Buying Breakouts Before They Break Out with JJ Zachariason

JJ Zachariason of Late Round QB joins Dynasty Compass to break down how he identifies Year 2 and Year 3 breakout candidates before the market catches on. Knowing which players are undervalued by the market is one of the most reliable edges you can have in dynasty, whether you're contending, rebuilding, or somewhere in between. JJ covers his ZAP Model, his new Market Score metric, and the specific players he's targeting right now heading into 2026. He also highlights that "too late" is earlier than we think.

💡 Key Takeaways

• How JJ defines a breakout analytically using ADP expectation, not just raw production
• What the ZAP Model predicts and why it's built around a player's first three NFL seasons
• How his new Market Score works and how dynasty managers can use it to find undervalued players
• Why dynasty managers are often too impatient with rookies, and when impatience is actually correct
• The signals JJ looks for at each position: mobility at QB, pass-catching at RB, per-route efficiency at WR and athleticism at TE
• How injuries factor into breakout evaluation, and why cost is the real variable
• JJ's 2026 breakout candidates at RB, WR, and TE, and when the buying window closes
• Why "too late" arrives earlier than most managers think
• The two pillars of dynasty success: production and market value

⏱️ Chapters/Timestamps

00:00 – Welcome and Introduction
04:23 – The A-ha Moment in a Target Parking Lot
10:07 – Defining a Breakout
17:13 – Archetypes, Comps, and What the Market Misses
20:58 – Market Score: JJ's New Tool
28:17 – Cost Is Everything: Buying for Value, Not Ceiling
36:29 – Breakout Signals by Position
46:59 – Talent vs. Situation: What JJ Weighs More
54:58 – 2026 Breakout Candidates
01:09:04 – When to Buy, When to Sell
01:13:23 – The Most Common Mistake 

🔗 Links Mentioned

• Late Round QB
• Follow JJ on Twitter/X 
• Late Round QB on YouTube 
• Jeff's Dynasty Rankings 
• Follow Jeff on Twitter/X 
• Footballguys 

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Visit dynastycompass.com to learn more about the show. 

Transcript

Jeff: One of the ways to win consistently in your dynasty leagues is to identify breakout players before they break out. That way you pay less for them and yet still get the full reward of their future performance. JJ Zachariason from Late Round QB is here today to talk through some of his models and the way that he identifies breakout players, and he's gonna name a few guys that you should have your eyes on right now.

Although for a couple of them, it may already be too late. So get those offers ready, and stay tuned for all that next on Dynasty Compass.

[theme music]

Jeff: Welcome to Dynasty Compass. I am your host, Jeff Blaylock, the other Jeff B from Footballguys. Thank you so much for tuning in today, whether you are watching us on YouTube or listening on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Thank you so much. This show would not exist without you. And we could not get the kinds of guests that we have, like the exceptional one that we have today, a man who is immensely well-regarded and respected in the industry, and I know this if for no other reason than J.J.'s name gets dropped on this show more than mine does.

J.J. Zachariason, welcome to Dynasty Compass. Thank you so much for joining me today.

JJ: Thanks for having me, man. I'm sure it's only bad things when my name is being dropped, but I still appreciate... You know, all PR is good PR, right?

Jeff: Exactly, exactly. As a crisis management guy, I'm like, "Yeah, you know, at least we are in the news. People are talking about us." Yeah, so let's just dive on in, man. What really got you interested in fantasy football analytics? You know, maybe you were like me, there was a question you couldn't find an answer to, so you went out and got it. But what really got you going in analytics?

JJ: Yeah, you know, numbers, I mean, I think a lot of people when they listen to my work or hear me talk about the way that I approach fantasy football, they think that I got my degree in stats or I got a master's in math or something like that. I didn't. I went to school for marketing. I just was always, like, good at math. You know, I'm bad at some things and I'm good at some things, and math always just kinda came naturally. And so whenever I was starting in the fantasy space, which was back in the 2012 type timeframe, whenever I wanted... I knew I wanted to work on something because I looked at the fantasy space and I saw that all these people and all these touts were talking about drafting quarterbacks early that year.

And I knew from playing fantasy football for about a decade at that point that that wasn't really the optimal way to draft. And yes, the previous season quarterbacks were really good, but it was also not a consistent trend yet at that point. And so just based on some basic economic principles and some math related stuff, I put together "The Late-Round Quarterback" e-book, which then started my career. But it was all based on just this foundation of me having that side of the brain, working that side of the brain, and me enjoying that part.

You know, like, I always tell people, like, if you're trying to be a fantasy tout, if you're trying to give fantasy advice and analysis, don't be something that you're not. You know, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm better at watching film than Matt Waldman, because he's been doing it for decades at this point. It's just not achievable for me at this moment, not just because I think that he's really good at it, but also the time that I spend, I wanna get better at the thing that I know where my competitive advantage is, right? And so that's what I've done over the last 10, 15 years of doing this for my career, is just kind of learning things.

You know, if you go back and you read what I wrote 10 years ago, I mean, if I read it, I wanna throw up at how bad it is, right? It's just the way... Like I think that's a good thing, right? That you're evolving and you're getting better. But I spent a lot of time through the years trying to get better at the math-based stuff, and hopefully that's shown out in my work too.

Jeff: I think the kids today call that cringe.

JJ: Yeah, very cringe. Yes.

Jeff: The key to me is just make it high quality cringe, and I'm sure that's what you had. JJ, was there a-- Did you have like an aha moment where you go, "Man, I am really onto something here"?

JJ: Yeah. I mean, I think that it was really after that first year. Like, part of it was fortune for sure, because it was-- When I published the e-book, it was that 2012 season, so 2011 happened, it was like the near lockout season, and we had some really gaudy quarterback numbers.

And when I look back at that season, that's whenever I was like, "Oh, this could be a good time to publish something and to put something out there into the universe that like you don't wanna go after quarterbacks early." And then that next season we saw not only normal regression happen, but we also got some hits from a quarterback class. It was Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson, and things just went really well, like overly well. So like I knew the regression was gonna hit at quarterback, but then it hit and then some, and that alone I think really helped me. And then at the end of the season I started to get...

'Cause again, the results were really strong, and at the end of the season I got messaged by Evan Silva, who was at RotoWorld at the time, and obviously now with Establish the Run. And I'll never forget it. I was in like the Target parking lot, and he gave me a call. And this is at a time where like-- And nothing against RotoWorld right now. RotoWorld's obviously like we're friends with a lot of people who work there, and they do great work, but back then there were fewer sites, there were fewer places for fantasy football content, and that was sort of like the mecca. Like RotoWorld was everything.

And Silva called me and he said... You know, it's funny looking back 'cause I'm good friends with him now, but Silva called me and he was like, "Hey, I want you to do an article series on RotoWorld on quarterbacks," and basically regurgitating and talking about the stuff that you talked about in your e-book.

And it was then where I'm like, "Okay, I think something could be going on here with what I'm doing." And it was a really cool kind of pinch-me moment, and I won't forget it.

Jeff: Yeah, the Target parking lot. It's amazing where some of these kinds of life-changing things happen, in these most mundane places.

JJ: In Newport, Kentucky, northern Kentucky, right across the river from Cincinnati, where I was living at the time. Yep.

Jeff: Should put a little monument there on that parking space that you had. This is where Late Round QB really took off. Well, you know, man, you've done a lot of modeling since then. Not like fashion modeling or calendar shoots, as far as I--

JJ: That's what you think, Jeff.

Jeff: Yeah, but I mean, surely, you know, a Late Round pin-up calendar would sell tens of copies. It would just fly off the shelves. So you've built a number of models and frameworks since then. I mean, how do you-- Take us into your mind for a second and let's see the world through your eyes. How do you get started on those? What's the thought process that kicks off the "I'm gonna build a model to do something"?

JJ: Yeah, I mean, it's really just asking questions in the end. Like I wanna build things that I would use. I'm trying to kill multiple birds with one stone here. I'm trying to say, "Hey, I wanna see if there's signal with this metric," and, "Oh, what if there are things that we can build off of this to have something predictive that we can sort of lean on and have a backbone with?"

And so my shower thoughts, my thoughts while I'm lying in bed, whatever the case may be, are often, not always, but often, what can I do to enhance the content that I'm doing? 'Cause I love this stuff. I wanna be good at it, and I want others to share in that love for the game, right?

