782: Low-Key Regression Candidates

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacheris j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode seven hundred and eighty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. When it comes to the term regression, you likely understand it by its typical definition. It's a return to a previous and less advanced or worse state, condition, or way of behaving. Regression is a little bit different when we look at it mathematically. Many assume that regression means getting worse at something, as the definition states, But when a fantasy football analyst like myself is talking regression we're really just referring to regression to the mean, and that says that if one sample of a random variable is extreme, the next sampling of the same random variable is likely to be closer to its mean or its average. If you go golfing and you shoot an eighty five when you typically is shoot in ninety five, the next time you golf you're probably gonna be closer to that ninety five number because ninety five is your average, it's your mean. You didn't necessarily get better when you shot that eighty five. You just had some lucky bounces and you had a good day. In that case, don't confuse regression with progression. Progression means you actually got better, you developed into a more advanced state. Now, players in football progress all the time. A rookie tight end gets better from year one to year two because he gains experience in the NFL. His numbers don't improve because he regressed favorably. His numbers improved because he progressed as a player. Regression is important to understand in fantasy football because fantasy football is a numbers driven game and it's also a small sample size game. There are only seventeen regular season games, and when we play fantasy football, we're often making decisions based on four, five, six games played. When a player is doing something out of the ordinary statistically, we should flag that player as a regression candidate, and that regression could mean that the player's numbers are bound to get better towards some average or some mean, or they're bound to get worse. Now, a lot of you already understand this concept, which is helpful for a show like this one. But a quick regression related example is when everyone's talked about this offseason, and that's what Deontay Johnson. Johnson scored zero times last year despite seeing one hundred and forty seven targets. It was the worst touchdown scoring season that we've ever seen at wide receiver. Naturally, he's not going to score zero touchdowns forever. If he sees another one hundred and forty seven targets this year, he's gonna score more. Last year, he probably should have been closer to six or seven touchdowns. That's based on where he saw his targets and the sheer number of targets that he saw, But he scored zero, making him a prime regression candidate. He should regress and see more scores in twenty twenty three. Now, Johnson's an obvious example heading into this season. I don't want to talk about players like that on today's show. I don't want to talk through obvious regression candidates. Oftentimes, it's more beneficial to talk about the lower key guys. So that's what I'm gonna be doing. I've got a handful of low key regression candidates heading into this season. I'll explain why they're candidates and whether that regression even matters for their fantasy football outlook. Now, before we get into candidates, I want to remind you to check out the Late Round Draft Guide. The Late Round Draft Guide has everything you need to crush your redraft leagues this year. There's strategy, philosophy, players of target players to avoid rankings, and tiers and more. You can purchase it on lateround dot com and when you do that, you'll get updates to the guide straight to your inbox each week through August. So check it out now over on lateround dot com. Players regress all the time in a variety of statistics. There really aren't tons and tons of numbers in football that correlate well year over year, which tells you that there's a lot of regression happening. A good example of that is with yards per carry. Yards per carry is not all that sticky from one year to the next, largely because it's a number that can be skewed by big plays. It can be influenced by more than just the runner himself. Offensive line play, for example, can help or hurt yards per carry, And when a player is touching the ball that matters too. Is he doing it on early downs only or is he seeing runs on third and long? All of those factors means yards per carry one year doesn't translate super super well to yards per carry the next. Some players are going to be really, really good, and we always focus on those guys like Derrick Henry or Nick Chubb, but yards per carry is not very sticky, and that brings me to Khalil Herbert. The Bears have what seems like a three headed monster heading into twenty twenty three, and Herbert, through two years in the league has been a really effective runner. He was especially affect last year, rushing to a five point seven yards per carry average. We've had