NFL Red Zone Stats vs. Expectation: Quarterbacks

As we continue to lay the foundation for the fantasy football landscape for 2024, we are following up our look at league and team performance in the red zone last season and spilling that over into individual player analysis.

In that top-down team post, we covered that the crux of touchdowns scored in the NFL come from inside of the red zone and that not all red zone touches are created equal.

Just to reiterate some notes from that article that relate to passing production near the end zone, since 2010:

• 66.8% of all passing touchdowns come from inside of the red zone. In 2023, that rate stayed on par exactly at 66.8%.
• 43.5% of all passing touchdowns scored overall come from inside of the 10-yard line. In 2023, that rate was at 44.8%.
• 22.4% of all passing touchdowns scored overall come from inside of the 5-yard line. In 2023, that rate was 23.7%.

Over the past decade, a pass attempt from the 19-yard line has been worth 0.58 fantasy points.

A pass attempt from the 10-yard line climbs to 0.92 points per attempt.

At the five-yard line, that spikes to 1.43 points per attempt.

From the one-yard line, that rises all of the way up to 2.08 yards per attempt.

With that, the next step is then diving into the red zone production versus an expectation for fantasy skill players based on their actual opportunities and where they came from in the red zone.

We are starting things off with the quarterbacks.

Highlighting the top options in the current ADP, excluding rookies and players injured for all of 2023.

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2023 QB Red Zone Fantasy Points Vs. Expectation

Opening things up, Josh Allen set a new record for fantasy points scored inside of the red zone last season.

The previous high was 185.9 points, set by Marshall Faulk back in 2000.

Over the past five seasons, Allen has finished 1st, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, and 5th in fantasy points generated inside of the red zone.

26.5% of Allen’s red zone points came from just the 1-2 yard lines.

Allen rushed for a career-high 15 touchdowns last year.

Buffalo adopted their version of the “tush push” along the way last season. As a result, Allen scored 30.5 fantasy points from the one-yard line.

For some added context, he scored 24.1 fantasy points from the one-yard over the 2021 and 2022 seasons combined.

Josh Allen Career Red Zone Output Vs. Expectations:

Looking over Allen’s career output is a great place to start here since it highlights where the ceiling potential from the original #KonamiCode rushing production turbo-charges fantasy points.

We talked about this two weeks ago when looking at quarterback trends relating to fantasy output.

The position has recently been involved near the end zone in the running game at a higher degree than ever before.

If you filter the table above by points scored over expectations in the red zone, the top of that list is littered with mobile quarterbacks.

Not only is it led by Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Lamar Jackson, but also the small samples from Deshaun Watson and Anthony Richardson are in the top seven quarterbacks over expected points last season.

The running quarterbacks can fend off regression to the mean at a higher degree than outlier passing production.

Jalen Hurts has outproduced his fantasy expectations in the red zone in all three of his seasons as a starter.

Hurts was 21st in the league in expected red zone points through the air and regressed from his spike season through the air in 2022.

But Hurts led all quarterbacks in rushing expectations in the red zone by a wide margin. He was fourth in the NFL overall in expected rushing points inside of the red zone despite being seventh in red zone runs.

Hurts was able to do that based on the aforementioned “tush push.”

He scored 67.1 fantasy points solely from the one-yard line.

That was the most fantasy points scored from an individual yard line last season. The next closest was from Gus Edwards, who scored 42.7 points from the one-yard line.

Hurts scored 11 rushing touchdowns from the one-yard line matching the most in a season in the 2000s, originally set by LeGarrette Blount in 2016.

Hurts now has 22 rushing scores from the one-yard line over the past three seasons. The next closest player has 14.

It remains to be seen how the retirement of Jason Kelce and the addition of Saquon Barkley impact the success and volume of the tush push in 2024, but Hurts has been the best goal-line rusher in the league, which carries massive weight inside of the red zone no matter how his passing production has been.

Moving away from the running quarterbacks at the top, there are a few pass-first players to highlight potential regression for in 2024 based on their 2023 output.

The first player that I want to touch on here is Dak Prescott, who led the NFL in passing touchdowns and touchdowns thrown over expectations last season.

You don’t lead the NFL in passing touchdowns without running hot on your passing opportunities.

Prescott led the position in expected red zone points last season despite the lack of rushing opportunities that both Allen and Hurts had.

Spoiler alert for tomorrow, but the Dallas running game was a massive underachiever in terms of red zone performance, which forced the Cowboys to aggressively attack through the air near the end zone.

Prescott set career-highs in pass attempts inside of the 10-yard line (49) and five-yard line (21).

Prescott led the NFL with 67 pass attempts into the end zone last season. The next closest player had 53. His career-high in end zone pass attempts before last year was 45.

Over the past decade, 53.4% of all passing touchdowns have come from throws that are into the actual end zone. In 2023, the league rate was 54.3%.

75% of Prescott’s passing touchdowns last year came on throws into the actual end zone.

His previous high in a season was 56.5%.

Jordan Love was third among all quarterbacks in points scored over expectations in the red zone, trailing only Allen and Hurts.

He was third in passing touchdowns over expectations, trailing only Prescott and Russell Wilson.

