New Advanced Fantasy Football Stat: Redzone Reliance Percentage

Unlike baseball, advanced statistics for professional football are not all-encompassing. We have some basic indicators and stats that have been proven very useful, but there is always the search for more comprehensive demarcations. After looking at some comprehensive numbers for 2012, I developed my own advanced fantasy football stat. The easiest way for NFL players to post fantasy stats is to score touchdowns; some sites, including JJ Zachariason, owner of LateRoundQB,and RosterWatch have great analysis of players and their dependency on touchdowns for fantasy value (JJ’s can be found here and here). Many players values are tied directly to simply how many touchdowns they are able to score. Arian Foster is a prime example of touchdown dependency; despite declining yards per carry and generally looking non-explosive, Foster finished as the second best fantasy running back due to his touchdown totals. This analysis of touchdowns, however, leaves us wanting a bit. Where a player gets his touches is supremely important to his value, and simply looking at touchdown totals is not enough. Several websites offer detailed redzone target numbers, including the awesome FootballGuys. However, to my knowledge, no website has detailed what percentage of a players fantasy points are accrued in the endzone. Getting touches inside the 20′s is incredibly valuable. While one year may have yielded an unfortunate redzone touch-to-touchdown ratio, if we dig deeper into the numbers and combine that knowledge with scouting, there is a real ability to uncover fantasy football value. This brings us to Redzone Reliance Percentage, the percent of a players total fantasy points that he scored while inside the 20. Touches between the 20′s will always be less valuable than redzone looks, but if a player is too dependent on redzone plays, there is a real chance for disappointment. I analyzed this statistic to get a better understanding of how a player scores his fantasy points, in hope to become more accurate in predicting sleepers and busts in the future. The further we move into inventing and understanding advanced fantasy football stats, the better we will become at the game. What follows is the original Redzone Reliance table, with the top 86 running backs. I will do a post for wide receivers sometime next week; for now, running backs are the obvious starting point. More than any other position, us fantasy footballers obsess over finding the next new sleeper and pride ourselves on recognizing talent.

There are several names on this advanced fantasy football stats chart that immediately jump out. Initially, all offseason, fantasy football experts have been divided on Arian Foster. There has been a general acceptance that he has lost a step and a general concern about his workload. However, after doing the research needed for this chart, I became even more concerned. Arian Foster was more reliant on touches inside the redzone than Micheal Turner for fantasy value. Foster had 51 more rushing yards in the redzone than any other player and gained 240 of his 1,424 yards there. If even 2 of the Texans games had followed a different game script, or if Matt Schaub hadn’t regressed to Delhomme-ian levels, Foster would have had a very different 2012. For example, Steven Jackson is tied with Foster at 4.1 yards per carry. Jackson, however, played on a worse team and was forced to do more of his work in between the 20′s and scored only 21% of his fantasy points in the redzone. While the Texans will certainly still be a good team next year, it is concerning that all of Foster’s touchdowns came with in the redzone in combination with the revelation that he was so reliant on the those touches.

This stat doesn’t just exist to point out which players were too reliant on redzone touches, however. This advanced fantasy football stat also has the ability to highlight which players have no way to go but up. The two that jump off the page at first would have been obvious without this chart, Jamaal Charles and C.J Spiller. Spiller was able to be the 7th overall running back in fantasy while accruing only 15% of his points in the redzone. Charles was able to finish at 8th with only 9% of his total points coming in the redzone. For context, James Casey scored more points inside the 20 than Jamaal Charles did. These two players were fantastic despite playing on terrible offenses and will excel as long as they have their health. Chris Johnson is another running back who did not need to be fed the rock in the redzone to perform. While I will never personally own him, an argument could be created that Johnson could have a real uptick in value if given more redzone looks. There are several other guys who are performing well without the same opportunity and I will have a post later in the week detailing those players.

Finally, here is the Redzone Reliance Percentage chart.