As the summer has gotten underway, we’ve already delved into scoring output on a team level, player performance and dependency on the red zone and last week, we started our first look at the individual positions that make up fantasy football with a guide on the tight end position. This week, we take on the other “start one” position for traditional fantasy formats, looking at quarterbacks.
Leaguewide Passing Output Over the Past 10 Years
| Year | NFL Pass% | Comp. | PaAtt | Cmp% | PaTD | PaYD/Gm | Y/A | TD% | FF PaPts/Gm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 57.6% | 10856 | 17488 | 62.1% | 741 | 239.6 | 7.0 | 4.2 | 13.7 |
| 2016 | 59.3% | 11526 | 18295 | 63.0% | 786 | 255.6 | 7.2 | 4.3 | 14.7 |
| 2015 | 59.1% | 11527 | 18298 | 63.0% | 842 | 259.2 | 7.3 | 4.6 | 15.2 |
| 2014 | 58.2% | 11200 | 17879 | 62.6% | 807 | 251.8 | 7.2 | 4.5 | 14.6 |
| 2013 | 58.3% | 11102 | 18136 | 61.2% | 804 | 252.3 | 7.1 | 4.4 | 14.4 |
| 2012 | 57.7% | 10833 | 17788 | 60.9% | 757 | 246.0 | 7.1 | 4.3 | 13.9 |
| 2011 | 57.1% | 10464 | 17410 | 60.1% | 745 | 244.8 | 7.2 | 4.3 | 13.6 |
| 2010 | 56.9% | 10491 | 17269 | 60.8% | 751 | 236.3 | 7.0 | 4.3 | 13.3 |
| 2009 | 56.3% | 10372 | 17033 | 60.9% | 710 | 232.3 | 7.0 | 4.2 | 12.8 |
| 2008 | 55.4% | 10081 | 16526 | 61.0% | 646 | 224.2 | 6.9 | 3.9 | 12.2 |
From the beginning of this series, we’ve talked about the decline in offensive plays and scoring that occurred in the 2017. Where the league saw the largest dip in offensive production from prior seasons production was in the passing game. With the league having their highest rushing rate since 2011 coupled with the fewest offensive plays run in a season since 2009, we saw 807 fewer pass attempts a year ago than we did the year prior, which resulted in the lowest average passing yardage output per team since the 2010 season. Tack on that passing efficiency sagged a touch around that volume loss and we had the fewest amount of fantasy points being generated strictly through passing output since the 2011 season. Going even a step further, it was the worst output in bulk that we’ve had from the QB1 fantasy finishing passers since 2010.
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Russell Wilson was the only quarterback to crack 300-points in traditional scoring a year. It was the first time since 2009 that we’ve only had one quarterback hit that arbitrary mark. On average, the top-12 scoring fantasy quarterbacks a year ago scored 28.4 fewer fantasy points per player than they did the year prior.
The lowest hanging branch as to explaining that deterioration in passing production is that last season saw multiple starting quarterbacks suffer significant injuries throughout the season. Just 12 quarterbacks played in all 16 games a year ago, the smallest number in a season since 2010 while we had 56 different quarterbacks start a game last year, the most in a season since 2011. Aaron Rodgers, Carson Wentz, Deshaun Watson, Carson Palmer and Jameis Winston all missed three or more games due to injury while Andrew Luck and Ryan Tannehill never were able to suit up for the entirety of the season.
There’s also raw merit to those who believe that offensive play was subpar a year ago as the 6.4 percent sack rate per drop back was the highest since 2013 -a significant spike on the 5.8 percent rate of 2016- all while being above the 6.1 percent average rate over the previous 10 seasons. While we may have hit an apex in passing output that occurred in the 2015 season that was due for inevitable recoil after consistently rising over the course of the decade but connecting all of these dots as we move along, it’s not entirely so much that running backs were truly back for fantasy last year rather than that passing output flat out plummeted and that decline universally lowered the tide of fantasy output in totality.
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Replicability and Replaceability
Betting on passing game output to rebound closer to the base rates of the 2013-2016 seasons is something that can be advantageous given the 2018 market value for players, but unfortunately, no matter how much the game of the NFL changes, until fantasy football follows suit, the value of the quarterback position for fantasy purposes is still not one to sink capital into. Just as we discussed with the tight end position a week ago, because you must start multiple players at the running back and wide receiver positions, the supply of those positions is in higher demand than the positions that require you to play one player weekly. Because those players also inherently score more points, you need to have more of them on your roster. They are a necessity. The difference between tight end and the quarterback position, however, is that there is a much larger surplus of usable players to choose from and those players have a far tighter and predictable linear drop in scoring.
