Touchdowns mattered more to fantasy in 2024, and will again in 2025
Some talk about macro trends in the NFL
Hopefully a quicker post today, as I mentioned yesterday I’d write up a longer macro post soon and wanted to get it out to you guys.
In the past, I’ve written league-trend posts as a way to understand a number of different key parameters for how fantasy points will be scored. I didn’t have any huge findings on that front this year, other than a pretty interesting one about touchdowns that I think will stick, which I’m going to write today. But as we know, touchdowns are not super easier to predict, so the actionability is somewhat cloudy.
NFL scoring was back up last year, after a two-year lull right on the heels of the record-breaking 2020 and then still-solid 2021. In 2024, its rebound still looked a lot like 2022 and 2023 except for one major variable: higher scoring rates per drive.
Other than 2020, the pandemic year with no crowds where teams averaged 1.4 more points per game than any other season in NFL history, 2024 brought us the highest percentage of drives that ended in a score in NFL history at 38.8%. In 2020, it was 39.8%, and in 2021 it was at 37.8%. No other season has been above 36.5%, dating to 1998 when per-drive stats begin on Pro-Football-Reference.
Relatedly, for each of the eight seasons prior to 2024, starting field position for NFL drives was in a tight band between 28.4 and 28.8, in terms of the average yard line. We’re talking about over 5,000 drives per season, which is why you don’t see fluctuation of more than a half yard per year, at samples that size. Last year, with a change in kickoff rules that included touchbacks now coming out to the 30, it jumped to the 30.1-yard line, so about a full yard-and-a-half increase on average.
That may not seem like the whole story, and I don’t think it is, but note that in 2025, the NFL only got more aggressive with these rules. Instead of the 30, touchbacks will now go out to the 35. This is widely expected to increase the number of kick returns, as kickers will try to drop it into “the landing zone” more frequently when the cost to going through the end zone is now just 5 yards shy of what it costs to kick a ball out of bounds.
In some cases, this could lead to improved coverage and pull back starting field position relative to kicks that might have come out to the 30 last year. But some of these kicks are going to be more aggressive toward the sideline — I’d expect an increase in kicks out of bounds going out to the 40 — and others are going to be shorter than intended when trying not to reach the end zone. Some returns will start at and before the 10-yard line, allowing it be pretty easy to avoid being pinned back inside the 20.
The distribution will be interesting, and I’m not going to track this or anything, but my expectation in thinking through this is between the touchbacks that do go out to the 35, and also the variance associated with more returns — longer ones will elevate average starting field position more than shorter ones will drag it down, though of course that’s just relative to how frequently those things happen — we’ll see that average start number either stick around 30 or perhaps even rise a bit more.
Part of that is I expect teams to be better at setting up returns in the second year under the new rules. That gets at the other thing that played into this story of increased scoring — offenses did improve some in 2024, dealing with the new meta where defenses are taking away explosives and forcing them to matriculate the ball down the field.
That explosives note is something we’ve talked about in all the other macro discussions since mid-2021, when I was writing about the declining QB aDOTs in Stealing Signals introductions, sort of shouting to no one in particular that something weird was happening, before the years of fallout we saw from that, particularly starting on a full-season basis in 2022. The adjustment to recognizing the space defenses were giving was in the shorter areas, and came with lighter defenders who aren’t as good of tacklers, has been opting for more success-rate oriented play designs and structures. Offenses need to get better at matriculating the ball, because that’s where the edge is.
Despite the increased starting field position actually making it slightly more difficult to have high play-volume drives since the end zone hits quicker, the average NFL drive last year averaged the third most plays in the database, coming in just behind 2020 and 2021. It was only the fourth most yards per drive, but turnover rate was lower, and scoring still increased. Teams were able to sustain drives for longer, in terms of plays, despite not necessarily seeing a massive increase in yards per play. Baby steps, there.
But the goal of defenses has pretty clearly been to make teams execute third downs, and avoid turnovers over more plays on longer drives, and it’s nice to see the offensive counterpunch recognizes that. If defenses are trying to play “bend don’t break,” then we need to bend them further, and make it easier on that key third down, or just get the first in two downs.
As a result, the average offensive team scored 41.25 touchdowns last year (I erroneously wrote this as 42.5 in yesterday’s post), up from 38.25 in 2023 and 38.8 in 2022 (pro-rated to account for the Bills and Bengals both missing one game). Once again we see how increases in league-wide averages don’t always jump off the page, so let’s compare some key team points.
In 2024, the Lions led the league with 68 offensive touchdowns, eight total broke 50, and the 10th highest was 47. Fifteen teams scored 40 or more, compared to 10 the previous year. League low was also elevated with the Browns scoring 27.
In 2023, the 49ers led the league at 60, only five more broke 50 (so six total), and 10th highest was 41. Low was 18 (Jets).
In 2022, league high was 59, six teams broke 50, 10th was 42, and 13 broke 40. So more like 2023. Low was 25, though.
