Fantasy Football Today - FFT Dynasty - Age Curve Explained! Player Breakout & Decline Timelines! (05/17 Dynasty Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Timing is everything in dynasty fantasy football! Join FFT Dynasty hosts Heath Cummings and Ryan Heath from Fantasy Points as they dive into the age curves of NFL players, uncovering the crucial breakout and decline points you need to dominate your league. We'll evaluate the (2:07) rookie class, highlighting favorite players (6:05) outside round 1 in rookie-only drafts. Ryan will share his analytics, including stickiness and correlation (10:45), plus weighted (15:50) opportunity. Then, we'll break down positions, starting with (19:20) running backs, followed by (31:35) wide receivers, tight ends (41:47), and ending with (47:01) quarterbacks. Don't miss these essential insights for your dynasty strategy! Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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to focus on what truly matters. Find their products through banks, credit unions, and associations, or visit SecurianCanada.ca. Securian Canada, insurance designed for life. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings, here with Ryan Heath. We've got so much Heath today on the show. You can follow him on Twitter at RyanJ underscore Heath. You can find his work at Fantasy Points. Ryan, tell everybody what you've been working on and where they can find you. Yeah, I've been working on a series called Statistically Significant.

Basically, I deep dive into all the stats that matter most and also the ones that don't matter for fantasy football. Basically using our Fantasy Points data suite over at Fantasy Points. It's a really cool tool. Lots of amazing information there. And you can find all of that at fantasypoints.com. And yeah, as you said, Twitter at RyanJ underscore heat. And it's funny that you've been what you've been working on because that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what information from the past matters most for the future and maybe what things are revaluing from the past that don't matter at all for the future.

And then also, you did a series last year or maybe just a piece last year on age curves. And that's something that's really interesting to me. I wrote something on that back at Football Guys probably a decade plus ago. I've always thought from a dynasty perspective, trying to crack that code and figuring out not just where the age curves are, but where is everybody else wrong about those age curves and how they're reacting to them. We're going to talk about that as well and how we can use all those things to our advantage. Now, we always start with three questions for our guests. And I'm going to ask so many questions

about the things I just talked about that I want to shift gears for these three questions. I want to talk about the rookies. What are your general thoughts on the round one rookie class in terms of 2024 and maybe where the tier breaks are yeah so i think the first almost mini tier break is after the 102 usually marvin harrison and i say that mostly because i have never seen anybody take malik neighbors or any qb that's not williams over harrison there People will not trade you

the 102. It's very difficult to convince people to do that. So I do have Harrison and Williams up in a tier at 101, 102. The next big tier for me is actually 107. So that is usually going to be Roma Dunze or whoever is left of Drake May or JJ McCarthy. That's the tier for me. And then at 108, I kind of have Brock Bowers just in his own tier. Obviously not an ideal landing spot, but he is still an elite talent. We want to bet on that in Dynasty. So I can't take Bowers any lower than 108. I find myself drafting him there a lot,

even though I didn't initially think I would be getting much Bowers on lower than 108. I find myself drafting him there a lot, even though I didn't initially think I would be getting much Bowers on my dynasty teams. And then finally, after that, I kind of have a big tier from the 109 to about the 202. I have like Ladd McConkie, Xavier Worthy, Brian Thomas in there. I stick Bo Nixon as well, just because quarterback is such an important position in super flex dynasty leagues, where if you're going to give me a guy who is likely going to start fairly immediately, who was drafted that high in a system like Sean Payton has,

where he's just gotten all this production out of complete, like nobodies and bums for years and years. That's a first round super flex rookie pick to me uh and then also jonathan brooks and trey benson are in that tier i have brooks more up towards the top of it uh again just because running backs who can be a bell cow play on all three downs um and that we feel really comfortable about being that guy. There's like three of those guys in the league right now. I think Brooks has an outside shot at being that. So I have to have him up towards the top of that end of the first rookie tier for me. So I actually have Brooks in the tier above and I know that that doesn't fit with what most people

have, but I feel pretty confident that he's going to be that three down guy for at least a couple of years. And I don't feel that way about anyone else in the class at running back. The fact like I was going into the draft with man, if it wasn't for the ACL, Jonathan Brooks would be the clear RB one. Let's see what the NFL does. And then the NFL says, you know what, with the ACL, he's almost a first round pick. And so I'm just on board with Brooks in round two. I'll tell you the other thing that I think I have that's a little bit different. I don't want to see if you think it's crazy. It's okay. You can tell me it's crazy. I am taking Marvin Harrison at the one-on-one and I don't care what the format is. I don't care how many quarterbacks you can start. Marvin Harrison's my one-on-one. Yeah. I don't think it's crazy. I don't care how many quarterbacks you can start. Marvin Harrison's my one-on-one. Yeah, I don't think it's crazy. I think if you're, as with anything in dynasty, context of your team matters a lot. If you're a contender and you have two really solid elite quarterbacks and a third backup quarterback that is kind of like an older, lower value guy, you don't need to draft Caleb Williams

whatsoever. My first inclination would be I'm trying to sell this pick. But depending on the league, that can be difficult because quarterbacks aren't very, they're very valuable, but they're not super liquid in super flex dynasty. Like most teams, if they feel set at quarterback, aren't willing to make moves at quarterback whatsoever unless it involves a swap so yeah if you're kind of stuck at that 101 and your team is really good and you don't need a quarterback i'm fine with you taking marvin harrison there hey i i appreciate that let's let's go the opposite end of the spectrum now because i like to give everyone a chance it was jacob gibbs talking about puka nakua last offseason So I want to give everyone who comes on the show a chance to be brilliant.