So a lot of it with the modeling is just thinking of different ways that we can investigate and navigate this game. But I think that we're in a position, as analysts, where we have to think about what consumers would want and how they would consume that information. You know, a lot of times I am by far not the best data analyst out there. There are people out there that are doing unbelievably good work with data, and I think one of the problems that some people run into is that they're almost too good at it from the standpoint of like they push out all of this information and all of these charts and it's overwhelming to the average Joe.

And so what I try to really do is distill that information in a way that people can consume it quickly and understand it quickly. Sometimes I fail miserably. I've had models and ideas that have gone out and people are like, "I don't understand this at all," and then I scrap it three months later.

Hopefully that doesn't happen with a new one that I just published. But yeah, I mean, I think that a really big key to it all is really thinking about not just the concept and what you can do, 'cause a really important way to differentiate yourself also as an analyst in the fantasy space where it's really saturated, is to come up with unique ideas and different ideas. I spend a lot of time brainstorming. Like a lot of my energy is towards that, and then once I have the idea, it's just hard work, grunt work to get that idea fleshed out. It's the idea that takes the most time and energy and effort to think about, and that's where the uniqueness would come from if you're really trying to stand out.

And so I spend a lot of time on the brainstorming side, and I also spend a lot of time on like, how can this thing be easily consumable to thousands of people? And it's not the easiest thing to put together and to think through, and like I said, I don't think that I'm the best data mind out there, but hopefully I'm at least packaging things up in a way that's consumable.

Jeff: I love that you think about it that way because I think that as an industry, because you say it is so saturated, we sometimes get ourselves into traps of trying to show how clever and smart we are as opposed to how can we make our fantasy players around us better fantasy players. And so I love that you really focus on that approachability. You wanna be more of a guide than the star of the show. It's something that I also really aspire to do, is to just not throw a blizzard of data at people, but say, "Okay, what about this makes sense?" And not just leave all the data back there because no one needs to see all that. If you wanna see my work, great, I'll show it to you. But if you don't need to see it, you're not going to see it.

We're gonna talk a lot today, JJ, about breakouts. But before we get into that, I think that word probably means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So what does it mean to you? What is a breakout? When you say that word, what do you mean?

JJ: Yeah, I mean, I think that from a high level and a more qualitative perspective, it's just someone who hasn't done something big yet in the NFL or in fantasy football, and then does something big in the NFL or in fantasy football. So there's definitely a lot of ways that people define that. I try to end up defining it in a more analytical way, shocking, where from a redraft and season-long perspective, I often will do a lot of analysis on what I call ADP expectation. And so essentially, if you look at ADP versus post-season result in PPR points per game, for each of the four main positions, and you look at history -- so I go back to 2014 when I do this, so it's about 10, 11 years of data -- you can do regression analysis and you can see how many points per game you would expect a player to score at a particular overall ADP, just based on what's happened historically. So a wide receiver drafted 50th overall might be expected just based on history to score about 13 PPR points per game. You know, if he's drafted 10th overall, then that number might be like 16 or 16 and a half PPR points per game. Same thing with quarterback, tight end, and running back as well.

And so from there, what I do is I say, "Okay, did this player exceed or underperform that expectation mark?" And you can then define breakout technically by saying, "This guy outperformed that ADP expectation by four points per game, and therefore he was a breakout based on where he was being drafted."

I think in dynasty, from that perspective, you could look at if you want a more quantitative way of looking at it, you could look at 2025 ADP versus 2026 startup ADP to see what kind of movement a player saw. Obviously like JSN took a big jump last year, so technically he was a breakout even though some people would say, "Oh, he already kind of broke out," you know?

So I think there's a lot of ways to do it, but I think if you were to just dumb it down, it's just this is a player that hasn't done much in the NFL or hasn't really gotten to the level that he can get to in fantasy football.

Jeff: Yeah. One of your core models, the ZAP Model, specifically looks at the first three years of a player's career. What was the magic around three? Was there something that specifically spoke to you on that versus, say, the rookie season only or a whole career, which other folks might actually probably focus on more?

JJ: Yeah, it's really for measurement purposes. It's a contained measurement. It's a measurement that almost every player will be able to achieve in some way. And even if they get cut from the league, if they don't make it after the first year or two, that's still signal, right? Because they weren't a good player to be able to play those three years. But generally speaking, after three years of a player's career, you're gonna have a pretty good idea 98% of the time of how good that player is going to be. And from a measurement standpoint and from a modeling perspective, it's really hard to only look at rookie season, for instance, because a lot can change after year one.

And then it's really hard to look at full career stuff because some players will retire on top and they might look a certain way if they retire on top. And then some players will go on and on and play into their mid-30s when they're not really giving you that amazing production.

So look, there's a lot of ways to measure success in the NFL. The way that I do it with the ZAP Model is by looking at what I call B2S, which is the best two seasons across the first three years of a player's career. So I just average their best two PPR points per game seasons. But you could look at the best season of a player's first five years if you want to. You can measure it in a lot of different ways. It just was the thing that made the most sense to me logically, since it would put a lot of players on the same playing field.

Jeff: Right. And talk for a second about what the ZAP Model tells us. This I believe is a lot in terms of rookie analysis. It's a major, major part of your rookie guide that you put out every year. Just talk a little bit about what does that model tell us?

JJ: Yeah. So like I said, it's trying to predict the best two seasons across the first three years of a player's career. So if a player scores 10, 10, and 12 PPR points per game, it'll throw out one of the 10s, and it'll just average out the 12 and 10, and it'll say, "This guy scored 11 PPR points per game as his B2S."

And so you're doing analysis to find signal and to find inputs that can help project that number based on what's gone on historically. And so it takes draft capital as sort of the main input for the ZAP Model, obviously, because a player who gets drafted higher is gonna have more opportunities, gonna be more talented. There's a lot of signal embedded in what draft capital is. But then it takes other inputs from college that I've tested. I mean, I have spent hundreds of hours testing different statistics and such that will give that draft capital input more signal, right? So if you were to just draft off of draft capital in your rookie draft and just go, "Okay, I'm gonna take the best wide receiver that was drafted highest, and then the next one, then the next one," the ZAP Model will perform and outperform that. Will be better than that, and that's the whole point is that you wanna be better than what someone could... Otherwise, what's the point of having a model, right? Because someone could just look at draft capital and just draft off of that.

And so I wanted to beat it. It beats it by a good bit. It's significantly better. And there's some metrics actually, like I have a breakout score metric it's called, for wide receiver, which is age and schedule adjusted, receiving yards per team pass attempt throughout a player's career. So it just looks at receiving yards per team pass attempts. It adjusts for when things happen from an age perspective and how good the program was that the player played at. That metric alone is just as predictive for top 100 wide receivers as draft capital is. So I could only look at that metric. You combine the two though, and you have breakout score and draft capital and some size inputs and some other stats and an early declare status, and all of a sudden you get something that is pretty predictive to help you find the best players across their first three years. It's not gonna be foolproof. Prospecting is incredibly difficult. There's plenty of variance involved, but hopefully it gets you going in the right direction.

Jeff: Yeah. I came to kind of a similar conclusion back in around January, February as I was refining my Dynasty Value Model. I actually tried several different things as kind of our straw man, and NFL draft capital was actually the worst of those straw men in terms of predicting outcomes. So but of course, the NFL's not drafting for fantasy success. They're drafting for actual success. Otherwise, Nate Boerkircher does not go in the second round. But he did this year. So it's a different animal. But yeah, I love how you are experimenting with that, but also trying to put things together. 'Cause you're right, if a model's no better than something that's already out there, then there's no point to having it.

Over this work, are there some specific archetypes that share characteristics or traits or analytics that serve kind of as -- and I really kind of hate the word comps, but I can't think of a better word -- but comps for these kinds of breakout candidates, or is this really just something you have to look at player by player?

JJ: I mean, yeah. I mean, look, I do look at everything versus ADP expectation, right? And so what I do, like, in the draft guide every year for season-long leagues -- and obviously there's gonna be some tie to dynasty from season long -- what I do is I look at history and I say, okay, I bucket these players up into, like, top 18 wide receivers, early round wide receivers, middle round wide receivers, you know, 19 to 42. You get in that round four or five to round 10 or so, and then late round guys. And you can -- you know, I bucket these players up and I try to find trends for players historically who have beaten ADP by a good margin, and what are some of the metrics and measurables and statistics that those players generally share.

So like you can look at quarterback for instance, and this is essentially saying, what does the market not capture, right? Because ADP is what the market is thinking. If these players are beating ADP, what are the signals and the statistics that ADP is just not properly capturing?