fifteen seasons since twenty eleven where running back carried the ball one hundred or more times and hit five and a half yards per carry, So I'm not even talking about the five point seven mark that Khalil Herbert hit. We're talking five and a half yards. Of those fifteen seasons, we have twelve who had one hundred and more attempts the following year. So Khalil Herbert gets bumped from that list because he hasn't played in that n plus one season yet. Not a single one of those twelve running backs ended up increasing their yards per carry year over year, and the average decrease in yards per carry among that group one point two yards. I always preach that volume numbers are more important than efficiency numbers in fantasy football, and that's true. Herbert can be fine this year if he sees an uptick in volume without David Montgomery in the mix. But if we're using something like yards per carry to justify drafting Herbert, that's probably not the right move. He's been good, He's been a really solid runner. I think he is a solid runner, But chances are his yards per carry is gonna drop a decent bit here in twenty twenty three. Now, one thing to keep in mind with today's show is that players also regress to their own mean. It's not just some league average mean that they're regressing to. Obviously, Justin Jefferson is a better wide receiver than Mac Collins. His averages are going to be better than Hollins. And that brings me to the next low key regression candidate, Michael Gallup. Maybe you could consider this partially a progression candidate because Gallup was coming off in acl tear last year, but his twenty twenty two season was a big yikes. Specifically, Gallup had a yards per target rate of five point seventy three. That number had been well above seven in each of the first four years of his career, and it's not like his average depth of target was any different last year. He just wasn't converting. He had the lowest yards after the catch per catch rate of his career to go along with the second lowest catch rate. Low average depth of target rates can bring down a player's yards per target. So with that in mind, I looked at all fifty plus target receivers since twenty eleven who had a yards per target rate below six alongside an average depth of target above eleven. Gallup was well below that six yards per target mark, and he was well above that eleven A dot now. That resulted in thirty one wide receivers, and of those thirty one, seventeen ended up seeing fifty plus targets the following year. Of those seventeen, only one of them, Corey Coleman, was still below a six yards per target rate. The following year, fifteen of the seventeen were above a seven yards per target rate. This bodes very well for Michael Gallup. Not only can he progress because he's healthier, but we generally see inefficient seasons like this regress. That is, as long as the player himself largely maintains a role on his team, and right now Gallup is projected to do that. Maybe this next one's a little bit more obvious than the others, but Danny Dimes, Daniel Jones, we saw him take a step forward in Brian Dables offense as a rusher, playing a role like we saw Josh Allen play in that Dable offense in Buffalo, and that resulted in seven rushing touchdowns and one hundred and twenty rush attempts. Based on Pro Football Focuses Expected touchdowns formula, Dimes should have had closer to four and a half rushing touchdowns that gave him the biggest rushing touchdowns delta between should have touchdowns and actual touchdowns across the league last year at quarterback. The thing is this is being priced into his ADP. I'm actually ahead of the market with Daniel Jones this year despite this regression coming. He was a rock solid QB one last year, and yeah it was a down year for quarterbacks, but he's currently being drafted as a firm QB two. Now. Of course, competition at quarterback is different this year. Than last. But he's one of the few guys who does have the rushing upside in that QB two range, and he's still got room to improve as a passer too. So yeah, he might score fewer rushing touchdowns this year than last. We should expect him to. But this is an example to me where regression could hit but still not be that big of a deal. Now, speaking of touchdowns, it seems like everyone's focus on the Falcons passing volume this year when it comes to Drake London, they're fading him because the Falcons just won't throw the ball that much. But did you know that London could have easily had twice the number of receiving touchdowns last year than he actually had. PFF's expected touchdowns model had him close to eight scores. He had four touchdowns. Despite the low volume. As a rookie, London was top twenty in the league in red zone targets, and he had the same number of end zone targets as Aj Brown last year. Those end zone targets are targets that he received in the actual end zone that resulted in a touchdown total that should have been much higher than it was. Now, there could be natural progression coming for London as he enters this season as a year two guy, and let's hope there's a quarterback upgrade