Who are your favorite rookies to target after round two of rookie drafts? Yeah, I've got a couple that I'm drafting a lot. One is Jermaine Burton. So when I look at this wide receiver class, at least analytically, it's pretty weak overall. So it's kind of a low bar for me to say this wide receiver has a decent analytical profile for the class. I would say that about Jermaine Burton. He was second best by career depth adjusted yards per target over expectation, which is a huge mouthful, but it is Scott Barrett's absolute favorite stat. Basically, he was insanely efficient on a per

target basis. And I really liked the situation he's walking into. He could be starting immediately. Cincinnati ran the third most three wide receiver sets last year. So if they like what they see with him in camp, he could be an immediate starter. And he's going to really pay off in round three of rookie drafts. And then I'm also taking a lot of Javon Baker. So with this Patriots wide receiver core, and I promise it's not because of the Josh Gordon jersey

hanging over my shoulder right now, but I want to take shots on ambiguous situations that are priced down. So last year, that would have been the Houston Texans. It's a brand new quarterback, brand new coaching staff. We don't really know much about any of these wide receivers. None of them have really stood out or they're all new. You want to take shots on that room just in case the magic kind of happens when you get a new

offensive coordinator and a new quarterback. I think the market kind of still has the Patriots stink on all these guys. So Javon Baker as the cheapest, you can get him in round three of a rookie draft. I'm drafting a lot of him. His profile as a prospect was pretty decent. Obviously, small school, we don't love as much. Day three, we don't love as much. But just the production was there. So I'm willing to take shots on him as well.

You saw me laugh when you said the second name, because I'm pretty sure earlier in the week, I had Dave Richard on, I asked him the same question, and he said the same two names. So if you guys keep this up, those guys aren't going to be available after round two. They'll go late in round two. Let's talk about some round one guys. Ricky Pearsall, Xavier Leggett, round one draft capital, but not necessarily being drafted like it in rookie drafts, not necessarily reflected like it in my rookie rankings.

Do you feel better about these guys than I do? Or is it kind of feel like these are the two mistakes the NFL might've made? Yeah, I don't feel amazing about either i i think they're around two rookie picks just based off of the draft capital um i'll prefer persol a little bit um the the person whose film opinion i respect the most in this industry is brett whitefield at fantasy points he absolutely loves pierce all he has kind of an insane record on just picking out wide receiver prospects that end up really succeeding. So he, Pearsall gets a little bit of a bump for me there, but especially with someone like Leggett, I get that the production was really, really good in that final season,

but I am just not into these types of profiles where they do nothing until year five when they're older than everybody they're playing against. And especially when as soon as they get drafted and Leggett's team is already talking about giving him touches out of the backfield and using him on screens. Like for me, that just says LaVisca Chennault, basically. That doesn't sound good for fantasy. We want wide receivers who can run routes and command targets in the intermediate areas of the field. And that doesn't sound like how they're planning to use Legat. Now you did break the number one rule. We don't say LaVisca Chenault anymore. We just like to pretend like that didn't happen. And yes,

I'm drafting Malachi Corley this year. I don't want to talk about it. Let's take our first break. When we get back, we'll get into less rookie talk, more talk about the guys who have been in the NFL, what matters and what doesn't. Take back your free time with PC Express Online grocery delivery and pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time. And still get groceries. Shop now at pcexpress.ca. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there.

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and wide receiver mostly. We'll talk a little bit about quarterback and tight end as well. But when we get into this idea of what matters, there's two terms I think we're probably going to use a lot. And I want to make sure that everybody's kind of on that same page about what those terms mean, or at least how we're going to use them. Stickiness and correlation year over year. And you kind of go through, those are the two things. When you send the charts out on Twitter, this thing is sticky. This thing is correlated to next year's success. Some people might see that and say, what in the heck is he talking about? So go ahead and kind of talk through those for a second. Absolutely. Yeah. So we'll start with

correlation. It is basically how much one stat can tell you about another stat. So in most cases for fantasy football, what we care about is how much a stat is going to tell us about that player's fantasy points. So just as an easy example, yards are strongly correlated with fantasy points, mostly because yards make up a lot of fantasy points. And something like a player's total number of fumbles are not correlated to fantasy points. They're completely randomly dispersed in a way that is not similar to fantasy points. They're completely randomly dispersed in a way that is not similar to fantasy points at all. And then stickiness, moving over to that, that's basically how stable one stat is from year to year. So if a wide receiver sees like a 25%