And so at quarterback you get things like mobility. People are still undervaluing mobility, and they're overvaluing previous season touchdown rate, which is interesting, right? So like a player like Matthew Stafford this year, last year he goes berserk, he has a great season, and this year he's being drafted like QB 12 or so. You know, I will say historically a player like Stafford would've been like QB 7 or something. The market is getting smarter, but he's still a QB 12 and historically players who outperform ADP expectation most actually have low touchdown rates the previous season versus high touchdown rates, because they have lower ADPs the following season because people aren't boosting them based on things that are unreasonably difficult to just repeat.

Like, Matthew Stafford's not gonna -- 99% chance -- not gonna have a 7.7% touchdown rate this--

Jeff: Right.

JJ: So I'm looking at that. And then running back, there's pass catching that people are still generally undervaluing. Wide receiver, there's a lot of the per route run stuff, whether it's first downs per route run, targets per route run, yards per route run, and it does differ depending on where you are in the draft.

Like for instance, wide receivers in the top 18, if you're looking at a guy who can really exceed expectation -- if you look at the competition on his team, right, and you look at the expected fantasy points based on ADP of his pass-catching teammates, the higher that sum is, the better outcomes we see for early round wide receivers. Which means the more competition an early round wide receiver has on his team, the better that wide receiver actually has performed historically when drafted in the early rounds.

But then when you get to the middle and late rounds, the inverse happens. And the reason for that is because an early round wide receiver is gonna be good no matter what, right? Like he's been drafted in the early round. He's gonna see a 25% target share and he's really, really good. So the competition piece really tells you probably that the situation's pretty good to have other wide receivers being boosted up in ADP and such.

But then you get to the middle rounds and the inverse happens because the middle round wide receivers just aren't as established. They're not as good. You want a more clean slate for these guys to hit a really crazy ceiling in target share and stuff, because they might not be able to do that on their own.

So there's just those kinds of things that I'm looking at all the time for the guide to try to spot some of these breakouts and find historical comps to help do so.

Jeff: Yeah. You may already be talking about it, but your latest model, I believe, is the Market Score, which really focuses on these kinds of market signals. So if you have not already told us how this model works and what it means for dynasty, go ahead and do that if you don't mind.

JJ: Yeah. So it's a season-long model, but like I said, I think that you can still use this because we wanna find as many small wins as we possibly can in dynasty, whether it's with veterans or with younger players. But what Market Score does is it looks at -- it's basically similarly built as the ZAP Model, but instead of draft capital like the ZAP Model's built off of, it's average draft position. So you're taking average draft position for a certain player, and then you're looking at previous season inputs, and you're saying, "Oh, this guy, for instance, at wide receiver, had a really good previous season first downs per route run number," right? And that's something that the model might look at, and then that player gets boosted versus where his ADP is, or it falls versus where his ADP is.

So it's just looking at ADP and previous season inputs, and it's giving a player a score based on what the market is saying essentially, right? And so this is then telling you -- it gives a score of zero to 100, and you can essentially get brand new rankings based on what Market Score is saying, solely Market Score.

And what I've had a good time and a fun time doing is using similarity scores or comps for these players. So I can look at a player like Zay Flowers this year, for instance, right? And I can say, "Okay, let me run the model really quick and see the top 10 similar players historically who were drafted around the same spot, who had a very similar Market Score, who had a similar career year as where Zay Flowers is at, and a similar positional rank," right? And I can get 10 similar players, and then those similar players will show me how many points per game they scored, and then that might give me a better idea of how bullish or bearish I should be on a particular player. And so that's been a really fun way to dissect and look at Market Score and give me a new angle to analyze these players with.

Jeff: Yeah, it's a really neat concept. I mean, you're looking at what are the prices that people are actually paying? And in dynasty that's very important 'cause obviously buying high and selling low is not gonna win you very many championships. But going the other way around, or identifying where you're getting the discounts, is really critical, whether we're talking about startup drafts or trades or even rookie drafts.

When we're thinking about players, dynasty managers really tend to focus on rookie evaluation. I mean, that is the thing that we do for several months, beginning at the end of the Super Bowl till whenever our rookie draft is. We tend to kind of ignore the folks that happen after that, and we tend to kind of give up hope on some rookies if they don't break out in year one. Are we as a group of people being too impatient or expecting too much from rookies every year?

JJ: I think it depends a lot on expectation and the kind of league that you're in. I know that's such a cop-out answer. I know. But it is really, really important, right? Like if you're in a shallower league, shallower dynasty league where you're starting a pretty standard lineup, there's not crazy amounts of flex spots or anything like that, you do need to chase studs, right? Because you need your lineup to be more elite because you're only starting a handful of players. If you're starting eight or nine players versus we're in leagues where you start 15 or 16 players, the depth matters a lot more in the 15 or 16 player leagues versus the eight or nine leagues where you're really just needing to do a lot of two-for-one trades and just get the most bang for your buck in your starting lineup because the depth isn't nearly as important.

And so what I would say to that is, yes, there's a lot of signal that we get from rookie seasons. You know, it's not -- I don't think of fantasy football in a black and white way at all. I don't think that's the way that anyone who's been humbled by this game should be thinking. It's not really rational to think that way.

You know, like we're scientists here. We should be using words like probably, not definitely. And so like you look at someone like, I don't know, Matthew Golden, right? Historically, players who have done what Matthew Golden did year one do not pan out at a high rate whatsoever. At all.

And so then it all comes down to cost and what the market is truly doing and saying about that player. Sometimes there are situations where the player is ranked really high still and then you can sell. Sometimes though you're saying, "Okay, will the margin here..." Like there are some hits. Like we saw Davante Adams do stuff after a really bad couple of seasons in the NFL. So maybe this is a Davante Adams type outcome. Or, you know, Rome Odunze wasn't very good his rookie season, but then you give context to it and you say, "Okay, really bad offensive coordinator, Caleb Williams wasn't great, et cetera, et cetera." And then you look at comps and you're like, "Wow, there's a DeAndre Hopkins comp sitting right here for Rome Odunze. Maybe that's the direction he goes in. Now let's check the price," and kind of go off of that.

So my approach to this is that yes, it's like a yes and no answer to it, where yes, I think there's some people out there and some managers who look at a rookie season production and they just completely write off a player no matter what, which is probably not the right way to approach things because everything does relate back to cost and it also relates back to what is important in your league.

You know, if you're in a deeper league, like you and I are in a league where we're starting tons of flex spots, we have four quarterbacks you can start in a 10-team. It's crazy, right? In those--

Jeff: Why, I don't know why we're in that league.

JJ: I don't know why we're in that league either. Yeah. But in that kind of format, a player like Jalen Coker, who I liked last year after his rookie season, my year two model basically ranked him the exact same way as Xavier Legette, despite Xavier Legette having much more draft capital, et cetera, et cetera.

But Jalen Coker is almost definitely not gonna be like a top 20 wide receiver given circumstance, given he's playing with T-Mac, all that kind of stuff. But that doesn't mean that we should just ignore Jalen Coker, because there are going to be plenty of instances in leagues where we want those small wins because we can use Jalen Coker.

So I do think there's a lot of analytically minded people in the dynasty space who are very black and white with like, "Oh, he's just not good enough because he doesn't have a top 20 ceiling." I'm not quite there 'cause I think I play in plenty of leagues where a guy like Coker is still valuable.

But if I were to high level this, I'd say yes, rookie seasons are very predictive. They do tell us a decent bit about these players. But that doesn't mean that you just fade Jayden Higgins this year because you have to look at his cost. Higgins is still a pretty approachable player even though his rookie season wasn't like phenomenal and even though I don't think that Higgins is gonna be a top 15 wide receiver in dynasty.

You know, you can get those small wins and they can really work out and help you out in those deeper formats.

Jeff: Yeah. I actually do know why I'm in that league. I got an email from Jeff Bell one day that said simply, "You've been summoned," and that was it.

JJ: Yeah, it's basically that, but yeah.

Jeff: So that's how I ended up in it. I love that you're talking about cost. And I got a couple of questions that are unrelated other than they're on cost. One will be about ADP muddiness, so if I don't come back to that, please remind me.

But while we're hitting on it, you know, when you're looking at -- and Coker's a great example -- I mean, he is not going to be or should not be your wide receiver one or two. And a lot of folks who are coming into dynasty from the redraft world, especially early on, are used to only having to play maybe two or three wide receivers. And so there's a whole swath of value that just falls off the table because they're not relevant in smaller benches. But when you're talking about five flex spots, then Jalen Coker is going to be a regular starter for you. And so it's good to be able to identify those guys at the lower cost and kind of leave the higher cost ones to your league mates to be disappointed by later on in the season.

