993: Taking Advantage of Quarterback Touchdown Rates

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 993 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings, thanks for tuning in. Football season is right around the corner, and there's no better way to lock in your fantasy football dominance early than with Best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, DraftKings is giving all customers a can't-miss offer. Draft one, get one. Enter a lineup in the $15 million Best Ball Contest for just $20, and you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for a share of that $15 million, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week. Across the whole season, every breakout star, every clutch play, every touchdown will count toward your quest for a share of $15 million. I've been drafting over there. I've been shocked how easy it is to get 49er stacks right now. So download the Draft Kings Daily Fantasy app now to draft your $20 Best Ball lineup to play for a share of $15 million, and get a second ticket to play free for a share of that $15 million. That's two chances to win big without ever setting your lineup again. Draft one, get one, only on Draft Kings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. In New York, call 8778-HOPE-NY or text HOPE-NY to 467369 In Connecticut, help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-77777 or visit ccpg.org. 18 plus in most eligible states, but age varies by jurisdiction. Eligibility restrictions apply. Voidware prohibited, one per customer. Enter the Best Ball $15 million Headliner Contest by 9-425 to get one bonus entry. $20 entry fee required. Reward expires in 30 days. See terms at draftkings.com/nfldashbestdashball.

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. Now, this isn't an episode breaking down one of my 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 2012 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 in high-end QB2 range than you are an immobile quarterback at QB5, 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 of 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 variance. Now don't get me wrong, better quarterbacks will generally throw for more touchdowns than bad quarterbacks will. But we know crazy and annoying things can happen in the touchdown column. A quarterback might throw an 80-yard bomb down to the one, just to see his running back run it in on the following play. For that 80-yard completion, the quarterback is getting just 3.2 points in the league that gives out one point per 25 yards. Meanwhile, a quarterback might have a running back gain 80 yards in a long run before going down on the one. And in the following play, if that team runs play action and scores on a pass, the quarterback gets 4 points. Technically more than 4 because he passed for a yard as well. That one-yard play is a whole lot more valuable than the 80-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 fluky. Like we're going to see a general correlation of yards to touchdowns. We're going to see a 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 variance. 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 2011, we've had 57 quarterbacks hit 300 pass attempts to go along with a touchdown rate of 6% or higher. The league average during this time, by the way, is a touchdown rate of 4.4%.