target share in 2023, it's very likely he's going to see a similar target share the following year. And that's not just with one wide receiver, but really over a whole population. On average, most players will see similar target shares. And if we put those together, if we get a stat that is both very correlated with fantasy points and is also sticky and stable year over year, then we found a stat that is predictive of next year's fantasy points. And at least right now in the off season, that is what we ultimately care about. We want a stat that's going to predict who's going to score a lot of fantasy points. Now, I wouldn't say the gold standard is this what I'm going to bring up, but like the bar, i would say is last year's fantasy points per game because that is

both and you can correct if i'm wrong stickier and more well correlated than most statistics and it's also heavily influences adp and so like we're looking for things that are close to or better than that. Is that correct? Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Overall, if you just want to be mostly right most of the time, yeah, last year's fantasy points are going to get you pretty close to next year's fantasy points per game, just overall most of the time. But as you kind of alluded to, last year's fantasy points also correlate to average draft position pretty well. So in fantasy football, the goal is to beat ADP, to beat the market, to beat everybody else that is playing. So, yeah, we want to find stats that are at least close to the predictiveness of last year's fantasy points, but maybe aren't being appropriately weighed by the market um so one really good example of that at least at the running back position but kind of broadly is volume stats in general are going to be very correlated to next year's fantasy points and are

very sticky often more sticky than fantasy points themselves. So for running backs, kind of the gold standard there is going to be weighted opportunities per game. I can go into what that is a little bit later if we want. Even just total scrimmage yards per game for running backs is pretty good. Snap share, route share, target share, all of these are going to be part of the puzzle. All of those are fairly predictive of points in the following season. And we're going to go into weighted opportunities almost immediately,

but I do just want to stop there for a second because I think that playing this game and more so maybe talking about playing this game, we're always trying to find the edge and that can lead to a mentality to where we want to just do away with what someone did last year. And I don't care what they did last year. Tell me what they're going to do this year. And I think it's an important point to kind of emphasize that like the onus is on the person who is saying things are going to be different than last year. And lots of things are going to be different than last year. And lots of things are

going to be different from last year, but you need to start with the baseline of what just happened because, and you kind of said it, we're looking for things that are almost as predictive because for the most part, the most predictive thing is what just happened. And then tell me why it's going to be different. So I think start, and start and that's kind of when my projections process starts. I don't I like to look back three years as well, but I'm looking for kind of a blend of what does history tell us? And then I'm looking to my ideas or metrics about why is it going to be different? What who left is a rookie who's just going to improve in year two as they often do we'll talk about that more later um but starting with that baseline of what happened last year and then trying to get a

little bit better is the way to go tell me about weighted opportunity for running backs and and kind of what that means yeah so weighted opportunity is basically just a quote-unquote made-up volume stat. We love our made-up volume stats here. All stats are made up. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Thank you. It's a volume stat for running backs that is meant to give proper weighting of the value of every touch,

sort of in a way that other stats all fail to. So just like on average over the past decade, running backs have scored more fantasy points per touch inside the red zone than they have per touch outside the red zone, right? That's intuitive. A touch in the red zone is probably going to be worth more fantasy points than outside the red zone. It's the same thing with targets and carries. On average, running backs score more fantasy points per target than fantasy points per carry. So all weighted opportunity does is it adjusts touches to reflect that. We basically just have an average number of fantasy points that each carry, each target is worth. We add them up and we divide by games.

You got weighted opportunities per game, and it's an incredibly sticky and predictive metric. And this is very similar. If you ever hear something like expected fantasy points per game being thrown around, very similar idea obviously depends on the source and the site and who's calculating expected fantasy points but usually is just a beefed up version of that where we're counting the five yard line is different from the 11 yard line for example well and i think that's that's a good point

to make specifically with running backs it seems like there's variance in a lot of running back stats in terms of whether we're talking about avoiding a tackle or forcing a missed tackle or breaking a tackle. And so which, which stats do you think that people are kind of using to evaluate running backs maybe are not as valuable as they think they are? Yeah. So this question completely depends on what bubble of the internet we're in and what we're talking about. Let's take an hour bubble. Yeah. So I think in our bubble, mostly people are overrating efficiency stats.

So that's going to be like missed tackles, force for touch, rushing yards, over expected yards after contact, stuff like that. And while these are our cool stats, I do use them and you can make arguments with them. I think there is a tendency to look at the missed tackles force per touch chart and pick the guy in the top, right. And say, okay, he like, he's the best running back. I'm going to draft him in fantasy. And that that's not a stat that is correlated to fantasy points per game in the following season. So just important to keep that in mind.

