1111: Market Score's Most Interesting Projections
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26 min
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Jul 21, 2026
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Tue, July 21, 2026
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Episode Transcript
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0:20weekend, it's a great time of year. And it's a time of year where I start flipping some of my content on
0:28this podcast to be a little bit more player-specific.
0:31Over the next handful of weeks, you're going to hear about schedule analysis, players to target, players to avoid, bold predictions, all
0:39of those admittedly pretty generic fantasy football topics. In today's topic, it's another player-specific one, and it's one that I'm going to
0:46throw into this rotation every year, now that we've established market score as a new late-round fantasy football metric.
0:53For those of you who are just joining and haven't been totally caught up, first off, welcome.
0:59But second, market score is a metric that we developed at Late Round Fantasy this offseason that assigns a score to a
1:06player based on his ADP alongside previous season inputs.
1:09In essence, it's like the ZAP model, except instead of draft capital, we're looking at ADP.
1:15ADP, of course, can be predictive, but we wanted to create a metric that utilized that market value alongside other metrics to
1:22be even more predictive than ADP itself. And that's what market score is.
1:27It's more predictive than ADP. If you were to simply draft off of the market score sheet, you'd have a better time than if you drafted via ADP.
1:36Now, the draft guide has those values, and we're working on getting them on the late-round.com website too.
1:43You can learn more about market score on episode 1105.
1:46To be clear, I don't blindly agree with everything market score says.
1:50To me, it's simply another tool to use when you're evaluating players, similar to any other metric.
1:56I take market score into consideration, and it makes me think twice about some players.
2:01It's not my sole evaluation process. That, to me, would be bad process.
2:06But it's really helpful. And one way that it can be really helpful, aside from the raw score that it produces, is through comps.
2:14We've talked about this before, but I can find the closest historical comparables for players in the current season via market score.
2:21I look at their market score, their ADP, and their career year to get a list of players, all ranked by similarity.
2:29So the most similar player gets ranked up top.
2:32I can then see how that player performed in their season to give us an idea of how the player we're analyzing might perform this year.
2:41So just for example, Zay Flowers this year. One of his top comps is Jackson Smith and Jigba's 2025 season.
2:48Pretty awesome. That's a great comp, obviously, for Zay Flowers.
2:51Now, I've shared some of this with you already, and there are more insights from it in the draft guide, which you can order right now on Lateround.com.
3:01It's updated weekly for you. But I took all of this one step further.
3:06I looked at all of the running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks who currently have market scores.
3:12For running backs and wideouts, it means that their top 120 picks are picked in the top 10 rounds of a 12-team league.
3:20For tight ends and quarterbacks, we're looking at the top 180.
3:24From there, I found the top 10 comps for each player.
3:28And from there, I found the average points per game from those 10 players, how those comps actually performed, and I weighed
3:35those point-per-game outputs by how similar that player scored to the one that we're analyzing.
3:41Now, since this entire episode is based on this concept, let me run through an example.
3:46Let's go back to Zay Flowers. You get JSN 2025 as a comp forum, where JSN scored 21.6 PPR points per game, and that's in relevant games.
3:55I took out the final week of the season, and I'll be doing that for everyone on today's show.
4:02But you also get a high similarity score for Cooper Cupps 2020, where Cupp was at about 14 PPR points per game.
4:10When you look at Flowers' top 10 comps, you get a weighted average of about 15.4 PPR points per game, which is really, really good.
4:18And it's one of the reasons that I like Zay Flowers this year.
4:23Now, to be clear, this is not what market score is.
4:26Market score is just one of the inputs to get those comps.
4:31Market score grades a player from 0 to 100.
4:34But this is giving us a weighted point per game average based on historical comps.
4:39It's like a next level look at what market score can do.
4:43And for what it's worth, I look back at the last two years of comps, and technically, these projections, they correlate stronger
4:50to actual performance than ADPs done, which is pretty cool.
4:54So like I said, I did this for every player this year.
4:58And my goal today is to share with you from 10 to 1, the 10 most interesting market score projections based on these comps.
5:06And give you a little insight about where I'm at with those players.
5:11So with all that out of the way, let's do it.
5:15I'm in on the Eagles offense rebounding this year with Kevin Petullo out of the picture.
5:20Because I generally don't think it could have been much worse schematically last year for that team.
5:26Now with that being said, market score is looking at previous season inputs.
5:30So it's not that big of a surprise that it doesn't love Saquon Barkley this year.
