A drastic change in the Quarterback betting market and what that means for 2024
A bunch of sportsbooks have released some quarterback props for the season and I’m using this post to break down historically what we can expect from the Quarterbacks as a whole for the upcoming year.
From there we can articulate which QBs we feel good about heading into the year and where there might be opportunity for us to place some bets this coming season based on the lines posted on these sportsbooks.
When doing these data dives from a historical perspective it’s hard to go too far back into the past due to the ever evolving landscape of the league and it shifting towards a much more pass heavy approach in the past decade.
QB Health and Injury Trends
Why could Quarterbacks be the best props to bet on their overs?
They are less likely to get injured over the course of the year and are much more stable.
How often do QBs stay healthy recently?
On average the past three years only 13.7 QBs on average start 16+ games and only 9.3 QBs each year play a full 17 game season.
On the grand scheme of things seeing only 28% of starting QBs will play an entire 17 game season is kind of crazy given the low injury rates at the position.
But we know sometimes in Week 18 things can get a little janky with teams resting their star players before playoffs which is why the 16+ starting game number comes into question.
And still only 43% of the starting QBs played 16+ games.
Healthy QBs who don’t play a full year
We do have to account for a lot of the lower end teams with quarterback questions naturally are going to have multiple QBs play during the season and also there are rookie QBs every year who start on the bench that naturally get more starting time as the season progresses.
When looking at who we want to bet on this year for QBs it’s going to be a good idea of dictating which QBs are basically locked into their starting jobs for the full year and avoiding rookies who we may not have clarity on whether they are starting Week 1.
Who are the QBs that might fall into the latter category of having legitimate concerns of getting benched via poor performance?
Daniel Jones
Russell Wilson
Sam Darnold
Obviously in some extremely bad seasons that are unlikely to happen we could see guys like Deshaun Watson, Derek Carr, Will Levis or Geno Smith get benched but given the team structure and how much these teams either have invested into these QBs or lack of backup options these feel like safe bets to be their teams starters for the entire years.
If you really want to maybe Kirk Cousins belongs in that boat as well, but that team has invested way too much into him.
Who are the teams in which they are unlikely to have a QB start a full 16/17 games given health?
Raiders
Steelers
Patriots
Vikings
Giants
Right now it looks like Bo Nix is trending to be the starter for the Broncos week 1 so that’s a team we should take off. Maybe you make the case that Daniel Jones has a rejuvenated year and plays the full season but starting the season he feels like he is on a short-ish leash.
This means that 27 other teams have what seems to be whoever their Week 1 starting QB is as a very high probability of playing the entire season regardless of performance (outside of a complete disaster).
2023 QB Season Long Prop Analysis
Last year there were 16 QBs to go under their season long passing total number. Only three of those 16 QBs played 16+ games last season.
In fact 11 of those 16 QBs who went under played 13 or fewer games last year. It was serious injuries that were the main factor in these QBs not hitting their win totals.
The five that didn’t get seriously hurt:
Geno Smith - 15 games played, would’ve likely hit over if he played one more game, would’ve smashed over if he played 17
Bryce Young - 16 games played, sucked
Patrick Mahomes - 16 games played, worst season of career
Russell Wilson - 15 games played, sucked
Derek Carr - 17 games played, missed the over by 50 passing yards
Pretty crazy that really the only way last year your QB is hitting their under is if you get hurt and/or play absolutely terrible relative to your expectations.
And last year specifically there were a ton of insane QB injuries we haven’t seen in most years.
What does this mean in the betting market?
All of the following data is per Connor Allen
Over the past three years QBs have gone under their season long prop number in 56 of 80 instances (70%).
This makes sense considering how few of these QBs got to play a full 16 or 17 games.
So naturally, games played was the biggest indicator of these unders.
What we have seen change over the past three years is how the sportsbooks are setting lines for these QBs.
2021-2023 Prop Lines • Average: 3,920.5 yards • Median: 3,900.5 yards • QBs with 4,000+ yard props: 38 out of 80 (47.5%)
2024 Prop Lines • Average: 3,550.5 yards • Median: 3,567.5 yards • QBs with 4,000+ yard props: 6 out of 30 (20%)
Market Shift • Overall decrease: 9.4%
Knowing that the market has decreased more this year, I wanted to dive into looking at the 24 overs that were hit in this mark to see if there was anything we could learn from this.