I would also say though, like kind of outside our bubble, just total touches or total carries is an overrated stat. And that's because weighted opportunity is better. Right. And then like yards per carry is not correlated or sticky at all yes yeah yards per carry is the classic one yeah so i bring that up not because of adamazer but because i want to compare a couple of players that i hear a lot

of talk about rashad white and how inefficient he is, and is he even good as a rusher? And I think about weighted opportunity and the number of targets he's seen, and I would think that predicting him by what he did last year and then factoring in his weighted opportunity versus a guy like Devon Achan, who was incredible in terms of efficiency. One of the best running backs we've ever seen, if he ever had enough touches. But his weighted opportunity wasn't that great,

because the team really seemed to only want to give him more than 10 touches in blowouts. Those two guys in best ball don't go particularly close. Achan's the clear, easy choice. I think in redraft, it will be closer because there's a little bit more value to White's profile. But can you kind of compare and contrast White versus A-chan and what these stats tell us about them moving forward? Absolutely, yeah.

So White, as you said, top eight by weighted opportunities per game last year, top 12 target share, had a virtual monopoly on goal line work. Those are all the things we care about in terms of predicting volume in the following year. Yes. So that's great. I do think with White, it was predictable heading into even last year, just kind of with the coach speak and how they were talking about him. He had a year or two running back bump coming. I was drafting a lot of Rashad White last year for all those reasons. This year, I mean, in Dynasty, he's a top 12 running back.

In best ball, he's a little more affordable. I think it's fine. I think he's priced pretty adequately with where his volume has been. I have no issue with White. I would never say, oh, his yards per carry isn't high enough, so I don't want to have him. Agreed. But I might be twisting this around with Devon Achan on you a little bit.

So, yes, Devon A. Chan's volume, his weighted opportunities, whatever way you look at it, all those super sticky stats were not super great last year. But look, he outperformed his weighted opportunities by 6.2 fantasy points per game.

That is the most of any running back of the past decade, which is unbelievable. There's not an exaggeration to say the most efficient rookie season out of a running back we've ever seen. So I wanted to go back in the past decade and look at similar rookie seasons to that just in terms of efficiency. What happened to those players after that rookie season? So there were five other rookie running backs drafted on day one or two who outperformed their weighted opportunity by at least two and a half fantasy points per game.

All five of them had an increase in volume in year two. Four out of five of them scored 20 or more fantasy points per game in year two. The only one who didn't, well, two that didn't, one was J.K. Dobbins, who destroyed his knee before the season. The other was Todd Gurley. That was the year that Jeff Fisher finally got fired, and he immediately had multiple 20 fantasy point per game seasons in a row after that. So what I'm saying, this is sort of the Alvin Kamara corollary where yeah, Alvin Kamara comes in his rookie season is unbelievably efficient. We say he's going to regress, he's going to regress, he's going to regress. Volume is sticky, efficiency isn't. But I do think at a certain Alvin Kamara or Devon HN level of outlier efficiency, we have to sit down and say, okay,

this player is probably really, really special and coaches and teams will respond to that at some point. So I like Devon HN's chances to see a volume increase this year, to be a really, really big fantasy contributor this year. I like him at his ADP in best ball right now, and I'm going to be drafting a lot of them. So I know I just lectured about how important volume is, but kind of, as you said, this is me. I understand the burden is on me here to say why it's going to be different than last year,

but I think this is one specific instance where we have good reason to believe it will be. Well, and I think that's kind of the point. I mean, there's, there's rules and there are exceptions to rules and the exceptions are usually the ones who win you leagues. Now, HN may be drafted so high that he could be part of the problem of losing a league as well if he doesn't deliver on that change. But that's a good breakdown of when maybe all the rules don't apply to certain guys and extreme outliers can make coaches change the things they do. I want to also talk, especially of the running back position, about the age curve. You wrote a piece last year about how the running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends age and where their peak seasons are, when their breakout seasons are, and when they fall off the cliff. And that's an extremely important thing for dynasty managers to

pay attention to. I know one of your takeaways was that there was generally a pretty big jump from year one to year two, which would fit with the expected HN breakout. What else did you find when looking at the running back age curve? Yeah. So yeah, I do want to say most important thing in terms of running back age curve and what we should feel most confident in is that elite running backs break out early in their careers.

So it can be year one, certainly, but yes, year two is a very big breakout year for running backs once you get past year three and you're still saying is this guy gonna break out we're waiting for it like giovante williams is who i can pick on right now at that point the odds are very low that they are ever going to be anything approaching an elite fantasy running back. And so in terms of peak production, usually from years two through year five or six, so roughly

the rookie contract of a running back plus a franchise tag or something. And year seven is where we start to see the production fall off. I do want to say if anybody happens to pull up like my age curves article and is just looking at the graphic or something, it looks like a very smooth decline from like year six through year 10. That's not the case at all. That's just something weird you get when you average lots of numbers together. Most running backs will go from one year. They're about as good as they always have been to the following year that they just completely fall off and they're dead and useless for fantasy. So that should be more of your heuristic when you're evaluating. Okay, is somebody like a Josh Jacobs going to totally fall off this year or a Derrick Henry or a Tony Pollard or something like that?

