1105: Market Score 2.0
STACKED extracted the fantasy-relevant player signal from this podcast and kept the full transcript here for context.
22 min
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Jun 23, 2026
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Tue, June 23, 2026
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Full transcript
Episode Transcript
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0:37Welcome to Alaska Airlines. This is the Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zacharysen.
0:42JJ Zacharysen. What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharysen in this episode 1105 of the Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast.
0:47Thanks for tuning in. A few weeks ago I introduced a new metric to you guys called Market Score.
0:54It's something that Brandon Gadula and I, we've been working on for a couple of months.
0:59And it felt like it was in the right place to share with you.
1:03As I mentioned on that episode, it was still a work in progress.
1:08We still had some things that we wanted to add and change.
1:11Though we didn't know how major those changes would be.
1:15Turns out, we needed some relatively big changes. After that episode was published, I received a lot of messages of confusion from people.
1:22Listeners didn't quite get what we were trying to do.
1:25And that's a problem. One of the hardest parts of my job is being able to communicate ideas that aren't always easy to communicate.
1:33And I want to do a better job with that when it comes to Market Score.
1:38So Brandon and I went back into the lab and we've emerged with a different type of way to talk about Market Score.
1:46And that's what I'm going to talk about today.
1:49And I'll be able to provide more concrete examples of who the metric likes and dislikes here in 2026.
1:55Before getting into that though, as a reminder, all of this Market Score stuff along with game theory talk, strategy talk, rankings
2:02and tiers and more are all in this year's Late Round Draft Guide.
2:06That's available for pre-order right now on the new LateRound.com.
2:10Or you can become an all access member on the site where you also get free access to the draft guide and
2:17the prospect guide, as well as just becoming a member.
2:20It's all up to you. But to learn more, check out LateRound.com.
2:24Now, if you didn't listen to the Market Score episode from a few weeks ago, no worries.
2:29You don't need to go back and listen to it.
2:33In fact, you might be more confused if you do that.
2:36Basically, the idea of Market Score stems from the ZAP model.
2:40As you guys know by now, the ZAP model is my prospect model that looks at different collegiate inputs to determine how
2:47well a player is going to perform in fantasy football across the first three years of his NFL career.
2:53A central piece of that model is draft capital or where a player gets selected in the NFL draft.
2:59Draft capital captures a lot of things that we should care about for fantasy purposes.
3:04And it's pretty predictive when looking at how well a player performs in the NFL.
3:09No surprise there. The higher a player gets drafted, generally speaking, the better he's going to perform in fantasy.
3:15When I sat back and thought about it, I've realized that I've kind of been doing the exact same thing as the
3:22ZAP model but for season-long leagues for years. I just didn't have a model for it.
3:27Let me explain. If you've read previous iterations of the late round draft guide, or even if you've just listened to this
3:35podcast, then you've read all of my analysis on average draft position expectation.
3:39Or how many points we'd expect a player to score at a particular ADP.
3:43Essentially, when you do some regression analysis, you can find the number of points per game you'd anticipate a player to score based on where he's drafted.
3:52A wide receiver picked 50th overall might be projected to score 13 PPR points per game, all based on history.
3:59Someone's 70th overall might be at like 11. And that's just based on what's happened historically.
4:04So right now, here in 2026, based on current ADP, we can estimate a player's PPR points per game output.
4:10It's a way to use the market in order to get a general understanding of how many points per game a player might score.
4:18So we have average draft position for season-long leagues, then we have draft capital for prospecting purposes.
4:24Those are both market values. For season-long leagues, ADP is telling us what the general fantasy football market thinks about a player.
4:31For the NFL Draft and the NFL itself, draft capital is telling us what the NFL thinks about a player.
4:37Now, as we know, the ZAP model then takes that draft capital input and it finds a score for a prospect based
4:44on additional inputs, like adjusted total yards per team play or breakout score.
4:49For market score, we're going to do the exact same thing.
4:52But instead of looking at collegiate metrics, we'll be looking at previous season numbers.
4:57Aside from rookies, where we will actually lean on some of those college metrics.
5:01Market score isn't going to show you how many points above or below expected you should expect a player to perform.
5:08We ran into some issues when describing market score that way, because expected points per game and relating back to expected points
5:15per game was kind of confusing people. Instead, we're quite literally going to be looking at market score the same way we
5:22look at the ZAP model, on a scale from 0 to 100.
5:26Just like the ZAP model, we can do some cool things with this.
5:31Like showing how many points per game we'd expect the player to score given his market score.
5:36Or telling you what overall ADP we'd give the player to break even.
5:40Essentially, telling you where he probably should be drafted.
5:43We can find player comps too, which is one of my favorite ways to use this metric.
