0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. Guaranteed Human.
0:03Guaranteed Human Services Corporation, member FINRA, Columbus, Ohio. This is the Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zacharyarysen.
0:09What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyarysen. In this episode 1144 of the Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast...
0:15Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the questions this week, I want to remind you guys about becoming a Late-Round Fantasy Football member.
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0:43So the first question this week is actually just from the Late-Round Discord.
0:48I was chatting with people the other day, they wanted me to look at Ashton Genticomps.
0:53So instead of reading a question, I'll just shout out that Discord and let's dig into some comps.
0:59I looked at a handful of things with Genticomps to find these comps.
1:04I used Snap Share, Rush Share, Route Share, Target Share, Current Points Per Game...
1:09All the volume related things that we're always concerned about.
1:12But then I wanted to include some of the efficiency and effectiveness things too.
1:17Because that's been a problem for people with Ashton Genticomps.
1:20So with some of the efficiency stuff, I looked at 10 plus yard run rate, yards after contact per attempt, yards per carry, and success rate.
1:29Essentially, I wanted to find players in the past since 2016 who through weeks one through five had similar usage, similar production, and similar efficiency as Genticomps.
1:38The results aren't like terrible to be honest. I won't go through every single comp, but like Brees Hall in 2024 was his top comp.
1:47Then Joe Mixon in 2022 was his next one.
1:50Both of those running backs actually saw their running back rank change in a positive direction.
1:56Joe Mixon pretty dramatically from weeks one to five versus week six through the end of the year.
2:02In total, when looking at the top 10 comps for Genticomps, something kind of interesting happens.
2:07Nine out of the ten saw their 10 plus yard run rate get better during the remaining parts of the season.
2:15Or after week five. Seven of the ten saw their yards per carry get better.
2:20Seven of the ten also saw their yards after contact per attempt get better.
2:25But many of them saw the volume stuff drop.
2:28In total, the group saw their point per game average drop after week five by about .8 points per game.
2:35What I think is going on here is basic regression.
2:38Number one, it's hard to maintain a really high backfield share all season long.
2:43Genticomps currently ranks in the top ten in snap share, rush share, top five in target share, he's top five in route share.
2:51Those numbers might drop a little bit as the season goes on.
2:55It's just hard to maintain them. Now there's a chance that they drop because the team sees the lack of effectiveness.
3:02They slightly change his workload. And then that helps the effectiveness.
3:06That's certainly one reason as to why we're seeing the numbers that we're seeing with these comps.
3:12But overall, I try not to get too concerned about efficiency numbers when we're dealing with a player like Ashton Gentie.
3:19Where the franchise seems to be pointing in a direction where they clearly want him to be the centerpiece of their offense.
3:27Or one of the centerpieces. The injury stuff could definitely come into play with him.
3:32But volume is volume. And volume predicts future volume, generally speaking.
3:36So maybe we project a slight dip in points per game for Ashton Gentie moving forward.
3:41And maybe he doesn't end up being the stud that you drafted him to be.
3:46Or that you wanted him to be. But if a round two running back ends up scoring over 15 PPR points per game.
3:54And right now he's closer to 17. So I'm being generous.
3:58But if he's over 15 into that 16 PPR points per game range.
4:02That's actually not a bad result at all. So right now with Ashton Gentie, I'm just holding.
4:08We'll go from one inefficient running back to the next.
4:12This one's from Marcel. And it says, Hey JJ, what should we do with Chase Brown in redraft leagues?
4:18I'm getting tempted to move on from him and trade him for someone like Bashaw Tootin.
4:24Would you hold on to Chase Brown or would you try to sell?
4:28So look, overall in a vacuum, I'm not ready to sell Chase Brown.
4:33I think there are some people out there who are going a little bit overboard with what happened in week 5.
4:40I've seen articles. And I've seen some of the quotes from Dan Pitcher about his backfield.
4:45That's their offensive coordinator. Saying that they're reevaluating things.
4:48That they went more with Samajay Pirine because he fit what they wanted to do more in week 5.
