768: Revisiting the Impact of Rookie Quarterbacks

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ zacheras J J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacher Esen in this episode seven hundred and sixty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Last week, I decided to take another look at the impact that mobile quarterbacks have on their teammates. Today, I'm revisiting another topic. It's one that I studied a couple off seasons ago, and that's the impact that rookie quarterbacks have on their teammates. This is one that I've wanted to go back to for a little while. I just wasn't a huge fan of how the last study all came together. The research itself could have been a little bit more thorough and a little bit more thoughtful. I think the numbers that I'm about to share with you today are way more interesting and they tell us a better story. The very simple question I'm analyzing here is how do rookie quarterbacks impact their teammates and fantasy football. Are running backs who have rookie quarterbacks under center better or worse for fantasy purposes? What about wide receivers and tight ends? I think intuitively we'd imagine pass catchers maybe being a little bit worse with a rookie quarterback because rookie quarterbacks aren't as good as other quarterbacks are. But maybe that wouldn't be the case, since rookie quarterbacks tend to be players who are good at football in general. Right, how often are we seeing random quarterbacks starting games as rookies. It's typically first round picks, the early first round picks. Those are the guys getting snaps under center as rookies. So maybe there's no impact at all. I'll get to all of that on today's show. Now, before digging into the numbers, I'm going to send another reminder to check out the guides over on lateround dot com. You've got the Prospect Guide to help with your rookie drafts, and you've got the Draft Guide that's available for pre order. The Draft Guide is there to help you with your season long drafts. In it, I talk about the things that I look for when I draft. I give players a target and avoid in your drafts. This year, I offer up my top two hundred rank and so much more. It's nineteen ninety nine to pre order, and when it launches on June thirtieth. That's going to go to twenty four to ninety nine, So check it out now over on late round dot com. So, similar to the Mobile Quarterback Study, I needed a way to define this whole entire thing. We know what a rookie quarterback is, it's a quarterback who's playing his first NFL season, But how should we define a team who's being led by a rookie quarterback? Like Deshaun Watson played seven games as a rookie, he started six of them. He threw the ball two hundred and four times that season, but he didn't lead the Texans and pass attempts that year. Tom Savage did, So it wouldn't really make sense to categorize that Texans team as a team who had a rookie quarterback. The players on that team they caught passes from a non rookie more than they caught passes from a rookie. So I decided to do the same thing that I did with the Mobile Quarterback Study. I looked at all quarterbacks since twenty eleven who led their teams in pass attempts and filtered that out by including only players with ten or more games played, so they played the majority of the season, and they were the player who played the most a quarterback for their team. Now, unlike that mobile quarterback study, bucketing these players is much more straightforward. I just need to see which ones were rookies and which ones weren't rookies. And when doing this, I got thirty seven rookie quarterbacks. So thirty seven first year quarterback since twenty eleven fit the criteria that I just laid out. My goal from here was to basically see how these rookie quarterbacks teams did in fantasy points scored, How did the team running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends do, how did that compare to the non rookies, And then from there, I'm going to dig into the individual players on those teams too, because I think it helps tell the story even better. I promise you if this doesn't make sense right now, it will make sense and literally thirty seconds. So since twenty eleven, we've got thirty seven quarterbacks in our rookie quarterback sample. When looking at those rookie quarterbacks teams, they ended up ranking on average nineteen point five four and pass attempts. Now, keep in mind there's thirty two teams in the NFL, the average pass attempt rank across the league in a given season would be sixteen and a half. These rookie quarterbacks are leading teams that rank nineteen and a half in pass attempts, meaning these teams with rookie quarterbacks are a lot more run heavy than the ordinary team. Meanwhile, their pass rates they ranked over eighteenth, again below average. Now, if you listen to the mobile quarterback study from last week, which you should, then you know where this is probably going. When teams have less volume, the pass catchers on those teams are going to struggle, and that's what we see with rookie quarterbacks. Within our rookie quarterback sample, the average team wide receiver rank and fantasy point scored has been twenty one point nine. So essentially, on average, a rookie quarterbacks team wide receivers are ranking twenty second in fantasy point scored in a given season. That's in PPR scoring. For the record, it's not like rookie quarterbacks are targeting wide receivers. It's some terribly low R wide receiver target share ranked sixteen point six. That's almost