Rewind: Taking Advantage of Quarterback Touchdown Rates

**JJ Zachariason** (0:02)
This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host JJ Zachariason.
June seems like a month where there's not a lot going on with my job as a fantasy analyst, but it's actually one of the busiest months of my year, because I'm working on the Draft Guide, and that Draft Guide has a ton of research in it each year that takes a lot of time. So to manage that time as well as I can, you may be getting more of these Rewind episodes over the next few weeks, for the early week episodes. They're still becoming a best ball bro, they're still The Late-Round show, and they're still perspectives in the mailbag happening each week. You won't be suffering from lack of content, I promise you that. But I do need to be smart about how I'm spending my time at this moment. With that being said, this Rewind episode is an important one, and the topic, it's one that I'm once again featuring in this year's Draft Guide. It's all about touchdown rate at quarterback. What it is, why it's important, and how we can use it to our advantage in our drafts. Last year's big touchdown rate poster boys were Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, and Joe Burrow. Goff did see the dip in touchdown rate that we expected, though it was still pretty high. He also saw his points per game drop by over two points per contest year over year. Baker Mayfield saw a major decline. Even if that was partially due to injury, regression hit him in a big way. Now, Joe Burrow didn't really have a huge sample, but for what it's worth and his seven relevant fantasy outings last year, he saw 16 points per contest. There's obviously more going on there, though.
But when it came to touchdown rate regression last year, the results were more or less right in line with what this rewind episode talked about. And while there aren't as many obvious candidates this year, the one that sticks out most is probably Matthew Stafford, something I talked about on last week's Mailbag episode. We'll see where his ADP officially lands, especially in more home leaks. But that's going to be the quarterback to track this summer. Regardless, though, if you want some of the data, you want some of this information on touchdown rate, give this one a listen. Before you do that, though, just make sure you check out the brand new lateround.com and you're pre-ordering that draft guide. I really try to make that draft guide bigger and better each year, and I plan on doing the same thing here in 2026 That's lateround.com. But without further ado, here's the Rewind episode on Touchdown Rate.
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.