Using the same chart that we showed a week ago, you can see that the quarterback position stays above all other positions in terms of players producing multiple starting-caliber weeks until we get to the 7+ game level for wide receivers and the 8+ game level for running backs. On average over that span, 16 different quarterbacks per season produce six or more starting weeks (excluding Week 17). On average seven quarterbacks per year produce starting-caliber weeks in over half of the NFL season. If you’re in a 10 or 12-team league, over half of your league is going naturally uproot the players providing that production in that given season.
If looking for the truly elite level players at the position in a given season, quarterback has the lowest rate outside of tight end in producing players to hit the double-digit mark of games repeated as a baseline starter in a given week over the season. Identifying those special players providing that weekly edge prior to the draft is also actually worse than you’d believe it is. Over the past five seasons, only five quarterbacks have multiple seasons with double-digit starting caliber weeks in a given year. Not one of those quarterbacks accomplished that feat in back-to-back seasons and not one quarterback of that group has had more than two such seasons in total over that span.
That’s due to the quarterback position having the shallowest player pool while also having the tightest window of production in relation to the baselines set for each position.
In terms of gaining a weekly advantage, the highest-scoring quarterback has the lowest rate of gain on the baseline of his position. The weekly QB12 is scoring on average 54.1 percent of the top quarterback over the past five seasons. If calling back on the man games article referenced a week ago by Frank DuPont, the QB18 mark required for 12-team leagues still has the smallest gap (42.4 percent of the top scorer) to the top the position over the baselines of the other positions. This is where once again where value-based drafting can mislead the true gap in value when in relation to the supply and demand of a position. With the QB12 holding an ADP of 87.8 over the past six seasons and the QB18 having a price point of 135.1 over the same timeframe, you’re sacrificing little gain for a lot of investment at the position. This is why more and more leagues have moved on to incorporating a second quarterback into their lineup requirements, whether through a true 2QB league or the addition of a FLEX spot where you can play another quarterback. To inherently make the position more valuable while making the elite players at the position matter more over the baseline options of the position that are rarely used in the first place in traditional leagues. If you’re looking for a more thorough post on the quarterback position and how to attack quarterbacks in those leagues that start more passers, the fantasy quarterback guru himself, JJ Zachariason has laid out a guide for the position in SuperFlex leagues.
Bounce Backs and Coming Back to the Pack
If you’ve followed this article for the past few seasons, you’ll know that we’ve had a lot of success with simply looking at players who found their path to fantasy stardom by out-kicking their expected touchdown rate and those who were more or less unfortunate with theirs. Another way to easily get to where which quarterbacks should throw more or less touchdowns is to go back and look at projected team output, which we did in our opening post in the series. The first year we set this up, the simple relationship between touchdown rate and yards per attempt – an R-squared of .4567 - yielded Cam Newton, Russell Wilson and Blake Bortles as the primary guys to be cautious on breaking out the year prior. We all fantasy ADP tends to chase the prior season’s results and Newton had an ADP of QB1 that season while Wilson was the QB3 and Bortles was the QB8. All three underperformed their respective ADP.
Last year, things were much tighter and only yielded us Marcus Mariota, Matt Ryan and Philip Rivers as avoids at cost. Rivers was a strong option, especially over the back half of 2017, but two of those players were the QB4 (Ryan) and QB9 (Mariota) in ADP, steering us off a potential landmine in relation to the opportunity cost when investing early into the position that we highlighted to open. For the recommendations to buy, each of the past two seasons has given us the QB1 overall with Matt Ryan in 2016 and Russell Wilson a year ago. Last year’s other buys were Kirk Cousins and Andy Dalton. I wouldn’t call Dalton a hit for fantasy purposes, but his touchdown output did correct itself after a lackluster 2016. This year, the layout looks like this…
You’ve read a thousand items already on Deshaun Watson’s inevitable regression, but here’s another hundred words on the topic. Watson threw a touchdown once every 10.7 pass attempts over his limited sample in 2017, a rate that only 2004 Peyton Manning (once every 10.1 passes) has bested in NFL history for a player with over 100 pass attempts in an NFL season. Over the past 30 seasons, there have been 25 other quarterbacks to have a touchdown rate over 7.0 percent on over 100 pass attempts and the average loss on that rate the following season of that group was -2.8 percent with an average loss of -11.3 total passing touchdowns. Watson’s passing sample was 113 pass attempts lighter, but feels eerily similarly to what Nick Foles did in 2013 if you’re looking for some recency of a comparable season. But the one thing that Watson does have is a floor-saving trump card in terms of rushing ability. Last year, Watson also averaged 5.6 rushing points per game, trailing only Cam Newton. Watson has now torn each ACL over the past three years, so that ability may be compromised, but if there are no ill effects, he should still hold a steady floor. To tack on to the balance of regression and that floor, is that Warren Sharp has pegged the Texans with the lightest schedule entering 2018. I can definitely say that I won’t own Watson this summer given his current QB2 cost, but between his rushing ability and schedule, there’s an avenue where he doesn’t completely bust, even if he does underperform his draft cost.
