993: Taking Advantage of Quarterback Touchdown Rates

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachers j J Zacher Reason. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode nine ninety three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings.

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Speaker 1: One per customer enter the Best Ball fifteen million dollars Headliner contest by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry twenty dollars entrprew required reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL Dash Best Dash Black sponsored by DK. Last week, on the Projections episode, I made a comment about Jared Goff being overvalued in fantasy football this year. I then turned that into a newsletter last week, and that newsletter found itself on Reddit. I feel like I'm having deja vu.

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Speaker 2: Now. This isn't an episode breaking down one of my.

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Speaker 1: Trades, don't worry, but it's definitely one that I think is very important for those of you who don't know. I got my start in the fantasy football industry by talking about quarterbacks. My social media handle late Round QB that stems from an ebook that I wrote all the way back in twenty twelve on the late round Quarterback strategy. Back then, everyone was drafting quarterbacks early, and I wanted to show people why that was wrong. Things are a lot different these days, as I've talked about plenty of times in the podcast, but one thing has remained the same. Touchdowns are still volatile. You've heard me talk about this before when speaking on the pocket passer trap. The crux of that idea is that, generally speaking, when you get quarterbacks who don't run the ball a lot, and when they have early round average draft positions, they bust at a super high rate. You're better off getting a mobile quarterback and high end QB two range. Then you are an immobile quarterback at like QB five. Historically, the main reason for that is because pocket passing quarterbacks, the ones who don't give you a lot of fantasy production with their rushing pocket passers rely more heavily on passing touchdowns to boost their fantasy scores. That shouldn't be some shocking revelation. If a quarterback is running the ball a lot, it means he doesn't have to post as good a passing numbers to match some of the production from a pocket passer. But for a pocket passer, those passing numbers are all he's got. He can't fall back on rushing, So if the passing numbers aren't there, then good luck in fantasy football and relying on passing production. It's kind of scary at quarterback. The single thing that's going to correlate to success most in fantasy football is passing touchdowns, and unfortunately, passing touchdowns come with a whole lot of variants. Now, don't get me wrong, better quarterbacks will generally throw for more touchdowns and bad quarterbacks will. But we know crazy and annoying things can happen in the touchdown column. A quarterback might throw an eighty yard bomb down to the one just to see his running back run it in on the following play. For that eighty yard completion, the quarterback is getting just three point two points. In the league that gives out one point per twenty five yards. Meanwhile, a quarterback might have a running back game eighty yards in a long run before going down on the one, and then the following play, if that team runs play action and scores on a pass, the quarterback gets four points. Technically more than four because he passed for a yard as well. That one yard play is a whole lot more valuable than the eighty yard play. And yeah, that's kind of annoying, it's kind of dumb, but that's how it goes in fantasy football. And that's a very basic example showing how touchdowns can sometimes be flu Like, we're gonna see a general correlation of yards to touchdowns. We're gonna see general correlation of strong talents giving us strong touchdown totals, but outlier type seasons happen at quarterback, and those outlier seasons are largely driven by touchdown variants. Let's walk through a general example of this. Touchdown rate is the easiest statistic to talk about when it comes to touchdown regression at quarterback. Because touchdown rate is simply touchdowns divided by pass attempts, it's really easy to grasp. For anyone who read last week's newsletter, Blast you saw this stat that I'm about to throw at you. Since twenty eleven, we've had fifty seven quarterbacks hit three hundred pass attempts to go along with a touchdown rate of six percent or higher. The league average during this time, by the way, is a touchdown rate of four point four percent. So the ordinary quarterback will throw a touchdown pass on four point four percent of their attempts, but in this sample of fifty seven, they throw a touchdown pass on at least six percent of theirs, so significantly higher. Meanwhile, of those fifty seven, forty four of them ended up throwing it three hundred or more times the following.

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Speaker 2: Season as well.

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Speaker 1: So after that six percent touchdown share season, guess how many of those forty four quarterbacks saw their touchdown rates increase year over year? Four of them, and two of those four were Russell Wilson, who had touched on rates of six percent and six point one percent, meaning he barely even made the cutoff here to begin with. Now, six percent is an arbitrary number for sure, but it's one that will probably see players hit each season, and it's one that shown serious regression in the past. One question I asked myself though, when I was writing that newsletter and when I was digging into touchdown rate, one question I kept asking was does the market generally account for this progression? And does it actually matter for fantasy football? Like I can point to all these quarterbacks to probably regress in some way year over year just by looking at a touchdown rate, but is the market already accounting for that? In other words, Jared Goff going from twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five, GoF had a touchdown rate last year of six point nine percent. He's now being drafted around QB ten depending on the source. Is his regression already baked in? What's happened historically with quarterbacks who had high touchdown rates? Do they live up to expectation the following year? Let's answer those questions. I went back to that sample of fifty seven quarterbacks who hit a six percent or better touchdown rates since twenty eleven. Now, obviously, if we're gonna analyze next season data, we have to remove all the players who hit that mark in twenty twenty four I also want to do some average draft position comparisons, and my ADP database is built off of data from Fantasydata dot Com, and that ADP goes back to twenty fourteen, So I'm really looking at twenty fourteen through twenty twenty three here, and I'm looking at quarterbacks who had three hundred pass attempts and a six percent or better touchdown rate in year n along with three hundred or more pass attempts and year en plus one the following year. So one year three hundred pass attempts at least a six percent touchdown rate, the following year at least three hundred pass attempts. That left me with thirty seven quarterbacks to analyze in total for some context. Of these thirty seven, only three of them improve their touchdown rate from year EN to year end plus one. So the vast majority of these dudes saw a decline and touchdown rate from one year to the next. But what about fantasy production? Well, of our thirty seven quarterbacks who had touched on rates of six percent or better during their follow up season, just six of them saw improvement in fantasy points per game. And for the record, I'm using standard scoring here, so four points per touchdown pass. But that means that roughly eighty four percent of quarterbacks who had a touchdown rate of six percent or better in one season ended up seeing a lower points per game rate.

