Year after year, we see significant variances in how many touchdowns a player may score. With touchdowns being a non-sticky stat, it can be hard to count on them staying at a positive number, but often if we examine the players who faired poorly in the touchdown column, we can squeeze some value from them moving forward. For example, in 2022, Miles Sanders followed up a zero-touchdown season with 11. While most players won’t have such a severe over-correction, here are some candidates set for better years.
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Touchdown Positive Regression Candidates (Fantasy Football)
The Steelers perhaps wrongly chose to wait until they faced a tough run of games before giving Kenny Pickett his NFL debut, facing the Jets, Bills, Buccanneers, Dolphins, Eagles, Saints and Bengals in his first seven games. This tough run of games against good defenses yielded three passing touchdowns and eight interceptions. Pickett went on to throw a total of six touchdowns across the entirety of his twelve games in the fantasy season, never managing more than one touchdown in a single game. Pickett’s low touchdown rate of 1.7% was the 660th lowest rate among quarterbacks to start 10 games or more since the year 2000, that is from a total sample size of 679. NFL average TD rate over the last three seasons among quarterbacks starting 10 games or more has been 4.53%. While we shouldn’t automatically assume Pickett can leap to that number, it shouldn’t be surprising to see him reach double his 1.7% and end up throwing over 20 touchdowns in 2023.
There was plenty of talk around the NFL Combine when Doug Pederson said the Jaguars would likely add another running back during the draft. Still, it’s unlikely they will completely move away from Travis Etienne this year after turning him loose down the stretch in 2022. From Week 7 onwards, Etienne averaged 67.1% of the snaps and boasted a 67.9% opportunity share, the ninth-highest among running backs in that period. Before Etienne had the backfield turned over to him, he had zero touchdowns. He followed this with four in three games before experiencing a drought as the Jaguars turned pass-heavy for several weeks. The likelihood is that the Jaguars will be more balanced in 2023, and Etienne will have a chance to take the lead role from the start of the season, which should give him ample opportunity to score more touchdowns than the five he managed in 2022.
The 2022 season was a frustrating one for Damien Harris, who went from scoring 15 touchdowns in 2021 to scoring only three as he missed games and struggled through injuries while fellow Patriots running back Rhamondre Stevenson truly broke out. The Bills brought in Harris to complement second-year back James Cook, who profiles as an exciting back who can break long runs and play in the passing game but doesn’t fit for goal-line opportunities at 190lbs. Harris, at 210lbs, has been a good goal-line option throughout his NFL career, and the Bills continue to say they want Josh Allen to take fewer hits in the running game. Making use of Damien Harris inside the red zone would definitely aid that and give Harris ample opportunity to score more than the three touchdowns he had in 2022.
Brandon Beane said Josh Allen has too many bruises on him. The only thing he’d criticize Josh for is to take less hits.
Perhaps he should improve his offensive line then as well…
— Bradley Gelber (@BradleyGelber) January 24, 2023
The Kansas City Chiefs currently have a wide receiver room featuring Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore. While they continue to be linked to the likes of Odell Beckham and DeAndre Hopkins, the team has also spoken positively about the leap they expect from the players on their roster. During the regular season, Moore had zero touchdowns and only one target inside the red zone, scoring his only touchdown in the Super Bowl. Moore played 47.9% of his snaps from the slot, and with JuJu Smith-Schuster moving on to the Patriots, Moore has a chance to stake a claim to more work, particularly in this area of the field. Any player playing with Patrick Mahomes should be considered a good bet to score five touchdowns a year, and it would not surprise to see Moore achieve that in 2023.
Another wide receiver who managed to score zero touchdowns was Diontae Johnson, who managed this despite having the seventh-most targets in the league (147). Johnson ranked 67th in catchable targets among wide receivers with 20 or more targets, so we can fairly say that not all of the inefficiency was on him. As mentioned earlier, this Steelers offense wasn’t flush with passing touchdowns, totaling 12 passing touchdowns in the entire season. Throughout Johnson’s four-year career, he has managed five, seven and eight touchdowns before 2022’s zero. Much like the rest of the Steelers offense, we should be banking on positive regression in 2023.
Diontae Johnson just broke potentially the most unbreakable record in professional football.
147 targets with ZERO touchdowns. No one else is within 20 targets of him on the historical leaderboard with no scoring plays.
Unbelievable stuff. pic.twitter.com/8cNCBFJCr0
— Davis Mattek (@DavisMattek) January 10, 2023
Year after year, we talk about Brandin Cooks’ average draft position (ADP) being too low for the production he routinely brings in. In 2022 that wasn’t the case as Cooks struggled through the mess of an offense that the Texans served up, and Cooks’ discontent was visible both on and off the field. After relocating 250 miles to the Dallas Cowboys, Cooks should be a part of the most competent offense he’s been in for the last several years. In 2022 the Cowboys had 28 passing touchdowns, a notable increase from the Texans’ 20. Cooks has averaged 5.4 touchdowns per season through his nine-year career, and he looks unlikely to repeat 2022’s two-touchdown return.
The Cardinals could very well be the worst team in the NFL in 2023, with Kyler Murray set to try and return from an ACL and Meniscus injury suffered in December, along with learning the first new offense of his NFL career and getting on the same page as a new Cardinals coaching staff that try to rebuild a roster that is a mess. With DeAndre Hopkins very likely to be moved on, the team has little choice but to build around Marquise Brown, who is entering a contract year, a year after the team traded the 23rd overall pick for Brown. During Hollywood’s three years in Baltimore, he caught an average of seven touchdowns per season but couldn’t replicate that in his first year in Arizona with only three. Regardless of who is at quarterback for the majority of the season, the Cardinals should be able to scheme Brown into positions to score at least twice as many touchdowns in 2023.
In an impressive rookie season for Garrett Wilson, despite the turmoil he had to cope with at quarterback, he scored four touchdowns, which was almost a third of the Jets’ 15 passing touchdowns. With Aaron Rodgers likely the quarterback in 2023, we can be safe in our assumptions that the whole passing offense will take a step forward. Rodgers has averaged 30 passing touchdowns per year when playing as the starting quarterback, and he should have no problem elevating Garrett Wilson to the next level.
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