5:49And this is just based off of a player's current ADP and some previous season metrics that give that ADP more signal.
5:56You can honestly think about market score as a formulaic way to rank players.
6:00Now I won't be ranking my players that way, but market score will be part of my process when I do rank players.
6:08Now something we ran into in developing this metric is just how scattered late round picks are.
6:13There's almost no correlation between ADP and actual points per game for late round selections.
6:18So using a formula might not be very helpful for those players.
6:22With that being said, late round quarterbacks and late round tight ends, they're very important to the game of fantasy football.
6:29Because quarterbacks and tight ends, they're low in demand positions.
6:32We can't just ignore them. We decided that the players who would receive market scores would be any quarterback or tight end
6:39drafted in the top 180, which is the top 15 rounds of a 12 team league.
6:45For running backs and wide receivers where far more of them are drafted early, we cap things at pick 120 overall.
6:51So if a player falls out of those ranges, he will not have a market score.
6:57So non dart throw players get scores between zero and 100.
7:00A score of like three doesn't mean the player is undraftable like it does with the zap model.
7:06Because remember, we're dealing with top 10 round picks for running backs and wide receivers.
7:11With that being said, we can definitely say, hey, historically players with a score of three have done X, Y, Z and PPR points per game.
7:19In essence, market score is giving us more context for player evaluation, and it's leveraging the market to do so.
7:26That's really what this comes down to. And since we reformatted everything, including some of the inputs in the model, let's talk
7:33about what market score is saying here in 2026.
7:36I can look at market score right now and tell you who it's generally higher or lower on this year.
7:42I'll give you one player it's higher or lower on versus the market at quarterback and tight end, and then two of
7:49them at running back and wide receiver. And we'll talk about some player comps to really help wrap your head around what's going on here.
7:58At quarterback market score is very high on Jalen Hurts.
8:01In fact, Hurts has a second highest market score at the moment, barely ahead of Lamar Jackson.
8:06His score is 71.8, which gives him honestly about a 50% chance to score 20 or more points per game this year.
8:14Josh Allen, by the way, he's had a score of 100 given what he did last year and where he's being drafted this year.
8:21But Jalen Hurts looks like one of the bigger values according to the metric right now.
8:27And I want to reiterate a couple of things here.
8:30First, this score can and will change. Average draft position is the baseline of this metric.
8:35So if a player's ADP increases, that's telling us that there's something more to be desired about that player's profile.
8:41Because the market wants him more. So his market score is going to get better.
8:46Second, please, please, please don't think this is how I'm ranking players.
8:50I do not have Jalen Hurts as my QB too.
8:53But I do think it's an interesting way to be a little bit more objective with our processes.
8:59To ask more questions and to try not to be too high or too low on certain players.
9:05Really, this is the exact same way that I've talked about the ZAP model.
9:10Jalen Hurts has some really interesting comps though. The way comps are created for market score is by looking at a player's
9:17market score obviously, but also his overall ADP, his positional rank, and then his career year.
9:22Those are all weighed based on importance. So career year gets less importance for the similarity score than some of the other metrics do.
9:30Now, admittedly, Jalen Hurts doesn't have a ton of super close comps.
9:34His closest one has a similarity score of 82.3.
9:37A lot of players have multiple guys above 90.
9:40But that top comp for Jalen Hurts is unfortunately Kyler Murray from two years ago, which honestly, pretty fair.
9:46I was high on Murray that year, as was the market.
9:49It's a mobile quarterback who was in year six of his NFL career, and he had almost identical overall ADP.
9:56Murray scored about 17 standard fantasy points per game that year.
9:59That was a huge bummer. So it's a little scary for Hurts.
10:03But within this 10 player comp sample, we also get multiple 20 plus point per game players like Joe Burrow in 2024,
10:10Cam Newton in 2018, Drew Brees in 2018, Russell Wilson in 2017, and Deshaun Watson in 2020.
10:16In total, it's a pretty good outcome for Jalen Hurts.
10:19Now, on the flip side, market score still really does not like Matthew Stafford, like far more than I do.
10:26But Stafford's the QB 12 according to the ADP that we're using right now in market score has him as a low end QB two.
10:34That's definitely not where I'd rank him, like I said.
10:37But it's seeing the touchdown rate regression that I've been talking about on the show, which is something the market usually doesn't factor in enough.
10:45It actually only gives him based on historical results about an 11% chance to score 18 or more points per game this year.
10:53Which again, I don't subjectively agree with. And the model is not going to be perfect.
10:58To me, it's just a way of saying that market score is not a big fan of Matthew Stafford.
11:04And funny enough, Matthew Stafford's top two comps are also Matthew Stafford.
11:08It's the 2022 season where he scored just 12 points per game than his 2020 season where he was at about 16.
