The What and Why of Touchdown Regression

How’s everyone doing? Well, I hope! I’m excited this week to do a “Data Dive”. Yes, I know, I’m super creative with names. We’ll be covering a lot during the preseason, everything from sleepers and busts for running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends, plus draft strategies as we get closer to draft season. But for right now, we’re going to dive into something nerdy.

This week we’ll discover who over and underdelivered in the touchdown department last season. In other words, we’ll be discussing touchdown regression. Sounds kinda lame right? Before you assume too quickly, let’s see why this is important.

Touchdowns influence how we look at players. And if we’re not careful and we’re just looking at just pure fantasy finish or score, we might miss some context about how those points were scored. Sometimes we might overhype a player based on their past performance, others we might overlook.

A perfect example of this is Kyle Pitts's rookie year. Pitts had one of the best rookie tight end seasons we’ve seen in a while, except for one thing: touchdowns. I was part of several discussions with people where I was the one defending Pitts and often I saw the objection thrown out “But he only scored once!”

With an aging Matt Ryan and in an offense where he suddenly became the only man in town, you would’ve expected more touchdowns for sure. But it’s still a lot to ask of a rookie to be the focal point of your passing attack, especially as a tight end.

To get us familiar with the concept, we’ll just be covering wide receiver TD regression candidates. If you want me to cover running back and tight ends, let me know!

While there are plenty of algorithms that weight field position and EPA and whatnot, we’re going a little simpler today. By using stats available to everyone, we can see how a receiver should have done in the scoring department. If you average out receiver’s stats as a whole, they are expected to score every “x” number of catches, “y” of receptions, and “z” of yards.

For the purposes of this study, I took every receiver who had a minimum of 20 targets so that they would have enough opportunity to score or not to score (I’m sure if Shakespeare was into sports he would have put that line in Hamlet). So in 2022, on average, a wideout scored every 14.3 receptions, 22.2 targets, and 178.4 yards. Based on those numbers I did an expected touchdowns for every receiver. Here’s what I found.

Overperformers

• Davante Adams 6.1 TD over expected

• Jahan Dotson 4.3 TD over expected

• AJ Brown and Christian Watson 4 TD over expected

Davante Adams massively overperformed in this category, despite having a roller-coaster season. Jimmy Garappolo and Derek Carr actually have similar passing TD per game stats over their last four seasons, so I’m not expecting a massive crash in Adams's scoring output. Just maybe a 9 TD season instead of a 14 TD one.

Jahan Dotson is an interesting name in the overperformers, as is AJ Brown. Dotson because he was a rookie on a team that wasn’t scoring much. I do expect him to have a strong second season, but I doubt he’ll be making touchdown grabs every 5 receptions.

Jalen Hurts threw 22 touchdowns. AJ Brown caught a whopping 50% of them. Part of that was helped by Dallas Goedert missing time from weeks 11-15. I’m not calling Brown a bust this year or to avoid drafting him, no sir. What I am saying is that his efficiency could come down. His workload will need to go up, ie, the Eagles pass more, in order for him to maintain a high number of touchdowns.

Christian Watson scored too much. Plain and simple. He scored a touchdown on every 5.9 receptions (add in his rushing production and he has nine scores on 48 total touches) which is a wild and unsustainable rate. He’s got a clear path to being productive as Green Bay’s WR1, but it’s unlikely he scores at his 2022-23 pace.

Underperformers

• Diontae Johnson 5.9 TD under expected

• Chris Godwin 3.5 TD under expected

• Courtland Sutton 2.7 TD under expected

• Garrett Wilson 2.2 TD under expected

Diontae did score any touchdowns, period. On 147 targets! So naturally he’s at the top of this list. I’m not bullish on Pickett, but I’m expecting a bounce-back season for Diontae. I think people might be unwisely sleeping on him.

Poor Chris. He goes from Tom Brady (albeit a struggling one) to Baker Mayfield/Kyle Trask. He’s probably going to end up right at scoring expectation or under it once again because I don’t think this Bucs offense will be consistently good.

Sutton suffered from Russell Wilson’s awful 2022, as did everyone else (not just Denver, we all did). The good news is Denver is now led by a competent coaching staff and there’s hope. If Sutton scored more along the lines of his expectations, he ends up firmly in WR3 territory in PPR scoring. If he gets a bump from a more productive offense, you could be drafting a WR3 at WR4 cost.

After suffering with Zach Wilson, Joe Flacco, and Mike White last season, Garrett Wilson gets Aaron Rodgers. That has to be an upgrade in almost any universe right? Right? I’m comfortable with Wilson as my WR1 this year.

That’s all I have today folks! If you have a question or suggestion, you can find me here or on Twitter. Until next time!