Statistically Significant: End-Zone Targets

An end-zone target is one of the most self-explanatory stats in the Fantasy Points Data Suite; it’s simply a target to a receiver located within the end zone. They’re also especially valuable: over the past four seasons, an end zone target has been worth 1.66x the fantasy points of a normal target in half-PPR formats.

End zone targets (0.484) aren’t nearly as predictive of future fantasy points as targets in general (0.716). However, they are somewhat sticky (stable from year to year), meaning they can hint at which players teams want to run their offenses through, to whom they’ll continue providing high-value opportunities. In practice, the league’s “alpha” outside X receivers often rank at the top of the end zone target leaderboard.

We can also think of end zone targets and TDs in terms of regression. In 2024, the league average end zone TD rate (the percentage of end zone targets caught and ruled TDs) was just under 42%. But this stat isn’t at all sticky: it has just a 0.028 correlation coefficient to itself in the following season, which would have been the lowest of any of the WR stats above. We should therefore expect abnormally high or low end zone TD rates to sharply regress toward the mean in a player’s next season; they are essentially random.

This doesn’t automatically mean the player will become significantly better or worse for fantasy football, but it’s an important factor we’ll need to consider when evaluating certain WRs. Below, I’ve included 2024’s end zone target leaders. Let’s dive into what this all means for their 2025 outlooks.

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CeeDee Lamb, WR, Dallas Cowboys

Underdog ADP: WR3

Like most of the WRs who held out of training camp last year, Lamb got off to a slow start over his first six games, averaging just 12.9 Underdog FPG. Then, over his next two games with Dak Prescott, he averaged 22.7 FPG. But immediately after that, Prescott was ruled out for the season, leaving Lamb to average just 11.4 FPG the rest of the way. In other words, Lamb really had only two games representative of what he can do when he and Prescott are on the same page together, and during them, he paced as the overall WR1.

I also see the departure of Mike McCarthy and promotion of Brian Schottenheimer to HC and playcaller as a positive. Pete Carroll likely ran Schottenheimer out of Seattle for wanting to throw too much, despite the offense ranking top-6 in EPA/play during his tenure and Russell Wilson having two of the best seasons of his career, finishing as a top-5 fantasy QB in both 2019 and 2020. In his offseason press, Schottenheimer suggested he might increase the Cowboys’ rate of motion and shifts, hallmarks of efficient modern NFL offenses.

Aside from a potential boost in pass volume, this change could also spark better efficiency. Over the past two seasons, Lamb’s YPRR has climbed by +27% and his TD rate by +50% on plays that include any type of motion.

Overall offensive efficiency is indeed the biggest question surrounding Lamb and the Cowboys. When he finished as the overall WR1 in 2023, Lamb saw 21 end zone targets (2nd-most) — a sign the offense was frequently getting into scoring position. The addition of George Pickens should help with this a lot, and given Dak Prescott’s still-reasonable ADP (QB14), I’m inclined to continue investing in this offense. I’m happy to continue selecting Lamb in the mid-1st to set up the stack.

George Pickens, WR, Dallas Cowboys

Underdog ADP: WR30

Pickens had among the worst luck of any WR in the NFL last year. He lost the 3rd-most fantasy points to penalties and DPI calls (~2.7 FPG in PPR scoring, behind only Justin Jefferson and Tee Higgins). And based on the amount and locations of Pickens’ targets, he’d have been expected to score ~7.6 TDs. Compared to his 3 actual TDs, that 4.6 expected TD gap was the largest on a per-game basis of any qualifying WR.

Much of this resulted from Pickens’ historically bad conversion rate on his end zone targets. Only five other WRs in the Fantasy Points Data era have scored on fewer than 16% of their end zone looks.

Missing from the above tweet are three additional WR seasons at or below a 20% end zone TD rate: Garrett Wilson (2022), DK Metcalf (2022), and A.J. Brown (2023). In the following season, these players’ end zone TD rates spiked to 38.5% (near the ~42% league average), collectively averaging 11.0 Underdog FPG (~WR32). Removing a washed 34-year-old A.J. Green would get the group up to 12.5 Underdog FPG in the following season (~WR17). In other words, Pickens’ WR30 ADP hasn’t necessarily priced in all of the positive regression we should expect, to say nothing of the additional pass volume he’ll see on a Cowboys offense I spent the entire previous blurb talking up.

Speaking of which, Pickens is going from one of the league’s worst scoring environments (check out where Justin Fields and Russell Wilson fall on this chart) to one of the best. Dak Prescott ranks top-3 in red zone accuracy over the past three seasons. In contrast, just four of Pickens’ 13 end zone looks in 2024 were chartered as “on-target”.