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Speaker 2: The following year.

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Speaker 1: That's kind of staggering, but it's also not totally surprising when you figure how much touchdown rate is going to drive fantasy production in the first place. So if it's a volatile number that regresses, fantasy points will regress too. And also, of those six quarterbacks who saw improvement in points per game, one of them actually did see a decrease in passing points per game. That was Russell Wilson from twenty thirteen to twenty fourteen. The only reason he improved in points per game is because he went from one rushing touchdown during his good touchdown rate season to six rushing touchdowns the following year. Regardless, we're looking at eighty four percent of quarterbacks seeing a drop in production from one year to the next, and that drop in production is not insignificant. Let me give you the breakdown of the thirty one quarterbacks who saw a drop in points per game from one year to the next. Two of them had a drop in points per game of zero to one points, so not a huge drop. Three of them had a drop in between one and two points, so again not a significant drop. Five more of them had a drop between two and three points, and then twenty one of them saw a drop in production of three or more points per game. So yeah, eighty four percent of high touchdown rate quarterbacks see a drop in points per game from one year to the next, But fifty seven percent of them, well more than half of them see a drop of more than three points per game. And here's the kicker. If you sort this list of thirty seven quarterbacks by their year over year drop in points per game, another interesting trend emerges. The players who follow the most are generally pocket passers. They generally aren't giving you a little extra with their legs. Here's an example. Within our sample, there's some repeat performers. Lamar Jackson's been over the six percent touchdown share mark twice within the sample. Josh Allen, same deal, Russell Wilson has many of them, and so on. So there's a mix of players in here, a mix between mobile quarter and more immobile pocket passer quarterbacks. Well, remember how I said six of the thirty seven quarterbacks who had six percent or better touchdown rates ended up improving their points per game scores year over year. Four of those six players scored at least three point two points per game in that following season with their legs. When you sort this sample of thirty seven quarterbacks by rushing fantasy points per game, when you look at the top ten quarterbacks by rushing points per game, four of them actually improve their points per game year over year. To put that another way, it plays into what I was saying at the top, what I've said about the pocket passer trap, what rich Reebar wrote about over a decade ago when he created the idea of the Konami code at quarterback. When these quarterbacks are giving you some sort of rushing production, they're giving you other outs. So yeah, the passing regression is gonna hit. But oftentimes, when the quarterback is mobile, they can still maintain fantasy value because of what they can do on the ground. We need to be careful of all quarterbacks who have unsustainable touchdown rates, but we need to be extra careful with pocket passing quarterbacks who have unsustainable touchdown rates. Now, one of the big questions that I was asking is does the market actually account for all of this? We now know, and it's pretty glaring too that a quarterback with a high touchdown rate one year has a high chance of scoring fewer fantasy points the following season, especially if he's not that much of a rusher. But does the market account for this already?

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Speaker 2: Well?

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Speaker 1: I took a look at average drapt position data and here's what I found. First off, I think we need to be aware that the quarterbacks that we're dealing with here are all generally good quarterbacks. Touchdown rates are volatile and they regress, yes, but you'll still generally see good quarterbacks with slightly higher touchdown rates than the norm. You're not gonna get like Aidan O'Connell throwing to a seven percent touchdown rate in a given season. Now, we did have guys like two I get there, Carson Wentz, Nick Foles, some weird players like that, But the list of thirty seven is more filled with names like Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Russell Wilson, Joe Burrow, and Tom Brady. But because these quarterbacks are more good than bad. To go along with them coming off really good seasons, they're naturally gonna have higher ADPs the following year. The average quarterback rank by ADP among this group during their N plus one season was six point eight, meaning these quarterbacks were basically drafted at QB seven on average. The following season, only four of them were drafted outside QB twelve range. Now I just want to give you guys that context, because this first exercise plays into that. The first thing I did was simply look at average draft position rank that a quarterback had versus where that quarterback finished in that given year. So Peyton Manning in twenty fourteen after his twenty thirteen season that saw him with an eight point four percent touchdown rate, so he was above that six percent mark. In twenty fourteen, he was the QB one by ADP. Obviously that's going to be impossible to improve, but he finishes the QB four. But to give you an idea of how these touchdown rate regression candidates did in that N plus one season, twenty eight of the thirty seven failed to live up to their positional rank by ADP. So if a quarterback was ring QB seven, by ADP, and he finishes QB eleven. He didn't live up to his average draft position positional rank. Twenty eight of the thirty seven failed to do that, which obviously is.

