What We Can Learn: Converting Yards into Touchdowns

As we are pushing into July and further downhill towards the 2024 fantasy season, we are going to extend our top-down approach that started with a look at the state of leaguewide production and usage at each skill position for fantasy by looking at team performance and output.

The goal is that come late August, we have covered all corners of the fantasy Earth from a team, player, position, and game theory stance to accurately calibrate our draft strategy for this upcoming season.

Yesterday, we opened up this series with a look at how the league and teams performed per drive in terms of scoring, efficiency, and what type of scoring plays offenses leaned on.

Today we are digging into how good teams were at converting yardage into reaching the actual end zone.

League Offensive Yardage Into Touchdown Conversion Since 2010

There is no secret to the idea that if a team gains a lot of yards, they then will be in a position to score more touchdowns.

But last season the two were wildly correlated to a degree we had yet to see.

Yardage and touchdown production had significantly ramped up in correlation over the two years before 2023, but last season, nearly 90% of the total touchdowns scored on offense were explained by total yardage gained.

My theory as to why we had such a rise in the relationship between the two is due to the decreasing number of long touchdowns across the league.

Perhaps we will uncover more of that when we hit the red zone portion of this series, but with vertical passing hitting a low point in the modern era, teams have to sustain drives at a higher rate to reach the end zone, and they have been doing a poor job of it.

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Top-down Regression

Moving to the team-by-team section so we can start pulling some specific notes.

Since 2010, 66.2% of the teams that scored fewer touchdowns than their expected total based on yardage gained per league rates came back the following season and scored more offensive touchdowns.

On average, those teams scored 10.1 more touchdowns the next season.

If looking for offenses that make the largest leaps in a given season, they of course almost come from the bottom of the league the season prior.

That makes sense since, if you scored a lot of touchdowns the season prior, you have smaller margins to improve.

There have been 82 teams since 2019 to increase their touchdown totals from the year prior by double digits.

64 of those teams (78.0%) were teams below touchdown expectations the year prior.

That can also be valuable to us since we tend to outweigh previous production into current draft positions.

Especially in the assumption of what teams we believe our good and bad, which has a ton of fluidity year-over-year.

Last season, six teams (49ers, Rams, Dolphins, Texans, Ravens, and Colts) raised their touchdown totals by double digits from the previous season.

All except for the 49ers and Dolphins were below their touchdown expectations based on yardage gained from the year prior.

On the other side of the coin, 71.4% of the teams that out-produced their expected touchdown total based on yardage gained scored fewer touchdowns the following season with an average loss of 10.0 touchdowns per season among those teams.

Just five of the 13 teams that outproduced their touchdown totals in 2022 came back and did the same last season.

This year, we have four teams joining that group (the 49ers, Lions, Ravens, and Dolphins).

2023 Expected TD Output Per Yardage

Things get more telling at the extremes.

Outside of last season, there have been 19 teams that have fallen below their expected touchdown totals by double digits.

15 of those teams scored more touchdowns the following season.

The Colts were the only team in this bucket last season based on their 2022 output.

They came back and scored 12 more touchdowns last season than they did in 2022, the fourth-highest increase in the NFL.

This year, both the Jets and Panthers find themselves in that group.

At the Top

There have been 26 teams since 2010 that have outproduced their touchdown totals by double digits.

22 of those teams scored fewer touchdowns in the following season with an average loss of 15 touchdowns.

Last season, there were four teams in this group (Chiefs, Eagles, Bengals, and Cowboys).

All four not only scored fewer touchdowns than they did in the previous season, but the Chiefs (-22), Eagles (-11), and Bengals (-10) all suffered double-digit losses in the touchdown department versus the previous season.

Entering this season, the 49ers, Lions, Ravens, and Dolphins find themselves in that company.

The 49ers outproduced their implied touchdown total for the second consecutive season, the first time that has happened under Kyle Shanahan.

They scored 14.5 more touchdowns than their expected total in 2023.

Not only was that the highest rate in the league, but just seven teams since 2010 have done a better job at outkicking their expected touchdown totals based on yardage gained.

All seven of those teams scored fewer touchdowns in the following season.

Six of those seven had a decrease in offensive touchdowns by 11 or more.

12 teams over that same period had a better rate of yardage per offensive touchdown than the 49ers had last season.

