We’ve sailed past the midpoint of NFL 2021, and Thanksgiving is coming up fast.
And with fantasy regular seasons entering the home stretch, it’s time to put the almighty touchdown under the microscope and single out the players who are under- and overachieving when it comes to striking paydirt, primarily utilizing basic regression-to-the-mean logic.
Compare your fantasy teams with these two lists, and if you’re well above .500, chances are good you’re rostering more players from the latter list and vice versa with your struggling squads.
Additionally, don’t be surprised to see some “market corrections” down the stretch with the TD underachievers finding their way into the end zone more frequently and a few fewer scores for the overachievers.
In keeping with our TD theme (six points), here are six underachievers and six overachievers, listed alphabetically under each category. Red-zone statistics, naturally, are cited frequently, and all of those numbers come courtesy of the informative folks at ProFootballReference.com.
Touchdown underachievers
Keenan Allen
The Los Angeles Chargers’ veteran wide receiver ranks fifth at the position with 93 targets and is tied for third with 65 receptions, but that volume has resulted in only two touchdown grabs to date.
It’s a similar picture in the red zone for Allen. He ranks sixth with 15 red zone targets and is tied for fourth with 10 inside-the-20 receptions, but he is the only player out of the 10 with at least 14 red zone targets to have two or fewer scores.
It’s a major reason why Allen only ranks 15th among wideouts with an average of 16.3 fantasy points per contest.
Dalvin Cook
Fourteen running backs have logged at least 140 touches this season and Cook is the only one with fewer than four TDs, tallying three (all rushing) on 157 total touches.
Cook’s red-zone touchdown rates also are revealing. He’s tied for third in the league with 29 rushing attempts inside the opposition’s 20-yard line, but he has only the three TDs. Inside the 10, Cook is tied for third with 17 rushes but has just two TDs, standing out as the only one out of 11 players with 14 inside-the-10 attempts with fewer than four TDs.
As a team, the Vikings have scored a league-high 81.8 percent of their offensive TDs via the pass (18) to only four rushing.
Over the previous two seasons, Cook has totaled 30 TDs in 28 games but has three scores in seven contests so far this season, and it’s the primary reason why he currently ranks as a RB2 (tied for 15th with 16.0 PPR points per game) instead of the top-end RB1 he was drafted to be.
Justin Fields
The dual-threat rookie has 187 passing attempts and 52 rushing attempts in nine games but has accounted for only six total touchdowns (four passing and two rushing).
Of the 34 qualified quarterbacks, Fields’ TD-pass percentage of 2.1 ranks dead last so far this season.
And his rushing numbers haven’t been much better as he ranks fourth among quarterbacks with 52 rushing attempts and 288 yards but has only two ground scores. That includes one rushing TD on five red-zone rushes.
It’s one of the main reasons why Fields is averaging a paltry 13.4 fantasy points (Huddle Performance scoring) — 35th among QBs who have played multiple games.
Christian McCaffrey
McCaffrey, fantasy’s near-consensus No. 1 overall pick this summer, has played in only four full games this season, logging 109 total touches and totaling 99.1 PPR points.
But included in those totals is only one TD so far — an 11-yard rushing score in Week 2.
Twenty-one (18 rushes and three receptions) of McCaffrey’s 109 touches have come in the red zone, but they’ve only resulted in one TD — leaving him as the only running back without multiple TDs among the 29 who have totaled at least 17 red-zone touches so far.
McCaffrey still ranks fifth at the position with an average of 19.8 fantasy points per game, but he’s going to need to pick his TD pace to remain an elite RB1.
Jakobi Meyers
Hey, Meyers did break through in a milestone way Sunday, scoring his first touchdown in 39 career games with an with an 11-yard scoring grab with 4:13 remaining in the New England Patriots’ 45-7 blowout of the Cleveland Browns.
But that’s one TD among 198 career targets and 135 receptions, including 76 and 50, respectively, this season. That puts Meyers in rare company as he joins Buffalo Bills WR Cole Beasley and Atlanta Falcons rookie TE Kyle Pitts as the only two players without multiple TDs among the 40 wide receivers and tight ends with at least 58 targets.
Overall, Meyers is tied for 16th in the league with 76 targets and 17th with 50 receptions but is 42nd among wide receivers and tight ends with 104.3 total PPR points in 10 games.
Kyle Pitts
The Atlanta Falcons’ prize rookie tight end ranks sixth at the position with 64 targets and seventh with 40 receptions, but he’s still stuck on one TD.