directly in line with the average, And it's the exact same story at tight end. The average team tight end rank and fantasy point scored for rookie quarterbacks has been twentieth. But they're target shairs. They're not a whole lot different when you have a rookie quarterback under center. So at a high level, we see that rookie quarterbacks aren't really supporting their pass catchers well at all. In fact, these numbers are worse than what we saw with mobile quarterbacks from last week. Now. The last position to look at here is running back, and at running back they do struggle with rookie quarterbacks, but it's not as much as what we see with wide receiver and tight end. Team running backs who have rookie quarterbacks, they've had an average fantasy point scored rank of nineteen point two since twenty eleven, so they're better than wide receiver and tight end from that perspective. And what's interesting is that running backs with rookie quarterbacks they tend to see slightly higher target shairs. They've ranked sixteenth in positional target share through the year, whereas all other quarterbacks are at sixteen point six, so it's not a huge difference, but it's the one position where target chairs are higher. Now we could stop there and say that you might want to be cautious about skill position players who are playing alongside rookie quarterbacks, and spoiler alert, that's definitely the high level conclusion of this episode. But when you take those team level numbers and you dig into the individual level, things become even more obvious. So, like I just talked through, each position in fantasy football ends up scoring less when a rookie quarterback is playing the majority of his team snaps in a given season, so that will naturally have a domino effect on the individual players on that team. In our sample of rookie quarterbacks, the average top wide receiver on one of their teams has ranked as the wide receiver thirty five in points per game through the years, meaning if you looked at a random rookie quarterbacks team since twenty eleven, his top wide receiver would be expected to rank as wide receiver thirty five in p DPR points per game or a low end wide receiver three. And that's among wide receivers who played at least eight games in the season. For the non rookie quarterback teams, which is a massive sample, that rank is roughly wide receiver twenty wide receiver twenty one a tight end. The average top tight end for a rookie quarterbacks team is tight end twenty three. It's tight end seventeen to eighteen for a non rookie quarterback. Breaking this down in a different way, you can look at how frequently rookie quarterbacks have wide receivers. Rank has wide receiver ones and wide receiver twos, or top twelve and top twenty four wide receivers in points per game. Since twenty eleven, the top wide receiver on a rookie quarterbacks team has been a wide receiver one, a top twelve wide receiver in points per game at just an eight point one percent rate. The top wide receiver being a wide receiver one on a non rookie quarterbacks team, that's happened at a thirty six point two percent rate for a top twenty four wide receiver season, it's the same deal. Rookie copterquarterbacks have at least one top twenty four wide receiver at a twenty nine point seven percent rate, So fewer than thirty percent of rookie quarterback teams have even given us a wide receiver two or better. That number shoots up to almost sixty six percent for non rookie quarterbacks at tight end. Since you're starting fewer of them, you can do this same analysis, but looking at top six and top twelve players at the position, rookie quarterbacks are giving us a top six tight end season at a five percent rate. It's twenty one percent for non rookie quarterbacks. Top twelve tight ends they're happening at a sixteen percent rate for rookies. It's forty one percent for the non rookies. I mean, those are some pretty insane numbers, like absolutely bonkers. Only three rookie quarterbacks since twenty eleven have had a wide receiver with a top twelve season in PPR points per game. Those three wide outs were Keenan Allen in twenty twenty with Justin Herbert where he was the wide receiver six in points per game, Percy Harvin when he was the wide wide receiver ten and twenty eleven with Christian Ponder, and Reggie Wayne was the wide receiver eleven with Andrew Luck. Keenan Allen had a twenty seven percent target chair per game rate that year. Percy Harvins was twenty four percent, but he also had fifty one carries. It wouldn't have been close to a wide receiver one without those touches on the ground. Reggie Wayne ended up seeing a thirty one point six percent target chair that season with rookie Andrew Luck, he had one hundred and ninety five targets, and he's still ranked as just the wide receiver eleven in points per game. So not only did the two traditional wide receivers in Reggie Wayne and Keenan Allen need a very very good rookie quarterback and Andrew Luck and Justin Herbert, but they also needed incredibly high target chairs to even sniff being a wide receiver one in fantasy. It's actually frightening to see how bad pass catchers tend to do with rookie quarterbacks. Now with running back the numbers aren't nearly as bad, thankfully. The average timeh running back from a rookie quarterbacks team in are sample ranked as RB twenty one. That was RB eighteen for the non quarterbacks, so not a huge difference. Even though team running backs they do tend to score a good number of points more for non rookie quarterback