It's very rarely rarely a gradual decline. So that brings up a good point, because there is a running back I was thinking about entering year seven. Saquon Barkley goes to the Philadelphia Eagles, and it seems like universal agreement that this is awesome for him. He's going to be great. Running backs changing teams later in their career, often not good running backs, entering year seven as certainly a danger sign. How do you feel about Saquon and Philadelphia

this year? Yeah, I'm, I'm kind of torn. So I'm not drafting Saquon Barkley, um, like in, in underdog best ball right now whatsoever. I think he's priced fine at the start of the second round. I get it. Barkley has been a player that has a history of having a lot of weighted opportunities, but he hasn't had an unbelievable season in terms of volume since his rookie year. It's been a while since he's been really a Christian. Philadelphia is not exactly a place that gives unbelievable opportunities to running backs. Yeah, exactly. No, having a mobile quarterback that just automatically means less checkdowns, fewer, fewer, uh, targets, uh, Jalen hurts being the goal line back doesn't help much either. I mean, Eagles running Eagles running backs overall did have more goal line carries than

Giants running backs last year, but it wasn't by as much as you would think. Like the Eagles were a top three in team rush attempts inside the five yard line. Jalen Hurts had at least half of those. So I, yeah, I think Barkley's fine. I don't think he has a lot of upside at a second round ADP. The way philosophically that I draft running backs in the early rounds, I only want this guy if I can imagine a 22 point per game season plus, because that's really the only type of running back that moves the needle enough to have it be worth taking that risk over drafting a generally safer wide receiver.

One more question about the running backs. When you were going through this age curve process and you think about the way that dynasty managers generally treat running backs, do you think there's anything exploitable here? Did the curve make you think, you know what, we're getting off running backs in Dynasty too early, or people are holding on to running backs in Dynasty too long, or do you think that Dynasty managers are mostly handling things the way that they present themselves? It kind of depends what you mean, because in terms of Dynasty value, I think people behave fairly appropriately. We know that a running back on

his second contract is going to be worth less in a dynasty trade than he was two or three years before. And I think ADP largely reflects that and reflects age curves pretty well. I would say in terms of I'm trying to win my dynasty league, what age of running back should I be targeting at cost? I think you're honestly, your best bet is wait until September or October. Well, really in the off season, you should be stockpiling running backs that have a chance to fall into volume. So affordable backups, Ty Chandler is a guy I really like right now, kind of in that vein. If you want someone with upside beyond this year who can maybe hold on to a job, I really like where Tajay Spears is going. So stockpiling running backs who could

fall into volume in September or October, it's pretty easy to trade second and third round rookie picks for whatever this year's version of Raheem Mostert is. I think going into your season with the plan of, okay, if my team really comes out of the gate hard and I'm looking like a contender, I'll make a fairly lower risk move like that. Not moving super premium draft capital, but once I have more information about the running back landscape this season after week four, week five, I think that can be a really effective way to get cheap running back production. If you want to go pay the iron price for Brees Hall, I'm not going to tell you no.

I would love to have Brees Hall on more dynasty teams. But I do think we underestimate how much you can cobble the running back position together, especially in a dynasty format where you can reach into next year's later round rookie picks if you need to. And to that point, I picked like in a 14-team league with 27-man, 28-man rosters, I picked Zamir White up off the waiver wire last year in the middle of the season.

And now he looks like he might be a starting running back. Like Ty Chandler was available on waiver wires for sure last year before he started getting touches. So yeah, I absolutely think we talk about that a lot. If you're rebuilding or if you're almost contending, I don't want to roster hardly any running backs, premium running backs at all, but I will roster those backup guys and hope they turn into starters. Let's shift the conversation to wide receiver and just kind of start with what matters. What are the stats besides targets and fantasy points per

game last year that that really matter in helping to predict fantasy points in the future yeah so so aside from those obvious ones one that people are i find are generally not as aware of is first downs in general as a concept are very predictive of wide receiver scoring in the following season so just straight up first downs as a like overall volume number of first downs stat it is actually slightly more predictive than fantasy points itself of fantasy points in the following season uh we can also divide it by routes run, and we get first downs per route run, which is almost an even better version, a more predictive version of yards per route run. And I should say that per route stats at the wide receiver position are

fairly predictive, not as good as volume stats, but they're very worth paying attention to. And that's for a couple of reasons. Why does efficiency matter more at wide receiver than at running back? There's multiple wide receivers on the field on most plays. So if the volume for a running back is just, is he on the field? Is he getting the ball? Doesn't really matter how efficient you are if you're not on the field, right? There are more wide receivers on the field at any given point.

