518: How Rookie Quarterbacks Affect Their Teammates

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa j J. Zacher reson What's up Everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com and this episode five hundred and eighteen of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. With five quarterbacks getting selected in the top fifteen in April's draft, there's a good chance that we see a lot of new faces under center this NFL season. Trevor Lawrence and Zach Wilson their locks to start, but Trey Lance, Justin Fields, and Mac Jones could all get more playing time than expected as well. We've done plenty of analysis this offseason showing what those quarterbacks are capable of in fantasy football, But considering their rookie quarterbacks, considering they have zero NFL experience, what about their teammates? What about the pass catchers and running backs on those teams with rookie quarterbacks? Should we maybe shift the way that we view those skill positions players because they're playing with rookie quarterbacks. That's the question I'll look to answer on today's show. Should we care if the running backs, wide receivers and tight ends that we're drafting are running in an offense with a rookie quarterback. Now before answering this question, Baseball Fans FANDLE has a fun promotion going on called five Dollars Dinger Tuesdays. All you have to do is place a twenty five dollars more bet on the to hit a home run prop on any Tuesday MLB game. You'll receive a five dollars site credit with a twenty five dollars max for each home run hit in the game by either team, regardless if your bet wins or loses. So head over to fandel on Tuesdays to play the five dollars Dinger. Must be twenty one years older in president of Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia or West Virginia. Refund issue does not withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days max refund twenty five dollars. Terms apply. Gambling problem called one hundred five to two forty seven hundred in Colorado, one hundred bets ff in Iowa one hundred nine with it in Indiana one one hundred two seven zero seven one one seven for confidential help in Michigan and one hundred Gambler in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Virginia, Tennessee redline at one hundred and eight nine nine seven eight nine, or visit one hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. We've had twenty nine rookie quarterback season since twenty eleven where the quarterback threw the ball three hundred more times. That's the main sample that I'm gonna work off of on today's show. Those twenty nine rookie quarterback seasons. Now, why cut things off at three hundred attempts? Well, I figured that would account for a majority of the team's pass attempt volume. And that's the case. Every rookie quarterback on this list threw at least fifty eight percent of their team's pass attempts during their rookie season. So, quite simply, I wanted to analyze those quarterbacks teams. I wanted to see if rookie quarterbacks generally made their skill players worse in Fantasy football, or maybe they made them better. I don't know. Let's see what the data says for exercises like this. I like looking at team level numbers before digging into the individual level. Instead of looking at individual running back performances with rookie quarterbacks, I want to see how a team set of running back performed. This data set actually provides a really good example as to why so we've got twenty nine rookie quarterbacks. If you look at where those rookie quarterbacks team running backs finish and fantasy point scored, the average was eighteen point seven. And all the data today is in PPR formats. Let me put that another way, though Andrew luck is one of the quarterbacks on this list, he was a rookie in twenty twelve. That year, Colts running backs finished with the second lowest fantasy point total in the entire NFL. They ranked thirty first. That was tied for the lowest of any running back group in this sample. Some quarterbacks had running back teammates who were better than average as a group, some were worse. More of them were worse. But the average rank the average finish for these team running backs when they were on teams with one of these twenty nine rookie quarterbacks was eighteen point seven. Now, the reason I said this data set provides a great example as to why we should start at the team level is because the RB one hit rate on these rookie quarterback teams has actually been pretty good, despite the fact that these team running backs have been below average. Of the twenty nine rookie quarterbacks in their sample, eleven of them had an RB one Top twelve fantasy running back on their team. That's a surprisingly high rate all things considered. If you figure every running back in the top twelve is from a different team, so twelve teams are being represented, that means thirty seven point five percent of starting quarterbacks league wide are playing with an RB one in this sample. That number is a little bit higher than the thirty seven and a half percent despite the team numbers being below average. This is why I'd rather look at team level numbers first and foremost, because on an individual level, it could just be the case that the team is giving one running back a whole lot of volume, even if that running back isn't all that effective. The sole fact that he's a workhorse is allowing him to be a top twelve running back, so hopefully that makes sense. So running backs seem to do slightly worse with rookie quarterbacks. I wouldn't say it's significantly worse, but it's slightly worse. Now this shouldn't be, but things are worse than that. At wide receiver and tight end. The team wide receiver ranking and fantasy points scored on teams with rookie quarterbacks since twenty eleven has been twenty two point three. In other words, team wide receivers with rookie quarterbacks are finishing between twenty second and twenty third, and fantasy points scored that's not great. At tight end, it's been between twentieth and twenty first. One of the first things that went through my head when I saw this was, while maybe this is a volume thing, maybe this is the result of teams not throwing the ball as much because they have rookie quarterbacks and they don't want those rookie quarterbacks throwing the ball a whole lot. And that's sort of the case. Just ten of the twenty nine quarterbacks were on teams that finished the season with more pass attempts than that season's league average. And if you look at where these rookie quarterback led teams ranked and passed the rush ratio, they ranked between eighteenth and nineteenth on average, So there's a little volume issue at play here, but I also think that doesn't necessarily matter. If that's how teams manage their rookie quarterbacks, then that's what we're working against when draft pass catchers on those teams. One question I got from my mailbag episode from last week was from Delhi Gayazov one that said, Hi, JJ long lived the show. Do you have any statistical data of rookie quarterbacks