994: Mailbag - Jonathan Taylor's Outlook, Quarterback Bounce-Back Candidates, and More

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, 994 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings.

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Sponsored by DK. It's a mailbag day. Let's get to these questions.

The first question is from Patreon, it's from KJS. It says, just finished your episode on taking advantage of quarterback touchdown rates. Can the inverse of exceptional touchdown rates be applied to those who had poor touchdown rates last year? Aside from mobile quarterbacks, are there any candidates that jump out as prime bounce back targets, especially in a super flex format? Yes, the inverse can be applied, and I wish I would have focused on that more on that episode that I did earlier this week because it's pretty fascinating after digging into it more. I'm just going to go over some data really quick that I think explains this really really well. I looked at every quarterback ranked QB1 through QB18 by average draft position since 2014, and this ADP data is from fantasydata.com. I then only included players who played eight or more games in a particular season in this analysis, and then I looked at all those quarterbacks who played eight or more games. I matched them with their previous season touchdown rate. So Peyton Manning in 2014, he was the QB1 by ADP. The previous season, he had a crazy 8.4% touchdown rate. Now, I didn't want to get players with skewed touchdown rates because they had low pass attempt numbers the previous season. So in order to qualify for a touchdown rate, the quarterback needed 200 or more pass attempts in that previous season. That led to 167 quarterbacks in total. 23 of those quarterbacks had touchdown rates below 4% the previous season. 103 of them had touchdown rates between 4% and 6%. That's not a surprise because that's where the majority of quarterbacks finish a season in touchdown rate. And then 41 of them had touchdown rates above 6% the previous year. Now, keep in mind, there's a bigger number above 6% than below 4% here because we're looking at top 18 quarterbacks by ADP. If a quarterback had a poor touchdown rate the previous season, chances are the market's not going to draft him very high the next year. But that's three buckets. You get low touchdown rates, normal touchdown rates, and then high touchdown rates. Now, get this, of the 23 players with low touchdown rates, 48% of them exceeded average draft position expectation in that following season, or the season that we're analyzing. But 35% of them scored two or more points above expected per game. And then 17% of them scored four or more points per game above expected. And again, this is based on average draft position expectation. Every draft position has some sort of expected point per game value based on history. And this is looking at their actual totals, their actual points per game versus that expected points per game. Now, if you go to the 4% to 6% touchdown rate bucket, the normal touchdown rate bucket, you get 53% of them exceeding expectation. But, just 20% of them exceeded expectation by 2 or more points, and only 10% of them by 4 or more points. In other words, the players with low touchdown rates sub 4% touchdown rates, they were exceeding expectation at a larger degree than the players with normal touchdown rates. Then we get to the high touchdown rate group, the guys in the previous season who had a touchdown rate of 6% or better. Of those players, just 34% of them exceeded ADP expectation. That's by far the lowest of the three groupings. And while they did match the normal touchdown rate group and exceeding 2 or more points per game, not a single quarterback from this group, not a single one who had a 6% touchdown rate or better the previous season, exceeded ADP expectation by 4 or more fantasy points per game. Now, a lot of this has to do with the fact that high touchdown rates one season lead to high average draft positions the next season, and when ADP is high, it's hard to far exceed that expectation. But that's also the freaking point. Touchdown rates regress, so the market isn't regressing that number quite enough. Meanwhile, players with low touchdown rates below 4%, they're exceeding ADP expectation at a really high rate, at least compared to the other groupings. They're giving us these really good seasons versus expectation. Now, the player who stands out most for me this year with this analysis is probably Dak Prescott. Dak's touchdown rate last year, it stands out as just 3.8%. He was at 6.2%, 5.8% and 6.1% during his three years prior. CJ Stroud, that's another one. CJ Stroud was under that 4% mark last year too. And you can also throw in Matthew Stafford and Gino Smith. If the goal is finding value at the quarterback position, you actually want to target players who had low touchdown rates the previous season when you're drafting them at ADP. Now, obviously, if you reach for these guys, if you don't draft them at ADP, you're losing that advantage. It's not going to be as valuable as a pick. Like Dak Prescott, he's a great candidate for this. But if you take him QB7, you're not really taking advantage of the touchdown rate stuff. But at ADP, those are some of the quarterbacks who really stand out. This Desk Questions also from Patreon is from Tanner. It says, Hey JJ, why are you low on Jonathan Taylor? Seems like a solid RB1 at a discount. Now, I'm a little lower on Jonathan Taylor because the Colts offense just scares the living you-know-what out of me. Taylor was the RB7 last year in PPR points per game. And plenty of you will point to that and say that it doesn't make sense for me to have met RB10 right now. Which to be fair, that three spot difference, it's not insignificant. But Taylor was a totally different player when Anthony Richardson was under center last year versus when he wasn't. Richardson threw 90% or more of Indianapolis' passes in 10 games last year. Jonathan Taylor was active for nine of those games. In those nine games, Taylor averaged a target share per game rate below 5%. He did average over 16 points per game. But those outings weren't totally predictable. He had two games below 7 points, and he had a 26 point and a 40 point performance in there too. Outside of those games, Taylor's target share per game rate was over 12%, and he averaged over 19 PPR points per game. Obviously, either of those splits is fine from a points per game standpoint. But it's very difficult for me to confidently buy into a player who has the possibility of seeing such a low target share. And he absolutely needs to maintain his 94% running back rush share per game rate in order to keep up this pace. And maybe that happens, but keep in mind that since 2011, among running backs who played 10 or more games in the season, only Saquon Barkley has been able to hit a 90% running back rush share per game rate more than once. It's a really, really hard number to sustain. Now, I know I made the comparison to Anthony Richardson. He may not even start. But I also don't have this insane confidence that Daniel Jones is going to be great for Jonathan Taylor either. But look, I'm not going to fault anyone for drafting Taylor. I don't think he's quite an avoid because he's too talented of a player to be that. But I'm probably going to be underweight on him this year if this cost holds steady. It still may though. A lot can change as I research stuff more, especially for this draft guide.