Splitsville: Passing up, QB down

Three items on the menu in Splitsville this week: the passing explosion, quarterback scoring and the rumored demise of the big wide receiver theory.

The passing game in the NFL this year is like Coors Field with hitting. The numbers are crazy inflated. Passing accounts for 68.7% of total yardage this year, up from 64.4% in 2005 and 60.6% in 1980. And don’t think running backs are getting the rest as rushing yards by quarterbacks has increased to 11.7% of the total rushing yardage, up from 8% in 2005 and 7.5% in 1980. So it’s an explosion in passing yards and rushing yards by quarterbacks. And they’re siphoning off 11.1% of all rushing attempts now vs. 9.4% and 7.2% in 2005 and 1980, respectively. Man, it must suck to be a running back these days.

So quarterback scoring is through the roof. But I believe that devalues the entire position.

Andrew Luck has 25.6 fantasy points per game, according to Pro-Football-Reference. That’s an incredible-sounding total, but it’s less than two points better than Peyton Manning and about five points per game better than Ben Roethlisberger and Carson Palmer, who weren’t even drafted in most leagues. You can stream waiver-wire quarterbacks like Eli Manning and Ryan Tannehill and pretty much guarantee 20 points a week, as both average close to that by themselves.

So if you’re redrafting now, I can’t see taking Luck or Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers with anything resembling a premium pick. Why do that when I can get a couple of plausible 20-point scorers on waivers or, assuming your league drafts quarterbacks they don’t even play due to an utter lack of imagination, at least very late in drafts?

There are 15 guys right now averaging 17-plus points per game. Yet I always get asked about trading for quarterbacks on Twitter (@michaelsalfino). That’s generally a sucker move and it absolutely is this year. But that does not mean you stick with the bigger-named, underachieving guy you drafted (Cam Newton the prime example) when there are always better streaming options available. Just cut Newton loose.

There’s also the question of how badly you need those extra Luck points. If the difference between playing Luck and random streaming quarterback is 5-7 points per week on average, what kind of win probability does that add? I believe average winning margins are at least twice that throughout fantasy football in even quasi-PPR scoring, so not much. You win or lose games because your opponent has a 20-point week at running back while you’re pulling five. Ditto for wide receivers.

I’m getting a lot of pushback this year on my big wide receiver model given that some smaller ones are performing very well, especially in touchdowns.

So let’s crunch the numbers. I used 5-foot-10 and under as short and 6-foot-3 and over as tall previously. There were only two boxes. The other receivers were viewed as neutral. The main point is that the tall receivers are significantly better touchdown bets (they also performed better in catches and yards and especially yards per catch). So what’s happening this year? I’m going to be nice and boost the short wide receivers to everyone under 6-feet and tall stays at 6-foot-3 and over. According to Pro-Football-Reference, the tall receivers are hauling in touchdowns on 9.1% of receptions and the short ones on 7%. That doesn’t sound like much but it’s nine touchdowns per 100 catches to seven, a 28% touchdown advantage for the tall wide receivers. That’s big.

But as I say repeatedly, this is not meant to say that all short receivers are worse than all tall ones. Don’t be dumb about this. The model is straight probability. It’s meant to increase the point probability of each pick. It accepts that there will be errors but it expects that the hit rate will be better than trying to assess each player individually. And it also has the benefit of saving a lot of time. Clearly, short receivers who are good and who play with great quarterbacks are solid bets (but not as good a bet as good tall receivers with great quarterbacks). And guess what, people who claim to hate models, that’s a model (assuming you have defined even subconsciously what “good” is). That’s the really annoying thing about every single person who knocks models in forecasting players — they’re using them and they don’t even know it. Please be a little more self-aware.

So whatever model you’re using is not going to be correct every time, nor even close to that, no matter how badly you lie to yourself about your ability to divine football future. And you’re never going to outperform, off the top of your head, a proper model that factors in historic scoring data. And even if I stipulate that some tiny number of you can and do, you don’t even know why or what it even is that you’re looking for. So what good are you?