The history of every star Steelers WR losing their mind after leaving the team is the only thing giving me any pause from guaranteeing Pickens will have a career year in 2025. But Upside Wins Championships (especially in best ball tournaments with hundreds of thousands of entrants), so I’m at peace with Pickens in the 5th round.

Terry McLaurin, WR, Washington Commanders

Underdog ADP: WR16

From 2021 to 2023, McLaurin scored on 41.7% of his end zone targets, roughly in line with the league average. But in 2024, that jumped to 76.9%, the 2nd-highest rate by any player over the last four seasons. If McLaurin had converted in the end zone at his previous average rate, he’d have averaged just 11.8 Underdog FPG (~WR24).

Among the above seasons and 7 others in the sample with next-season data after averaging at least a 50% end zone TD rate, those players collectively averaged just a 37.8% end zone TD rate in the following season (below the average of ~42%). The group still went on to average 13.8 Underdog FPG (~WR12) — after all, it contains many incredible players like A.J. Brown, Ja’Marr Chase, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, and Cooper Kupp — but I’m not convinced McLaurin fits into that category.

Over his past four seasons, McLaurin has never exceeded a 22.5% target share or 2.21 YPRR. And his 2024 season with Jayden Daniels wasn’t even his best in either category; aside from the TD rate, all of McLaurin’s peripherals are largely similar to when he was averaging 10.3, 11.2, and 9.6 Underdog FPG over each of the previous three seasons.

I certainly don’t want to be underweight on Daniels or this fast-paced Commanders offense in general. I’m just skeptical that overwhelmingly likely touchdown regression is entirely priced into McLaurin’s WR16 Underdog ADP at the moment; he’s a particularly tough click over Davante Adams (WR19).

Marvin Harrison Jr., WR, Arizona Cardinals

Underdog ADP: WR14

Though his rookie season wasn’t what fantasy managers hoped for, Harrison Jr. still amassed the most end zone targets by any rookie WR since at least 2021. That puts him at the top of a relatively encouraging list:

And at least over the past few seasons, end zone targets have explicitly been predictive of fantasy scoring for players entering Year 2. Among Day 1 and 2 rookie WRs, it’s been about as predictive as target share.

Looking at the above lists, I’m left with the impression that teams try to feed especially highly-drafted WRs these high-value end zone targets, giving them every chance to make a big impact and pay off their draft capital. That certainly applies to Harrison, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if we looked back on the 2025 season and asked, “Why didn’t we expect the former 4th overall pick who averaged 1.0 end zone target per game as a rookie to break out and finish as a top-5 fantasy WR?”

I dug into all of the negative indicators from Harrison’s rookie season (of which there are many) in this recent piece. As a TL;DR, he was asked to run a ton of deeper routes on the perimeter, rather than getting chances on horizontal routes over the middle of the field, where he was a much more successful separator. It’s not at all obvious to me that any of that will change in 2025 with Drew Petzing still at OC and Kyler Murray still at QB, but in tournaments that include hundreds of thousands of entrants like Underdog’s Best Ball Mania, I want to keep an open mind to upside.

I’m still very out on Harrison at cost in dynasty formats — there, I would gladly trade him away for the rookie 1.02 or Ladd McConkey straight up. But in best ball, he’s of an archetype that I can’t justify zero exposure to, even if I (and our projections) dislike his WR14 price tag.

Drake London, WR, Atlanta Falcons

Underdog ADP: WR9

Six of London’s 14 end zone targets happened to come in Michael Penix’s three starts. And London averaged 19.4 Underdog FPG (~WR2) over this span despite catching only one of those six end zone targets. His 13.0 targets per game and 117.3 receiving YPG led all WRs over this timeframe, and would have ranked 1st among all WR seasons over the past four years.

In fairness, we’re talking about a three-game sample. But even across the full season, London easily led the NFL with a 56.0% end zone target share; he commanded these highest-value targets at a higher rate than any other player in the league, while converting them into TDs at roughly the league-average rate. Maintaining this share while running even slightly hotter would put a top-5 finish squarely in play.

And red zone work aside, we saw this offense consolidate heavily under Penix. London’s first-read target share grew from 33.1% (~WR10) to 45.1% (~WR1), while Darnell Mooney’s fell from 27.2% (~WR32) to 19.0% (~WR57). Maybe that was a product of Penix taking over mid-season without established chemistry — Mooney was famously apprehensive at the time about catching passes from a left-handed QB after not practicing with Penix all year, while London was much more eager — but there’s also a strong likelihood London remains the clear alpha heading into 2025.

I believe that London’s WR9 ADP appropriately straddles the middle between these two worlds, so I’ll likely be about at market. I’d just let this blurb serve as a caution that a 173-pound WR who just barely reached 2.00 YPRR for the first time in his career (and mostly from a QB that won’t start for the Falcons in 2025) shouldn’t be the reason you fade a red-zone weapon as potent as London.