two. Just don't sleep on the fact that he scored just four times last year. Now, there are two quarterbacks who fall in the same category of incredibly low touchdown rates that I want to call out today because they play quarterback, maybe they're not all that low key. We tend to pay more attention to quarterbacks. The first one, though, was justin Herbert. Herbert had a touchdown rate last season of three point six percent, meaning three point six percent of his pass attempts were touchdowns. In year one, that number was five point two percent. In year two five point seven percent, So it was a dramatic difference for him from one year to the next. Since twenty eleven, the NFL average touchdown rate from quarterbacks has been four point four percent, so Herbert was well below that mark. And we know that he's not just some ordinary quarterback. We'll often see good quarterbacks reach marks of five five and a half percent within this statistic. What that means that the Chargers could very easily be more efficient through the air. Just truly this season. I think there are a ton of reasons to believe that, from a coordinator change to Quentin Johnson being part of this offense now, but I would be shocked if Herbert has that poor of a touchdown rate again this season. Now, the other player's Kenny Pickett, who had a touchdown rate of just one point eight percent last year. Some of you were gonna hear that and you're gonna say, oh, Kenny Pickett's just bad at football, But it goes beyond that. First off, Among all three hundred plus attempt rookie quarterbacks since twenty eleven, Pickett had the lowest touchdown rate. He's one of two quarterbacks to have a touchdown rate below two percent. The other one was Trevor Lawrence, whose touch on rate was one point nine to nine percent, and as we know, Lawrence improved that number from one point nine to nine percent to four point three percent last year. And no, I'm not saying that Kenny Pickett is Trevor Lawrence as a prospect. I'm just saying that natural regression happens. Touchdown rate would say that Kenny Pickett was the worst rookie quarterback in over a decade, and that's obviously an unreasonable take. We would all agree on that regression inevitably hits to some degree within this metric. A huge reason for Pickett's low touchdown rate it stems from the team level. The Steelers scored touchdowns in a really weird way last year. Fewer than forty three percent of their offensive touchdowns came through the air. That was a bottom ten number from any team since twenty eleven. That type of number almost always regresses to a mean. In fact, and this is in the Draft guide, but we've had twenty two teams with a pass rush touchdown rate below fifty percent since twenty eleven. Remember, the Steelers were at forty three percent, so well below that fifty percent mark. The average increase in that rate was six and a half percent year over year, So we should essentially expect the Steelers to be back to at least a fifty to fifty touchdown split in twenty twenty three. At least. This is one of the reasons that Pickett makes a lot of sense as a late round dart throw this season. Now, the last part of today's shows another one where I've got two candidates. How running backs perform at the goal line is not very sticky year over year. Since twenty eleven, there have been almost ninety running backs who have had back to back seasons with ten or more goal line attempts. Those are attempts within an opponent's five yard line. Some of those players had good conversion rates at the goal line, meaning they scored a touchdown on those attempts at a high rate. Some of them were bad. But year over year, there's been absolutely zero correlation across the larger sample between goal line conversion rate one season to goal line conversion rate the following season. In other words, that number fluctuates and regresses. Why am I bringing this up well? In twenty twenty two, there were two running backs it would have surprisingly poor goal line conversion rate. Kenneth Walker scored just two times on ten goal line rushes. Ramandre Stevenson had two touchdowns at the goal line on twelve goal line rushes. As long as those players maintain those roles, we should expect those numbers to get better. Now, with that being said, this doesn't automatically make those players favorable touchdown regression candidates. In fact, Kenneth Walker, given his big play scores last year, he's someone who outperformed as expected touchdowns last season, and then Ramandre Stevenson did play below expectation. The general point here is that those two running backs converted at a really poor rate close to the end zone last season, and there's a chance that we see that impact their volume in twenty twenty three at the goal line. Maybe their coaches don't want to use them there anymore, but if their coaches do use them there, if they do maintain that role, expect those numbers to look better. 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 it don't to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening, everyone greatly appreciated. As always, i'll talk to you later in the week.