supporting more than one fantasy relevant wide receiver? Should we be taking it into consideration for Mooney, iyukndbo Chark and Laviska and the Jets receivers given their rookie quarterbacks. And the answer to this is yes, we probably should. Of the twenty nine quarterbacks in our sample, only three of them were able to produce a wide receiver one in Fantasy football. That's a top twelve wide receiver. Nine of them were able to produce a wide receiver two or better, wide receiver two being a top twenty four wide receiver in PPR formats. Those are pretty low rates. And if you look at the wide receivers who finished in the top twenty four, none of them had a teammate in the top twenty four with them in our sample, none of them had a teammate actually higher than wide receiver forty. The best tandem wide receivers with rookie quarterbacks is twenty eleven were from Andrew Lux rookie year, where Reggie Wayne and t Y Hilton were wide receiver ten and wide receiver forty respectively. Hilton did miss two games, but we're looking at a scenario where there was one low end wide receiver one and essentially one wide receiver three. Now, some of these rookie quarterbacks did produce a usable wide receiver with a usable tight end, but the rate of tight end ones on these rookie quarterback teams was just thirteen point eight percent. That's for a top twelve tight end. So four of the twenty nine quarterbacks helped produce a tight end one. Two of those quarterbacks had a usable top twenty four wide receiver with a top twelve tight end, but only two quarterbacks, Carson Wentz and Marcus Mariota, helped produce a high end tight end one or a top six tight end, and unsurprisingly, the highest wide receiver ranking on those two teams was wide receiver forty four for the Eagles and Carson Wentz and wide receiver fifty four for Marcus Mariota and the Tennessee Titans because a lot of targets were clearly going the tight end's way. Now, I know that was a lot of data, so let me just be clear about what I'm saying here. We really don't usually see more than one pass catcher become very viable in an offense led by a rookie quarterback, And honestly, depending on your definition of viable, it actually just never happens if a tight end blows up. The wide receivers on a team led by a rookie quarterback, they don't. If a wide receiver ends up doing well, he doesn't have a good tight end piece on his team, and no other wide receiver teammates are also finishing in the top twenty four with him. That's what we've seen historically. I'm giving you guys, historical data. When I was doing this research, I was talking about it with my friend and fellow analyst, Rich Reebar of Sharp Football Analysis. He did a study on rookie quarterbacks a couple of years ago, so I was curious that the raw data that I found looked similar to his His study was a little bit different, but it stretched back all the way to two thousand and one and what he found was similar. Last year Keenan Allen. According to his data, he became just the fifth wide receiver one in points per game on a team with a rookie quarterback who made eight or more arts. That data set included fifty seven quarterbacks. Rich also found something that was really vital to all of this as well. He looked at wide receivers who played with rookie quarterbacks over this time from so since two thousand and one, and he looked to see which ones ranked high the previous season in points per game, and then he compared that to how that player did the following year. Now, why is that important? Because it's showing us that a player was good, and then it'll show us the impact that a rookie quarterback had on that player the following year. He found that fifteen wide receivers ranked as the wide receiver fifteen or better one year, then got a rookie quarterback the following season, and of those fifteen wide receivers, of those fifteen good wide receiver seasons, only two of them, so thirteen percent of them increased their points per game the following year, and the majority of them saw their points per game rate decrease pretty significantly. With that rookie quarterback, I think all of this is telling and it's a little bit scary if you're drafting some of these pass catchers in the early parts of your fantasy draft. For running backs, I don't think think I'd change anything. One thing to keep in mind is the impact that mobile quarterbacks can have on running backs, which is something I talked through on episode five hundred and ten. I think that's far more important to this group of rookie quarterbacks than the study that I'm talking about today. But for the pass catchers, I do think there's some concern. The two players who stand out as worrisome based on this data are George Kittle and Alan Robinson. No one from the Jets is being drafted early, no pass catchers from Jacksonville have significant ADPs, and no one's drafting new England wide receivers high at all. It's Chicago and San Francisco that we should be worried about the most. In Chicago's top players Alan Robinson or San Francisco's is George Kittle. If you're still into those two players, which I'd argue is fine because they're both really good football players. But if you're really into them, then this data suggests that you at least should not be stacking. You shouldn't be drafting their teammates. We know that rookie quarterbacks don't usually generate more than one reliable fantasy pass catcher. So if you take Alan Robinson or George Kittle early, you should be working under the assumption that Darnell Mooney or Cole Kmet or Brandon Ayuk or Deebo Samuel that those players aren't going to have significant seasons. If you believe that those players will have significantly good seasons, then you should lower the expectation for George Kittle and Alan Robinson. That's just what this data shows. And on top of that, we've got situations with Trey Lance and Justin Fields where they're mobile quarterbacks, and as I mentioned on the episode from a couple of weeks ago, that also doesn't bode well for those teams pass catchers. Now, maybe Trey Lance doesn't see the field until like week fourteen, Maybe Justin Fields crushes it and at least allows Alan Robinson to maintain elite status. I could absolutely see that happening. But do keep in mind that when you're drafting your fantasy teams, if you select a pass catcher from one of these offenses with a rookie quarterback, you're making the assumption, because of how we've seen things go down with rookie quarterbacks, that that player's teammates aren't going to live up to expectation. That is, of course, if the player that you're drafting is living up to expectation, and you also are playing against probability a bit for that individual player, because historically past catchers on teams with rookie quarterbacks have been underwhelming. That's going to do for today's show, though. Thanks all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and no forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll have an early mailbag episode for you this week. I'll talk to you then