Following suit with that statistical nugget on elite touchdown rates declining the following season is Carson Wentz. We’ve already highlighted how the Eagles should be expected to not only score fewer touchdowns in 2018, but also be expected to have a much more even balance of rushing to passing scores. The interesting part about Wentz and his 7.5 percent touchdown rate – which trailed only Watson – is that he ranked 13th in yards per attempt (7.49) and 29th in completion rate (60.2 percent) for all passers with at least 100 attempts a year ago. Wentz also was a great find in terms of adding unexpected rushing output a year ago, doubling his rushing yardage (299 yards) from his rookie campaign despite the three games missed while ranking eighth in rushing yards per game (23.0). We know his touchdown rate isn’t sticky and his late-season ACL injury puts his early-season 2018 rushing opportunity at risk, leaving Wentz as someone that will need to fall below his average cost over the summer to draw major interest.
We’ve already touched on how Russell Wilson should return back to the pack of mid-QB1 scoring while Seattle should find natural regression in terms of rushing for more scores, so we won’t dwell too long here. 2017. Wilson did have his least efficient season to date, posting career-lows in completion rate (61.3 percent) and yards per attempt (7.5), but those totals were still impressive considering that he no pressure on just 58.6 percent of his dropbacks, the lowest rate in the NFL for all 29 passers to play half of their team snaps in 2017. After an injury-filled season prior, Wilson’s rushing totals (76.6 fantasy points) swelled back to career marks, giving him a higher floor if and when passing touchdown regression strikes again as it did in 2016. But we know Wilson’s supporting cast has decayed from a year ago with the losses of Jimmy Graham and Paul Richardson, while they have one of the toughest projected outlooks entering 2018.
The last guy on the positive end is Jared Goff and it’s no surprise that the Rams also popped up as one of the top teams to expect natural regression from offensively this season, even if like the Eagles, they still remain a strong fantasy offense in totality. Goff accrued his points in an overly efficient way, which gives us some pause on going all in in year three. Despite ranking 24th in pass attempts per game (31.8), Goff posted a 5.9 percent touchdown rate (fifth) and 7.9 yards per attempt, which also ranked fifth. Goff threw eight of his touchdowns on passes from behind the line of scrimmage per Pro Football Focus, which was double the amount of the next closest passer. To surround those bunny touchdowns, just four of his 28 passing touchdowns a year ago were on throws 15-yards or further downfield, giving pause to how much more effective he can be with the addition of Brandin Cooks. Lastly, Goff was also was driven a bit by opponents, finishing as a QB1 in just six games, with four of those games coming against teams that were 25th or lower in passing points allowed to the league last year. This isn’t to say that Goff can’t continue to improve as a real quarterback, but with the Rams defense much improved and team still funneling through Todd Gurley on offense, his volume should remain in the bottom quadrant of passers, leaving us reliant on his second-year efficiency being the norm moving forward.
As for players that underachieved, I’ve already gone in on why we should expect Drew Brees to get back to being a high-caliber fantasy option while also expressing the Tennessee passing game is where we should be looking while fantasy owners squabble over which running back to own in that same post. Brees is the first big-name passer I monitor in leagues to see if he slides. I love Mariota’s season-long prospects of returning value as well and he has a Week 1 tilt against the Dolphins, but he may be someone that has a larger second half of the season as I do have some concerns with the Titans drawing Houston, (@) Jacksonville, Philadelphia, (@) Buffalo, Baltimore and the (@) Chargers over their next six games before their Week 7 bye. Things get significantly softer down the line, but that’s a lot of pass defenses that we anticipate to be in the upper third of the league early on.
