Touchdowns are the lifeblood of fantasy football. In most cases,
they are highly volatile. There are many reasons for this, but it
doesn’t change the fact that during a given NFL game, the
unplanned happens with regularity. For example, owners of Green
Bay Packers running backs over the years have been watching John
Kuhn vulture scores for what seems like a decade. Or how about the
"meaningless" score in a 38-7 game that helps give your
opponent's quarterback the last few fantasy points he/she needs
to ruin your week?
For the most part, one of the jobs of a successful fantasy football
owner is to be able to discern what exactly can be considered
lucky and what is repeatable. In other words, it is beneficial
to place your bet on the event that is most likely to happen while
also reducing the number of resources (i.e. players in your fantasy
lineup) that essentially need to count on a breakdown or mistake
from the defense to get their points. So how exactly do we measure
this?
To my knowledge, there is no way to accurately predict how often
a particular defensive back is going to make a mistake in his
coverage in any given game (predictive) , just how often they
get beat (reactive). After all, we see receivers beat perfect
coverage quite often in today's NFL, so such analysis would be
of limited use anyway. We can't even trust team's evaluations
from year to year. If you require a recent example, look no further
than Oakland Raiders CB David Amerson, who was a liability for
the Washington Redskins for most of his short career there. Almost
immediately upon arriving in Oakland, he was one of the league's
stingiest corners.
One of the older fantasy football adages is more opportunities
tend to lead to more success. Short of being able to predict how
often a particular defender will fail to do his job, we can get
a better sense of what offensive players will thrive based on
the number of opportunities they get. Thanks to the explosion
of advanced analytics over the years, finding more specific information
is much easier than it used to be. This year, I'll finally be
able to take the next step in the evolution of this article, which
is to present more than what teams and individuals do inside the
20.
Red-zone analysis helps owners get a sense of what teams are
doing in prime scoring territory, but looking at what teams do
solely inside the 20 doesn't provide the total picture. And it
makes sense why: just like in basketball where the field-goal
percentage goes down as the shot get progressively longer, the
percentage of teams scoring a touchdown on any given play go down
the further away a team is from the goal line. In keeping up with
the basketball metaphor, fantasy owners aren't concerned with
the first few passes that led to the shot; we want successful
conversions. The point to be made here is a lot more touchdowns
are scored inside the 5 and inside the 10 than between the 11
and 20.
Below is a key for the abbreviations you will see below:
TD – Rushing Touchdown Tm % – Percent of team's carries
inside specified area TD Conv % – Rush attempts/total
number of rushes inside specified area
There are several examples of a player receiving a touch or
a target inside the red zone, only to watch his usage drop significantly
inside the 5 and 10. Since I want the numbers to speak for themselves
in most cases, I'll focus mostly on the outliers in an attempt
to suggest which players may find themselves having a much different
2016 season:
Carolina was far and away the leader in rush attempts inside
the 20 (105), inside the 10 (50) and inside the 5 (32). Not
only is it against the odds all of those occurrences happen
again, but expecting the Panthers to play with a positive
game script at the same rate they did last year would be insane.
(For example, 196 of Jonathan Stewart's 242 carries last year
came with Carolina either tied or leading, including 155 with
the lead.) As the chart above clearly shows, the Panthers
ideally wanted Stewart to get them inside the 10, at which
point OC Mike Shula wanted to make the defense believe it
was a 50/50 proposition as to whether Stewart or Newton would
be finishing the drive. For some perspective, Carolina called
run inside the red zone 65 times in 2014. Last year, the Panthers
ran 50 times inside the 10 alone (and 105 inside the 20 as
mentioned above).
Even for all of Jeremy
Hill's struggles last year, he was still the superior red-zone
runner for the Bengals. Giovani
Bernard did not score on any of his four carries inside the
5 or 14 attempts inside the 10, while Hill converted 50 percent
or better in both areas. While it is nearly impossible to predict
how much carryover there will be from former play-caller Hue Jackson
to new OC Ken Zampese, Hill should have a pretty long leash in
scoring territory. Considering the current state of their receiving
corps as well (including injured TE Tyler
Eifert), I would expect Cincinnati to be more (and not less)
reliant on Hill and Bernard. As such, Hill is a good bet to bounce
back in fantasy and Bernard is a strong pick to at least maintain
the kind of fantasy impact he made last year.