5:36Market score focuses pretty heavily on receiving metrics at running back.
5:40And Barkley hasn't had the most robust volume profile as a receiver in Philly.
5:44And last year, since market score takes previous season metrics, his low yards per out run was a red flag entering this year.
5:52So in the end, Barkley's market score leaves him at like RB10.
5:57But then his market score comp projections equate to RB13.
6:00So even worse. His number two comp is Marshawn Lynch in year eight, where he scored 19.1 PPR points per game.
6:07That's great. But his top comp is DeMarco Murray's 2017, where Murray split a backfield with Derrick Henry.
6:13Now obviously, we're not looking at a situation quite like that.
6:17So I wouldn't get too worked up about those specifics.
6:21That's not what these comps are looking at. Remember, it's ADP, market score, and career year.
6:26But it is a little scary that Saquon has just one comp in his top 10 above 18 PPR points per game.
6:34That's a heck of a season, don't get me wrong.
6:37But it's also the type of ceiling outcome that we want from a 1-2 turn pick.
6:43Now I'm not out or in on Saquon this year personally.
6:46I think he's part of that giant cluster of running backs in that late round one, early round two range.
6:53But market score is slightly low on him, and the comp projections, they show that too.
6:59At number nine, I'm going to go to the Jacksonville wide receiver room, and I'm looking at Brian Thomas and Parker Washington.
7:06Something to keep in mind with market score is that it's largely a median type projection.
7:12It's not giving you multiple outputs for floor and ceiling.
7:15It's just giving you a general projected score, which is not a lot different than a general projected point per game output.
7:23So with Jacksonville in that wide receiver room, and this is the same argument I'd make for like Chicago too, I'm probably
7:30going to be higher on some of the players in those rooms than market score is.
7:36Because I want to embrace that ambiguity, even if the most likely outcome is that no one truly, truly emerges.
7:43It's just that someone has a chance to, and it's in a good offense, and if that happens, you're getting a huge discount on that player.
7:52Now I say all that because market score is not super high on Jacksonville wide receivers.
7:57Market score looks at market factors, and there's competition in Jacksonville based on where these guys are getting drafted.
8:04It likes Brian Thomas more than Parker Washington, but that's also driven by our ADP source, which is Fantasy Data's ADP.
8:11There's an 18 pick gap between Thomas and Washington.
8:14You won't see that in the best ball streets.
8:17But that's also why I think Washington is a good target in managed season long leagues this year, because his ADP on
8:25some platforms like Yahoo, it's really low. I'm willing to see if his crazy good efficiency last year translates into this season.
8:32You can read more about that in the draft guide.
8:36Regardless though, when you look at the market score comp projections, Brian Thomas' top 10 comps bring him to wide receiver 20.
8:43Parker Washington brings him to wide receiver 39. Thomas is being boosted by some higher end outcomes.
8:49I don't think this is a shock to anyone, given we know his profile is volatile.
8:55But he's got George Pickens 2025, for example, as one of his highest.
8:59Five of Thomas' top 10 comps are above 15 PPR points per game, but then four of them are below 11 PPR points per game.
9:08Parker Washington's are based on a lower ADP, so actually, based on where these guys are drafted ADP-wise, their projections don't look terrible.
9:16But at Washington's current ADP, he only has five double-digit PPR point per game comps out of his 10.
9:22Hence the reason he's close to wide receiver 40.
9:25I think these two should be back-to-back in rankings.
9:29But given their prices in managed season-long leagues, I like Washington a lot more as a value.
9:34That doesn't mean that I'm off of Thomas. And these comps are going to keep me more neutral, maybe even above market with Thomas.
9:43It's an offense that I do want pieces of.
9:46Tyler Shuck came out as the QB9 with market score comp projections.
9:50I'm pretty surprised and I'm excited about it. I've found that second-year quarterbacks are generally really good bets against ADP.
9:57They have substantial downside risk, but they have more upside versus their cost than any other career year among fantasy quarterbacks.
10:04And generally speaking, with quarterback, we're looking for that ceiling.
10:07Now, market score does not have Shuck at QB9.
10:11It actually has him at QB15, which is still higher than most platforms are going to have him.
10:17My rankings are bullish on him too. Because not only is he a second-year player, but he's coming off a year where
10:24he finished strong with almost 20 points per game over his final six.
10:29And he proved that he could bring a little bit extra with his legs.
10:34Add in Kellen Moore's high-volume offense, Jordan Tyson being added there, the offensive line looking pretty good.