11:15One thing I'll say about Stafford though, is that the comps really don't know exactly what to do with him.
11:22His top one has a 72.6 similarity. That's not high at all.
11:25That's probably one of the things that I'd hold on to if I were really into Stafford this year.
11:32Now, moving on to tight end market score is literally obsessed with Brock Bowers.
11:36Like, it thinks that he should comfortably be a first round pick.
11:40It's got a pretty big gap between Bowers and Trey McBride too.
11:44Tight end looks at a lot of factors in the model.
11:47And one of them is wide receiver competition score.
11:50That's a huge reason that Bowers is looked at so favorably.
11:54We know the wide receivers on that Raiders team, they're lacking in a big way.
11:59And that score is driven by the ADPs of those players.
12:02But like you look at Bowers comps and they're amazing.
12:06His top one is 2025 Trey McBride. We know how that worked out.
12:10Almost 19 PPR points per game and a league winning type pick.
12:14McBride had a slightly lower ADP, but he had a perfect market score, which is what we're looking at with Bowers right now.
12:21And it pains me to say this, but Colston Loveland is not beloved by market score.
12:26Honestly, the Bears pass catchers, they're iffy in general, according to this metric.
12:31And it's because of the competition factor, which I think deep down that's everyone's concern in some way, right?
12:37That instead of just one or two of these players emerging, all three of them, Loveland, Luther Burden, Roma Dunze, each of
12:44them have pretty good seasons, but they're not able to totally live up to ADP.
12:49I'm the kind of fantasy manager who wants to bet on some of these players to emerge, because that's where ceiling outcomes could really hit.
12:57But I do think Loveland's 49.1 score, which is one point below Tyler Warren's right now, it's reflecting that.
13:03It's a way for us to stay grounded with our evaluation, even if we don't blindly follow that score.
13:09Now let's go to running back. Jameer Gibbs, B.
13:12John Robinson, and Christian McCaffrey, they all look like smashes according to market score.
13:17But then there's also Ashton Gentry. He's got the fourth best market score among all running backs.
13:22He's looked at as the RB4, partially because he's young, he's a stud, and he had volume last year.
13:28But also because of what I said with Bowers.
13:31There's opportunity for him to be the central piece of this offense, and market score is recognizing that.
13:37Gentry's top comp is Eddie Lacy in 2014, his second year in the league, where he scored 17 PPR points per game.
13:44People forget that Lacy was actually really valuable for the first two seasons of his career in fantasy football.
13:51And then Gentry's other top comp, which has a similarity score of 90, is Ezekiel Elliott in 2017.
13:56Zeke scored almost 21 PPR points per game that year, his second year in the NFL.
14:02There's a very real chance I'll be even higher on Gentry after digging into his market score.
14:07Another player to call out favorably is Amari and Hampton.
14:10Market score loves these year two backs, Hampton being one of them.
14:14Hampton has a lot of close market score comps.
14:17Like Dalvin Cook in 2018, when he scored just 14 PPR points per game.
14:22There's also Kareem Hunt in 2018 as a second year player, when he posted 21.
14:27And then he gets some Miles Sanders, Gio Bernard, Christian McCaffrey, and Jameer Gibbs, all in their second seasons too.
14:33So there are some good upside comps, but even a player like Sanders, he's not a tremendous talent, but he still gave us RB2 numbers.
14:41I think the comps for Hampton tell a story that his floor isn't as scary as you might think, but there's really a fun ceiling.
14:49Now on the flip side at running back, I want to first call out that the first iteration seemed to really like
14:56Kyle Monungay and Blake Horam, the first iteration of market score.
15:00This one doesn't. Things were changed in the inputs, I just want to call that out and correct myself.
15:06But market score is not the biggest fan either of Jadarian Price.
15:10He's got a score of 24.3, which is more in line with someone like Ramondre Stevenson or Kenneth Gainwell than it is
15:17Bashaw Tootin or Quenchon Judkins, which is where he goes around.
15:21There are some market related trends that don't mind Jadarian Price, but for rookies and market score, the zap model naturally is a big input.
15:29And while Price wasn't terrible within the zap model thanks to teammate score, he definitely wasn't great.
15:34Price's top comp in market score is another rookie in carry on Johnson, who actually wasn't that bad at 13.9 PPR points per game.
15:42But then you get Bishop Sankey, J.K. Dobbins, T.J.
15:45Yeldon. He doesn't have any true ceiling outcomes among the top 10 on his comp list.
15:50More of like solid RB2s as a high-end outcome, which is to be expected as a rookie.
15:56But that does say that he might be a little bit overvalued.
16:00Tony Pollard is the other player to call out here.
16:03His market score is 18.5, which is close to Rico Doudal and not that far away from like Rashad White, who's going 30 picks later.
