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The league average touchdown percentage for NFL quarterbacks was 4.5 percent last year. Every year since 2009, the number's been somewhere between 4.2 and 4.6 aside from a one-year jump to 4.8 in 2018.
That's not to say some individual quarterbacks don't exceed that number every year. Plenty do. 12 NFL quarterbacks had a touchdown rate over five percent last season. But of those 12 quarterbacks, only five had been in the top 12 in touchdown rate the year before, and even among the guys who did, we saw drops in touchdown rate. In 2018, Patrick Mahomes led the NFL with an 8.6 touchdown percentage. Last year, he dropped to 5.4 percent. Russell Wilson was at 8.2 percent; he fell to 6.0 percent. That's still a good mark, but it did contribute to Wilson dropping from 35 touchdowns to 31 touchdowns.
Below are three quarterbacks who we should expect some touchdown regression from this season.
Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens
I love watching Lamar Jackson play football and am comfortable taking him as one of the first two quarterbacks in fantasy drafts this year. I don't want it to sound like I'm projecting Jackson to be a bust or anything.
But a 9.0 percent touchdown rate is wild. Jackson's the first qualifying player to throw touchdowns on at least nine percent of his throws since Aaron Rodgers in 2011. Rodgers still led the NFL in touchdown rate the next year, but dropped to a 7.1 percent rate. Because he threw 50 more pass attempts, his overall touchdowns fell only fell from 45 to 39, though.
Anyway, Lamar. There's just no chance he throws touchdowns on nine percent of his passes. That kind of outlier number is unsustainable. I get that his running ability helps open up space down the field for him to find his receivers and tight ends. I get that he's going to attempt a lower number of passes than many other top quarterbacks, allowing him to be more choosy about which passes he does throw. Makes sense. I'm not hating on Lamar Jackson.
But his touchdown rate will fall in 2020. It has to. Peyton Manning's 9.9 percent season was followed by a 6.2 percent season. Ken Stabler's 9.3 percent fell to 6.8 percent. Len Dawson from 9.2 to 6.7. Etc., etc., etc.
While the sample size of quarterbacks with a touchdown rate over nine is very small, it seems like we should expect Jackson's rate to fall somewhere in the six percentage range. So, let's do some math.
6.5 percent feels like a decent estimate. Based on last year, Jackson throwing touchdowns on 6.5 percent of his throws would be a drop down to 26 touchdown throws. That's 10 fewer than he had, which equates to 40 fewer fantasy points over the course of the season. If Jackson had finished with 40 fewer fantasy points than he had, his total after Week 16 would have been 381.68 points, which still would have seen him ranked as the best quarterback in fantasy. Deshaun Watson was second over the first 16 weeks with 331.98 points.
(And yes, I realize Jackson would have also lost yardage points with 10 fewer touchdowns. But the point of this is that he still would have been great if he'd only thrown 26 touchdowns, a number that's more in line with what we might expect in 2020.)
Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee Titans
Like with Jackson, I don't see Tannehill falling off the face of the earth or anything, especially since in 2018 he ranked sixth in touchdown rate at 6.2 percent. But it's hard to imagine Tannehill stays above seven percent this year.
Still, his year-to-year touchdown rate seems to paint a picture of a guy who continually gets better:
The problem with looking at the chart in this way is that you miss out on some important context, though: pass attempts and how Tannehill's usage has influenced his touchdown rate. Let's do a new chart that replaces year with pass attempts:
As you can see here, Tannehill's touchdown rate has been higher when he's thrown fewer pass attempts. In years where he threw over 500 passes, he topped out at 4.6 percent.
One of my concerns about Tannehill is that he looked good last year and was underrated in 2018, but both of those years saw him throw under 300 passes. We don't have a track record of Tannehill's touchdown rate being above average in years where he saw a heavier workload. In fact, two of his three years with 500-plus pass attempts saw him post a below-average touchdown rate.
The big question is how many passes will Tannehill have to throw this year. Overall, the 2019 Titans attempted the second-fewest passes in the league at 448, and in Mike Vrabel's first season with the Titans, the team threw 437 passes, also the second-fewest in the league. How much will the Titans lean on Derrick Henry this year? If we put him around 450 attempts, how will he look?
I'm fine with Tannehill in 2019 as a high-end QB2, but I don't believe his numbers down the stretch last year are sustainable, and neither does math.
Matthew Stafford, Detroit Lions
While a couple of other guys were in contention for this final spot, I ultimately went with Stafford because the other two -- Kirk Cousins and Jimmy Garoppolo -- felt slightly more sustainable, with Cousins post multiple seasons over five percent and Garoppolo having the benefit of playing in a run-heavy offense.
But Stafford... he's interesting. He only played eight games last year but threw enough passes to qualify for the leader board, finishing fourth at 6.5 percent.
That's the highest touchdown rate of Stafford's career and his first time over six percent since 2011. Stafford's had a lot of ups and downs in terms of touchdown rate, something that makes sense when you factor in that he's thrown over 550 passes in every season where he's started 16 games.
Stafford threw 19 touchdowns in eight games last year. In 2018, he threw 21 in 16 games. He was on a 38 touchdown pace in 2019, which would have been the second-highest touchdown total of his career after his 41 touchdowns in 2011.
Simply put, Stafford was on pace to have one of his best seasons ever last year. I think we can attribute some of that to the addition of offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell and I don't expect Stafford's touchdown rate to plummet to 2018's 3.8 percent, but I also don't think a 32-year-old Stafford coming off injury is going to be a better quarterback than a healthy Stafford was in his late 20s.
I still like Matthew Stafford plenty this season. He has some good weapons around him with Kenny Golladay, Marvin Jones Jr., Danny Amendola, and T.J. Hockenson. And the fact that the team invested in running back by drafting D'Andre Swift means some pressure can come off Stafford, opening things up in the passing game.
But he's not equaling last year's touchdown rate. He's not going to have the highest touchdown rate over a full season that he's ever had. He'll be a solid fantasy quarterback, but he's not going to be on pace to throw nearly 40 touchdowns.
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