10:39Shuck is in a good spot to at least have the opportunity to make that leap this year.
10:46The reason he ranks so high in market score comp projections is because he drew a year two comp of Carson Wentz back in 2017.
10:54He scored almost 22 points per game. And lower down the list at number nine, he got Patrick Mahomes' insane 2018 season.
11:02Now, I don't think the latter is going to happen for Shuck, but there are enough upside comps here to make me nod in agreement with market score.
11:11He's a great late round option this season. Now, on this countdown from 10 to 1, my number seven most interesting takeaway
11:19from these market score comp projections is Quinchot Judkins being the RB32.
11:23Now, in regular market score, the thing that we've tested, we know correlates a lot better than ADP, Judkins comes in an RB22, significantly lower, significantly better.
11:32The biggest thing for Judkins this year, in my opinion, is his situation.
11:37The Browns' offensive line was horrible last season. Judkins ranked last among high-volume running backs and yards before contact per attempt.
11:44Now, we have a huge question mark at quarterback, though I am more bullish than most on Todd Munkin as head coach.
11:52I think he's a pretty good offensive coach. Another issue for Judkins, though, is the pass catching.
11:58He wasn't a huge pass catcher in college, and he ran a route on just 30% of Cleveland's dropbacks last season.
12:05Todd Munkin has historically split that kind of work in his backfield, so I'm expecting Dylan Sampson to play more of a pass catching role for Cleveland.
12:14And that's what market score is kind of seeing here.
12:18His ranking within market score is fine, but the comps are legitimately scary.
12:22His top one is Devin Singletary's second year, where his ADP was about seven spots higher than where Judkins is currently at,
12:30but he scored 9.4 PPR points per game. But among the top 10 comps, we've got six with fewer than 10 PPR points per game.
12:38Only one was over 14. Now, I've been a little bit lower the consensus with Judkins because I'm worried about the pass
12:46catching and I'm worried about the situation. I didn't even mention the injury either.
12:51But in the end, Judkins isn't far enough off in my rankings to call him a player to avoid, even if I'm lower than the market.
13:00I think the talent profile is there too, which makes it harder to fade a player like this.
13:06But there's no doubt that these comps are scary.
13:09We go from one year two back to another.
13:12Let's take a second and talk about RJ Harvey.
13:15His market score projections put him at RB15, which is exactly why he made it on today's list, because that's very surprising.
13:23For anyone who's listened to the show this offseason, you know I started the offseason back in January by calling Harvey a clear sell, a very clear sell.
13:32He wasn't a good rusher last year and it seemed very clear that Denver was going to do something to that backfield.
13:40That something ended up being re-signing J.K. Dobbins and then drafting a solid running back in Jonah Coleman.
13:46But I'm now of the belief, at least from a season-long perspective, that there's some market overcorrection here.
13:52I've seen people say that Harvey's a terrible draft pick this season.
13:56And it's pretty much for the same reasons that I talked about back in January.
14:01Bad rushing yards overexpected per attempt, Dobbins outperformed him on the ground, and there wasn't enough consistency.
14:07But he's not priced in like round five anymore.
14:10Over on ESPN, Harvey's going past pick 100 after J.K.
14:14Dobbins. He's back-to-back with Dobbins on CBS. He's close to 100 over on Yahoo.
14:19And I get it. The argument is that he's worse than Dobbins.
14:23But we're also basing that off of rookie season production.
14:26And when I get into round eight, round nine, and so on, I'm looking purely at ceiling.
14:32If it doesn't work out, it's not going to kill my team.
14:36That's why Harvey's all of a sudden become intriguing.
14:39He had a really good weighted opportunity last season, and his top 10 market score comps bring him to RB15, like I said.
14:47Though to be clear, after RB14, there's a very big gap to RJ Harvey.
14:52I do want to be clear about that. Harvey, though, gets a couple of really strong 16-plus PPR point per game comps
15:00in David Montgomery's year two and Todd Gurley's rookie season.
15:03Only two of his top 10 comps are below 10 PPR points per game.
15:08I've bought more into Harvey this season, even if the consensus hasn't.
15:12I don't want to be so concerned about the downside case when we're now so late in drafts.
15:18Especially when we know the offensive environment's really good, and we know that ambiguous backfields, they have a chance to bring out really great values.
15:27The fact that his market score comp projections look the way they do, and for the record, market score has Harvey as
15:34a very firm RB3 this year too. The fact that market score in general likes Harvey has made me look at the situation a whole lot differently.