So when you think about it from that perspective, what are you thinking of as not necessarily ceiling, 'cause ceiling means a lot of different things, but in terms of what you think this player is gonna be in terms of value over ADP?

JJ: Yeah. You know, I think it depends on where they are in terms of rankings and startup costs and stuff. I think one of the things that people get wrong a lot with bust rate analysis for instance, is that they look at a player like who gets drafted at wide receiver five, and then he finishes as wide receiver seven, and they're like, "See? He didn't live up to the cost." Like, actually, he kinda did, right?

Jeff: He did.

JJ: Yeah, like, you don't draft-- It's like when people talk about, you don't draft last year's wide receiver one because that wide receiver rarely repeats as the wide receiver one in a given season. Okay, but if he finishes as the wide receiver two, he's a great bet still. He's still an amazing pick. That's just not logical to say he has to finish as the wide receiver one if you draft him as the wide receiver one. Like you shouldn't make that pick in general 'cause it's just not gonna happen. You just can't assume that's gonna happen.

And I feel similarly about whenever I'm building out value in dynasty. You know, in dynasty it's, to me, there's two pillars. There's the market value side, and there's the production side, right? You need to beef up the production side obviously 'cause you need to eventually win. But then there's the value accumulation, which is what the market is doing and saying, and you're trying to play that market.

And you're trying to say, "Okay, I could see this guy rising based on X, Y, Z year over year, and that'll give my dynasty roster a lot more value that I can then turn into either keep the player, 'cause he's gonna be productive, or I can turn that into picks or turn that into whatever I wanna turn it into, and I'm turning a profit," right?

So whenever I'm looking at these profiles, like, yes, going back to Jalen Coker, I think that Coker could be a wide receiver three. Like, I think that's in his range of outcomes in the right environment 'cause I think he's really good, and there's data and reasons to support that claim.

Whereas there's other wide receivers where I'm looking and I'm like, especially some random day three rookies that might get boosted in a rookie draft or something, I'm largely gonna ignore some of them because I know the chance of them actually being a true difference maker is just so slim. It's slim to none, and if I miss it, I miss it. And then every once in a while there's some players that I'm like, "This is actually a pretty good profile for a day three wide receiver. I'll go after him." But if every ounce of research points to that player not being that studly or we don't have good comps anywhere for the player, then yeah, I'm fine with just saying I'm not gonna draft him because I don't think he's gonna give me even that wide receiver four type ceiling.

And I think that's reasonable enough to use as a cutoff of like, can he get there? And not all these guys will get there, you know. But you at least wanna have that upside in your back pocket.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. The ADP side for me, I find ADP to be exceptionally muddy. I find it to be a lagging indicator and quite a bit frustrating as any kind of an analytical tool. But I love that you are just saying, "Let's embrace that. Let's embrace that muddiness and that lagging indicator, and let's get in front of it. Let's show you a metric that will say, 'No, this guy that's being drafted at 55th overall really should be drafted at 30th overall. And so this is a guy to go after in that fourth or fifth round while everyone else is still ignoring him. You're getting a third-round talent for a fifth-round price.'" I love that you're thinking about it in that way.

So now with that in mind, can you convince me that ADP is actually something I should pay more attention to than I do?

JJ: Yeah. I mean, I actually think ADP can be pretty powerful because this is a peer-to-peer game at the end of the day, right? And we are going to disagree on plenty of stuff from a player evaluation standpoint, but if you know, especially people that are listening to this or people that listen to my show, you know, if you know that others in your league are going to be using Keep Trade Cut, let's say, right? If you know that they're gonna be leveraging that and they're gonna look at the trade calculators there, use that to your advantage. Like there are ways to make a trade look really good on those sites, you know, by loading up one side and making it, you know, just gaming it a little bit.

Yeah, you should use that to your advantage. And I do think there is still something to the wisdom of the crowds, too. You know, like ADP, when you look at correlation and you do some testing, at least from a season-long perspective where it's a lot easier to measure this -- it's just more difficult to measure this in dynasty because it's like, where do you draw the line? Like how many years are you looking at whenever you're testing all this, et cetera, et cetera. But in season long it's just one year, so you're just testing one year. And there is some signal to ADP, similarly as there is some signal to draft capital with the NFL draft.

And so, the wisdom of the crowd, I think is not nothing. But again, if you have a $40,000 car that you value at $20,000 but everyone else values at $40,000, you wouldn't sell it for $20,000, right? You'd still try to sell it for $40,000 because that's how everyone else is valuing that thing.

Similarly, in dynasty, if you have a player that you don't value very highly but everyone else is valuing highly and you know that his ADP might even rise further, then you should play that game. Like there is a huge market component to dynasty in terms of just building out the most valuable roster.

But then like I said, there's that flip where you need to eventually get production. You need to eventually realize, okay, I've got a really valuable team right now, and admittedly that's probably my biggest flaw in dynasty. I am very, very good at accumulating value, at doing well in rookie drafts, all that kind of stuff. I am not as good at finally just being like, "Okay, I'm gonna go in." I've gotten better the last few years, but I gotta go in, I gotta be productive. Like let's, let's do this. Let's try to win this thing.

And so sometimes it's nice to have a co-manager with me to kind of push me, you know, instead of me just being like, "No, I gotta accumulate as much value," and like, "I gotta go to these sites that show you how much value your team has. I gotta be at the top of the list in all these leagues." And so it is a hard thing to balance, but it's a really important thing to balance.

Jeff: It is a tough mindset shift to go from trying to accumulate value, trying to accumulate draft picks, trying to take advantage of every kind of little discount that you can pick up and then convert that into winning, because then you have to turn around and give a lot of that back away. It's gonna cost you. You are going to pay more than you think you should to take a team that is typically around eight and six or nine and five and turn it into one that's 11 and three. Unless you are extraordinarily lucky or good in drafting, you are going to have to pay for that upgrade, and that's gonna be kind of expensive.

I do have one thing I will say about ADP that always makes you say, "Okay, there's some hope here." I told you earlier that NFL draft capital was the worst predictor of rookie performance that I found. The best was QB1 ADP in dynasty rookie drafts, because there you got people who are trying to draft for dynasty value, and they tend to be pretty good at it.

So let's shift over to some of the more specific signals. And let's just start with, is there a position that's -- and I would do bunny ears, but I don't like doing them -- but if you're thinking about easier in the bunny ears sense, to identify breakouts than others that you've found?

JJ: I think it's different in season-long versus dynasty. In season long it's easily quarterback, in terms of finding breakouts, just because the cost to acquire is lower 'cause the demand is lower for that position. And so it's a lot more -- you can be more free in terms of the cost associated and the upside cases that you're making for these guys and just shooting for upside.

So quarterback is usually just as simple as, is this player sort of ambiguous and unknown right now? Okay, yes, he is. Is he a mobile quarterback? Yes, he is. Okay, go after him. You know, in season long this year, the easiest click, because it doesn't matter if you're wrong, is Malik Willis. It just does not matter. I know people are gonna be like, "Well, he's gonna be bad." Yeah, he might be bad. There's like very, very easily could be bad, yeah, right. The upside from a fantasy perspective is crazy, and if you are wrong, it's like a 12th or 13th round pick. It literally doesn't matter in season long.

In dynasty, what makes it difficult is Superflex especially, you can't really play that game nearly as much. 'Cause Superflex right now, Keep Trade Cut, you could look at Malik Willis and you'd have to trade Christian Watson for him, which is a much more significant investment to make in that player versus in a season-long league where even in Superflex season long, it's not gonna be nearly that-- You can miss out on a fifth round pick in a Superflex season-long league and still win your league. But it's a lot more difficult when it's a multi-year type scenario.

So I would say in redraft, the easiest position to spot breakouts would be the quarterback position. I think in dynasty it's probably-- You know, I don't know if there's like an easiest per se. Like I think that there are pockets and there are certain areas-- Like I think tight end is actually easier than what people give it credit for, only because of the cost associated with these guys.

So I'd probably say tight end from a dynasty perspective. Simply because, again, with running back and wide receiver in dynasty, you're getting younger players being boosted up draft boards and being more costly to acquire, and so you can't necessarily -- and usually younger players are the ones that are breaking out, and so you can't necessarily find that discount on those guys.