10 of those 12 teams scored fewer touchdowns the following season with eight of those 10 losing double-digit touchdowns.

We are only two posts in on this series, and the 49ers and Lions are already popping up as consistent regression candidates in the same way that the Chiefs and Eagles were a year ago.

Both the 49ers and Lions find themselves in prestige company.

They are among just five other teams to outproduce their implied touchdown totals by 8.0 or more in back-to-back seasons.

Just one of those teams (the Patriots 2014-2016) did so for a third straight season.

This is not the first time that the Ravens have been here under Lamar Jackson, a pro in their overall range of outcomes as a team.

In 2019, the Ravens scored 12.5 more touchdowns than expected.

In the following season, they scored seven fewer touchdowns but still were ninth in the NFL in touchdowns scored offensively.

Something I want to reiterate here is that not all regression means that we have to avoid these teams or that they will bottom out this upcoming season.

I would bet the base rate of these teams scoring fewer touchdowns in 2024, but I also do not think it is a surprise to see so many teams from the Shanahan/Sean McVay coaching tree among the best in the league above since these are coaching staffs countering the current defensive meta the best ways.

These are offenses I am buying to compete for top-end production in the context of next season, even if they do not replicate their prestigious efficiency from 2023.

We can account for both.

I have been below the market on all of Jahmyr Gibbs, Brandon Aiyuk, and Sam LaPorta this offseason.

I would still draft these players when they fell below those market prices and expect them all to be good assets overall, but those are the players who relied on that efficiency the most in those offenses for fantasy purposes in comparison to their usage.

The same should be a step of caution for De’Von Achane and Raheem Mostert, who excelled last season in their rate of touchdown output versus expectations.

Achane scored eight rushing touchdowns.

His expected scoring rate was 3.6 rushing scores.

Just three of his rushing touchdowns came inside of the five-yard line while four came from 10 or more yards out.

He caught three touchdowns versus 1.9 expected receiving scores.

Mostert scored 21 touchdowns.

The only running backs to ever score more touchdowns in a season at age 30 or older were Priest Holmes in 2003 (27 touchdowns at age 30) and John Riggins (24 scores at age 34) in 1983.

47.1% of his fantasy points were scored directly via touchdowns.

Not only was that the highest share for a running back in 2023, but it was also the highest rate of touchdown dependency any fantasy RB1 has had over the past 30 years.

At the Bottom

Last season, we used this post to identify the Buccaneers as a team that the market was too low on along with the Broncos and Colts.

For as much as we have already talked about the 49ers and Lions at the front end of this series in offensive efficiency, we are equally talking about the Jets and Panthers inversely in futility from a year ago.

Both the Panthers and Jets needed on average over 200 yards of offense per offensive touchdown last year.

The Jets averaged a touchdown for every 253.7 yards gained, the worst rate since the 2012 Chiefs.

Only four other teams since 2010 have converted yardage into touchdowns at a worse rate than the 2023 Jets.

Three of those four teams increased their touchdown total by double digits in the following season.

Carolina joined the Jets and 23 other teams in averaging over 200 yards per touchdown scored.

Of those 23 teams, 22 of them scored more touchdowns the next season with 13 of them gaining double-digit touchdowns.

The Falcons have been a hot-button offense all offseason given their offensive changes at quarterback and offensive coordinator.

Atlanta was not as poor as New York or Carolina in failure to get into the end zone per yardage gained, but add regression to the mean as another reason to buy in on the Falcons this season.

The Falcons were 30th in the NFL in touchdowns scored below expectations last season.

One final team at the negative end of the pool here is the Chiefs.

Kansas City was ninth in the NFL in expected touchdowns but finished 15th in touchdowns scored.

As a byproduct, they ended up 26th in the list above in touchdowns scored below expectations.

This was the first time in the Patrick Mahomes era that the Chiefs scored fewer touchdowns than their implied total.

This is the cheapest that Mahomes has been in fantasy since his breakout in 2018.

This is also the cheapest that Travis Kelce has been since his early career.

Gamers have had trouble sorting out the wide receiver room for the Chiefs given Xavier Worthy is a rookie, Marquise Brown is coming off back-to-back down seasons, and Rashee Rice could still receive a suspension of an undetermined length.

Isiah Pacheco is the one Chiefs gaining significant steam, but this offense is a strong bet to rebound in getting back into the end zone frequently.