15:44And hopefully you will too. Market score hates Mike Evans, like way more than I do.
15:49When you look at his top 10 comps, Mike Evans comes out as wide receiver 41.
15:55Now I do like the fit with San Francisco.
15:58I think there's a lot of touchdown upside in the Shanahan system.
16:02He's not a fade for me. But I've mentioned this before.
16:06One of Evans' top comps is Allen Robinson's 2022 when he went to the Rams.
16:11Frightening. He also gets Vincent Jackson, rest in peace, in 2015, an 11th year player who had an ADP 70th overall, who scored 10.7 PPR points per game.
16:20There's year 10 Michael Crabtree under 9 PPR points per game, year 7 Christian Kirk, year 11 Wes Welker.
16:27They were both under the 9 mark. There's only one player in Evans' comp list who scored more than 13 PPR points per game.
16:35That was Will Fuller in 2020. He crushed that year, but it's still a frightening situation overall for Evans when we're looking through this lens.
16:44Like I said, I don't have Evans this low, but it's pretty interesting to see how market score is treating Evans this year.
16:52And it's a combination of a lot of things as to why.
16:56Teammate competition, his age, and some of his numbers just weren't fantastic last year, like his yards per out run.
17:03Now I still think that the circumstances surrounding Mike Evans last year, and Baker Mayfield in particular, that led to that lower yards per out run rate.
17:12Because Evans still did a really good job at commanding targets.
17:16He actually had his third best targets per out run rate of his career last year.
17:21But I can see why a model would objectively view Evans as being in a bad spot this year.
17:28It's kind of crazy that Aranda Gadsden's coming off a rookie season where he had 49 catches, 664 yards, and three touchdowns.
17:36And yet, he's almost an afterthought in fantasy football.
17:39He ranks 15th in NFL history in receiving yards by a rookie tight end.
17:43Now the obvious reason is that they changed offensive coordinators in LA, they signed David Njoku, they signed Charlie Kolar, they have
17:51wide receivers, they have other players in that offense who can catch passes.
17:55But to be fair, even with that, market score in general views Gadsden as the tight end 14 overall.
18:02And look, we know there's variance with tight end, but this is still very shocking to me.
18:08Gadsden's top 10 comps led to a tight end 4 in market score comp projection.
18:13There's a very low outcome with one of Gadsden's top 3 comps, which was Ladarius Green in 2014.
18:19Ironically, that was for the same Chargers team, but back then they were in San Diego.
18:25But his top comp is 2018 George Kittle, Kittle's second year in the league.
18:30Kittle went 9 spots later than Gadsden, but their market scores were pretty close.
18:34And Kittle scored over 15 PPR points per game that year.
18:38This isn't very easy to find at tight end, but 6 of Gadsden's top 10 comps scored over 10 PPR points per game.
18:46I guarantee you that we're going to read beat reports this summer about the other tight ends for the Chargers.
18:53The other pass catchers. But I don't think that we should lose sight of Gadsden.
18:58His rookie season was impressive. And if we're throwing darts, why not throw one his way in a managed league?
19:05Maybe I should be a little bit higher on him than I currently am.
19:10Despite CeeDee Lamb having the higher ADP, so his comps are naturally going to include some players who are really good.
19:17Despite that fact, George Pickens ranks ahead of CeeDee Lamb in market score comp projection.
19:22Now, the difference is only about like 0.7 PPR points per game, but still, there's a decent sized gap between the two players in ADP.
19:31I do have Lamb ranked ahead of Pickens, don't get me wrong, but I can kind of see where market score is coming from here.
19:39In terms of their raw market scores, we're looking at a 72 for Lamb and a 65 for Pickens.
19:46It's not like that significant of a difference. Lamb is the wide receiver 6, Pickens is the wide receiver 13, not that far from ADP.
19:55But I think the small gap between these scores, that's what's more telling.
19:59And that's why we could see the type of result that we're seeing with market score comp projections.
20:05Lamb's being dragged down a little bit by year 10 Jordy Nelson, who scored just 9.2 PPR points per game.
20:12That's his third highest comp. That was a year where Nelson was competing with both Devontae Adams and Randall Cobb.
20:19At least Lamb only has Pickens to really worry about.
20:22Lamb actually has an extremely close comp of 2023 Stefan Diggs and then his second comp is 2022 Diggs.
20:29Both of those were good seasons, 16.1 and 19.6 PPR points per game.