The ones who are most efficient on their routes are going to have the most production. So that's like a critical difference between wide receiver and running back that I always want to point out. Yeah. I, it's fun to like, to say, Oh, we don't need to care about the missed tackles forced over expected or whatever running back. Not the case at wide receiver. It, oh, we don't need to care about the missed tackles forced over expected or whatever running back. Not the case at wide receiver. The efficiency does matter at wide receiver. It is a good measure of skill. I will say the first downs I think should already be like a standard setting in fantasy leagues. We should have a quarter point or a half point or whatever

you want to do per rushing first down per receiving receiving first. These are the things that move the ball down the field, and those players should be rewarded. Is there anybody who stands out from that metric in a good way that you think may be undervalued right now in Dynasty Leagues? Yeah, there's a few of them. In terms of undervalued, I would say the biggest one right now is Amari Cooper. 29 years old. he was top 12 in yards per outrun last year i think also top 12 in first downs per outrun top 10 in just receiving

yards per game and in games with deshaun watson he scored 17.6 fantasy points per game that that was the wide receiver six overall and right now he's being drafted in like the 30s, the wide receiver 30 wide receiver 40 range in dynasty startups. So he's the one I think genuinely has a shot to give you multiple years of wide receiver level wide receiver one level production that you can get it incredibly cheaply. You can trade like a running back you don't want to have on your team for Amari Cooper. You can trade like a Tony Pollard or a Deandre Swift for Amari Cooper on your dynasty team right now.

That's who I would first point to. Aside from him, I'm going to keep up for Jalen Waddle a little bit. Good. Yes. I'm glad we have agreement here. Anytime you go per route for any stat, Jalen Waddell just absolutely pops in it, especially this past year.

Top five by yards per outrun. Second behind only Tyree Kill in expected fantasy points per outrun. So you say, why do we have to wade into the per route stats for Jalen Waddell? It's because he only ran a 70% route share in six games last year because he kept getting knocked out of games early. In those six games, he was the wide receiver seven by fantasy points per game overall. I have a tweet somewhere where I break down all of the weird injury stuff that was happening with Jalen Waddle throughout the season, but he missed time in at least a half a dozen games.

I want to say that that's less routes, less opportunity for him to score fantasy points. And as a result, yeah, he was frustrating to have on your fantasy team. But we can't sit here right now in May and project Jalen Waddle is going to randomly get knocked out of six games and go under a 70% route share in all of them. No, we're going to expect him to mostly play most of the game, as most wide receivers do, if these freak things don't keep happening to him. So, yeah, I really like Jalen Waddell in all formats right now.

He's also a really big touchdown regression candidate. He as well. Didn't score a lot last year on one of the most explosive offensive, most explosive passing offenses in the NFL. So I'm loving Waddle in best ball. I like him in dynasty right now. I want a lot of Jalen Waddle this year. I love it when like the advanced stats and the really smart people come together with like the rudimentary, just take out the games. He got hurt. If you just look at the games where he still stayed healthy, he was awesome. Just, and so it is like, it's a little bit of both, but I agree completely that the discount I'm seeing on Jalen Waddle from where we were last

year does not make any sense at all to me. Let's talk about wide receivers in terms of age. And I want to start at the beginning of the career because I've seen a little bit of debate here recently between when I first started doing this, it was always the third year breakout for wide receivers. And now I hear a little bit more about the second year breakout for wide receivers are both true is one more prevalent than the other yeah so as with anything in football it comes down to the individual talent of the draft class or of really of the individual players that are coming in every single year so you're correct kind of back in the day uh pre-2014 if only 7% of elite wide receivers broke out in year one. But since 2014,

that's been up at 26%. Like the year two and the year three is less common now because these last several classes of rookie wide receivers have been so good just year after year. We've been getting incredibly talented wide receiver classes and we've had a couple overperform expectation. So yeah, I do think in general, the most common breakout year is shifting from like year two, year three to really be year one, year two. So that is absolutely the case. In terms of when wide receivers fall off,

on average around year nine, year 10. But again, that's not necessarily going to be super predictive for an individual player. So like Devontae Adams, I think is entering year nine this year, if I counted right. That doesn't mean he's going to completely fall off a cliff this year. There counted right uh that that doesn't mean he's gonna completely fall off a cliff this year there's certainly a chance he will and i think you have to understand that when you draft him but it this isn't like a very binary they get to year nine and they're dead type

of deal wide receivers can outlast this absolutely if they're an elite talent that's to say this is more useful i think when you're looking in terms of the end of the career, when you're talking about a rebuild and you've got a year seven or a year six wide receiver, and are they still going to be great two years from now? And you can correct me if I'm wrong. If a guy showed last year in year eight that he's still an elite wide receiver, the best bet is that he's still going to be that in year nine.

