Newsletter

The two best examples from last year are probably Ryan Grant and Brandon Jacobs. In 2008, Grant touched the ball 330 times but he had only 5 touchdowns. Because of that, he was being taken as the 16^th running back despite excellent rushing statistics and was behind Brandon Jacobs who was 12^th. Jacobs had a very good year with 1,089 rushing yards in only 13 games and he also had 15 touchdowns in only 225 touches. Jacobs had finished with 30 more fantasy points than Grant despite playing only 13 games so, of course, he was getting drafted ahead of him. However, if you looked closely, you would have noticed that Grant had 30 more fantasy pts than Jacobs if we excluded their fantasy pts from TDs.

In 2009, Jacobs finished with the exact same number of “non-TD” fantasy pts than the year before and Grant had only 20 more than the previous year. In total fantasy points however, instead of a change of 20 between the two, there was a change of 110 fantasy points in Grant’s favor! How did that happen? Jacobs went from 15 touchdowns to only 6 and Grant went up from only 5 to 11. That’s a difference of 90 fantasy points simply because of touchdowns. The change may have been much more than we expected but the formula predicted a change of 50 fantasy points in Grant’s favor which was enough for us to rank him above Jacobs last year. Because of that theory, Matt Forte and Steven Jackson are underrated this season while players like Michael Turner and Jonathan Stewart are overrated.

Here are the same charts as well as the formula for wide receivers that had over 40 receptions in two consecutive seasons:

As you can see, wide receivers have the most inconsistent numbers compared to quarterbacks and running backs. The formula is: 0.062 + 0.271 x previous year’s ratio.

In 2008, DeSean Jackson had 62 catches for 912 yards and 2 touchdowns and in 2009, he had only one more catch but he had 250 more yards and 7 more touchdowns. There are 19 receivers who, since 1983, have had a TD to receptions ratio of under 0.06 and went up to over 0.12 the following season (like Jackson). The following year, their average ratio was 0.091. This means that if Jackson once again has 63 catches, he should only have 6 receiving TDs instead of 9 which would give him 18 fewer fantasy pts than last year. If we also account for his yards per reception average, which went way up, (and usually follows a similar trend than the TD to receptions ratio), he’ll probably have 25 to 30 fewer fantasy points than last year. He went up from 31^st to 11^th last year while catching only one more pass and yet fantasy players  are still drafting him as the 7^th best WR. Touchdowns are extremely inconsistent and because of that, DeSean Jackson is extremely overrated this season.

The data is a little too limited to come up with a formula for tight ends but I assume that this would also apply to them.  Some of the tight ends that had high ratios that you might want to be careful with are Vernon Davis and Visante Shiancoe while players like Jason Witten and Zach Miller could improve over last year.

In conclusion, I hope this article has made you understand that players with a lot of touchdowns will not necessarily be able to repeat those numbers in the following season and you should not assume that they will.  When you are studying a player and deciding whether or not to draft him, take a look at his touchdown number and keep in mind that it will likely vary much more than his other statistics, especially his number of carries and receptions.

This ratio is included in our 2010 Player Rankings and for those players where we are far away from other sites, compare our projections for TDs and it'll likely explain a lot of things.

Previous Page