teams, running backs rank in the top twelve at a thirty five percent rate for rookie quarterbacks, and it's a thirty eight percent rate for non rookie quarterbacks. The top twenty four rates are sixty two percent and seventy one percent. Now, there could be some noise in that data and that rookie quarterbacks just ended up landing in spots with belcow running backs, but it loosely lines up with the team level data and that running backs tend to not be impacted as much by rookie quarterbacks compared to wide receivers and tight ends. Now, rather than just leaving at that, I do think there's one more layer to all of this, and that's seeing if this actually matters a whole lot when you're drafting. If the market is already accounting for this, then you don't necessarily need to be aggressive in avoiding these players. Now, I've been keeping track of ADP since twenty eleven thanks to my fantasy league's data, and given that, I've been able to put together a formula that gives me expected fantasy points for every draft slot at each position. Essentially, if a wide receiver, let's say gets picked fiftieth overall, how many points would we expect him to score in points per game? If a wide receiver then plays above that points per game expectation, then he exceeded his draft slot. He beat ADP. If he plays below that, then he didn't. So if this rookie quarterback stuff is a big deal, then wide receivers on those teams with rookie quarterbacks would consistently be playing below expectation, and the same holds true a running back and tight end. Turns out, there's some merit to all of this. Let's start with running backs. We already know that running backs seem to be impacted less by rookie quarterbacks than wide receivers and tight ends, and the market shows this too, but there's still an edge to be found. I looked at all running backs drafted in the top one hundred overall since twenty eleven who had a rookie quarterback. The remaining top one hundred running backs didn't have a rookie quarterback, So again, these are guys drafted mostly in the single digit rounds of a twelve team league. Clearly, far more running backs didn't have rookie quarterbacks, but we still have a decent sized sample of backs with rookies Under center. Of the running backs with a rookie quarterback, forty six percent of them were able to exceed expectation. They outperformed their average draft position. On the flip side, that number was fifty one percent for the running backs with non rookie quarterbacks. So running backs without rookie quarterbacks are doing better versus expectation. Now, for anyone who read last year's draft guide or who just listened to the show, you might remember the concept of moderate and true breakouts. A moderate breakout is when a player outperforms his ADP expectation by three or more PPR points per game. A true breakout is when a player does that by six or more points per game. Running Backs drafted in the top one hundred overall without rookie quarterbacks have been breakouts at a three percent better rate than the running backs with rookies, so they are a little bit better. But then get this, there's never been a running back drafted in the top one hundred who's been a true breakout with the rookie quarterback, But nearly nine percent of running backs in the top one hundred with non rookie quarterbacks were true breakouts. To put that another way, the players who are far exceeding expectation during the most important parts of your fantasy draft, the top rounds. They've been solely from teams without rookie quarterbacks all the way back since twenty eleven. And for the record, all of this holds true and stays steady when strictly focused on top sixty picks or running backs who are drafted in the first five rounds of a twelve team league. And these numbers stay steady with wide receiver and tight end two whether you're specifically looking at the top sixty or the top one hundred. Of all the wide receivers and all the tight ends drafted in the top one hundred since twenty eleven, remember this is the top one hundred overall, none of them have been a true breakout when they're associated with a rookie quarterback, not one, and of course the moderate breakout rates they're still better for non rookie quarterbacks as well. So what this means is that not only does this raw data tell us that players with rookie quarterbacks perform worse than the alternative, but the actual market shows this as well, and that piece is arguably more important. It means that from an ADP perspective, players truly are overrated when they're attached to a rookie quarterback at every single position. And by the way, if you're curious about this, exact same exercise with a mobile quarterback study. I send a newsletter out to Late Round Fantasy Football subscribers last week about it. If you missed it. If you're not subscribed to that newsletter, you can find it on lateround dot com in the newsletter archive, but make sure that you're subscribed to it. It's totally free. But in all, when you look at all this data, it seems pretty clear players do worse in fantasy football when and they're playing alongside a rookie quarterback, not just in terms of raw data, but also compared to how the market drafts. This is something you can exploit in the single digit rounds of your fantasy drafts, so you should probably do that. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Inter Fit to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Appreciate you all listening. I'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag Show,