Dynasty Myths: Young Quarterbacks and their Tight Ends, Part One
There are some old sayings, proverbs, rules, tropes, and “what have you’s” that permeate within both the football and fantasy football industries. Here are just a few:
- “You can’t win a league in the first round of your draft, but you can certainly lose it.”
- “Running backs with over 370 carries don’t perform well the following season.”
- “Wide Receivers break out in year three.”
- “Rookie tight ends never produce in year one.”
Some of the things we read may be completely true but others could be things we have heard or read so many times we just take them as factual without really knowing the truth behind the statement. I’m certainly guilty of saying and believing some of these things myself, so I wanted to take a look at one of these blanket statements. One I’ve long wondered about is the old adage, “Young quarterbacks love targeting their tight ends.” Another version you hear is, “Tight ends are a young quarterback’s best friend.” Even still, “Tight ends are safety valves for young quarterbacks.”
Say it however you want to, but are any of those statements true? Do young quarterbacks really have a propensity for throwing to their tight end more than veteran quarterbacks? I wanted to find out.
The Method
For the purpose of this study, I am arbitrarily calling a quarterback “young” during their first three seasons in the NFL. This is regardless of age, number of years as a starter, or stage of development. I only looked at quarterbacks who had played in less than four NFL seasons over the last five NFL seasons (2013-2017). The only other criteria for a young quarterback season to be included is a minimum of 100 pass attempts.
The Data
Once filtered through the above criteria, I ended up with 60 qualifying quarterback seasons from 2013-2017 for quarterbacks in their first, second, or third season. Using Pro Football Reference, I pulled passing target data for each of those 60 seasons, only counting those that went to a wide receiver, tight end and running back – this gave me the target distribution for each quarterback during a particular season. For each NFL season, I pulled total target numbers per position from Fantasy Pros and was able to calculate the average target share at each position across the entire league. Lastly, I compared the tight end target percentage for each of the 60 quarterback seasons that qualified for the article to the league average tight end target percentage.
The Results
To make it easier to digest, I’ve broken down the data sets by years. At the end, we will look at the total numbers.
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2013
In 2013, there were 17,820 passing targets – 3,741 of which went to tight ends for a league average target percentage of 20.99%.
In total, 16 quarterbacks made the cut in 2013. Nine of them finished above the league average, but only one finished 5% or more above the league average. In his third season, Colin Kaepernick targeted tight ends 5.04% more than the league average of 20.99% as 84 of his 107 passes to tight ends went to Vernon Davis, who posted 52 catches for 850 yards and 13 touchdowns in what would presumably be his last season as a fantasy stud. Seven young quarterbacks finished below the league average for tight end target share in 2013.
2014
In 2014, there were 17,604 passing targets – 3,572 of which went to tight ends for a league average target percentage of 20.29%. That’s down 0.7% from 2013.
In summary, 13 quarterbacks made the cut in 2014. Seven finished above the league average, but none hit 5% above that number. Andrew Luck was the closest at 4.63%. His top tight end target was Coby Fleener who received 86 of Luck’s 150 attempts to the position. The recently released Fleener finished with 47 receptions, 722 yards and seven touchdowns. Six young quarterbacks finished below the league average for tight end target share in 2014.
2015
In 2015 there were 18,060 passing targets, of which 3,877 went to tight ends for a league average target percentage of 21.47%. That’s up 1.18% from 2014.
A total of eight quarterbacks made the cut in 2015. As you can see in the table, no third-year quarterbacks from the historically bad 2013 class had 100+ pass attempts in 2015. Five of the eight qualifiers finished above the league average to the tight end position but only two by 5% or more. Interestingly enough, both played for the same team and both eclipsed 15% above league average, the only two quarterbacks in the entire field of 60 to do so. Thanks to both Marcus Mariota and Zach Mettenberger, Delanie Walker had his best season as a pro with 94 receptions on 133 targets for 1,088 yards and six touchdowns. Three young quarterbacks finished below the league average for tight end target share in 2015.
That’s a wrap for part one of this study. In part two, I’ll finish up with 2016 and 2017, then conclude with my final thoughts on how to potentially use this data to your advantage in 2018. As you can already see, this study is starting to become a bit of a myth buster. Will the trend continue? We’ll continue the study tomorrow.
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Creator and Co-host of Dynasty Game night, the fantasy football game show.
Creator and host of the Zookeeper Stories podcast.
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