Honestly, one of the reasons the NFL is so much more popular in the United States than soccer is because there is more scoring. Touchdowns are king. That’s why there’s a Red Zone Channel to begin with.
In fantasy football, a touchdown is normally the equivalent of going 60 yards downfield. Think about that — a player must go over half the distance of a football field on his own to score the same amount of fantasy points as one touchdown.
Pro Football Focus typically focuses on the more predictive stat lines like yard per route run, target share, etc. But completely ignoring touchdowns, no matter how non-predictive they may be, would ignore the way fantasy football is played.
Here were the touchdown leaders by position last season:
- QB: Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers (44)
- RB: David Johnson, Arizona Cardinals (20)
- WR: Jordy Nelson, Green Bay Packers (14)
- TE: Hunter Henry, San Diego Chargers, and Cameron Brate, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8)
With that in mind, here are six players who could seize the position leads in 2017:
QB: Andrew Luck, Indianapolis Colts
Luck will enter his sixth year in the league this September. Over the offseason, he underwent a major procedure on his throwing shoulder and there’s no word yet as to when he’ll be back to 100 percent. The good news is that the Colts aren’t rushing him back. A healthy Luck is a productive Luck. Last season, despite missing a game and grappling with injuries during others, Luck threw 31 touchdowns and scored an additional two on the ground. That tied with Philip Rivers for the fourth-most total touchdowns in the league. Luck tied Aaron Rodgers with a 74.6 adjusted completion rating despite being under pressure on 44.4 percent of his snaps, the most of any quarterback with at least 100 pass attempts on the season.
The Colts’ offensive line is young, and the team didn’t make a lot of moves over the offseason, meaning they will rely on improvements with one more year of experience for the players. Also, the Colts rely on Luck to score a lot because their defense has been suspect for years. In fact, PFF ranked Indianapolis’ defense dead last in 2016. Don’t look for the unit to do a worst-to-first leap up the ranks. Luck will have to make it happen, and we’ll be there to gather those fantasy points.
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