Fantasy Football: 8 Late-Round Lottery Tickets for 2017
Carson Palmer, QB, Arizona Cardinals
Average Draft Position: 13.05 (QB20)
Because Carson Palmer's massive dropoff occurred in his age-37 season, it led to the perception that he was simply cooked. There's a chance that's entirely true, which would certainly throw a wrench into this whole "lottery ticket" thing. But what if there was something else at play?
Specifically for Palmer, two overriding trends seemed to develop. The first was that he simply could not stay upright. Due to separate injuries to Jared Veldheer and D.J. Humphries, the team used three starters at left tackle, and the results were exactly as you'd expect. They lost 74.50 Net Expected Points (NEP) due to sacks, the fifth-worst mark in the league.
NEP is the metric we use to track the expected points added on each play throughout the season, meaning that had the Cardinals not allowed a single sack the entire year, they would have been expected to score an additional 74.50 points. The median mark in the league was 55.90 NEP lost due to sacks, putting the Cardinals almost three touchdowns in the hole there.
Second, Palmer could not connect deep. As our own JJ Zachariason wrote, Palmer threw just six touchdowns that travelled at least 15 yards in the air, down from 13 the previous season. You could chalk that up to Palmer's age, but there's another explanation that's a bit less grim.
Due to issues with his sickle-cell trait, wide receiver John Brown couldn't handle his usual snap load. Brown played at least 60% of the snaps in just 3 of his 15 games, robbing Palmer of one of his best deep targets.
Going back to 2015, check out how Palmer fared on deep passes (those at least 16 yards downfield) when targeting Brown compared to the rest of the team's assets. Target NEP shows the expected points Palmer added on each attempt, deducting the expected points that were lost on incompletions and interceptions.
| On Deep Targets | Targets | Target NEP | Target NEP per Target |
|---|---|---|---|
| John Brown | 35 | 27.78 | 0.79 |
| Rest of Team | 95 | 58.27 | 0.61 |
Brown produced that efficiency on a 26.92% target market share of the deep looks, so there was nothing sneaky about it; he was just good.
If Brown and the offensive line can stay healthy -- and that's far from a given -- Palmer could be in for a big rebound in 2017. Palmer was fifth in overall in fantasy scoring in 2015, so we know he's got upside. That makes him worthy of an all-or-nothing selection at the tail end of drafts.
