Do Rookies Improve as the Season Progresses? (Fantasy Football)

Introduction

As all fantasy football managers know, drafting rookies in redraft leagues is full of risk. These unproven players often underperform or turn out to be draft busts, ruining a fantasy season. Because of this uncertainty, it is truly difficult to gauge when to draft rookies, how long to hold on to them, and how to treat them on the waiver wire. Managers who draft or pick up rookies early in the season might often find themselves asking, “Is this player going to turn things around?” or “Do rookies tend to improve as the season progresses?” In this article, we’ll delve into the performance trends of rookie players, analyzing whether their fantasy value increases with each passing week. Join us as we explore the ups and downs of relying on rookies to boost your fantasy football lineup.

Approach

To answer this question, I split the season into quarters (Weeks 1-5, 6-9, 10-13, 14-18) to evaluate players as the year progressed. I filtered out players who averaged less than eight points on the year (assuming those players would not be rostered). With this, we can evaluate rookies by position.

Running Backs

First, let’s evaluate running backs. If we look at the distributions of RB fantasy performance (PPR) throughout the season (each number corresponding to its quarter of the season) we see a positive shift in the mean. Rookie backs tend to start the season averaging close to 10 points but typically finish higher than this threshold.

Looking at the mean fantasy points per quarter, we see an average increase of almost two fantasy points throughout the season. While this might not seem like much, keep in mind that not only are these league (rookie) averages but that every point counts! Oddly, the trend shows that rookie RBs typically perform best during the second quarter of the season and level off from there. This tells us that by Week 9, you should have an idea of whether your rookie backs are worth holding on to. 

Wide Receivers

Next, we’ll look at wide receivers. Again, we see a shift in the distribution of PPR fantasy points as the season progresses. One thing to note, however, is the minimal amount of variance in rookie receiver production. This means that most receivers are putting up similar numbers throughout the entire year.

Taking a look at the progression of their mean point production, we see a sizable increase late in the season (over two fantasy points). However, there is little to no increase in performance between the first and second quarters of the year — the jump occurs in the final weeks of the season (Weeks 14-18). This tells us that rookie WRs may be better as waiver wire targets (especially later in the season) than as draft investments. 

Quarterbacks

For the first three quarters of the season, we see a large amount of variance in rookie quarterback performance. Some QBs disappoint, scoring less than 10 points per week, while others impress putting up over 20. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a huge shift in performance as the season progresses.

While there certainly is a slight bump in production, it isn’t nearly as much as the previous two positions (about a one-fantasy point increase). It appears that it will be evident early on whether a rookie QB is going to succeed — however, if you’re hanging on to a rookie QB for a longer period of time and they haven’t made a big jump by the third quarter of the season, it’s unlikely they ever will. 

Tight Ends

Last but not least, we will take a look at rookie tight ends. Observing their PPR fantasy point distributions, we notice a few things: early production is poor, mid-season production is highly variable, and late-season production is more predictable. Let’s take a closer look.

We see a massive jump in the mean fantasy point production from Q1 to Q2 of the season (~4.5 points). Evidently, the second quarter of the season is when rookie tight ends find their groove (Weeks 6-9). Unfortunately, following this we see a bit of a dip in production — what does this tell us? Rookie tight ends are a bit inconsistent. While they show the most growth of any position as the season progresses, their performance will likely vary from week to week. With that said, if your rookie TE hasn’t shown a jump in performance by Week 9, it is likely time to move on.

Conclusion

In conclusion, rookies do improve as the season progresses. RBs and WRs show more steady and consistent growth, while TEs improve more sporadically. The one anomaly is QBs, as they display little improvement with time.