Last year, I had a pattern. I discussed offenses that are on the regression watch, and then I discussed quarterbacks who are in the same boat. I am repeating that process this year.

We’ve talked a lot about regression here recently, be it total offense or rushing efficiency. Now, we’re going to tackle quarterback efficiency.

Specifically, touchdown regression. Sure, quarterbacks could regress in terms of completion percentage, yards per attempt, and interception rate, but the single most valuable thing a quarterback does for fantasy is throw touchdowns (or run them in, or catch your own pass like Josh Allen did that one time).

What happens after a quarterback has an above-average season in TD rate? What about a below-average season?

For this study, I went to Stathead and looked at every quarterback since 2015 who had at least 200 passing attempts in a given year to give us a decent sample size to study. From there, I grouped players who had a TD rate at or above 6% and those below 3.5% (for what it’s worth, 4.5% was the overall average). Finally, I narrowed it down further to QBs with next season data (so a player who had 200+ attempts one season but not the next was not counted for this study).

So in total, I looked at QBs with at least 200 attempts, focusing on those with a TD rate at or above 6% and 3.5% or lower, who had at least 200 passing attempts in the following season, so we could establish some usable next-season data.

In the above-average sample, we have 47 quarterbacks. Funny enough, in the below-average sample, we have 46 quarterbacks. I didn’t plan that to be the case of having such closely matched groups, but here we are.

In the high rate group, 89% saw a drop in TD efficiency the following year, though not all were dramatic losses. In the chart below, the light green bar marked “Little Change” is my way of showing natural variance. I don’t expect players to maintain an exact TD rate multiple years in a row, and that bar is there to show small changes. However, it’s still notable that in that data point, 10 of the 12 quarterbacks there saw their TD rate fall. Even though it may have been slight, the overwhelming majority saw a drop in efficiency following their highly efficient season.

The average decrease was 1.7%, which is a huge change! So if a player had a 6.2% TD rate, they would be looking at the 2024 league average of 4.5% the next season.

🔎 Just to put that in perspective, a quarterback who passes 500 attempts with a 6.2% TD rate would throw 31 touchdowns. If he keeps the passing attempts the same and drops to 4.5%, that’s 23 touchdowns! In order to keep up the same number of touchdowns despite the drop in efficiency, he would have to throw 689 times! Since 2015, only three quarterbacks have attempted that many passes in a single season. It’s an extremely high number to hit.

Among our second group of quarterbacks, the average increase in TD rate after a below-average year was 1.2%. Nearly half of those who saw an increase saw their rate go up by 1.5%, and 33% had a 2% increase or more! In total, 78% of our 46-player low-efficiency sample set saw an increase in TD rate.

🔎 As we did in the previous example, let’s put this in perspective. This quarterback also attempts 500 passes in a season. With a 3% TD rate, he’s only throwing 15 touchdowns. He stays in average offense, but has a 4.2% rate the next year. He’s now throwing 21 touchdowns! Six touchdowns doesn’t sound like a lot for a QB, but it can be the difference from bottom of the barrel to a viable streamer, and he’s got a reasonable shot to achieve much more than that.

But what about fantasy points scoring?

Of the 47 high-TD rate QBs;

Among the 46 QBs in the low-TD rate group:

Last year, Jared Goff, Baker Mayfield, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson made our high-efficiency list last year. Three saw their TD rate drop by at least 1%, with Baker falling by 2.4% (and Lamar was still at a 7% TD rate in 2025). Only Burrow managed to tread water.

On the flip side, we saw some successes in our low-TD rate group, where we listed Daniel Jones and honorable mentions Caleb Williams and Geno Smith (who were right about the 3.5% cutoff at 3.6%). Though he dropped in fantasy PPG, even Geno Smith increased his TD rate from 2024 to 2025.

Now with all that information, the quarterbacks who fit the high rate threshold in 2025 are Matthew Stafford, Lamar Jackson, Brock Purdy, Joe Burrow, and Drake Maye.

The fantasy-relevant quarterbacks who had a touchdown rate at or below 3.5% in 2025 were: Justin Fields, Shedeur Sanders, Michael Penix, Spencer Rattler, Tyler Shough, and Cam Ward. Two are firm backups, and two are fighting for the starting job. So Shough and Ward are the more relevant ones in this conversation.

This has been a fun and interesting study for me, and I hope it was for you as well. Thanks for reading, and I will see you again soon!