4:55There are reasons to agree with that. I'll get to that in a second.
5:00But there are also reasons to say that those quotes are absolute BS.
5:04Chase Brown fumbled in the second quarter of that game.
5:08Before the fumble, he had a 75% snap share.
5:11After the fumble, it was 49%. You can't tell me that the fumble had nothing to do with his usage in week 5.
5:19Now to be fair, before that fumble, the rushing split between Pirine and Brown was 6-4.
5:246-4 in favor of Brown. But some of that's just the randomness of play calling.
5:29Brown had played 86% of their early down snaps pre-fumble.
5:33Post-fumble, his early down snap share was 50%. After the fumble, Pirine out snapped Brown 22-17.
5:38But look, if we're being totally objective here, Chase Brown has not been good on the ground this season.
5:45He's been one of the worst players in the league in yards after contact per attempt.
5:50And his 31% success rate, it's 42nd out of 55 running backs with 20 or more carries.
5:56But here's the thing you guys, Samajay Pirine in his limited action, he hasn't been very good either.
6:02While Brown ranks second to last in yards after contact per attempt, Samajay Pirine is barely ahead of him.
6:09While Brown's success rate is 31%, Samajay Pirine's is 37%.
6:12Brown has done more in the 10 plus yard run rate department.
6:17He's more explosive than Samajay Pirine. So strictly when looking at the ground game stuff, Brown has been bad, yeah.
6:23But Pirine has also not been that great in a limited sample.
6:28And when you focus strictly on the early down work, Brown actually has a higher success rate this year than Samajay Pirine does.
6:36Now I said there was one area where I would agree with what the Bengals coaching staff is saying.
6:42Or at least saying to the media. And that's in terms of overall fit.
6:47I looked at how these running backs performed when out of shotgun versus under center.
6:52There was a lot of talk this offseason about how the Bengals were going to play more from under center.
6:59They've been one of the most shotgun heavy teams in football over the last couple of years.
7:05Over the last couple of weeks, they've gone more into shotgun than they had to start the season.
7:11Now sometimes it's just due to game script. But from weeks one to three, when games were within a seven point margin,
7:19Cincinnati ran 70% of their plays out of shotgun.
7:22Over the last two weeks, that number is 86%.
7:25I bring that up because Samajay Pirine in our relatively limited sample, he's definitely been more effective than Chase Brown has out of shotgun, on the ground.
7:34I looked at some data going back to the start of the 2025 season.
7:39Here's the split that I looked at. Joe Burrow was on the field, the game was within a seven point margin, and we're looking at early downs only.
7:49Those are when run plays are going to be most frequent.
7:52It's more of a one to one comparison. Samajay Pirine on his 28 rushes has a pretty absurd 57% success rate on those runs went out of shotgun.
8:02Chase Brown on 53 rushes is at 28%. Pirine clears Brown in most metrics across the board on the ground, out of shotgun.
8:10It's a small sample, yes. But it's at least some evidence that not all of this is total crap.
8:16We don't really have a big sample of Samajay Pirine under center in that same environment.
8:22But Brown's splits have been better on the ground when the team has been under center.
8:27He's not as good on the ground when they're out of shotgun.
8:32If we strictly left it at that, I would say that I would be semi worried about Chase Brown.
8:38The issue is that again, number one, overall, Pirine still hasn't been that good this year.
8:44And number two, we're only looking at rushing work right now.
8:47There's the passing game element too. Chase Brown is a reliable pass catcher, if nothing else.
8:53He's not B. Sean Robinson, he's not Jameer Gibbs in terms of effectiveness, but he's reliable.
8:58He can see a lot of looks through the air as a go-to dump off option for Joe Burrow.
9:05And out of shotgun, that's when Brown has really thrived as a receiver.
9:09In that same neutral situation with Joe Burrow on the field, on early downs, when under center, Brown has seen a 7.7% target share.
9:18He's seen a target on 11% of his routes run.