It's when we start to see just little glimpses that he might not be anymore that we should expect that to go away. Absolutely, yeah. And I don't have – this will be one of the few things I say on this program where I haven't done a full study to completely back this up. But for me, I like to look at these per route efficiency stats, yards per outrun, first downs per outrun, what have you. If a wide receiver, it has like a big fall in that stat from what they've been doing their whole career, but maybe the production was still kind of there, then I'm officially scared. Then I'm not drafting them. But with someone like Keenan Allen last year, I was drafting so much Keenan Allen last year because he had been, he was continually insanely efficient by yards per outrun, even in

his older age. That was still true last year. If it weren't for this incredibly crowded, weird situation with the bears, it's hard to figure out. Keenan Allen would, again, be one of my highest drafted players. So, yeah, you have to be very discerning individually with these players when you're evaluating. Do I care about the risk of them falling off here in their older age? We had this talk, and we'll go to a break after this, but we had this talk about Terryry mclaurin um earlier this week on the main fft show and like we are well past the point where we would expect that

terry mclaurin to turn into an elite fantasy wide receiver right yeah absolutely yeah i would never i would not be holding my breath on terry mclaurin at all right now yeah he's a he's a mid-wide receiver too at best and if a guy gets through, I know you said it's kind of shifting, but if a guy gets through three years and we haven't seen that top 12 potential, we shouldn't really ever expect to see it again. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. I would agree with that. And I mean, there are still guys that take until year three, CD lamb was not like an elite wide receiver until this third year. It certainly still happens.

But yeah, if you're, especially if they're getting into a second contract and it's like, okay, now, now he's going to break out. No, he he's probably not.

So let's take one more break and we'll finish up with tight ends and quarterbacks. With smart waters, pure crisp taste. There's nothing to overthink. So while you may be spiraling over double-texting your crush, whether your skincare routine is working because you look the same or is doing nothing because you look the same

in whatever the heck red light therapy is, it's definitely not that. Don't overthink how you hydrate. Life's full of choices. SmartWater is a simple one. I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it.

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Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Uh, nope. You're on your own there. Could have skipped it. Should have skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. So let's talk about tight ends for a moment.

And when it comes to what is sticky, what is predictive, what is correlated, is it fair to say it's very, very similar to wide receiver? Is there really any difference? It's pretty similar to wide receiver. I'd say there's two main differences. One is just that touchdowns have a much bigger effect on the position than the wide receiver position. That just kind of makes it harder to predict the tight end position comparatively. And the other is that athleticism actually really matters at the tight end position, especially in Dynasty when we're trying to project the ceilings of these players. Almost every really good fantasy tight end that has been like an elite top six type of tight end for multiple years is at least very athletic. Scott Barrett has his spork score. If a tight end is 75th percentile or above in that, I will usually say, okay, sign me up that this is a very athletic tight end who could have a big fantasy ceiling. Is the age curve similar too?

Are we thinking like if a guy gets through the first three years and hasn't shown us a lead, is that year two breakout still there? What does the age curve look like for tight ends? Yeah, so the tight end age curve overall looks very similar to wide receivers, I'd say. Definitely the biggest jump is in year two. You'll see kind of a gradual fall off

from year seven through year nine or year 10 or so uh but yes really the most important thing with tight ends is all almost all of the elite tight ends over the past decade or so have broken out in year two 50 percent of multi-time top six tight ends have broken out in year two. So just draft year two tight ends. Honestly, there are very few fantasy football cheat codes that still exist in sharper leagues, I think. This is one of them, is just draft the year two tight ends. Now, last year, if that was Greg Dulcich or Chico Conquo,

as I was doing, obviously it didn't work out. But that was Trey McBride. That was Jake Ferguson, both of whom are going completely undrafted, certainly in any redraft league. So yeah, I always am looking very, very closely at just about every year two tight end. Even someone like Michael Mayerer who nobody wants right now i'll take michael mayer off your hands for like a fourth round rookie pick what why not there's there's no reason not to at this point i understand no one wants him there's a very good reason for

that his name is brock bowers but we kind of thought the same thing about trey mcbride like why is he getting outproduced and outrun by ancient Zach Ertz in his rookie season? And look at what happened as soon as he got a real opportunity. That's great stuff. Now, when you're talking about these guys and combining that year two idea with the things that are sticky and predictive. That points to the ultimate breakout this year for which guys? Yeah, I've got three names. Two kind of go together, so we'll start there.

Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft. Both were relatively efficient per route by rookie tight end standards over 1.3 yards per outrun a heck of a lot better than trey mcbride did as a rookie so we'll we'll definitely take that both have 75th plus percentile athleticism musgrave being a bit more athletic if either musgrave or craft just outright win the packers tight end one job and are out there running most of the routes, then they are going to matter a lot in fantasy football. This is an ascending offense with a lot of young playmakers, but nobody who's clearly going to come in and be a number one target dominator.

That is an incredible situation for a fantasy football tight end. So I'm taking shots on both Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft. Really pick your poison or draft both of them on different teams is what I'm trying to do. And aside from those two who I feel great about at cost, there's Dalton Kincaid, who I kind of go back and forth on, especially in Dynasty, where he's the tight end three or the tight end four by startup ADP. Very, very rich for my blood.