Whereas at tight end, people do give up on tight ends very quickly in dynasty when we know it's a position that needs a little bit of time for these guys to get going, right? And so it's a little bit easier to wait for that to develop at tight end and then just go after the guy who had pretty good college production, pretty good draft capital and athleticism. Does he check those boxes? Okay. And then throw that dart and get that guy in the double digit rounds.

Jeff: What are some of the best signals that you have found that say, "This guy is someone I need to keep an eye on as a potential breakout candidate"?

And again, I love how you're saying we're scientists. We ought to say probably and possibly, not definitely or no. Probably to heavy possibly.

JJ: Yeah. Looking at the ZAP Model is important, generally speaking, since the model is not bad and it's predictive. If players haven't broken out yet but they have pretty good ZAP Scores, those are players that I'm at least keeping an eye on.

And then the other thing is just, like I said earlier, quarterbacks, are they mobile? How mobile are they? Like, I don't really care about pocket passers that much. Different in Superflex just because you want some of that stability, of course. But mobility is really easy to chase in single quarterback leagues still.

With running back, pass catching is still something that's really undervalued by the market. Wide receiver, you can look at some of the previous season peripherals and stuff. But part of the problem is that people are getting a lot sharper. Like, a good example of the previous season peripheral stuff at wide receiver is Luther Burden, right? Where the ZAP Model loved Luther Burden. The year two model that I have, which looks at a player's year two through four after their rookie season, likes Luther Burden a whole lot based on his per route run efficiency last year. But the market is also recognizing that, which it didn't used to recognize, and it used to be a lot easier to find those players, right?

But you can still kind of find them. You can still find these diamonds in the rough at times. But wide receiver's a pretty tough position versus the dynasty market. And then at tight end, players again who had a backbone coming into the NFL and who are good athletes. So you generally need -- speed score is one that is a very easy to look at metric to see if a guy is athletic or not, and it gets a lot of signal at tight end, but it's just weight adjusted 40 time. And that does get signal. So if you get a tight end who maybe hasn't broken out yet but had a good backbone as a prospect and is athletic, that's someone that you should be paying attention to.

Jeff: I think that people are getting a lot sharper because of folks like you, JJ. This is your fault that this is becoming harder for us to win at these games.

JJ: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing with that though too is that it's a lot more difficult, I've said this my whole career, but it's a lot more difficult for the average fantasy manager to understand game theory and strategy than it is for them to understand player takes.

And so we can sit here and be like, "Hey, go get Luther Burden," or, "Go get this player, whoever," and they can do that and attack it. But like what I try to do in my draft guide every year and what I try to do on my show even is teach people to understand the game at large and understand the dynamics of the game and where there are pockets of value and why, because that allows you to replicate those good choices over and over and over again, as opposed to just being like, "Yeah, go after this guy. Go ahead. I really like this guy." You can do that, it's just not very sustainable.

Jeff: Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's what I try to do here with Dynasty Compass as a show. I try to be more of a teach-a-man-to-fish show than here are the fish for this week, go after these guys. And I love, too, just going back to some of the early part of our conversation. I mean, this all starts basically with questions. You ask really good questions, you pursue those questions, you're going to get answers that are gonna work not just for that particular specific question, but for several others that are similar, whether that's player evaluation or identifying breakouts or rookie values or any of these other sorts of things that we're talking about in the abstract.

There is a pattern to all of this. It is not perfect, but there are patterns, and if you can see them and understand them, then you can apply them going forward. And you don't have to ask which fish should I catch this week? You can ask instead, "Hey, I'm thinking about catching this fish this week. What do you think?" That's a very different question. And you, I'm sure, as I do, answer lots of start-sit questions and who should I trade for and other things on Sundays and weekdays. It's a big difference to me when someone comes to me with a "I'm thinking of doing this" versus a what-should-I-do kind of question, because that means that thought process is at work and they're already becoming better players, even if in that particular moment they've picked the wrong fish. At least the process is there.

When you're looking at -- 'cause people get hurt, and that's one of the biggest wrenches that goes into everything in terms of you can have the wide receiver one, and if he only plays four games, then that didn't help you in that particular season. Do injuries play into your breakout evaluation at all? I mean, if a guy misses a season or two seasons like MarShawn Lloyd or Jonathan Brooks, do you give them mulligans or is your shot clock running on their ability to break out?

JJ: Yeah, you know, I think it's case by case, but it's also going back to cost, right? Like I'm gonna worry about cost. If I'm gonna -- you know, if we were to remove cost and say, "Is this guy a breakout candidate?" I'll probably-- I think it's just not as actionable, right? Like for someone listening to this, if I were to say, "Oh, this player is drafted in round three," and I'm saying he's a breakout candidate, well, what good does that necessarily do for you? Because you're gonna have to spend up a lot to get that player.

And so from that perspective, I try to ask myself, do I think the market is embedding the injury risk into this player's cost right now? And sometimes it doesn't. You know, Jonathan Brooks -- who's actually on my team in that one league--

Jeff: Yeah, I think so.

JJ: Jonathan Brooks being an example where I drafted him in a lot of startups, including that one last year, because my vision for it was, at the very least, his cost is going to rise after this year is up, right? Like it's essentially throwing a dart at a rookie, because usually we just naturally see that climb for those guys. And the nice part is that we're almost definitely gonna see a climb because there's nothing that he can do on the field that's gonna make him fall, right?

And so from that perspective, I will sometimes go after injured players, even like a Tank Dell, who -- I don't think it's like necessary to do it, but I think Jonathan Brooks was an easier case, especially at running back. But like Tank Dell, you could have gotten for-- Like people were dropping him.

Jeff: Yeah, he's on waivers in a lot of leagues right now.

JJ: Yeah, but now any sort of positive news, he moves up in terms of cost and rankings and stuff. So you can play the value game even that way. So from that perspective, I'm just looking at cost to see if I wanna invest in a player who's coming off injury. But I think it's mostly case by case still.

You know, what kind of injury was it? Is it a broken collarbone? I'm not gonna care that much about that. Everyone, you know--

Jeff: Everyone does that.

JJ: Yeah, if it's soft tissue, the-- I was not in enough on Christian Watson, for instance, coming back 'cause it was scary. His cost wasn't-- There was like a pocket of time where I bought in a little bit, but I didn't, I wish I would've done more. I think any of us listening to this is probably, "Why didn't I buy more into Christian Watson?" right? Sometimes it happens that way, right?

But it depends on the player, the situation and such, and then it depends on cost.

Jeff: Yeah, Watson is one. All the shares I have on him in dynasty is because I drafted him as a rookie and held onto him. My attempts to pry him away from other people have not worked because they're either savvy enough, they have faith, or they're Packers fans. And so that irrationality sometimes -- that can help you sometimes if you have Matthew Golden and you've got a Packers fan in your league who wants him. But when the Packers fan has him, yeah, forget about it. You're not gonna pay what they want for that.

You know, as you're looking at potential breakouts, are you looking more at talent scores and underlying metrics? Are you looking at their team situation or their potential role, or is it a little bit of both that you're looking at?

JJ: I -- it's a little bit of both, but I still would say that I'm leaning more on the talent evaluation side because that's gonna be something that is stickier and easier to project than the team environment stuff. And I say that because especially in dynasty, team environment can change in an instant, you know? Like one year the environment's terrible and the next year it's amazing, or vice versa.

But also we get that environment wrong a lot as well. Like if you -- I've tried for years and we kind of finally have gotten to a point where we kinda have a decent model for it, but like projecting just touchdowns per game by a team is not an easy thing to do, right? But there's tons of signal when you look at ADP expectation and players outperforming expectation, and then in hindsight how good their offenses were in touchdowns per game. The better the offense, the higher rate they break out. It's just we don't have that information when we're drafting these players and when we're going into a season, right?

And so I know factually that environment matters a lot, but I also am trying to look at this from the perspective of what do I know right now? You know, having that information in hindsight does no one any good. It does not matter. Like if the Jets are really good offensively this year and they're fifth in the league in touchdowns per game, it'd be great to have that information right now, but we're not projecting that right now. Like some of us might be a little bit more bullish in the market, but no sane human being is saying that a Geno Smith-led team is gonna be a top five team in touchdowns per game, you know? And hopefully if that happens, you can run that back, and I'll either look like a--

Jeff: We eat lots of our takes.

JJ: Yeah.

Jeff: Taste good.

JJ: Right.