9:21That's under center. When out of shotgun, again, when the situation is more neutral, when Joe Burrow is the quarterback.
9:28Brown's target share on early downs jumps to almost 17%.
9:31That's about a 9% point jump from when they're under center.
9:35He sees a target on almost 24% of his routes run.
9:39His yards per outrun, his targets per outrun, they're all much better than Samajay Pirine in those situations, out of shotgun.
9:46In the snap rate between those two in that situation since 2025, it's 89 for Pirine and 229 for Chase Brown.
9:53It's not nothing in terms of sample size. So where we're at is that this is a team that's starting to just revert back to their old ways.
10:03They're playing more out of shotgun. Pirine has been more effective as a runner out of shotgun in that offense.
10:10With that being said, looking at the numbers, I don't know if Pirine is special enough to say that he deserves like
10:18a 70% backfield share on the ground. And that's especially true because Brown is a better pass catcher out of shotgun.
10:25That's a part of the game that I don't think that we can just dismiss when talking about this backfield.
10:32So my conclusion based on all this research is that I do expect Brown's ground game workload to drop a little bit moving forward.
10:40But I also think the Bengals are going to continue to get him involved as a receiver.
10:46Here's the thing though. The Bengals got Joe Flacco in week six last year, and then Joe Burrow eventually took over after his injury.
10:54From week six onward, Chase Brown was a stud in fantasy football.
10:58He averaged 19.4 PPR points per game. And guess what?
11:02Even though Pirine was banged up throughout that split, Chase Brown's snap share was 66% in the split.
11:08His rush share was under 60%. His target share though was 14.5% and his route share was 59%.
11:14What's interesting about this discussion was that entering week five.
11:17So before we saw a pretty big snap discrepancy between these two running backs, Chase Brown had a snap share of 74%.
11:25That was eight percentage points higher than last year after week five, when he was really good in fantasy football.
11:32His rush share was 72% from weeks one to four this year.
11:36Remember last year, it was under 60% when he was thriving.
11:40Guys, Chase Brown is a pass catcher. That's what we need for fantasy football.
11:45To start the year and down the stretch last year, we're seeing pretty similar usage numbers as a pass catcher.
11:52The difference is that the ground game work isn't quite as effective, both for him and Samaj AP Ryan.
11:58And let's be real. He's not finding the end zone.
12:02He had 10 touchdowns from week six onward last year.
12:05He has one touchdown this season. That's going to change the fantasy conversation.
12:09So my stance, just like Ashton Gentry, it's to hold tight.
12:13I don't think it's necessary to be aggressive in buying him only because I'd rather buy a player who has outstanding peripherals all over the place.
12:22Brown has not been a good runner. But the good news is that Pirine hasn't been fantastic either.
12:28Which means I think the usage on the ground, it might drop a little bit for Chase Brown.
12:35We might see a little bit less work. But the receiving work should still be there.
12:40And we've seen this play out before. And when we've seen it play out, Brown has still been fine in fantasy football.
12:48He may not be a high-end RB1 like he was down the stretch last year.
12:53But I still think Chase Brown can live in that high-end RB2, low-end RB1 range.
12:58Once they're back from their buy. Because it's a good offense in the receiving role, it should still be there to a decent degree.
13:06We're going to hit on all the controversial running backs on today's mailbag episode because this next one is from Blue Sky.
13:14It's from at Dave McPherson. He says, what do we do with Jeremiah Love at this point?
13:20So you guys know that I always talk about learning from mistakes.
13:24Fixing our process. Trying to be better when you're inevitably wrong in fantasy football.
13:29Last year, I was too high on Travion Henderson.
13:32A lot of you remember this. My logic with the pick focused a lot around the pass-catching work that I assumed Henderson
13:39was going to see in that New England offense.
13:42Even though Henderson had some really big weeks last year, I'd say he was kind of a whatever pick in the end
13:50because he did have those spiked weeks. It was a bad process for me.
13:55Because I made an assumption that I shouldn't have made.
13:58The truth is, rookie running backs don't typically see high target shares unless they're only playing a satellite back role.
