6 Fantasy Football RBs Whose Touchdowns Are Trending Up & Down
Last year, I inherited this series on outlier touchdown production from the venerable TJ Hernandez and used it to spotlight fantasy players due for regression in 2024. While the hit rate isn't perfect, the research predicted a bounce back for Aaron Jones —who ended up being the RB14— and negative regression for Travis Etienne — who scored 10 fewer touchdowns than he had the year prior. It remains a helpful strategy for pinpointing big swings in scoring, at least from an efficiency perspective.
More Outlier TD Pieces: QB | WR | TE
First, a quick crash course on the data. There is a consistent historical rate at which an average NFL player finds the end zone, relative to their opportunity. That rate can be more specifically dissected by field position to offer a more granular look at the data — unsurprisingly, a goal-to-go target has a much higher chance of producing a touchdown than a carry from midfield. While these historical rates aren't necessarily the same thing as predictive probabilities, they are usually quite close over a decent sample. The following table lists a bird’s-eye view of the touchdown rates for all running back opportunities (carries and targets) over the last 10 seasons, with field positions aggregated for simplicity.
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