Top 5 deep-ball passers in the NFL entering the 2020 season
By Dustin Baker
Which NFL quarterbacks are the top deep-ball passers as of late?
Passing the football, rather than rushing, has become a significantly more prevalent attribute of NFL offenses as the league has evolved. For example, the “most average” passing football team in the NFL 40 years ago was the Miami Dolphins.
In the 1979 season, the Dolphins ranked 14th out of 28 teams in passing for a total of 2,763 yards. For context, this was the twilight of quarterback Bob Griese’s career. Flash forward four decades, and the most-average team throwing the football in 2019 was the Jacksonville Jaguars–with 3,760 passing yards. That is nearly a 1,000-yard differential, and it is substantial.
That’s the backstory. NFL teams throw more. How do they throw it?
Teams with inexperienced or less-than-stellar passers tend to utilize checkdown valves for pass-catching options; these are typically running backs or short routes to tight ends. The Chicago Bears do a lot of this with quarterback Mitchell Trubisky.
In 2019, Trubisky was the king of one-to-three-yard completions. He led the NFL with 45 completions of three or fewer yards. Next to him in this metric for 2019 were Jared Goff, Jimmy Garoppolo, and Derek Carr (all with 39 such completions).
And then there are the quarterbacks that launch it. This examination is defining 40+ yards as the deep-ball parameter. It takes the number of deep-completions and divides it by the quarterback’s overall number of pass attempts. A deep-ball-by-pass-attempts percentage is derived.
Honorable mention on this list is Detroit Lions signal-caller Matthew Stafford. The 32-year-old Lion was on a trajectory to finish near third in this particular metric but his season was derailed by injury about halfway through the 2019 campaign.
Alas, the following five quarterbacks are ranked in ascending order of good-to-great, in terms most 2019 deep-ball completions.
Note: All stats are courtesy of Pro Football Reference. Disclaimer: This analysis is constructed with a recency preponderance. The statistics mentioned are from last season, 2019. It’s an examination of the “here and now” of deep-ball passers.