14:05Since 2016, there have been just 9 rookie running backs that hit a 50% rush share per game rate and a target share above 10%.
14:14Only 5 of those players had at least a 12% target share.
14:18Now granted, Jeremiah Love isn't like any other rookie running back.
14:22But with Tyler Algier back there, there was always that risk that Love wouldn't see the receiving reps that we wanted him to see.
14:30Or a high route share. That's essentially what we're seeing right now.
14:34On the season, Tyler Algier has played 2 more snaps on offense than Love has.
14:39Love has a 56% rush share, so that's good.
14:42But Love is trailing Algier in routes runs 78-60.
14:45His target share is just 7% as a result.
14:49And a lot of that is just the general role on the team.
14:53Algier is playing way more 3rd downs and he's been the one on the field in those passing down situations.
15:00This isn't to say that a 3rd down role is everything.
15:04Players will catch passes on early downs too. The Cardinals have tried doing that with Love.
15:09Love still has a higher target share than Tyler Algier.
15:13But there's enough Algier usage to torpedo Love's overall value up until this point in time.
15:18Now I'll give you the bad news first. The bad news is that Arizona has a tough schedule.
15:24They had a tough schedule entering the season. So negative game scripts could be frequent moving forward.
15:30That's scary for Jeremiah Love because of how we've seen them use Tyler Algier in those situations.
15:36But here's the good news. We can't assume that this usage is going to be the usage all season long.
15:43That's the one piece of good news. But here's the second one.
15:47I looked at rookie season comps for Jeremiah Love.
15:50Based on his first 5 weeks, how he's done in rush share, snap share, target share, and route share.
15:57I then got 8 relatively close comps for other rookie running backs since 2016.
16:02Those players had point per game averages that ranged from about 9 to 15.
16:06Most of them though were right around where Love is at, at 10.2 PPR points per game.
16:12Only one of the players saw their points per game decline from week 6 onward.
16:17That was actually Quinshaw Judkins last year. The average increase in PPR points per game when you look at weeks 1 to
16:255 and then week 6 through the end of the year was plus 3.2.
16:30Four of the players saw significant jumps of almost 4 points per game and above.
16:35So I think Love is one of those volatile pieces that you might want to invite to your roster.
16:41If you can sincerely buy Low, I'm talking like bench assets, maybe a fringe starting running back, gobble them together and buy Low on Jeremiah Love.
16:50I think I'd go in that direction just based on history.
16:54But if you drafted him thinking that he'd be like, you know, like a high-end RB1, I think those dreams are mostly over.
17:02But he's probably more at a low point right now than like a medium point.
17:07Just monitor his health. Because there are some negative reports right now surrounding his health.
17:12That's probably the biggest deal at this point. The last question this week is from Pete.
17:18It says, So this is actually a really interesting question.
17:21And the data tells a very interesting story. Quarterbacks in total, they're running the ball less in 2026.
17:28We've had 607 quarterback rushes so far this year.
17:31That's about 60 fewer than last year at this point in time.
17:35We haven't been this low since 2020. Now is that some sort of sign that things are shifting in the NFL?
17:42I don't necessarily think so. If you look at the landscape, we've had injuries to a lot of mobile quarterbacks.
17:49Jaden Daniels, Lamar Jackson, Caleb Williams, Kyler Murray, Jackson Dart.
17:52Even Jalen Hurts hasn't been totally healthy this year.
17:55Not only that, but Hurts in particular, he's carried the rushing quarterback torch for a few years now with a tush push.
18:03That offense hasn't been playing as well, and he's seeing fewer of those opportunities.
18:08That's allowing other quarterbacks to step in and be relevant.
18:11But there's more than that too. Daniel Jones is coming off an Achilles.
18:16Patrick Mahomes, he's coming off an ACL. Drake may got off to a really, really weird and bad start.
18:22His rushing has been there, but his overall production hasn't.