In 2021, league high was 61, nine teams broke 50, 10th was 49, and 18 broke 40. More like 2024, but not quite as impressive. Low was 23.
In 2020, we still had 16-game seasons, but because of offensive environment the points were there. League high was 64 in 16 games, low was 25, and we had nine over 50.
This is a hard trend to quantify because we only have a few years of data in this new meta where from 2020 to 2022 things really cratered on the league level, which makes the rebound in 2024 not look all that impressive. But it is.
The things that shifted from 2020 to 2022 weren’t going to shift back. Football had changed. And in 2024, we started to see an adjustment back the other way, both because of a rules changes on kickoffs (that may get more drastic in 2025), and also because offenses are probably just getting better at operating within the parameters of this new meta.
How to play it
I don’t want to make a big deal about this research, because I think it could lead people down the wrong path. After writing recently about how many analysts do great analysis 80% of the way but sometimes get in trouble with the actionability in the other 20%, I (predictably) got asked for at least an example.
An example would be closing this piece by looking at past touchdown rates and then making recommendations based on that. We know that there are some guys who are a bit more “skilled” at their ability to convert touchdowns, but we also know that for those guys, that particular skill is baked into cost. This research could just as easily be used to argue that they won’t find it as easy for their TD production to stand out at their position, as other players spring up for big seasons and are the real “big win” picks of 2025.
When applying something like this, we know we can’t be certain of the trend, first of all. I’ve made what I think is a compelling case, but there’s some degree of uncertainty. Secondly, we need to understand that the underlying stat, touchdown rate, is not a particularly sticky stat. If that’s the case, it’s probably one where we want to look for uncertainty-based opportunities. One of the first players that comes to my mind is Brock Bowers, who I recently made the case was unlikely to carry below-average touchdown rates deeper into his career, and that his rookie year was essentially an anomaly in that regard.
The market is playing Bowers as if Year 2 growth is not just unlikely but basically impossible, likely because Sam LaPorta and Kyle Pitts before him were second-year TEs who not only didn’t take a step forward but were massive ADP misses. Touchdown rate is one of the clearest ways Bowers can improve on his rookie season; broadly, it’s ridiculous to think he couldn’t be different than other young TEs before him when his collegiate profile is demonstrably stronger and he’s just a different player, but that’s the type of small-sample pattern-matching that is rampant in fantasy play, that you need to exploit.
Guys who had real volume issues relative to their pricing, but managed to score a ton of touchdowns last year, are a bit more concerning to me. Terry McLaurin comes to mind, and I’ve argued we’ve double counted his Jayden Daniels connection because he already got high-level QB play from him in an offense with limited receiving competition last year. Now he’s holding out. I do expect him on the field Week 1, and to be good. But while he may be a good bet for 8+ TDs, he’d need a different type of statistical ceiling than he’s shown to really be a smash at his cost.
Mark Andrews also comes to mind, but with him the price has gone far enough that you can make a talent-based, and like contingency-related, argument that he was closer to his floor of targets and receptions in a 2024 that was clearly different from the rest of his career. But certainly, if the touchdowns aren’t differentiating this year, his path to mid-round relevance gets thinner.
The thing that both McLaurin and Andrews have is they are in high-level offenses that project to score a lot of TDs. This is I think the real actionable takeaway here, to put a little more emphasis on drafting the players on the teams that can actually convert these shorter drives and carry the high scoring rates that have led to this touchdown increase. As we showed, this data also pulled up the bottom offenses, but a handful of more touchdowns doesn’t necessarily translate to big upside at the bottom.
A lot of that is baked in for the key plays on those teams, and I’m not saying avoid players in bad offenses entirely. But it’s a lot easier to hit the McLaurin or Andrews season when your team has the huge spike in overall TDs. Notably, both those guys had multiple teammates with very high TD rates as well, with multiple Commanders’ RBs (plus Daniels) posting very strong rush TD rates en route to 25 team rushing TDs, and Rashod Bateman, Isaiah Likely, and of course Derrick Henry all posting really strong TD rates with the Ravens.
Looking at my RB projections for more names that stand out, Chase Brown is a guy in a very good offense where I didn’t project a big touchdown rate, largely because I projected a big split toward passing TDs. It wouldn’t shock if he was able to improve on his 11 TDs last year, while I’ve actually regressed that a bit. He’s smaller than his backfield mates but clearly has more burst, and that’s probably the underrated thing to look at relative to size — which everyone references — when we look at who will win goal-line usage in some of these backfields. Bucky Irving’s quickness was just evidently more important to the goal-line equation than Rachaad White’s size, when White lacked the first-step burst; Aaron Jones did that to A.J. Dillon once upon a time when I kept expecting Dillon’s size to equate to TDs but he couldn’t hit holes hard enough for it to matter.
Anyway, don’t get carried away with this research, but keep it in the back of your mind. It’s interesting to chew on, but it might be nothing, and then even if it is something and does carry over to 2025, the conclusions and individual players I’ve discussed are mostly suggestions of possibilities in what I’d describe as something that will play out with a lot of uncertainty.
Until next time!