Last week I highlighted that the Packers set a new record in goal-to-go efficiency.

Every single completion that Love made last season in goal-to-go situations resulted in a touchdown.

Love was second in the NFL in end zone passes (53) and end zone touchdowns (21) behind Prescott.

Green Bay is also a strong bet to have more balance in terms of touchdown dispersal.

While Love showed over the back half of 2023 that this offense has another gear and he could be an ascending player, we are also only working with half of a season of front-end production paired with multiple pulling threads of potential regression in terms of passing success near the end zone.

Love also had fewer expected rushing points in the red zone than C.J. Stroud.

I do believe that the fantasy community as a whole has priced Love fairly this offseason, but those elements are something to keep in mind if getting overly aggressive with him in drafts, especially in 2QB formats.

Brock Purdy has done nothing but operate at a hyper-efficient level on his small sample in the NFL.

Whereas Prescott and Love had above-expected output last season, they each still had a lot of volume which had them sitting high in terms of expectations to begin with.

Purdy got there with extreme efficiency.

Purdy was eighth on the list above in red zone fantasy points but was 18th in expected points scored.

He was 11th in the NFL in red zone pass attempts (64), but his 29.7% touchdown rate on those throws led all players with 20 or more attempts.

Purdy only threw 21 passes in total into the actual end zone (21st in the NFL), but 57.1% resulted in touchdowns, the highest rate in the league.

The league average was 34.8%.

Purdy threw a touchdown pass on 4.5% of his attempts that did not travel into the end zone.

The NFL average was 2.0%.

After a 7.6% touchdown rate over his small sample size in 2022, he led the NFL with a 7.0% touchdown rate last season.

For some context there, Aaron Rodgers is the only other quarterback over the past 30 years to have back-to-back seasons with a touchdown rate of 7.0% or higher while attempting 100 or more passes (he did it twice in 2011-2012 and again in 2020-2021).

Before Rodgers, you must go all the way back to Dave Kreig in 1987-1988 to find someone who accomplished that feat.

For added context, Patrick Mahomes has one NFL season with a touchdown rate of 7.0% or higher.

Now, no other quarterback in the Super Bowl era has put together three such seasons in a row.

There is an element of “he can’t keep getting away with it” surrounding Purdy that we are waiting to course correct, but his surrounding NFL environment is so strong that it is hard to completely run away.

As was the case in correctly pricing Jordan Love, the fantasy field is also much sharper now and is doing the same with Purdy.

In years past, we may have seen a player like Purdy be overvalued, but even if factoring in inevitable regression, there is an argument to be made still that he could be undervalued right now in drafts since he is regularly drafted as a front-end QB2 in terms of positional ADP.

Underachievers

After walking through some of the players who were at the top of points over expectations, let’s go through a few at the bottom since that group is littered with intriguing names that could rebound.

Fantasy gamers are fully buying back into a bounce back for Patrick Mahomes.

Last season was the first time Mahomes finished below scoring expectations in the red zone.

He was fourth among quarterbacks in expected points, finishing seventh in actual points scored.

No player above finished with fewer points scored than expected other than Tua Tagovailoa.

He was seventh in expected red zone points but 16th in actual production.

Tua set early career lows in passing touchdown rate inside of the red zone (24.6%) and inside of the 10-yard line (29.6%).

His previous career rates were 29.6% in the red zone as a whole and 45.2% inside of the 10-yard line.

Matthew Stafford and Joe Burrow were two other passers who finished below expectations last season and remained in the same coaching situations as a year ago.

Burrow has been given a slight hall pass for 2023 due to all his injuries. Just as he was getting healthy and ramped up after an early-season calf injury, Burrow was lost for the season with a wrist injury.

Stafford had a complete sample, ending the season 13th in fantasy production inside of the red zone despite sitting ninth in expectations.

He finished 18th among all passers with double-digit passers in touchdown rate on throws into the end zone (35.1%)

Justin Herbert, Kirk Cousins, and Baker Mayfield were underachievers who find themselves attached to new play callers in 2024.

Just 28.1% of Herbert’s end zone passes resulted in touchdowns, a career-low which was 29th in the league.

His career rate was at 34.7% entering last season.

Just 22.2% of Cousins’ red zone passes resulted in a touchdown, his lowest rate since 2016.

Mayfield is the most curious case here because he was fifth in the league in passing touchdowns over expectations last season.

The four players above him (Dak Prescott, Russell Wilson, Jordan Love, and Brock Purdy) were all overachievers in the red zone.

Mayfield was 12th in expected fantasy points inside of the red zone but finished 18th in actual output.

Only Tua Tagovailoa scored fewer points below expectations in the red zone than Mayfield did.

Mayfield was third in the NFL in pass attempts thrown into the end zone (48) but was 17th in touchdown rate on those passes (35.4%).

Of course, we already covered that Mayfield was able to overcome that inefficiency by leading the league with 14 passing touchdowns from outside of the red zone. He had never thrown more than seven such touchdowns in a season.

If drafting Mayfield in 2QB leagues and looking to run back the success he had as a fantasy QB2, you are hoping that his efficiency from outside of the red zone meets his inefficiency inside of the red zone in the middle in terms of regression.