Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Rome Odunze Worth the 1.01?
Welcome back to the DLF Mailbag, the preeminent mailbag in all the dynasty fantasy football land.
If you’re reading this, we’re now into the winning season! A firm line in the sand has been drawn, as no more NFL games will be played until the 2025 preseason. While it seems far off, we know there are a number of actions between now and then – free agency, the NFL Combine, the NFL Draft, and then all the various minicamp and training camp proceedings. As always, we’ll take each new piece of information in stride and act accordingly – here’s to the start of the real season!
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Let’s get to it!
From Discord…
When in Rome…
Which side do you prefer for a contending team in a 12-team, half-PPR league – Rome Odunze or pick 1.01?
In answering this question, I want to introduce a phrase I’ll call “latent stubbornness.” One of the best examples I can use to illustrate this is ordering food at a restaurant. There’s a good chance you’re going to skip over half the menu because in your head (and stomach), you know you simply don’t like those offerings.
But what if that’s not true anymore, and rather you’re lazily relying on outdated information? So while perhaps spending money on date night isn’t the right time, but I’m a big fan of periodically testing my priors. And for me personally, yes, olives and yogurt are still absolutely trash foods – but as it turns out, after decades as dedicated cheesecake hater, I tried it recently and came away pleasantly surprised.
Before my editors send me back an email with seventeen question marks, I’ll get to the intended point.
Last season Bears receiver Rome Odunze was considered largely as the consensus #3 player in traditional (non-superflex/non-tight end premium). As shown below, while there were some ups and downs which largely mirrored his real-life campaign, the ascending sophomore’s value is largely unchanged.
Circling back to my original point, are you testing your priors here? While this represents the other side of the coin as compared to my food analogy (i.e., folks liked and continue to like Odunze), should you be reconsidering your previous thoughts on 2024’s half-PPR WR46?
Starting with the obvious, the odds were largely stacked against the rookie given the presence of veteran teammates Keenan Allen and DJ Moore, as well as the slow development of fellow first-round pick Caleb Williams. So while we’ve been blessed with a number of fine rookie performances in recent years (including 2024 with Malik Nabers, Brian Thomas and Ladd McConkey), I remain of the mindset it shouldn’t be the expectation. Given this, the addition of context may be appropriate.
To that point, and while noting Moore played the entirety of the year, Allen missed a couple of contests – and in these games, we perhaps saw a glimpse of the future for Odunze.
It’s a small sample size, but when Allen missed time Odunze’s numbers improved across the board. In increasing his targets, receptions, yards and touchdowns, Odunze’s fantasy points (PPR in this scenario) nearly doubled. With Allen now an unrestricted free agent, Odunze’s needle is pointing up. This, of course, brings us to the initial question.
I’m not terribly surprised here. Pick 1.01 is one of the most Teflon assets in the game, as picks tend to appreciate in value nearly right up to the time they are used. And even in what appears to be something of a weak class, there are still a few highly valued players.
Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty makes this a conversation, but I’d easily have Odunze above the rest of the group. So given my mantra of drafting for talent over need, the questions becomes simple – who do you think will be a more valuable fantasy asset moving forward?
Running backs become slightly more valuable in a half-PPR setting, which checks an early box for Jeanty. As a player with one solid receiving year (43-569-5) and a couple of other “meh” campaigns, it’s far from a guarantee he’s going to be a solid dual-threat ball carrier in the NFL. As such, this isn’t trifling.
The other concept here regards positional scarcity. While having game-breaking receivers such as Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson tips the scale on a weekly and seasonal basis, the drop-off in depth from the low-end WR1 range through the flex-level guys isn’t as pronounced as it is with running backs, particularly when the PPR is removed from the equation. With Jeanty likely to emerge as a bell-cow in his first season, this makes him not only a high-end running back asset, but a high-end dynasty asset in general.
As noted above, when context is applied Odunze had a solid first season, and he looks likely to continue to grow. But given Jeanty’s pedigree, likely status as a first-round draft pick, and position I have to lean towards him as the presumptive 1.01. But I could see this one going either way depending on each owner’s preference.
Hall vs Irving
Which side do you prefer in a 12-team, TE-premium, PPR league – Breece Hall, and a 2026 second and third-round pick, or Bucky Irving and a 2026 first-round pick?
Right here appears to be something of a lesson in recency bias. Yes, Hall is still valued a bit more highly than Irving, but it’s significantly closer than anyone would’ve projected prior to the 2024 season. Such is life for running backs as fantasy assets – in a position where you’re only as good as your last season, fluctuations in valuation come fast and furious.
It’s a bit hard to speak to intangibles in a game predicated around statistics garnered in an actual game, but here we are. And in this scenario, if the specific intangible is momentum, then Irving has it and Hall doesn’t. While it’s hard to glean this from the above graph, and noting that it’s taken some time, since September the rookie pulled his best Miley Cyrus and came in like a wrecking ball, jumping from an ADP of 150 all the way up to an ADP of 30.7.
While Hall wasn’t an abject failure, he was simply too hit or miss. Of course that was the story of the entire Jets team, which was somehow even worse with Aaron Rodgers at the helm in 2024. This was enough to cost head coach Robert Saleh (and interim coach Jeff Ulbrich) his job and Rodgers his tenure in New York, leading to a full-on reboot in 2025. So as seems to be the case every year with the Jets we’re grading their offense on a massive curve, but the simple fact is Hall fell off hard from his sterling 2023 effort.
I’m of the belief that the Braelon Allen story was fun early on in the season, but as shown above he wasn’t much more than a small thorn in Hall’s side even with the lost season. He touched the ball 17 times over the final month of the season, and was less efficient than his counterpart. If the new-look Jets offense is smart next season, they’ll continue to feature Hall.
I like Irving quite a bit, and though it took longer than it should’ve, Tampa Bay sensibly began to finally feature him down the stretch. From December onward he had at least 15 carries and 17 touches in six of seven games, averaging at least 4.3 YPC in each effort. While he didn’t send Rachaad White fully to the bench, he relegated him to more of a 1b or RB2 role, sensibly enough for one of the least exciting ball carriers in the league. Still, White was solid in the passing game and retains the trust of the coaching staff – it’s unlikely he goes away completely come 2025.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, given Irving has never truly functioned as a volume-based runner. While he’s not tiny, he’s far from a bruiser at 5’10” and 195 pounds, and given this there may need to be some workload management. And while we’ve seen examples of running backs functioning as elite assets without sequestering huge amounts of touches, to join them Irving will likely need to add onto his eight scores in 2024, or steal a lot more of the receiving work from White.
The first-round pick is nice, and massively trumps the second and third-rounders on Hall’s side which to me are little more than window dressing. But I just can’t get away from Hall’s upside that has already been shown on some terrible Jets teams, as he likely continues to function as a dual-threat ball carrier with bell-cow usage. So as much as I like Irving’s future, and even if Hall has a gimpy wing, I still view him as the bird in hand.
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Rome Odunze Worth the 1.01? - February 11, 2025
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: What to do with Jaylen Waddle? - February 4, 2025
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Buy-Low Running Backs - January 28, 2025