Of the 552 carries around the league that occurred inside the
5 among the 182 players I have on the above chart, 215 resulted
in touchdowns, resulting in a league average of 38.9 percent.
This is particularly notable when looking at Adrian
Peterson's woeful 25 percent conversion rate on such attempts,
almost half of his career rate of 47.4. In order for one to rebound,
I suppose one would need to have a bad season, which AP did not
have in 2015. However, if he converts near his career rate in
2015 instead, he could have scored 14 or 15 times (instead of
the 11 he finished with).
Todd Gurley was less than 12 months removed from ACL surgery
for most of 2015, got a late start to the season and had virtually
no supporting cast to speak of last year, so it speaks very
well for his future that converted exactly two-thirds of his
carries inside the 5 and almost half of his attempts inside
the 10 as a rookie. Los Angeles didn't exactly make over its
offense in the offseason, but help is on the way - a scary
thought for the Rams' opponents this season. Gurley should
be even better in Year 2.
DeAngelo
Williams nearly led the league in red-zone carries and paced
the NFL in attempts inside the 10 and the 5. Of course, that isn't
going to happen with a healthy Le'Veon
Bell this year. There seems to be some sentiment Williams
proved enough last year that Pittsburgh will be willing to let
him take some of the burden off Bell, or at least more than the
Steelers wanted to early last season. I'd expect a few more token
carries for Williams going forward, but Bell is still going to
remain among the most well-fed backs in the league regardless.
And in case you needed some tangible proof that Pittsburgh's line
excels in blocking the run, consider that 12 of the 21 carries
Williams and Bell combined for inside the 5 went for touchdowns.
It's not hard to see what the Jaguars were thinking when
signing Chris Ivory. After all, one only needs to take a look
at T.J. Yeldon's lack of success inside the 5, 10 and 20 to
see why they thought he might need help. Here are the problem:
1) no other Jacksonville back fared particularly well either,
2) for as nice as Ivory's 27.8 percent conversion rate inside
the 5 looks, it is still well below the league-average 38.9-percent
mark I mentioned earlier and it came behind a much better
offensive line and 3) Jags OC Greg Olson has historically
been a pass-heavy play-caller inside the red zone. Perhaps
Olsen changes his stripes and leans on the hard-charging Ivory
in goal-to-go situations knowing he now has one of the more
physical runners in the league at his disposal. I'd venture
a guess and say that won't be the case and any improvement
Jacksonville makes in converting opportunities on the ground
will come as a result of players like ex-Steeler LT Kelvin
Beachum giving the front five a lift or RG A.J. Cann taking
the next step in his development during his second year.
Carolina's closest competition in terms of plays run inside
the 5 was NFC South rival New Orleans, which saw Mark Ingram
(4-for-10), Tim Hightower (4-for-8) and Khiry Robinson (3-for-5)
combine to score on 47.8 percent of their carries in that
area. It will be interesting to see if HC Sean Payton uses
Hightower a bit more often early in the season in an effort
to help Ingram make it through a full season for only the
second time in what will be his sixth NFL season. I think
the bigger story, however, could be Robinson in New York.
The evidence against Matt Forte is somewhat damning - out
of all backs to have 50 or more rushing attempts from the
5 and in since 2000, he ranks last in conversion rate (23.2
percent), and he has only one season in his career in which
he's converted more than a third of such carries. While numbers
lie (and I think they do somewhat in this case as Forte has
been stuck behind some poor lines throughout his career),
I can't imagine the Jets will stick with him in those situations
if he doesn't convert them early in the season. Robinson may
not necessarily be the answer, but his straight-ahead style
is definitely going to give the coaching staff something to
consider on 1- or 2-yard plunges.
Doug Orth has written for FF
Today since 2006 and been featured in USA Today’s Fantasy
Football Preview magazine since 2010. He hosted USA Today’s
hour-long, pre-kickoff fantasy football internet chat every Sunday
in 2012-13 and appears as a guest analyst on a number of national
sports radio shows, including Sirius XM’s “Fantasy Drive”.
Doug is also a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association.
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