This article is part of our On Target series.
We have discussed advanced metrics in this column already this season and in seasons past but this year, we have yet to take a deeper look at touchdown scoring. With six weeks of data, we should be able to get a sense of who is getting lucky and unlucky, and try to identify 10 players who are due for some sort of regression.
It pains me to say it, but Nelson has a lot of signals that he will honestly be barely startable the rest of the way. The Aaron Rodgers injury absolutely submarines his value, specifically, because he has had one of his lowest target shares of his Packers career thus far and has been propped up by turning seven targets inside the 10-yard line into five touchdowns. Brett Hundley is not going to support that sort of efficiency, though Nelson could see his target volume increase if the Packers re-structure their offense to spread the ball around less with their new, inexperienced QB.
I never thought that I would be writing positively about Allen's ability to score more touchdowns, but he has the lowest ratio of targets to touchdowns scored inside the 10-yard line in all of the NFL. Allen is not really a "touchdown maker" but if he continues to be used in that role near the goal line, he could finish this season with eight touchdowns, which would be just a giant boost to his total value as that has not been
We have discussed advanced metrics in this column already this season and in seasons past but this year, we have yet to take a deeper look at touchdown scoring. With six weeks of data, we should be able to get a sense of who is getting lucky and unlucky, and try to identify 10 players who are due for some sort of regression.
It pains me to say it, but Nelson has a lot of signals that he will honestly be barely startable the rest of the way. The Aaron Rodgers injury absolutely submarines his value, specifically, because he has had one of his lowest target shares of his Packers career thus far and has been propped up by turning seven targets inside the 10-yard line into five touchdowns. Brett Hundley is not going to support that sort of efficiency, though Nelson could see his target volume increase if the Packers re-structure their offense to spread the ball around less with their new, inexperienced QB.
I never thought that I would be writing positively about Allen's ability to score more touchdowns, but he has the lowest ratio of targets to touchdowns scored inside the 10-yard line in all of the NFL. Allen is not really a "touchdown maker" but if he continues to be used in that role near the goal line, he could finish this season with eight touchdowns, which would be just a giant boost to his total value as that has not been a part of his profile in the past.
Kittle is a player that I have been focusing on pretty heavily almost all season, as I thought he was super undervalued in deeper leagues in drafts to begin the year. He has played 90 percent of the snaps for the 49ers in all of their games and also has five targets inside the 10-yard line, which is massive for a tight end. He had a quiet week last week after exploding against the Colts, and I would actually consider him a back-end TE1 instead of just a pure streamer.
Fowler should be the largest beneficiary of Emmanuel Sanders' ankle injury. Outside of Demaryius Thomas, Sanders and Fowler, no other Denver wide receiver has more than four total targets. Fowler has more targets than that (five) inside of the 10-yard line alone. I think DT will see a pretty big target share increase with Sanders out, but Fowler has become a usable WR3 in the interim. I am actually planning on starting him this weekend against the Chargers in a 12-team league where we start three wide receivers.
Believe it or not, Gronkowski has actually been unlucky in terms of touchdowns this season. He is the only player with more than nine red-zone targets and less than three touchdowns. The Patriots defense being so bad is actually a huge plus for him, as the Patriots can't afford to put him in bubble wrap until the playoffs the way that they have in years past. I think he has firmly established himself as one of the 5-8 most valuable players in FF with his target volume and specifically his red-zone target volume.
In a role that I did not expect him to take on this season, Fitzgerald is actually tied for the NFL league lead in red-zone targets. I suspect that the Cardinals offense would not be trending in this direction if David Johnson was still healthy, but it does not appear that he will be back any time soon. It is gross to tie your WR1 to an extremely aged Carson Palmer but with this target volume in the red zone, Fitz not only is an elite PPR wide receiver right now but he offers league-winning upside if he is going to score 10 or more touchdowns.
Before this column even goes to publication, I am sending out multiple trade offers for Garcon. While he is not heavily involved in the red zone or inside the 10-yard line for this team, Garcon is top five in all of football in targets but does not have a single touchdown reception. Even though the 49ers offense is #NotGood, it is unrealistic for a player to project for a 100-target season with no touchdowns. Even if Garcon ends up regressing to five or so touchdowns the rest of the way, he is not being valued that way.
Normally, we discuss only wide receivers and tight ends in this column, however due to the changing nature of the NFL, there are a subset of running backs that are really more pass catchers than they are runners. White is third in line for targets in the Patriots offense but does not have a receiving touchdown this year. As we have seen with the Pats pass-catching backs in the past, they generally are used as actual goal-line threats quite often, and White is a player that I start week to week in a few leagues as I am very confident in his ability to begin to regress to the normal stats associated with that pass-catching back role in New England.
A column about touchdown regression would not be complete without mentioning that Fuller now has five touchdowns on 14 targets. While I think that Fuller is a rather decent player and a really good fit with Deshaun Watson, who is proving that he really likes to take shots down the field, there is about a 0.0 percent chance that Fuller ends sustaining anything like this pace. Even Watson's TD rate is inflated by how hyper efficient that Fuller has been. You don't need to try to panic sell Fuller, but he really is more of a boom or bust WR3 than someone you can rely on starting every single week.
I am not sure if I am willing to believe that this touchdown rate from Brate is his new normal or if he is likely to begin to tail off dramatically. He has been the team's primary touchdown scorer through five games this year, but he plays on the same team with Mike Evans (who was born to score NFL touchdowns) and also suits up for a team with a healthy ground game. If you could get 125 cents on the dollar for Brate, he is a no-brainer sell at that point and I definitely would not try to trade for him right now, but he is someone who could end up being like Tyler Eifert and going in the sixth round next season.
