It’s early November, a subdued Halloween has come and gone, and Christmas is upon us — at least in the retail world.
That also can only mean the midpoint of the NFL season is fast approaching with 14 of the league’s 32 teams having played half of their 16 scheduled games coming out of Week 8.
And with fantasy regular seasons already in their back half, it’s the perfect 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.
Immediately compare these lists with your fantasy rosters as you’ll want more of the former rather than the latter.
Here are 10 underachievers and 10 overacheievers, listed alphabetically. Red-zone statistics naturally are cited frequently, and all of those numbers come courtesy of the informative folks at ProFootballReference.com.
Touchdown underachievers
Joe Burrow
The Cincinnati Bengals’ scintillating rookie leads the league in passing attempts with 330 but only 11 have gone for TDs, ranking him 28th among qualified passers with a 3.3 touchdown pass percentage.
Similarly, Burrow leads the league in red-zone passing attempts with 46, but he’s tied for 10th with 10 red zone passing scores.
Overall, Cincinnati ranks 25th with a 55.2 red-zone TD percentage, and all of these rates should improve as the first-overall pick now has half a season under his belt.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire
CEH ranks fifth in the league with 146 total touches, but only two of those have resulted in touchdowns — and that’s on a potent-as-ever Kansas City offense, which ranks second overall in the league with 28 offensive TDs.
In close, the rookie running back has been flat-out inefficient as he’s the only player out of the 17 with double-digit rushing attempts inside the opposition’s 10-yard-line without a TD. Inside the 5-yard line, Edwards-Helaire has seven rushing attempts for minus-3 yards and, of course, no scores.
Evan Engram
The New York Giants tight end ranks third at the position in targets with 54, but he only has caught 31 of those passes for 284 yards — and none of those have resulted in touchdowns. That makes Engram the lone TD-less tight end out of the 21 who have at least 27 targets on the season so far.
Only the Jets (four) and Patriots (three) have fewer passing touchdowns than the Giants’ seven (more on that in just a bit), but with that expected to pick up over the season’s second half, definitely expect Engram to contribute in that process.
Myles Gaskin
Like CEH, the Miami Dolphins’ lead back has a prodigious touch total (130) but only two TDs to show for it so far.
Inside the opposition’s 10-yard line, Gaskin has had 15 total opportunities (12 rushing attempts and a trio of targets) but only has a pair of rushing scores.
Hunter Henry
Henry ranks eighth among tight ends with 46 targets but only has one scoring grab.
The numbers are even more glaring from the Los Angeles Chargers’ team perspective as the Bolts are tied for eighth overall with 15 passing/receiving TDs. Among Chargers tight ends, Henry has accounted for 46 (four in the red zone) of the contingent’s 55 targets and 29 of the 34 receptions but only one of the position group’s four TDs.
Daniel Jones
The Giants’ second-year quarterback ranks 31st with a 2.6 TD percentage with just seven in 272 attempts. And that percentage just received a boost Monday night with Jones tossing a pair of scoring passes in a loss to the visiting Buccaneers.
Both of those TD passes came in the red zone, finally giving Jones a positive TD-to-interception ratio (4:3) inside the opposition’s 20.
As a rusher, Jones ranks third among QBs with 316 yards — but, of course, no TDs.
Jones did account for 26 TDs (24 passing, 2 rushing) in 12 starts as a rookie last season, and while he’s not likely to match that total this year given his brutally slow start, putting up even a modest 13 TDs over his final eight games would give him 20 on the season.
Julio Jones
The stud wideout’s two-TD game in Week 7 is still fresh in memory, but those are the only scores Jones has had this season in six games. Overall, Jones has found the end zone (four TDs total) in only two of his last 18 games overall, dating back to last season.
In the red zone, Jones has caught just 4-of-8 targets for 29 yards and no scores while teammate and fellow fantasy stud WR Calvin Ridley was reeled in 7-of-12 red-zone targets for 59 yards and five scores.
Expect more of a balance there over the second half of the season.
David Montgomery
Chicago’s lead back completes the Edwards-Helaire/Gaskin high-touch/-low-TD triumvirate as he has only two touchdowns among his 144 touches (sixth overall) in eight contests.
Averaging only 3.8 yards per carry, Montgomery certainly isn’t the most efficient of backs, but he is due for some positive red-zone regression as his nine carries inside the opposition’s 10-yard line have produced only three yards and his only rushing TD.
Amazingly, though, Montgomery’s one rushing score accounts for 50 percent of the Bears’ league-low team total as they have a way-out-of-whack 14:2 aerial-to-ground score ratio.
Cam Newton
The New England Patriots infamously are bringing up the rear in the league with three passing touchdowns in seven games, and Newton only has two of those on 156 attempts and 103 completions in six games.
Newton does trail only the Arizona Cardinals’ Kyler Murray (seven) among quarterbacks with six rushing scores, but even given the Pats’ less-than-ideal collection of pass catchers, Newton is all but guaranteed to pick up the passing pace over the final nine games.
Matt Ryan
The Atlanta Falcons’ veteran QB leads the league with 2,462 passing yards and ranks second in both attempts (316) and completions (211), but he only has 12 passing scores in eight games. His 3.8 touchdown percentage ranks 25th among quarterbacks and is below his career average of 4.7.
Of the 18 quarterbacks who have at least 30 red-zone attempts, only the aforementioned Giants’ Jones has thrown fewer red-zone TD passes than Ryan’s seven.