Two names that also popped up in that same article alongside Brees and Mariota that also show up here are Jimmy Garoppolo and Mitchell Trubisky. In that article, we talked about how Chicago will be joining this century in terms of offensive approach and how that can greatly increase the lowly play volume they had under John Fox and Dowell Loggains. Much like Goff was as a rookie, Trubisky was shackled to an unimaginative and archaic coach as a rookie. No longer does Trubisky have to throw 43 percent of his passes to Kendall Wright, Dontrelle Inman and Josh Bellamy as Chicago has added Allen Robinson, Trey Burton, Taylor Gabriel and Anthony Miller this offseason to go along with Tarik Cohen and Jordan Howard in their backfield. Trubisky also has mobility, adding 3.1 rushing points per game last season to his totals and should be expected to run more run-pass options and operate out the shotgun more in his new system. Trubisky is set up to make a turnaround in year two and we’ve had a recent run of second-year passers that struggled as rookies markedly improve as sophomores and become fantasy relevant in Jared Goff, Derek Carr, Carson Wentz and Blake Bortles. To throw a cherry on top, Sharp has Chicago facing the fifth-easiest schedule of pass defenses.
Garoppolo made his first start with the 49ers in Week 13 and closed the season as the QB8 for purposes overall and 13th in points per game (16.4) over that span. During those five starts, Garoppolo averaged 8.8 yards per attempt and 308.4 passing yards per game, marks that would’ve paced the position over a full season. The only fly in his ointment was that he threw just six touchdowns to five interceptions in those starts despite posting such high efficiency per dropback in terms of yardage production. If you played a ton of Robbie Gould on FanDuel over that stretch, you know what we’re talking about. Despite being due for an increased touchdown spike, I do have some questions about investing into Garoppolo at his early season ADP of QB9 and am currently the lowest of our staff on him in our Draft Guide rankings. While we know the touchdowns should rise, when I look for a breakout quarterback, I look for two things. 1) Does this quarterback have 30+ passing touchdown upside? And 2) does he have rushing ability if the answer to one is no or a soft-maybe. Despite the kickback due for more touchdowns, Garoppolo’s receiving corps haven’t shown a lot of scoring upside as Pierre Garcon has never scored more than six times in any of his 10 seasons, Marquise Goodwin has eight touchdowns in 55 games played, and George Kittle is still a developing player. This could end up being a situation where Garoppolo needs several players to all score near five or more times, which is a tall ask. Garoppolo also has 19 rushing yards in his seven career starts. In my opinion, if you believe in Garoppolo’s ADP, you should then be looking to grab Garcon, Goodwin and Kittle as those players are actually discounted with respect to their position compared to Garoppolo at his, but there is reason to place strong stock in Garoppolo throwing scores at a higher rate in 2018.
Matt Ryan has bounced around the efficiency pendulum like no other quarterback over the past few seasons, going from a clear buy to a clear sell and now back to being back on our radar. Ryan still checked all the efficiency boxes in line with his career performance and he threw for 4,000 yards for the seventh-consecutive season , something only Matthew Stafford and Brees have done actively . Despite falling all the way to 22nd in points per game (14.3) a year ago, Ryan still ranked 10th in yards per game (255.9) and yards per pass attempt (7.74). The Falcons has a way better offense than their actual touchdown output suggested in 2017 and should be expected to find the paint more this upcoming season. The one thing to watch with Ryan is that after throwing over 600 passes in four straight years prior to 2016, Ryan has followed that up by ranking 22nd and 18th in attempts per game over the past two years, meaning that even if his touchdown efficiency recoils, he’s still only going to shake out a lower-end QB1 if he remains in line with his career efficiency output at those volume levels.
One final guy to touch on here is Jameis Winston. Winston was by far my favorite offseason value early on before his suspension, so that three-game absence stings. Despite having a suppressed ADP, Winston quietly made strides nearly across the board, improving his completion rate (63.8 percent) and yards per game (269.5) for the third consecutive season while posting a career-high 7.9 yards per attempt, which ranked seventh in the league. This came in a season in which he injured his right shoulder in the Buccaneers fifth game, an injury that Winston attempted to play through before inevitably missing three full games and essentially two other ones in which he played a half or fewer. When he returned for Weeks 13-17, Winston was the QB1 for fantasy purposes and led the NFL in passing yards (316.8 yards per game). Winston is on a pass-first team littered with strong passing options, setting him up to be an updated version of early-career Matthew Stafford for fantasy. But now, with Winston missing the opening three weeks and having an early season bye in Week 5, that means you’re going to have to have him eat a roster spot for the opening five weeks with only getting one start (@ CHI) from him. That’s a no go in leagues that only start one quarterback when positional points are so readily available. If you’re in a deeper league, you can explore the possibilities of pairing him with someone like Tyrod Taylor, but my bet is that Winston will find waivers more often than not in leagues over the opening month when the fantasy wire is churning and the hottest and if like Winston, you’ll be able grab him in many leagues for a second-half of the fantasy season spike after the opening month.