16:11Pollard's top comps are legitimately frightening. They're older backs who are still holding on to decent ADPs, but they failed to reach
16:18even 10 PPR points per game in that given season.
16:22Nick Chubb in 2024, Latavius Murray in 2019, Devin Singletary in 2024, Maurice Jones-Drew in 2014.
16:27He eventually gets a good comp in Fred Jackson back in 2014 and David Montgomery in 2023.
16:32But I've said it before and I'll say it again.
16:35Tony Pollard scares me this year. I know he doesn't have the toughest competition in the world, but I think there's plenty of variance with his profile.
16:44Like he should be one tier down versus going around players like Ramondre Stevenson and Jalen Warren.
16:50So that's running back. Let's finish things up with wide receiver.
16:53Market score really likes the top of the position this year.
16:57Nico Collins is probably one to call out specifically because his score of 74.3 is actually higher than Drake London's, which is 67.5.
17:04Nico's top comp is 2014's Jordy Nelson, where he scored 19.6 PPR points per game.
17:09Three of his top four comps hit 17.5 PPR points per game.
17:13It's a really good spot for Nico overall. A little bit further down the list, I've had a really hard time ranking
17:20like the round three to round five wide receivers this year because I just really like all of them.
17:26But I've got to say market score likes Tedaro McMillan more than I expected.
17:31Not that I think he's a questionable talent at all.
17:34Anything but the dude is a stud. The situation is just very scary given how little they throw the ball and how
17:41strong Bryce Young has been as a passer. But T-Mac friend of the show, by the way, T-Mac has a score of
17:4962.8, which is slightly ahead of a Mecca Ibuka.
17:51You could throw him in the exact same bucket.
17:54And because these comps are looking at market score, overall ADP, positional rank and career year, both T-Mac and Ibuka share a lot of the same comps.
18:03They basically share identical comps. And that includes their top one, which is year two Juju Smith-Schuster.
18:09That year, Juju scored 17.6 PPR points per game.
18:12Now, if you look at the bad side at wide receiver, I think the most obvious call out is Mike Evans.
18:18I don't hate Mike Evans as much as market score does.
18:22Mostly because I think the fit in San Francisco could make him this year's Devontae Adams with maybe even more yardage upside.
18:29But I definitely see the downside, which is why I'm not overweight on Evans right now in best ball.
18:35Evans has a market score of 29.8. That's more in line with like Quentin Johnston.
18:40Like it's very low for where Evans generally goes.
18:43Some of you are going to hate hearing this, but his top comp and market score by far is Allen Robinson's 2022.
18:50That was the year that Robinson changed teams just like Evans did.
18:54And he went to the Rams and he was just a massive, massive bust.
18:59Now, I really, really don't think that we're going to see that outcome for Mike Evans.
19:04And we did get a couple of good top 10 comps for Evans, like Emmanuel Sanders in 2018.
19:10But it just goes to show how volatile this situation is given where you're drafting him.
19:15And then the last player I'm going to call out is Matthew Golden.
19:19I bought into Golden and best ball because his cost is pretty cheap.
19:23But even at that price tag, which is close to a wide receiver 50, 117th overall, according to the ADP that we're
19:30looking at for market score at that price tag.
19:33He's got a market score of one. Largely because he didn't do anything last year.
19:38And he's obviously got competition based on ADP and Christian Watson, Jaden Reed and Tucker Kraft.
19:43Golden's top comp by far is Sky Moore's year two.
19:47There was some hope for more coming off of a bad rookie season, but it just didn't develop.
19:53If you want a more optimistic look for Matthew Golden, it's Jamison Williams in 2024 as a third year player, maybe Michael
20:00Gallup in 2019 as a year two player. But neither of those guys were league winners.
20:05And they're the only two players in Matthew Golden's top 10 comp list who scored more than nine PPR points per game.
20:12I'm not quite there with Golden, but it should bring you back to earth a bit if you're buying heavily.
20:19Now, like I said, all of this is just another tool to help us get closer to the right answers.
20:25You don't have to blindly agree. Similarly, you don't have to blindly agree with the zap model and what that says.
20:32Context is always key. But this version of market score, the one that we're using moving forward, it's more predictive than average draft position.
20:40And it should be helpful on our journey to winning a fantasy title.
20:44That's it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening.
20:48If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found.
20:57And don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at LateRoundQB.
21:01Thanks for listening, everyone. I'll be back on Wednesday on the YouTube channel with David Kitchen for the Late Round Fantasy Football Show.
21:09And then this week, it's a mailbag week. So I got a mailbag episode for you dropping on Friday.
21:15I'll talk to you guys then. Welcome to Alaska Airlines.
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