Jeff: I put lots of salt on them so they're tasty when I have to eat them.

JJ: Yeah. The one thing that is static generally is talent. And so if you've seen it or if you believe in it or if there's a backbone and we know that the probability of a player with a certain ZAP Score is supposed to do XYZ, you should lean in on that more than what you've seen in a certain environment or leaning into that environment.

But the environment does matter. You know, like if we feel really good about a certain team -- just because you can't fully predict how good an offense is gonna be doesn't mean that you just don't do it at all. You know, you can still be better than average at doing so, and you can do that from a redraft perspective, look at it with a redraft lens, and then apply that to dynasty and say, "Okay, he's in a really good environment right now. That means his ADP could easily rise, his value could rise, and I'm gonna get a win from that, and hopefully his production's pretty good too."

So the one thing I will say is that I think that you can also reverse engineer that, and you can look at a player's environment in a particular season and say, "That environment's not gonna repeat this year," when the market is assuming that that environment's gonna repeat. So environment does matter a lot. Like there's regression with environment, there's tons of different stuff. But talent is what I do generally lean into more from a dynasty perspective because it's a little bit more predictive.

Jeff: Yeah, and a little bit more immutable. And even with -- we were just talking about injuries earlier. Injuries tend to do a lot more damage to production than they do to talent. Players remain fairly talented even if they have gotten themselves hurt. It really just comes down to is it an injury that they lose ability out of? That would be a problem. But a lot of injuries are just time and healing, and with medicine being the way it is, people heal a lot faster than we expect. I mean, George Kittle tore his Achilles, and yet here we are, many of us expecting elite performance when he is on the field, even if that's not until week nine or 10. That may be a bit of dreaming, but he's proven himself he can do that.

Are there qualitative signals that you are looking for -- something that isn't captured in the analytics or the stats or the past performance -- that suggests to you that a breakout may be coming for someone?

JJ: Yeah, look, I do a lot of watching of games. People -- like, I watch every game every week. During Sundays, that is my-- It's my job to do this, and so I'm watching games. But then after the fact, on Mondays when I'm writing up my 15 Transactions newsletter and doing the podcast and stuff, I'm watching the games to make sure that I'm not sounding like a complete moron whenever I'm talking about these guys.

So I'm watching players. If I like 'em, I'll give them a more subjective boost. I also think that there are some things that can't be captured with coaching tendencies and the way that coaches do certain things, and the way that they might use personnel. So that's another thing that I try to take into account.

You know, like I really am excited about what Mike McDaniel's gonna do with the Chargers. And that -- you can look at his historical numbers and be like, "Yeah, he's really efficient." And you can look at the way he's deployed certain positions and stuff. But a lot of times it's not just looking at -- you know, there was a narrative for a while with Kyle Shanahan, I don't know if you remember this or not, but there was a narrative that he feeds his X receivers 'cause he had Julio Jones and Andre Johnson, and then there was one off random season where Pierre Garçon had like 160 targets in Washington.

And so there was this narrative that Kyle Shanahan feeds his X receivers, but realistically it was, no, Kyle Shanahan's really good at scheming up his best players to get targets. Like Pierre Garçon was by far the best wide out on that Washington team back then. And then it's Julio Jones and Andre Johnson -- they're Hall of Fame players, you know? So of course they're gonna get a lot of looks in his offense.

But it's more so just thinking about like what does this coordinator do well, what kind of environment does he like and how does he run his offense, and how does this particular player really fit into that? You know, like I'm buying more into a decent season from Quentin Johnston this year because he's a good YAC player, and we know that both by watching and what data tells us and what he was as a prospect. And Mike McDaniel's been really, really good at getting his wide receivers in space and generating that YAC.

And so you can make that connection pretty quickly with a guy like Quentin Johnston, or like the speed aspect with Ladd McConkey or Keaton Mitchell or whomever. So I think there's a lot of that that goes on that folks think that I'm only in my spreadsheets, but there's a lot more to the evaluation process for me.

Jeff: Do you look for different signals between year three and year two, or is it the same things that are generally as predictive in one as the other?

JJ: Yeah, they're generally gonna be the similar things and similar metrics that I'm looking at in trying to find the predictiveness for year two or year three. But if we have an additional season to -- you know, like for instance, going from year one to year two, I have a year two model, like I said, and it looks at how well a player might perform in years two, three, and four. And that model uses -- so it's actually kind of interesting, to a nerd like me, but the running back year two model, okay, it looks at a player's year one numbers, and then it looks at his ZAP Score as well, right? And the same thing with wide receiver. It takes all these inputs as to how they performed in year one in the NFL, but then also factors in their ZAP Score.

At running back though, the ZAP Score gets a lot more weight in that model than the wide receiver one does. And actually, ZAP Score is more predictive itself for year two to four production at running back than year one PPR points per game is at running back. So let's say a running back just does really, really well in PPR points per game in year one. I care way more about how he was as a prospect after year one than how he actually performed in the NFL after year one. His prospect score is more meaningful.

Whereas at wide receiver, it's the opposite. The production at wide receiver year one is way more important than how he looked as a prospect.

And it's not because the running back model is so much better than the wide receiver one. It's just the nature of those positions and how they work, right? And so once you get into year three from year two, you have an additional year of NFL data, and so you're gonna continue to weigh that a little bit more than what they were as prospects. That's really the biggest difference from year two to year three.

Jeff: Well, let's get into some of the folks that you are saying are probably, or at least strongly possibly, breakout candidates this year. 'Cause we were just talking about running back and some of the challenges of the position and still going back to prospect analysis more so than you would in the other positions. Let's start there. Who are some of the running backs that you have said, "Keep an eye on these guys," or, "Get them now before they get too hot"?

JJ: Yeah, some of them have seen increased pricing a little bit. But like one of them, the first one -- like I'm in on the Jonathan Brooks stuff. I'm interested mostly because if you look at what Chuba Hubbard's done, I think he's a solid player, but he's not a special player. Like I think anyone listening will probably agree with that.

One of the things with Chuba that has gotten consistent signal is his yards per route run as a receiver. He is usually -- last year was okay enough, but is usually pretty poor in yards per route run. That's pretty predictive of next season receiving work and target share and stuff. And Jonathan Brooks came out as a really good receiver. Like that was part of his profile that was strong. And I thought his profile in general was really good. And so I'm willing to throw that dart with Jonathan Brooks. It's less of a dart now because his price has been rising. But I do think that he's a good breakout candidate.

I'll call out Bhayshul Tuten. I loved him as a prospect. I thought that his production profile was really, really solid. Obviously he has the burst. And obviously there's no Travis Etienne anymore. And Chris Rodriguez is going through this foot stuff. Calling him out just because I've been backing him since he entered the league. I've made the joke that #allroadsleadtoBhayshulTuten. And so I at least wanna give him a shout because I think the environment's good for him.

And then two other ones. One of them's probably kind of surprising, but one of them's Keaton Mitchell, who I mentioned with Mike McDaniel. I love the speed element as we saw Mike McDaniel with De'Von Achane. Achane's a better player than Keaton Mitchell, don't get me wrong. But you can really make the argument that Keaton Mitchell is the most efficient running back in football, period. Like he's just that good per touch, and that's really intriguing in an environment with their tackles coming back. Justin Herbert obviously being one of the better quarterbacks in the league. The run game should be good with Mike McDaniel. I'm just into Keaton Mitchell.

And then the last one that I can't quit is Jaylen Warren.

One of the things that we should be looking at with breakouts at running back is players in what I've always dubbed as ambiguous backfields. I know that people throw that term out a lot now. I'd written about it back in like 2015 or so, because I did a breakout study and I realized that the best players that break out are middle-round running backs who have middle-round running back teammates, right? Who have teammates being drafted along with them. It's not that they're subjectively muddied backfields -- you know, where you're like, "Oh, we don't know exactly--" It's, no, you look at ADP, and if the ADP is close, that's really telling you that it's muddied. And oftentimes one of these guys, whether due to injury or not, will emerge and become huge values at their cost.

And I'm betting more on Jaylen. Like I don't mind Rico Dowdle, but I'm betting more on Jaylen Warren because, again, going back to the argument with Keaton Mitchell, Jaylen Warren has been one of the most efficient running backs in all of football since he entered the league. I mean, his yards per route run is year over year in like the 80th percentile or higher. Like he's a great pass catcher. Last year, no Najee Harris, he got to see his running back rush share jump to about 60%. Obviously Rico Dowdle's there now, and that's a Mike McCarthy guy. But Aaron Rodgers being the dump-off guy that he's been, I could see a scenario where Jaylen Warren is sort of like a PPR cheat code this year, like we saw with Kenneth Gainwell last year.

