When a Touchdown Hurts, Pt.2

Last week I focused mainly on wide receivers who scored too much or too little. With the fantasy football draft season fast approaching and a busy summer schedule, I didn’t have time to dive into running backs. I can put my findings up on socials in a quick post or video, maybe even a podcast. But I won’t be featuring them here.

However, I did want to turn our attention to “the big picture”. Offenses can rebound as well, we see breakout offenses every year. The Los Angeles Rams went from the bottom-10 offense in 2022 to a top-10 scoring offense in 2023. Houston went from laughable to the middle of the pack. Indianapolis jumped from 31st to 11th.

Offenses can also regress. Kansas City went from leading the NFL in offensive points scored in 2022 to 15th in 2023 (and still won a Super Bowl!). Minnesota, Cincinnati, and Seattle all endured a loss in offensive scoring. Granted, two of those teams also suffered injuries to their starting quarterbacks.

We’ll go over the teams that could see a dip or rise in production, some of which are fairly obvious, others, maybe less so. I’m using + / - Touchdown Over Average (TOA) to signal a team’s performance in three different areas we could see regression: passing (Pass), rushing (Rush), and overall (OVR). Positive implies a team was above average, negative, below average.

I should also mention that the source for my research came from Pro Football Reference, which is a great site to find stats for anything football-related. Let’s get to it!

The Overperformers 📉 

🐎 🟠 Denver Broncos, 4.4 Pass TOA, -6.7 Rush TOA

I can’t really think of anyone last year who said “Man, Denver is actually having a decent year”. And in truth, they actually had a negative TOA. So how did they overperform? I’m mainly looking at their passing production, where Broncos quarterbacks threw a touchdown on 5.5% of their pass attempts, a little over a percentage point above the league average. With Bo Nix at the helm, I’m not optimistic about the passing offense, however, I do think the running backs will get a slight boost.

🤠 Dallas Cowboys, 12.4 Pass TOA

Dallas was right at the NFL average for rushing touchdowns but was a league-leading 12.4 TOA in the passing game. Tony Pollard was abysmal down towards the goal line, converting only two of his 16 attempts inside the 5-yard line into touchdowns. If Ezekiel Elliot’s his efficiency is any better than Pollard’s, fewer touchdowns are going to the receiving options. Plus, it’s just hard to throw 36 touchdowns in consecutive years. Prescott has yet to have back-to-back 30-touchdown seasons in his career.

The Underachievers 📈 

🏹 Kansas City Chiefs 🔴 -1.3 OVR TOA, -5.7 Rush TOA

Kansas City falling so far down the order in offensive scoring yet still winning a Super Bowl is impressive. It goes to show what a great defense can do for a team as long as the offense stays OK. Kansas City added multiple bodies into their receiving room this year, giving Mahomes more viable options in the passing game than he had last year. None are as good as Tyreek Hill of course, but they should still give this offense a needed boost.

What’s crazy is that Mahomes has thrown more touchdowns by himself than the team scored as a whole on offense in 2023 four times in his career. Likely, the slip in production is not the rule, but the exception. The running game with Pacheco and Mahomes scrambling should see a boost as well. 2023 was the first time since Mahomes took the helm in KC that he did not score a rushing TD all season. He averaged 2.4 rushing touchdowns per year leading up to that point.

🛫 New York Jets 🟢 -20.3 OVR TOA

The big thing here is Aaron Rodgers. If he can stay healthy, I don’t envision a world where the Jets don’t start scoring more points than they have in the last several years. Breece Hall should get a boost as well as Garrett Wilson, who has struggled to score with the awful QB play he’s endured so far in his career. Mike Williams on the opposite side of the field should open things up a little more for Wilson as well.

Can you imagine if they just get back to league-average scoring?!? Heck, even just below average would give them an additional 15-18 TD’s spread between guys like Hall, Wilson, Williams, and the ancillary options. It would mean wonders for their high-end fantasy options and their respective seasons.

🐈‍⬛ Carolina Panthers 🔵 -18.3 TOA

After all we piled on the Panthers for being terrible, is it crazy that they had a better rating than the Jets last year in TOA? The Panthers touchdown pass rate was 2.2%, New York was 1.8%. So it wasn’t as bad as it could have been for Carolina, but it’s not like they could have been much worse. The reason for optimism is focusing largely on Dave Canales turning around the team. Seattle and Tampa Bay, where he operated as OC in 2022 and ‘23, each finished inside the top 10 in the NFL in pass rate TD%.

Bryce Young wasn’t given much to work with in 2023, but he now has Diontae Johnson, Xavier Legette, and Jonaton Brooks to help him out versus Adam Theilen alone. That plus Canales hopefully making the team a competent unit should give them a big boost going into 2024. They are one of my favorite offenses to target in the mid-rounds of drafts. Young is extremely cheap even in Superflex formats, taking the discount on him and hoping for a resurgence is a bet I’m willing to take.

That will do it for this edition of the Ballfield Banter newsletter! Thanks for stopping by this Saturday morning and giving me your ear as we talked touchdowns!