18:26So he's not ranked as a top quarterback. There's just been some really strange things happening with the quarterbacks that we'd usually
18:33bank on for their dual threat ability. Now to be clear, quarterback scoring is not down this year as a result.
18:41Quarterbacks are scoring about the same as they did last year through five weeks.
18:45Passing production is on the higher side right now compared to the last five years.
18:51So the points haven't gone away. With so many of our rushers hurt or limited, the passers have filled the gap.
18:58You can see that in the top 12. Last year at this point, about 23% of top 12 quarterback fantasy points came from rushing.
19:06In 2024, that number was 26%. This year though, it's 17%.
19:10But look at who's in the top 12. Jared Goff, Bryce Young, Kirk Cousins, Jordan Love, Dak Prescott.
19:16They're good players having good starts, but nobody's drafting them for their legs.
19:20Many of them are in there because the guys who usually take those spots haven't been on the field.
19:27Look at Caleb Williams as the perfect example. He's only played two games.
19:31But if you were to count them, he'd be a top five quarterback with about half of his points coming on the ground.
19:39He just hasn't played enough to show up in the rankings.
19:43Now look at the dual threat players who have stayed on the field.
19:48Josh Allen right now is the QB one by a mile.
19:51He has 28 points per game. More than half of that is from rushing.
19:56He has eight rushing touchdowns in five games. Jaden Daniels has been a top five quarterback when he's played.
20:03And over half of his points have come via rushing.
20:06When those guys are healthy, when they're running, they're still some of the best quarterbacks in fantasy football.
20:12The cheat code hasn't gone away. I also want to talk about though why we focus on rushing.
20:19It's not because pocket passers can't and won't finish as top fantasy options.
20:23This gets lost in the discussion all the time.
20:26It's about predictability. We see way more fluctuation with pocket passing quarterbacks than we do with the mobile guys.
20:33I talk about it in the draft guide every year, but rushing production, it's far stickier year over year than passing production is.
20:41Good passers can certainly buck these trends. Like Joe Burrow, for instance.
20:45But here's the interesting thing with Joe Burrow. He's been above 20 points per game twice in his career.
20:51In one of those seasons, he scored almost three and a half points per game with his legs.
20:58And the other, which was in 2024, he averaged almost two points per game.
21:02And it took him a 6.6% touchdown rate and 652 pass attempts to get there.
21:08Burrow has had two seasons with less than a point per game via rushing.
21:12And in those two seasons, he scored less than 17 points per game.
21:17This year, for the record, he's at 2.2 points per game via rushing.
21:21I say all of that because those small wins, those two to three points per game, they can literally be the difference.
21:29And oftentimes, they will be the difference between a quarterback who's just like the QB 12 to one who's actually the QB 5, who's actually a difference maker.
21:39So what I'm getting at is, when we talk about rushing production, it's not simply only rushing quarterbacks will be atop the leaderboard.
21:46It's the humility to know that predicting exactly who the pocket passers who kind of break the mold or break math, predicting
21:54who those guys are going to be, is a very difficult task.
21:58We can have a general idea. We can guide ourselves in the right direction.
22:03But it's a safer bet to lean towards the mobile guy.
22:07Unfortunately, this season, a lot of those guys just have not been healthy.
22:11So it's giving other quarterbacks an opportunity to step into QB 1 land.
22:16So outlier or new trend? I'm calling this more of an outlier.
22:20There's been some weird stuff happening. But it doesn't mean that we won't see some of these non-mobile quarterbacks finish high this year.
22:28We definitely will. Because it happens every single season.
22:31That's it for today's show though. Thanks to all of you for listening.
22:35If you yet subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast, make sure you are researching for it.
22:42Pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. And don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at LateRoundQB.
22:49LateRound Perspectives will be hitting your podcast feeds later this morning.
22:53And then obviously you got the Late Round Fantasy Football Show 1 p.m.
22:57Eastern over on the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel.
23:00Thanks for listening this week, everyone. Greatly appreciate you.
23:04Enjoy week six. I'll catch you next week. We'll be right back.
23:08We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Thanks for listening.
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