20:33And then Lamb gets a year six Tyreek Hill as his fourth comp where he scored 18.5 PPR points per game.
20:41There are some really, really good ceiling outcomes for CeeDee Lamb.
20:44It's just oddly, he has worse floor comps than George Pickens.
20:48Pickens' worst floor comp is a Des Bryant season where Des scored 12.1 PPR points per game.
20:54Lamb had three comps lower than that mark. And I think from a value perspective in your draft, that's kind of how I'm viewing these two players.
21:03All because of opportunity costs, I like Pickens more at his price.
21:08There's a scarier floor given the cost for CeeDee Lamb.
21:11But in that Dallas environment, I'm not fading either player.
21:14You guys know I'm Nemeca Ibuka guy and I'm higher on him versus some of the non-best ball platforms.
21:21ESPN has met wide receiver 19. Yahoo has met wide receiver 23.
21:25I have met wide receiver 16. Market scorer sees met wide receiver 15.
21:30His market score player comp projection, wide receiver 5.
21:33For real. Ibuka's worst comp out of his top 10 is DJ Chark's year 3 where he scored 12 PPR points per game.
21:41He also gets Amari Cooper's 2015 where he was at 13.9.
21:44Every other player in his comp list scored at least 15 PPR points per game.
21:49You get Juju Smith-Schuster in 2018, 18.8. DK Metcalf in 2020, 17.8.
21:54AJ Brown in 2020, 16.2. He got a Chris Godwin year 3 one when Godwin dominated.
21:59I mean, it's just one amazing comp after one amazing comp.
22:03Ibuka's 2025 peripherals took a hit after a really hot start.
22:07But there are reasons for it. His injury, Baker's injury, an awful catchable targets rate.
22:12Now Mike Evans is gone and he has a chance to be the alpha.
22:17Market scorer likes Ibuka's chances of producing a big season.
22:20This is the final part of today's show and you might be wondering, how is anything more interesting than a Mecca Ibuka at wide receiver five?
22:29Well, when Jackson Dart comes out as the QB one, that's how.
22:33Market scorer does not have Dart as the QB one, so you can breathe.
22:38That's not what I'm saying here. Though market scorer does love Jackson Dart.
22:42What I am saying here is that his top 10 comps are absolutely insane.
22:47Better than what Josh Allen is seeing, who's the QB two, albeit barely.
22:52One of the problems with Dart though is that he's kind of a rarity.
22:57No player on his comp list has a similarity above 80%.
23:00So while his comps are really good, they're also not unbelievably close matches.
23:05But I've said this before, his top match has a 79.7 similarity.
23:09It's Lamar Jackson's 2019, his first MVP season where he literally broke fantasy football.
23:14You have that, Josh Allen's year three, and Kyler Murray's year two all driving up his overall projection, which is a little over 22 points per game.
23:23There's really only one bad outcome on this list, which is Nick Foles' third year in the league.
23:29But that also came after a touchdown rate of 8.5% during a time when the fantasy football market didn't quite understand regression.
23:37Now there are reasons to not be so bullish on Dart.
23:41Change in coaching staff means ambiguity. Maybe we see less rushing.
23:44And it's not like we saw a super clear picture of the type of quarterback he's going to be long-term.
23:51Malik Nabors is banged up too, though he did do a lot of work last year without Nabors.
23:58But look, if you have an opportunity to get Dart as your QB1 at a price where the opportunity cost just is
24:05not significant, round 8, round 9, round 10, I do think that we should be leaning into this upside.
24:12Consider this. We've had six rookie quarterbacks since 2011 average at least five rushing points per game across at least eight games played.
24:20Those six quarterbacks are Cam Newton, Josh Allen, Jaden Daniels, Robert Griffin III, Lamar Jackson, and Jackson Dart.
24:26And for what it's worth, Dart was at 7.3 points per game via rushing last year.
24:31This isn't some random parameter to make Dart look extra special.
24:35There's at least some chance that Dart is just really good for fantasy football purposes, like the same way that Jalen Hurts is.
24:43Market score believes in the ceiling and at the right price, I think the rest of us should too.
24:49That's it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening.
24:54If you have subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found.
25:03And don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at LateRoundQB.
25:08Thanks for listening, everyone. Greatly appreciate it. I'll be back in your ears on Wednesday on the YouTube channel for the Late Round Fantasy Football Show.
25:17And obviously this week, you got another Becoming a Best Ball Bro.
25:21And at the end of the week, you get Late Round Perspectives.
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