And he -- it's not like Jaylen Warren was terrible last year, you know? So I think he's like a very interesting post-hype sleeper in a way, because last year people were more in on him because there was no Najee Harris. This year people are still kind of in on him, but not nearly as much.

Jeff: I'm with you too on Warren. I've always been a little hotter on him than most. I did kind of dampen a little bit last year when Kaleb Johnson was drafted, but he has all but disappeared from the world in a little bit of time.

Brooks, of course, I think as you're saying, he is already rising pretty quickly up the ADP board, so I think the world may be in on him. However, in a case like that, if he doesn't deliver in the first couple of weeks, you may have some managers who are ready to make a--

JJ: That's right.

Jeff: They may say, "Okay, I was wrong here. Let's move." So be willing to sort of jump in there after that.

How about on the wide receiver side? Who are you looking at over there?

JJ: Yeah, I don't have as many hot takes at wide receiver as I do running back in terms of guys who are gonna be really, really cheap. But I will call out Luther Burden. I think that he's just a special talent. The ZAP Model actually liked Burden just as much as T-Mac basically, from a ZAP Score perspective. And it's -- that's not a knock on T-Mac at all. That's just how good Luther Burden was as a prospect and how the model viewed him. And then obviously when he got his opportunities last year, he was really strong. Ben Johnson, who is not the most optimistic coach to the media -- especially when it comes to players and stuff -- is already saying that he's buying Luther Burden stock. Really good per route efficiency. I just think he's a really good player and in a good environment as well. So I'll call him out.

Zay Flowers -- I think that this could be finally the-- 'Cause like even last year, he got -- he had that monster game in like week 18 when it didn't matter from a fantasy perspective. And he has been more of a floor player than ceiling player, and a lot of that is because he's not used as much in the red zone and he hasn't had many end zone targets throughout his tenure in Baltimore. But there's a new offensive coordinator, there's a new system there, and Flowers has been unbelievably efficient per route.

And I go back to Market Score if you wanna -- from a season-long, this is a redraft season-long comp and perspective, but his top comps in Market Score are crazy. He's got like a DeAndre Hopkins season where he scored like 17 PPR points per game, and then one of his top three comps is Jaxon Smith-Njigba's 2025. And so I'm like, I know, I know Zay -- he's actually not that costly in dynasty given his body of work. But I think there's a very real chance that we see his cost be higher next year versus where it's at now.

And then the last one I'll call out, who just checks a lot of the redraft season-long boxes in terms of what we look for in a breakout in the middle rounds -- kind of early but more middle -- is Jaylen Waddle. Him moving to Denver, we've seen this story before. And oddly, year six guys are often the players in the middle rounds who do break out, which is a little bit noisy, but there is something to it. But he has really good previous season per route run efficiency, new environment. We've seen this happen before where guys change environments and they get fed and they have really good-- Stefon Diggs being an example of that after they were traded. I care much more about guys who are traded than released and signed, because if they were released, that team doesn't want 'em anymore. That's not a good sign. Whereas if they were traded, they're getting something in return, and they spent a decent bit to get Waddle too.

So I like the environment for Waddle. I think Waddle could end up seeing his overall cost rise by like five to seven wide receiver spots year over year.

Jeff: Yeah. Before we hit the record button, you and I were talking a little bit about a trade you made with Waddle in that wild league we're in. And so I probably should have put a trigger warning on that question before I asked it. I see your face sort of rolling up there. Did you at least get something good for him?

JJ: Yeah. I mean, I traded-- Well, I mean, it was one of those trades where I was trying to flip my team. It was a team that I knew I wasn't gonna win last year, so I'm like, "All right, I'll try to just get some assets and get some picks." And I traded Waddle for a first last year. This is around the time that he was -- you know, Tyreek had already been hurt and stuff. And so I got him for a first, and maybe first plus, maybe there was something else thrown in there from Alan Seslowsky. And Alan ended up winning the freaking league. So it ended up being a worse first round pick. And then rookie drafts this year ended up being worse than we expected. But it is a tight end heavy league and I got Stowers with that pick, so maybe if Stowers pans out, it's not the worst thing in the world.

Jeff: I like the Stowers pick, and there are only 10 teams in the league, so it wasn't as horrible as it could have been. It was still the 1.10, and I think Stowers is a good get given the talent drop-off that you had there. But yeah, looking -- that Waddle to me is exactly what you were saying earlier, that situations can change very, very quickly. I mean, he went from a deteriorating, crumbling Miami system into the league that literally threw the most passes last season. And that's generally a good sign for someone of a wide receiver's production, is if there's a bunch of targets and you can get them, you'll do something with them.

And I love the Flowers call. I think this is actually a year for him. I was trying to acquire a lot of him during the earlier part of the off-season before folks like you and me started talking about him, and now he's a lot harder to acquire, 'cause I think people are starting to see it.

And so let's go over to tight end, the position that bedevils lots of people. But I think we are seeing some major changes in that position in the way that offenses are deployed. So who are we looking at here, JJ, in terms of some of your tight end breakouts?

JJ: Yeah. One is kind of a post-type also in Dalton Kincaid. I haven't really been a Kincaid guy throughout his career, but I think we have to be honest -- his per route run efficiency has been very, very strong, and that's been on limited routes run. And if they just unleash that a little bit more, he can easily be a top seven tight end in fantasy. Very, very easily top six, top seven. So he's one that I'm kind of interested in.

And then the other one is a deeper one. It's Terrance Ferguson, who I just loved as a prospect, thought he was really strong. He checks those boxes that I talked about earlier about having a good backbone production-wise and as a prospect, and then also being really athletic.

The Rams don't have a wide receiver three essentially right now. They're gonna run a lot of heavy, which means he's gonna be on the field. But also, this is one of those plays where he might not be a tight end one this year in fantasy, but next year Colby Parkinson and Tyler Higbee could both be gone. And yes, they got Max Klare. I like Max Klare. I think he's a good prospect. But Ferguson is still gonna be the senior to Max Klare, and so you could see a scenario where the following year, you're seeing a big jump in cost for Ferguson. So you're kinda getting in early right now.

And so the breakout here is that he does enough as a second-year player to really see a big boost going into next off-season, and then you're really gonna profit off of that.

Jeff: Yeah, that's a smart read of the depth chart there, I think, with those two older tight ends. Even though there are now this jumble of five that all can catch passes in LA, they're not always going to be five. And I do see a world where it's Ferguson and Klare are the two, and then they may have a blocking guy here or there. And they may be able to pick up a receiver that can function on the field as a third receiver and don't need as many heavy sets. I mean, McVay has always been one to adapt his offense to his personnel, and if he's got -- at the moment he's got 100 tight ends, so we see lots of them, but that won't always be.

And too with Ferguson, a lot of people were really into him going into rookie drafts last year. He obviously didn't have the kinds of seasons that go with some of the draft capital that was spent on him. So you might still be able to pry him off of a Ferguson owner if you don't have him, especially if you tell that Ferguson owner, "You know, there's five tight ends out there this year, man. There's--"

JJ: They drafted Max Klare, you know.

Jeff: Yeah, he got Max Klare. I mean, you know. So is there anybody else that just kinda either has caught your attention that maybe we haven't mentioned yet that you wanna highlight?

JJ: No, I mean, I think that's generally where I'm at. I'm keeping an eye on some of the -- I wanna just see if there are any fallers, like guys who are a little bit banged up right now. Like, I never thought that this would be the case, but I'm becoming more and more interested in Alec Pierce, even though I literally thought I was gonna be on the opposite side of this argument this year, because he's never been a target getter going back to college in Cincinnati. I didn't think he was that good of a prospect. But he's gotten better every year in the NFL, and then now he has this injury and he's falling in season long, and he's falling a little bit in dynasty as a result of this. And so he's a little bit intriguing just from that perspective.

I was really into Josh Downs before a lot of the hype started, just because the depth chart -- it was very clear that they had to make these decisions of using Downs outside the slot. If you can still get him, I think he's a legitimate breakout candidate just because he's a capable player who can play inside and out. He's just only played inside throughout his career. And so he's another one in that same offense that would be a little bit intriguing.

But overall, the other guys that I mentioned are the ones that I'd call out mostly as the breakout candidates.

