When you draft a quarterback coming off a huge season – like Aaron Rodgers or Josh Allen this time around – it’s with the understanding that it’s very unlikely that you’ll get numbers that are quite as good. But when you pull out the stats, the drop is even worse than you would expect – way beyond the fabled “regression to the mean”.
Rather than just finishing a few touchdowns short, you see far more instances where the player is just simply nothing close to what he was in his big season. Like with Lamar Jackson last year (at least until late in the season) and Patrick Mahomes in the previous season. It’s not easy staying on top.
In the chart below, see the run-down of the last 25 quarterbacks to put up at least 40 touchdowns in a season (combined total of touchdown passes and touchdown runs). Of that group, only six made it to 35 touchdowns the following year, which is the kind of gut-feeling total I think many settle on with these kind of players (“He won’t be as productive as last year, but he’s still really good.”)
Of the 25 previous quarterbacks to finish with 40-plus touchdowns in a season, only 11 the next season made it to even 30 touchdowns.
Something to keep in mind with a half dozen quarterbacks this year coming off 40-touchdown seasons.
On the chart below, let me clarify what you’re seeing with those final two columns. The first (the “next year” column) shows the total touchdowns for the follow-up season – the combined total of passing and rushing touchdowns. And the last column shows where the quarterback ranked in his follow-up season using standard fantasy scoring (standard scoring, of course, includes passing and rushing yards, but I’m not publishing all of the yards numbers here – I wanted to keep the chart readable).
The fantasy rank numbers are interesting, I think, because they show that when you have a bunch of quarterbacks who put up 40-plus touchdowns, only about half of those guys ranked higher than 10th in fantasy value at their position the next season. Officially, 13 of the 25 ranked 8th or higher, three ranked 10th, and nine of these 25 quarterbacks ranked 13th or lower for various reasons.
With there being six of these quarterbacks this year, it looks pretty likely that a couple of them won’t finish with top-10 numbers.
| QUARTERBACKS WITH 40-PLUS TOUCHDOWNS (the next year) | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | TDP | TDR | Total | Next Yr | Pts Rk |
| 2013 | Peyton Manning, Den. | 55 | 1 | 56 | 39 | 3 |
| 2018 | Patrick Mahomes, K.C. | 50 | 2 | 52 | 28 | 10 |
| 2007 | Tom Brady, N.E. | 50 | 2 | 52 | 0 | 61 |
| 2020 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 48 | 3 | 51 | ? | ? |
| 2004 | Peyton Manning, Ind. | 49 | 0 | 49 | 28 | 3 |
| 1984 | Dan Marino, Mia. | 48 | 0 | 48 | 30 | 1 |
| 2011 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 45 | 3 | 48 | 41 | 2 |
| 2011 | Drew Brees, N.O. | 46 | 1 | 47 | 44 | 1 |
| 2020 | Josh Allen, Buff. | 37 | 9 | 46 | ? | ? |
| 2015 | Cam Newton, Car. | 35 | 10 | 45 | 24 | 17 |
| 2012 | Drew Brees, N.O. | 43 | 1 | 44 | 42 | 2 |
| 1986 | Dan Marino, Mia. | 44 | 0 | 44 | 27 | 5 |
| 2016 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 40 | 4 | 44 | 16 | 31 |
| 2019 | Lamar Jackson, Balt. | 36 | 7 | 43 | 33 | 10 |
| 2014 | Andrew Luck, Ind. | 40 | 3 | 43 | 15 | 27 |
| 2020 | Tom Brady, T.B. | 40 | 3 | 43 | ? | ? |
| 2011 | Tom Brady, N.E. | 39 | 3 | 42 | 38 | 3 |
| 2013 | Drew Brees, N.O. | 39 | 3 | 42 | 34 | 4 |
| 1994 | Steve Young, S.F. | 35 | 7 | 42 | 23 | 10 |
| 1999 | Kurt Warner, St.L. | 41 | 1 | 42 | 21 | 13 |
| 1998 | Steve Young, S.F. | 36 | 6 | 42 | 3 | 53 |
| 2020 | Russell Wilson, Sea. | 40 | 2 | 42 | ? | ? |
| 1995 | Brett Favre, G.B. | 38 | 3 | 41 | 41 | 1 |
| 1996 | Brett Favre, G.B. | 39 | 2 | 41 | 36 | 1 |
| 2011 | Matthew Stafford, Det. | 41 | 0 | 41 | 24 | 8 |
| 2012 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 39 | 2 | 41 | 17 | 26 |
| 2004 | Daunte Culpepper, Min. | 39 | 2 | 41 | 7 | 31 |
| 2014 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. | 38 | 2 | 40 | 32 | 8 |
| 2000 | Daunte Culpepper, Min. | 33 | 7 | 40 | 19 | 15 |
| 2020 | Patrick Mahomes, K.C. | 38 | 2 | 40 | ? | ? |
| 2020 | Ryan Tannehill, Ten. | 33 | 7 | 40 | ? | ? |