Inconsistency of Touchdown Numbers
As you
have probably read quite a few times on this website, touchdown numbers
are very unpredictable and fantasy owners tend to overvalue players who
had a lot of touchdowns and undervalue players who had few touchdowns.
This is pretty simple since owners often look at fantasy points scored
in the previous season without looking at specific statistics. The
following article will show you how much of an advantage you can gain
over your opponents simply by understanding this.
Starting
with quarterbacks, there are various ways to look at this such as the
average change for quarterbacks who had more than a certain number of
touchdowns. However a much more interesting and meaningful statistic in
my opinion is the number of touchdown passes for every pass attempt.
This is a way to have much larger samples of data and include all
quarterbacks who only played a few games in a season because of injuries
or other reasons. The only restriction used is that a quarterback had to
attempt at least 200 passes in two consecutive seasons to be included in
this analysis. The league average is 0.043 touchdown passes for every
pass attempt so I decided to look at various ranges situated around this
average. The following chart shows the average number of touchdown
passes per pass attempt for quarterbacks since 1983 and their average in
the following season:
|
|
Less than 0.03 |
0.03 to 0.036 |
0.036 to 0.042 |
0.042 to 0.048 |
0.048 to 0.054 |
More than 0.054 |
|
Number |
73 |
91 |
106 |
94 |
68 |
103 |
|
Avg |
0.025 |
0.033 |
0.039 |
0.045 |
0.051 |
0.063 |
|
Avg next year |
0.037 |
0.038 |
0.040 |
0.042 |
0.044 |
0.049 |
|
Change |
50.4% |
13.9% |
2.2% |
-6.9% |
-13.8% |
-22.3% |
As you
can see, the difference between the highest and lowest group goes from
0.038 (0.063 – 0.025) to 0.012 (0.049 – 0.037). To put this in more
concrete terms, a quarterback who attempted 550 passes and had 35
touchdown passes (0.063 per attempt) would be expected to have only 27
in the next season. On the other hand, a quarterback who had only 14
touchdown passes would be expected to have 20 in the following season.
In a league that awards four points per touchdown pass, that means the
gap between two quarterbacks could close by 56 points. Based on last
season, that would mean a quarterback who was outside the top 20 could
be expected to be better than a quarterback who finished in the top 10
simply by looking at this ratio. I determined the following formula
which best predicts a quarterback’s touchdown passes per pass attempt:
0.027 + 0.339 x previous year’s ratio. Based on that formula here are
the top five quarterbacks whose touchdown numbers are expected to
increase the most and the top five who are expected to decrease the most
if they attempt over 200 passes again in 2009:
|
Top 5 Decrease |
|
Top 5 Increase |
|
|
Philip Rivers |
-28% |
Matt Hasselbeck |
+47% |
|
Tony Romo |
-19% |
Marc Bulger |
+42% |
|
Drew Brees |
-16% |
Jason Campbell |
+39% |
|
Aaron Rodgers |
-14% |
David Garrard |
+30% |
|
Kurt Warner |
-12% |
Kerry Collins |
+27% |
These are
statistics so you always have to be careful. Tony Romo has averaged
0.062 touchdowns per pass attempt over the last three seasons so he
probably won’t drop by 19% as the formula says he should. However,
Philip Rivers and Drew Brees both had ratios significantly higher last
year than they did previously. Assuming they all attempt the same number
of passes as in the previous year, Rivers would drop from 34 to 24 and
be the eight ranked quarterback, not the fifth. We used this theory for
a lot of our quarterback projections and this should give you an idea of
how important it is and explains why certain players may seem low in our
rankings.
|
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