this guy this year. But I'm not going to have him on my team because he's just playing too expensive in drafts. So we each kind of picked out a couple of things to bring up volunteers to go first here. I'll jump in here first because you just mentioned Joe Burrow. And that's a quarterback that I want to highlight. Again, all three of us, we really like Joe Burrow. He's going to be solid for fantasy football. He is a good real-life quarterback. Great.

Okay, great. He is a great real-life quarterback, according to Jason Moore. But he is currently being drafted as the quarterback six on Underdog. And that is too rich for my blood. So looking back at what Joe Burrow did last year, before what I will call the playoff boomtacular, where, like, if you had Joe Burrow on your team. That would be the fantasy playoff boomtacular. Yeah, yeah, yes, exactly, the fantasy playoffs.

If you made it to the fancy playoffs and Joe Burrow was your quarterback, congratulations because your odds of winning were very, very good because he went off. He was the quarterback one, two straight weeks. But before that happened, he had zero 30-point games.

at the fantasy quarterback position. He was the quarterback 12 in points per game at just over 18 points because the Bengals were 20th in passing attempts. And that is not going to change under the regime of Zach Taylor. They will be a balanced team skewing more towards the run. And not only where, like those two weeks, those took Joe Burrow, one into the...

the hall of history in fantasy playoffs, which changes how we think about these players emotionally. But to get back there, he has to either have his volume pumped up or he has to repeat his historic season. And when you think about Joe Burroughs season, you're like, well, that was kind of an anomaly, but it really was.

Times that a quarterback has completed 70% of their passes and had 8.9 yards per attempt, which Joe Burrow led the league in 8.9 yards per attempt by a pretty decent margin. But the times that those two statistics have aligned three times in history, including Joe Burrow. We're talking Joe Montana once, Deshaun Watson in 2020, and Joe Burrow just did it again. We've seen second year quarterbacks who have hit the 6.5% touchdown rate.

saying that 6.5% of their attempts turn into a touchdown. The average decrease that we've seen from those players in their third year is nearly 3%. Now, like when it's Lamar Jackson and he's at a 9 and he drops down to 7, it ends up being okay. But for a lot of these guys, it's a pretty catastrophic fall in the touchdown department. And because Joe Burrell has no rushing baseline, he has to hit.

Just incredible efficiency numbers because the running won't be there. And the passing volume is not likely to get to a level where he can overcome if he's not nearly as efficient. And I'm concerned that Joe Burrow being drafted as the quarterback six, I think he's going to be disappointing for the expectations that people are placing upon him. So the overreaction is on the boomtacular. Yes. People.

too excited from those two games at the end of the fantasy playoffs where that was the outlier not the new normal. Right. Like I said, before those, before those two games to that point of the season, quarterback 12 and points per game. It's very frustrating because I agree. Right. Yeah, take that. I hear you. I agree with the analysis and the reality of that situation. I think the most, at least the thing that jumps out to me the most is if you just.

pull those last two explosions off the map, you know, you have a really average fantasy season leaning to the less valuable for your team. But when I looked at the, you know, when I projected Joe Burrow, he ended up, you know, in that five, six range. Now, that's really irrelevant. If I can't get him out of value, if I'm just paying costs for Joe Burrow and upside has a tremendous amount of risk. Right. That is a problem for kind of.

making him a darling in fantasy drafts because you're paying the price. And, you know, he could have had two, if he had had two great games to start the year, the exact same two games, and ended the year the other direction, there's no way his ADP is where he is now. It's all about youth plus, is he advancing? You know, we've been here before Josh Allen and said, well, he can't repeat, and then he repeated. And even Justin Herbert, it's like, what's the reality? So you kind of look at it and you say,

He does have a special player in Jamar Chase. He's got a special talent. Absolutely. And both of those other quarterbacks you mentioned have special coaches that are much better than Zach Taylor for fantasy football purposes. I don't care about real NFL here, Zach Taylor. Let him throw the ball more. Air it out. Stop with this cowardice. The hope would be that you'd get the 616 pace from the last six weeks of the year as opposed to the first half.

But you're right. Balance is probably the target. If they were 15th in the league, I mean, that would probably be an upgrade. Yeah, and they made some good moves to their defense. Yeah, it's really upsetting stuff. They did do some work on the offensive line, though. That is true. So hopefully in the pass blocking department. I'll share one of mine, which is I wanted to kind of look at.