Look for a higher percentage of Ryan TD tosses over the season’s second half as the throws keep coming to try and offset the Falcons’ poor defense.
Touchdown overachievers
Chase Claypool
Of the 14 players who have scored at least seven touchdowns so far, the Pittsburgh Steelers’ rookie wideout is the only one to do so on fewer than 30 touches.
That means an unsustainable 24.1 percent of Claypool’s 29 touches have resulted in TDs, including three scoring receptions of at least 32 yards and TDs on two of his six rushing attempts.
With plenty of other capable mouths to feed — including fellow pass-catchers JuJu Smith-Shuster, Diontae Johnson and Eric Ebron, who have a combined eight TDs between them — don’t expect the rookie’s scoring binge to continue.
Dalvin Cook
After his record-setting four-TD, 226-total-yard afternoon Sunday in Green Bay, the Minnesota Vikings’ stud back now has a three-TD lead on the rest of the league with 11 in six games. More impressively, Cook has accounted for nearly half (11 of 23) of Minnesota’s total touchdowns on the season.
Inside the opposition’s 10-yard line, eight of Cook’s 14 rushing attempts have wound up in the end zone.
Now, sure, Cook very well will likely wind up leading the league in TDs in 2020, but averaging 1.83 trips to the end zone per contest is going to be pretty tough to sustain.
Mike Evans
Evans has only caught 30 passes this season, but a whopping seven of those have been scoring receptions — accounting for a full 44.8 percent of his 109.3 fantasy points (point-per-reception scoring).
Fellow stud wideout Chris Godwin (two TD receptions) has missed half of the Buccaneers’ games due to injury, and now newly signed wide receiver Antonio Brown is slated to join the potent mix this week.
Meanwhile, the Bucs’ top running backs (Ronald Jones and Leonard Fournette) and tight ends (Rob Gronkowski and Cameron Brate) have combined for only four scoring grabs between them, and all of those factors severely dim Evans’ chances of matching his first half of the season TD toal over the final eight games.
Todd Gurley
Only Cook has found his way across the goal line more than the Atlanta Falcons’ running back, who is tied with Chiefs WR Tyreek Hill and Titans RB Derrick Henry for second with eight scores on the season.
In all, Gurley has accounted for eight of the Falcons’ 22 total TDs, but as noted in the Ryan and Julio Jones writeups above, there are plenty of other mouths to feed in this offense, including tight end Hayden Hurst (three TDs) and backup RB Brian Hill (one TD), who is becoming increasingly more involved with double-digit touches in two of the last three games.
Justin Herbert
The Los Angeles Chargers’ rookie QB has been on a fantasy tear with three or more TD passes in each of his last four games. Herbert has accounted for 14 total TDs during that span, including one rushing score, which is 87.5 percent of the team’s 16 total touchdowns since Week 4.
In all, since Herbert took the reins in Week 2, only two of the team’s 19 offensive touchdowns haven’t involved the rookie QB in some form or fashion, and that’s a rate that simply isn’t going to be sustainable over the Bolts’ final nine games.
Kareem Hunt
The running back leads the Cleveland Browns in touchdowns with seven, including a team-high four through the air on only 18 receptions.
However, the Browns’ 1A back, Nick Chubb, has only played in half of the team’s games due to a knee injury, but is expected back soon, and that will severely lower Hunt’s TD ceiling for the second half of the season.
Tyler Lockett
The 5-foot-10 Lockett is renowned as a deep threat, but five of his team-high-matching seven TDs have come in the red zone on a highly efficient seven receptions and nine targets.
Fellow wideout DK Metcalf also has seven scoring grabs, but at 6-foot-4, 230 pounds, Metcalf’s nearly unparalleled size-and-speed combo make him the front runner to pull away with the team TD lead over the final nine games.
Meanwhile, the Seahawks have only scored six of their league-leading 32 TDs on the ground — including none so far for QB Russell Wilson — so expect that to pick up as should the aggregate TD total for the trio of tight ends (Greg Olsen, Will Dissly and Jacob Hollister) Seattle employs. Each of the three has a TD apiece so far.
Aaron Rodgers
The Green Bay legend currently boasts a gaudy 8.0 TD-pass percentage, which is way above his career mark of 6.1 and would be the second highest of his career, trailing only the 9.0 percentage he had in his MVP season of 2011.
As a team, 20 of the Packers’ 26 offensive TDs have come via the air, and that should start to change once running back Aaron Jones, who tied a league-high 19 scores a season ago, returns from the calf injury that’s sidelined him in Weeks 7 and 8.
Adam Thielen
As mentioned in this column in recent weeks, Thielen has been near-perfect in the red zone, bringing in all eight of his targets for 72 yards and six touchdowns.
The wideout has seven scores in all — tied for second among wide receivers — and has done so on just 53 targets (22nd overall) and 35 receptions (tied for 24th). In all, Thielen has been on the receiving end of 58.3 percent of Kirk Cousins’ 12 scoring passes and has combined with Cook to account for a whopping 18 of the Vikings’ 23 total touchdowns (78.3 percent) in seven games.
Robert Tonyan
Among tight ends, only Travis Kelce (six) has more TD catches than this Green Bay Packers’ out-of-nowhere story, and Tonyan has done so on only 27 targets and 23 catches.
Three of his TDs, of course, came in a memorable Monday night breakout performance in Week 4, and the expected regression has already begun as he hasn’t scored on any of 13 targets and 10 receptions over his three games since.
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