Pitts has particularly struggled in the red zone, catching only three of his 10 inside-the-20 targets for 16 yards and one score.
Due to the scarcity of high-end fantasy producers at the position, Pitts does rank fifth with 106.6 total fantasy points in nine games, but he’s the only one of the top 17 highest-scoring tight ends without multiple TD receptions.
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Touchdown overachievers
Tom Brady
The Bucs’ QB leads all passers with 27 passing TDs, 28 total TDs and an average of 29.1 fantasy points per game.
He also trails only the Los Angeles Rams’ Matthew Stafford (20) with 19 passing scores in the red zone and has thrown nary an interceptions inside the opposition’s 20-yard line.
No real shocker there, but where Brady is overachieving is with his league-leading 7.2 TD pass percentage. That’s 1.7 points higher than his career average and would rank as the third highest percentage of his career — and at age 44.
Finally, the Bucs have one of the league’s greatest offensive TD imbalances with 27 aerial scores to only seven ground scores — nearly a 4-to-1 ratio.
James Conner
Conner scored the Arizona Cardinals’ only touchdown Sunday in a 34-10 loss to the Carolina Panthers to up his league-leading TD total to 12 (11 rushing and one receiving).
Conner, however, ranks 18th in total touches with 138, including 125 rushes (11th).
In all, the Cards are tied for the Bucs for the league lead with 34 offensive TDs and Conner has accounted for 35.3 percent of those scores.
All 11 of Conner’s ground scores have come in the red zone, and he’s done it on only 27 rushes — an average of a TD every 2.45 red-zone attempts.
Mike Evans
In his first season with Brady a year ago, a whopping 18.6 percent of the Bucs wideout’s 70 receptions resulted in a TD (13 in all).
This season, that percentage has somehow climbed even higher through nine games with Evans finding the end zone on nine (22 percent) of his 41 catches.
Evans trails only Kupp (10) among wide receivers and tight ends with his nine scores — exactly one third of Brady’s league-leading total — but ranks 36th in that contingent with 66 targets and is tied for 35th with his 40 receptions. But despite the low overall volume, Evans ranks 11th among wideouts with an average of 17.3 fantasy points per outing.
In the red zone, Evans has reeled in seven of his 11 targets for 32 yards and five TDs.
Hunter Henry
New England Patriots rookie QB Mac Jones has thrown 13 scoring passes on the season, and more than half (seven) have been hauled in by Henry, one of two veteran free agent tight end acquisitions this offseason.
Among league tight ends, Henry’s seven touchdown catches are No. 1, and he’s done so on 42 targets (tied for 15th) and 31 receptions (14th). Thanks to the TDs, though, only Travis Kelce (166.7), Mark Andrews (134.3) and Mike Gesicki (108.9) have totaled more tight end fantasy points than Henry’s 108.3.
All of Henry’s seven TDs have come inside the red zone — six from 13 yards in or closer — with only Rams WR Cooper Kupp owning more red-zone scoring grabs with nine on the season.
Henry reeled in eight touchdown passes (on only 53 targets and 36 receptions) in his rookie season of 2016, but he’s been in a relative scoring slump since then with 13 TDs in 40 games over the last four seasons, including his 2018 campaign missed due to injury.
Dawson Knox
On a Buffalo Bills squad featuring one of the league’s top wide receiver quartets in Stefon Diggs, Emmanuel Sanders, Cole Beasley and Gabriel Davis, it’s the third-year tight end Knox who leads the team with five scoring catches. Diggs and Sanders have four TD receptions apiece while Davis has two and Beasley one.
And Knox has done so while playing in seven of the Bills’ nine games and ranking fourth on the team in targets (28) and receptions (22).
Among tight ends, only Henry has more TD grabs than Knox, who is tied with Kelce and C.J. Uzomah for second with five. Knox, though, is tied for 26th at the position in targets and 23rd in receptions.
Knox has doubled his career TD total this season after entering the campaign with five in 27 games over his first two seasons.
Joe Mixon
The Cincinnati Bengals’ fifth-year running back is tied for fifth overall in the league with nine total TDs (seven rushing and two receiving) in nine games, which already matches his career season high from 2019 in 14 games.
Seven of Mixon’s nine TDs have come in the red zone, but they’ve come on only 17 total touches (14 rushes and three catches on four targets) for an average of a TD every 2.43 inside-the-20 touches.
Of the Bengals’ 29 total touchdowns this season, Mixon, rookie WR Ja’Marr Chase and TE C.J. Uzomah have accounted for 21 of them (a healthy 72.4 percent).