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Speaker 2: Not what we're looking for now.

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Speaker 1: Late Round Draft Guide readers know this already, but I like to look at this kind of stuff a little bit more Precisely, I like to compare average draft position to player output. And the way I do that is by looking at history, plotting every quarterback spot by EIGHTYP since twenty fourteen, and comparing that spot to the quarterbacks points per game output using a trend line that gives me ADP expectation, or how many points per game we'd expect a quarterback to score at a particular overall ADP. I can then take that number and compare it to a quarterback's actual output, and we can see if the quarterback outperformed ADP or not. Unsurprisingly, this group of thirty seven quarterbacks underperformed versus expectation more than they overperformed.

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Speaker 2: Twenty four of them played under expected.

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Speaker 1: Which honestly, it's not as bad of a number all things considered. I thought it was going to be worse than that, and it tells me that the market is doing something to adjust for the incoming regression for these guys, But I will say not. Many of the quarterbacks have outperformed average draft position expectation by a large number of points. And on average, quarterbacks who are part of this cohort are falling about a point per game below ADP expectation. So just in general, these quarterbacks generally play one point per game below expected. That might not seem like a lot, but it is a lot across a larger sample. So when you look at where these high touchdown rate quarterbacks are being drafted the following season, they far more often than not fail to live up to average draft position expectation.

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Speaker 2: Two. So what does this all mean?

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Speaker 1: Well, to wrap up everything I just said, we've got the following takeaways.

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Speaker 2: Number One.

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Speaker 1: When a quarterback has a touchdown rate of six percent or better one season, odds are that he's going to see worse fantasy production the following season, and there's a better than fifty percent chance that he sees a drop of three or more points per game. Number two. That can be combated a little bit by quarterbacks who are mobile. They tend to beat regression more in points per game because they have another way of scoring points to fall back on. Now, obviously three points per game. It's a lot easier to lose from a player who scores twenty five points per game one year versus one who scores twenty. So if you just want to look at how the market predicts this stuff, it's still not great. Only thirty five percent of high touchdown rate quarterbacks will exceed ADP expectation the following year or they have in the past, and the vast majority of those players they're not doing it by a significant.

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Speaker 2: Number of points. And for the record, this applies.

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Speaker 1: Much more to season long than best ball. Best ball is about spike tweeks. It's about stacking that can shift a player's cost. It also makes certain players more or less valuable based on your team build. But for season long, it's a different story. It's very clear that touchdown rate is volatile, but we know that it's volatile, so let's use that to our advantage. Let's use that regression and instead of thinking that it's unpredictable, think that touchdown rate is actually predictable because we know what's going to regress. So what does that all mean for twenty twenty five. Then it means that we should at least look at Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, Sam Darnold, Jared Goff, and Joe Burrow with an extra careful eye. Fortunately for Lamar, we know the rushing production can keep him afloat. But Baker last year, though, he did see more rushing production than normal, which was great. Baker at a seven point two percent touchdown rate when his previous high was five point six percent. Burrow had a six point six percent touched on rate, which was also a career high. He'd seen six point five percent before. But Burrow's obviously a very talented passer with insanely good weapons, So even with a drop he might be okay enough. But I do expect regression. Sam Darnold, he's not being drafted very high. We don't really have to worry about him. And then, like I said, with Lamar, we know he's at least gonna get rushing production.

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Speaker 2: But then there's Jared Goff.

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Speaker 1: Goff had a six point nine percent touchdown rate last year, when his previous career high was five point nine percent. He threw for thirty seven touchdowns when his previous career high was thirty two, and that's across nine seasons in the NFL. Now, if you just think about what touchdown rate is touchdowns divided by attempts. One way to still throw for a high number of touchdowns while regressing and touchdown rate would just be to simply throw more passes. Right, So there's some way to work against this regression. If a team offense decides to throw the ball a little bit more, a player may not be hit as hard with regression. But just given all of this data, probability is not on these players' side. It's very rare for improvement to happen when touchdown rates are really high in one season. You don't have to full blown fade these quarterbacks because even a dip in points per game can still lead to good points per game numbers. You just have to be very aware that touchdown rate regression is a very very real thing. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by shooting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. I've Got to Becoming a Best ball bro coming out tomorrow. Then there's a mailbag episode later in the week. And David Kitchen and I we kicked off the Late Round Fantasy Football Show last week. We'll be doing that on YouTube every Thursday at one pm Eastern, so tune in for that if you can. It's at YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. So there's lots and lots of content coming your way each week, and the draft guide is out there too and available for pre order over on lateround dot com. Check it all out or don't do whatever fits you best, just know that it's there. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.