The term touchdown-dependent in fantasy football refers to players that rely on touchdowns to generate a quality fantasy football output.
These players do not tend to accumulate many yards through rushing or receiving the ball. For this reason, they must rely on touchdowns to give them a solid fantasy output.
As most fantasy football players know rushing and receiving touchdowns are worth the same as sixty yards in a standard scoring league.
This means if a player is able to score touchdowns there are going to be able to put up some solid fantasy numbers.
Touchdown-dependent players tend to put up solid fantasy numbers throughout the course of the year but will often lay several duds during games in which they are unable to get into the end zone.
Example of touchdown-dependent players
To get a better understanding of what a touchdown-dependent player is in fantasy football we are going to break down a few examples.
Below we will go over some prototypical touchdown-dependent player you may see on your fantasy team.
Goal-line back
A goal line back is a great example of a fantasy player that is touchdown reliant. Goal line back are players that have the job of punching the football into the endzone when close to the goal line.
These players are often larger and slower and are typically not the primary ball carrier on the team. This means these players are not going to get many touches throughout the course of the game.
Instead, they will have to capitalize on their goal line opportunities in order to put up a solid fantasy score.
If these players are unable to get touchdowns they are likely to put up a small amount of yards and a dismal fantasy performance.
Red zone tight end
The tight end position is the most likely to be touchdown-dependent. The reason for this is simply because tight ends do not tend to get many receiving yards and often score touchdowns.
On many NFL teams you will find is a tight end that plays a big role in the red zone but doesn’t do much outside this area of the field.
The result is a low amount of receiving yards and a large number of touchdowns.
And since the touchdowns to tight ends are relatively short throws this means even if they score a touchdown they are not going to accumulate many yards.
It is not uncommon for these players to get roughly thirty yards receiving each week. In standard scoring, this means these players will get three points on weeks in which they do not score a touchdown.
And nine points in a week in which they do score touchdown. This makes these players touchdown-dependent.
Deep ball receiver
One more prototypical player that is considered touchdown-dependent in fantasy football is the deep ball receiver.
On football teams, there will be a player that can be extremely boom or bust each week. These players often do not receive many targets but their depth of target is quite high.
This means the players aren’t thrown many passes but the passes thrown their way can produce big results.
These types of players tend to score touchdowns on long plays. This means if they are able to break off one of these big plays it is going to produce a ton of points for your fantasy team.
Though on a game in which these players don’t catch a deep pass they are often going to put up dismal fantasy numbers.
