1114: Regression Candidates

**JJ Zachariason** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.
What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1114 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. People tend to think of regression to the mean in a negative way, that if someone regresses, that someone got worse. They did something great, and then that greatness turned into goodness or mediocrity. But regression can work in the opposite direction, too. Regression to the mean is the tendency for unusually extreme performances, whether they're really good or really bad, to move closer to what's typical over time. If someone does something completely out of this world, chances are he won't be able to repeat that performance. On the flip side, if someone gets all the opportunity in the world and just doesn't come through, it's easy to assume that he's just bad at football. But what if the evidence suggests otherwise? What if he was simply on the wrong side of variance? I say it all the time. I analyze fantasy football through numbers because fantasy football is a game about numbers, and regression is one of the biggest aspects of that. Extreme outcomes are often a mix of skill and randomness, and while skill tends to stick around, randomness usually doesn't. That's why regression is so important to understand. I'd argue it's the most important concept in fantasy football.
On today's episode, we're going to dig into regression to the mean. We'll look at players, we'll look at teams, who are likely to look different this season, not because they've suddenly become better or worse, but because some of what happened in 2025 simply wasn't sustainable. Some players benefited from that, others got burned by it. Understanding the difference can help you identify some of the best values in your fantasy drafts this year. Now, before we get into all of that, I did want to send another reminder to check out the Late-Round Draft Guide. There's over 270 pages of content that includes game theory, strategy, ways to spot breakouts and busts, players to target, players to avoid, and more. You get cheat sheets in the guide, which includes a cheat sheet of our new market score metric. It's all updated weekly directly to your email inbox. Check it out and learn more at lateraound.com.
I think the easiest place to start with this episode is with the Rams. Now, obviously, a team led by Sean McVay, and with the amount of offensive talent they have, it's going to be good offensively. But that was also just on another level last year. Now, the Rams had Mike LaFleur now coaching the Arizona Cardinals as their offensive coordinator for three years. He got Matthew Stafford for 15, 16, and 17 games during that three-year stretch. The Rams during those seasons threw for 26, 22, and 46 touchdowns. Their touchdown rate, touchdowns divided by attempts, 4.5%, 3.9%, and 7.7%.
Since 2011, 14 teams had touchdown rates of 7% or higher in one season while having played another. So the Rams obviously don't qualify for this. Only one of those teams stayed above the 7% mark year over year, but that team, the 2011 Packers, still saw a decline in touchdown rate. They went from 9.2%, which is absolutely insane. I mean, that's peak Aaron Rodgers stuff right there, but it went all the way down to 7.2%.
Those teams averaged 42.1 passing touchdowns in that high touchdown rate season. On average, they fell down to 29.6 passing touchdowns the following year. Now, some of you are going to say, well, they got Devontae Adams. He drove this figure up. And yeah, for sure, he helped things out. But we also can't just assume that something like that's going to be sustainable year in and year out.
Adams in particular is really interesting because obviously he scored 14 times last year. That's a super high number given the amount of volume that he actually saw. And he was often just like uses their goal line back, essentially. His expected touchdown total was right around that mark. He didn't actually outperform in the touchdown column last year. And I would imagine a lot of people are going to point that out, that Adams won't regress because he performed around expectation when it came to touchdowns last year. But my argument against that is the fact that Adams tied for the most endzone targets last year of any wide receiver since 2011 And he had more inside the five targets, inside the ten targets, and endzone targets per game than any other wide receiver in that sample.
His other peripherals were fine, and he converted at a pretty normal rate. He just had so much volume around the endzone. That alone is just naturally going to be difficult to repeat. And here's the math behind that. Adams had 1.93 endzone targets per game last year. Absolutely absurd. That number basically laps every other wide receiver since 2011 But if you look at the wide receivers who had over 1.5 endzone targets per game since 2011, when those guys played eight or more games the following year, they've historically seen a 35% drop from one season to the next in endzone targets per game. And naturally, their points per game dropped by about two. Now, this isn't to say that Devontae Adams is an avoid for me, though I have toyed with the idea because I am a little bit below market. The reason it's not so obvious though is because I do think the Rams are still going to be really good offensively. But do keep in mind that it would be shocking, legitimately shocking to see Adams and Matthew Stafford repeat their 2025 performance.