I think that's a little bit presumptive. But when you look at the profile, 42 receiving yards per game in his rookie year, that's a top five tight end rookie season since 2010. His splits with Dawson Knox in the game are not very good, but the Bills are lacking in wide receiver talent. Kincaid kind of plays like a wide receiver. Only 20% of his routes were in line last year. That was bottom five among tight ends. If you look at this Bills receiving room and say, I like Dalton Kincaid the most out of these guys to take a year or two jump, I'm totally fine with that. So those would be the names that I'm very much interested in this year. Awesome. Let's finish up with the quarterbacks.

And we're not going to talk about the age curve because the age curve is absolutely ridiculous at quarterback. I do think it would be interesting, and I don't know if you've ever looked into this, to kind of look about the difference in the age curve between a quarterback who has ever rushed for more than 500 yards in a season and the quarterback who has not. I think it's fascinating looking at Mahomes versus Allen versus Jackson versus Hertz,

and what's going to happen in the next five to 10 years with those quarterbacks absolutely yeah no I have not looked at this tried to split it out by rushing or anything but I'm open to us being surprised honestly it it hasn't been that long in the NFL since most quarterbacks were statues like really 10 years ago or so the the almost every quarterback aside from like our the whole RG3 thing was there they're a statue they're not rushing very much at all so we could be surprised by some of these guys I don't know I I tend to lean toward if they don't have the highest, highest end arm talent like a Patrick Mahomes, then maybe their longevity won't be as good.

But I don't think we have a big enough sample size of older Russian quarterbacks that are old enough, have been in the league long enough for us to really know how this one pans out. And a lot of that's because guys like Cam Newton just didn't make it to that stage. Now, I guess Michael Vick did, but it's because he took six years off or five years off in the middle. What about when it comes to predicting quarterback production versus what happened last year? What have you found there? Yeah, so the thing about the quarterback position in fantasy that is very important to understand is unlike every other position, it is primarily efficiency driven. So yes,

you want a quarterback that's going to throw the ball a lot. Sure. But to get a quarterback that is going to throw the ball a lot is going to have a lot of opportunities in the red zone. That quarterback needs to be good because guess what? They create their own scoring opportunities. If a quarterback can't sustain a drive, he's not going to have as much volume. What causes him to get the good volume for fantasy is his efficiency, is his skill as a player. So the most predictive quarterback stat from season to season is actually just fantasy points per drop back. So fantasy points, obviously we know why we care about that per drop back. It's the most granular unit of volume we can really get at the QB position that evens out all of the fluctuations in game script, in injuries,

everything weird that can happen in one fantasy season. So, sorry, go ahead. No, I was wondering, does that really positively impact or weigh itself towards quarterbacks who run more than they drop back? I think about a Lamar Jackson and a Justin Fields. They're scoring a lot of points on plays where they they drop back. I think about a Lamar Jackson and a Justin Fields. They're scoring a lot of points on plays where they never dropped back. I guess

it depends a little bit how you define a drop back, I suppose. That's true. Yes, I would just say fantasy points, I guess if you want to think of it as just per opportunity or per snap, you could even say

uh are all about the same i i have a tweet that kind of breaks them all down okay uh but yes the the russian quarterbacks are very much favored in terms in terms of anything that has to do with fantasy points but especially per drop back per opportunity, those are the best, of course. And that goes to my biggest flag plant at quarterback this year is Anthony Richardson. 0.76 fantasy points per dropback last year. That would have been the best by any quarterback since Lamar Jackson's 2019 season when he won MVP and lit the league on fire and completely broke fantasy football. Per four full quarters, Anthony Richardson last year averaged nearly 30 fantasy points, 54 rushing yards, and 6.8 designed rush attempts per four full quarters.

Obviously was kind of knocked out of a couple games early, only made it to week five before he was out for the season. But if Anthony Richardson stays healthy and he does anything like we saw on the field very briefly in his rookie season, he is going to demolish fantasy football this year. And I do think people kind of in like the sharper, like underdog draft rooms have absolutely caught onto this.

He is being drafted very high there. I think in your typical, like home redraft league this year, Anthony Richardson is going to be very affordable and easy to get. And he's one of my favorite quarterback bets to make in years. Awesome. Awesome stuff, Ryan. Again, that's

Ryan Heath at Ryan J underscore Heath on Twitter. Ryan, tell everybody what you've got coming up. And again, just remind them where they can find your work. Yeah. So coming up next for me, I have a huge article all about weighted opportunity going much more into detail than I was able to today, just kind of breaking down how it's calculated, how sticky it is, why it matters. Also, of course, applying this to specific players for this season and doing some analysis there

on whether I think they're a good value in fantasy drafts or not. And also a lot of stuff about Devon A. Chan. So I'm really looking forward to releasing that article. You'll be able to find it on fantasypoints.com. You can follow me on Twitter at RyanJ underscore Heath to make sure you don't miss it. Thank you, Ryan.

Thank you to everybody who hung out with us in the chat on a Thursday evening. We will talk to you next Tuesday.