Jeff: Yeah, somebody in the Colts has to catch passes, right?

JJ: You would think.

Jeff: You would think. So one of them's going to. I think at Bob Harris's show a couple weeks ago, I think we were pretending that Pierce is the wide receiver one and Downs is the wide receiver two, because someone has to be. But I do think at least one of them is gonna do something, and I do like that Pierce's game has gotten a lot better. I mean, he used to just be the deep threat guy and that was it, and--

JJ: Yeah, he has to do more.

Jeff: So he has to be able to do more. He doesn't have Pittman there anymore, so the injury is a problem. I think if you've got a skittish Pierce owner in your league, this might be worth taking a--

JJ: That's, yeah, that's the time that I would. Like 'cause I don't have much exposure to Alec Pierce, and this is the way that I would kind of go about that, is just take a chance on what this injury is doing to him.

Jeff: Do you consider these guys that we've just been talking about -- from Brooks and Tuten through Flowers and Waddle to Ferguson and Kincaid -- do you consider these dynasty buys right now? Or is there a point that it's still too early to be doing that?

JJ: I think that you could for the majority of them. The one that is scariest would probably be Tuten just because his price has skyrocketed. I think for a lot of these guys, it's probably late. Like you should've been buying a couple months ago, whether it's Brooks, you know. I think Warren is probably still pretty static from a cost perspective because they got Dowdle. But Keaton Mitchell's rising. Burden's obviously risen. Flowers is rising a little bit. Maybe Waddle would be more of a buy just because people are kind of -- it's like a boring pick, you know? It's just someone that we think we know what we get out of him.

And then maybe the tight ends are still okay. Those would be the call-outs probably most -- like a Warren, Waddle, and then both tight ends.

Jeff: Yeah. And you know, obviously too late is when they have actually broken out, but do we think that the too-late period is actually earlier than we think it is? Like for Flowers, it may have already happened.

JJ: Yeah, unfortunately, it's like the projection is kind of baked in, right? That's what you have to do in dynasty. You have to be ahead of that game. It's unfortunate that people are getting sharper. It's harder on us.

Jeff: It's our fault.

JJ: They are, you know. They're getting sharper, they're understanding the game better, and that means that you gotta -- you can't buy right before the breakout. You gotta buy months before the breakout.

Jeff: Yeah. It's either you gotta pick that neighborhood for real estate before anyone's built in it, or you just accept that it's on its way up and you're gonna pay a price now, and maybe you'll be able to flip it later for a little more.

What about -- let's kind of break it out a little bit more into different types of teams. Should contenders be looking to acquire these guys, or are they better off sticking to known producers?

JJ: No, I mean, I think it's fine to go after the potential breakouts as a contender. I mean, you're -- like, again, with a lot of the analysis I just talked about, you're trying to build up value too, right? And the way that you stay a contender is by not dropping in overall value in your team.

And I understand you're gonna have to make some moves -- you're gonna have to get like a David Montgomery type or a Derrick Henry type who probably doesn't have that much time left being a productive enough player. That's gonna, sure, you're gonna have to take those losses. But you still need to take some wins, and the way that you do that is by being ahead of the game in these breakouts.

So even if you're contending, these guys should be helpful for your fantasy team still this year too.

Jeff: Yeah, either in your own lineup or they're the kinds of players you can trade to some of the rebuilders for that one-year rental that you need to put you over the top, whether it's Derrick Henry or George Kittle or somebody like that. And so I assume the answer on rebuilders is yes, these are exactly the kinds of guys that you wanna be taking a chance on as long as you can get them for a reasonably affordable or low price.

JJ: Yeah, 100%. It's important to see those huge value jumps whenever you are rebuilding. And then honestly, if you see those value jumps happen, if you are truly rebuilding, you can then have the discussion with yourself about should I sell them now and just profit and just get that big win and not have to worry about it dropping a little bit.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, that's actually really the next question is when's the time to start selling these kinds of breakout candidates? And how would you -- do you want to sell them first of all, and if so, what are you selling them for?

JJ: The hardest thing to do is to sell a player who just came off a bonkers season and is trending in the right direction and all that. But if you're truly in a state where you are purely rebuilding, the way that you can see the biggest value jump still with a player is through a rookie draft, right? Where you spend the 1.09 and then that player becomes a stud, right? That's how you gain the most value in dynasty. And so that's why accumulating picks is still a strategy that is going to work, because that's how you can gain the most value instantly with some of these players.

Whereas if you're taking an established veteran like Jaylen Waddle, yes, I think that you can win. Like I even said it whenever I was talking about Waddle, I think you can move up like five to seven wide receiver spots year over year. Is that gonna help your team? Of course. But is it as meaningful as what we might get from a rookie pick that hits? Absolutely not.

So you should be thinking about selling those players even though it's really, really uncomfortable to do so, because you can get bigger value jumps through your rookie draft in the end.

Jeff: What would you say is the most common mistake that you see from dynasty managers when they're handling these kinds of players?

JJ: Assuming that the breakouts happen before they happen, right? Like paying a price of what that breakout already is. You see it all the time. You could make the argument that right now Luther Burden is there, right? Because if Burden has an awesome, awesome season -- I don't know where he is, what? Wide receiver 14 or something probably in dynasty, 14, 15? And so if he has a monster year, yes, he'll rise in dynasty rankings. But he's gonna have to have an elite, elite, elite season to be able to get into like the Justin Jefferson range or something, right?

And so you could make the argument that Luther Burden -- I think he's a breakout candidate for sure. I wanna be in on Luther Burden, all of that. But at the same time, if I'm not equipped to buy into that, I'm not gonna just blindly buy into that, because realistically, if he has just like an above average season, he's not gonna rise that much, if at all, from a value perspective, right?

So it is important to not just assume that's gonna happen whenever you look at the price. So what I do as often as possible is I say, "Okay, what's gonna happen to this dude's price if this happens or if this happens?" And you just weigh the expected value and expected outcomes that way, and then you make your decision.

Jeff: Yeah, I think that might be a great articulation of why I'm not as high on Burden in dynasty as some others, is because I think that he's kind of trending at what I see as his ceiling. There's not a lot of room for him to go up, and you just kinda basically said that. But there's a lot of room for him not to go up. And even in an offense as prolific as Ben Johnson's, there's still that possibility.

So yeah, I think that sometimes we -- and even ADP can do this -- we price in this breakout that hasn't happened yet in anticipation of it. And if we're right, great, but we've had to pay for it in a way that we wouldn't have had to if we had picked up Luther Burden sometime last year when he was having that stretch of games where he was hardly doing anything at all. That would've been the time to get him.

Any kind of final advice that you've got for dynasty managers out there that have made it through this far listening to two nerds talking about a bunch of numbers?

JJ: Yeah. I mean, I think two things I would say. Do your best to always think in the gray area, like I was saying earlier, to not have black and white stances 'cause it's just not a sustainable way to win. And then the other thing being to think of dynasty as a market-driven game still, because it is. It's not just about production, it's about market as well, and that's an important factor when you're building out a team long term -- to have a team that's gonna accumulate in value and not depreciate quickly. You want the opposite to happen. So those would be the two big things. Those are like my two big pillars in the way that I think about dynasty.

Jeff: That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, JJ, thanks so much for being here today. This has been a blast getting to hang with you and talk about breakouts and ZAP Scores and your modeling career. Before you go, make sure you tell everybody where they can find you and some of the cool stuff you've got coming out in the next few weeks.

JJ: Yeah, I'm on Twitter @LateRoundQB, Bluesky as well. I got a YouTube channel, youtube.com/@laterroundff. You can check out lateround.com. We have the draft guide ready for pre-order. If you're really into game theory stuff and sort of the higher level thinking about fantasy football, not just player takes, the draft guide's definitely for you. So check that all out over on lateround.com, and the Late Round podcast too, of course.

Jeff: Absolutely. I think I may have already pre-ordered your draft guide. If I haven't, I'll be sure to do that in the next 15 minutes. That is a really good thing. Even back before I'd ever stumbled into a fantasy analysis career, JJ, you were one of the guys that spoke my language. And so I'm really, really thrilled to have you here. And thrilled to have all of you who are watching or listening, whatever platform you are on. Please do the things that really help a show like this grow. Please like, please subscribe if you have not. If you're over on Apple, please give us a five-star rating and drop a really nice review about how this show, this episode, this series has really helped you become a better dynasty manager.

And make sure to come back next week when we will have another outstanding guest and another terrific episode of Dynasty Compass.

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