You know, we talked about vacated targets. We talked about opportunity. And one thing I think a pattern I've noticed in fantasy football over the years is we just, we're so, we're so thirsty for a tied in to make a difference to our fantasy roster because there are so few that do. And so I wanted to look and see what vacated targets, potential opportunity, how does it translate to new tight ends?

or I would also say one's next on the depth chart when someone departs. Do they go in and fill that void? Do they really pay off an opportunity? And we went back and looked back to 2018 at some tight ends that had an average draft position that basically you could tell people were saying, hey, this is their year to step up. Trey Burton is one of the first examples of that. He was the sixth tight end off the board. O.J. Howard.

uh in 2019 vance macdonald in pittsburgh remember the vance dance yeah it was it was too dangerous it was a bad he was drafted as the tight-end 80 finished tight-in 32 o j howard was the tight-in four in a dp finished 29th hayden hurst in atlanta when he arrived he was the tight-end 80 finished below that adp uh fercser below the adep troutman troutman below the adep d n arnold so i think we're very

thirsty to see opportunities at tight end. And so for 2022, here are the teams with the most vacated target numbers and then they're tight ends that maybe are going to get a lot of excitement that maybe shouldn't. Austin Hooper in Tennessee with a 67% vacated target number. Totally agree. David and Joku. And again, this is not, these are, most tight ends are in this category of medium tight ends. David and Joku.

I've thought about David and Joku a few times this off season. You want to get excited. He's an athletic guy. You get hopeful, but it's probably not going to happen. Yeah, Robert Tunyon, you know, with the big Packer target vacated... The Target vacation. Yes, thank you. Cole Kamet in Chicago. I've seen a lot of buzz around Cole Kamat. Yeah, you won't stop me. Ricky Seals Jones with the giant CJ Uzama with New York with the Jets.

And so will they matter for fantasy? Maybe on a streaming week, but probably not for any sort of vacate or bankable volume. And then I'll bring up Irv Smith, who we've had some debates about. But the Vikings only have the eighth fewest vacated targets. Exactly. So he's fine. Yeah. So there's not a lot of opportunity. I've heard an argument about too much opportunity. I know. And little opportunity for Irv. Big Irves above the law. It's been, and it's been a while.

for Kirk Cousins and his tight-in. So I just say, you know, be careful with Irv. You know, the tight-ins for cousins, 10, 16, 8, 16, 23-16, not a lot of targets to go around. I'm throwing the ball to Jefferson instead of Irv-Smith whenever I can get an opportunity of a quarterback. So don't overreact to vacated targets and then automatically put a tight-in into that spot. That's the overreaction. And we've done the research.

Running backs are actually the beneficiary most often of vacated targets. So to amplify the Aaron Jones will have secure volume argument, that's where I would turn versus a Robert Tunyon resurgence because he was never a volume guy anyway. Right. And now he's coming off an injury. So be careful. Yeah, I heard you loud and clear. Clyde Edwards-Alair, RB1. Yes. I heard it. I heard it.

You think I'm not already thinking about that, Jason? I just can't say it out loud anymore. You need to go into the season with Antonio Gibson and Clyde as your two running backs in every league you're in. And then you may never go into the season with either guy as you're running back after that. They're on my dino squad. Yeah. So my first thing that I think people overreact to is the rushing upside of quarterbacks.

Don't, now here's the thing. This is not overreacting. We do want to react. I talk all the time about, you know, the cheat code that rushing quarterbacks have the fact that fantasy scoring is dumb and stupid and broken because, you know, quarterbacks get a point for 10 rushing yards and a quarter of a point for 10 passing yards. They're going to 10 yards either way. But this isn't the debate. The debate here is just I don't want people to overreact to these great mobile quarterbacks who might

not be good quarterbacks. It's not a guarantee that you might not be Lamar Jackson. Right. There might not be Lamar Jackson. And this year, it's really, you know, a slight caution to Trey Lance and Justin Fields to very mobile quarterbacks who can run a ton. Two quarterbacks that I have in my stats in the ultimate draft kit rushing for a ton of yardage and two quarterbacks who still with all that rushing yardage.

are not in the top 15 for me. And, you know, we see it before. If you look at their season, right, like Justin Fields, he started 10 games. And I know, you know, it's talking, oh, three out of his last four were top 10. He literally only scored 20 fantasy points once on the season. Mack Jones did it four times, and he don't run the ball.