Looking at QBs who hit their overs
Of the 24 overs that were hit, the average passing yardage total of these quarterbacks were 4,395 while the median total was 4,495!
This is just more proof that these good quarterbacks with stable jobs that stay healthy end up smashing when they hit.
The average season long prop line of these 24 quarterbacks was 4,000.
So these top QBs when they hit their overs go bananas and hit their marks.
So instead of betting overs on the depleted lines this year should we be betting more alternate lines on these QBs?
DraftKings and a few select other sportsbooks are offering lines where we can bet QBs to pass for 4,000 and/or 4,500 at longer odds this year than we ever have been able to before.
I wanted to look historically at how many QBs reach these landmarks each year to help us get a guide for understanding when betting into these markets.
I chose 2016 as a cutoff for this data as it gives us enough of a sample size to work with while also being within this new generation of football.
We obviously know that in 2021 the league changed to 17 games so the benchmarks per game become a little different. So when doing this exercise I broke it into the following: who paced for these benchmarks given a 17 game season, who would’ve hit these benchmarks with an extra game, and who actually hit these benchmarks.
From there this could help give us a firm grouping of a rough range of how many QBs we could expect get close to or exceed these numbers on a yearly basis.
Analyzing 4,000+ yard passers
There’s been 228 starting QBs who played 10+ games since 2016, here is how they fared in these benchmarks:
I used criteria of QBs for 4,000 passing yards as the following: 235.3 passing yards per game (4,000 over 17 games)
QBs Pacing for 4,000 Yards • 129 out of 228 QBs (56.6%)
QBs Actually Reaching 4,000 Yards • 85 out of 129 pacing QBs (66.9%) • 85 out of 228 total QBs (37.2%)
Adjusted for 17-Game Seasons • Additional 20 QBs projected to reach 4,000 yards • Total of 105 out of 129 pacing QBs (81.4%) • Average of 13.1 QBs per year
For the Adjusted 17 game season I included all QBs who paced for 4,000 passing yards and started between 14-16 games from 2016-2020
I know this is dangerous to add 20 here since they technically didn’t do it. As far as we know they could’ve not played well the last game. But on the flip side there’s plenty of other QBs who didn’t pace but could’ve hit the mark with a massive last game.
So this number is more of a guideline than anything in terms of how many we can expect each season.
If we had 105 of 129 (81.4%) hit this number of the QBs that were pacing this is a good sign.
We obviously can’t say that this will be the case this year as each year is it’s own unique season, but gives us a range and indicator that there are certainly some QBs who will hit their overs and smash.
In fact only 19 QBs have gone over 4,000 yards over the past two seasons combined (9.5 average per year).
So is this trend of league wide passing affecting this over the two year sample, are QBs just getting hurt more recently or is it a combo of both?
Well, only 25 QB have started 16+ games over the last two seasons (12.5 average).
From 2016-2021 I looked league wide at QBs to either play an entire season or miss one game and there were an average of 18.8 QBs to start basically an entire season!
What does this mean?
We have been super unlucky with QB injuries recently.
Here are some QBs who had serious injuries last season:
Aaron Rodgers
Anthony Richardson
Daniel Jones
Deshaun Watson
Joe Burrow
Justin Herbert
Kirk Cousins
This will happen every year where we get stable QBs go down but last year was clearly an outlier.
But the fact given the average has now decreased by 9.4% and taking into key context like this there might be an edge here if we properly identify the correct QBs this year.
Analyzing 4,500+ yard passers
Looking at the same sample of 228 QBs since 2016, the average per game passing yards needed (17 game adjusted) would have been 264.7 yards per game.
QBs pacing for 4,500 yards:
68 out of 228 QBs (29.8%)
Average of 8.5 QBs per year
QBs actually reaching 4,500 passing yards:
32 out of 228 QBs (14%)
Average of 4 QBs per year
Adjusted data for 17-game seasons (2016-2020):
54 out of 228 QBs (23.7%) would have hit 4,500 yards
Average of 6.75 QBs per year
This final one is the number we should be looking at the most.
Changes in the QB landscape
In each of the past two years individually we have seen passing decline across the league as a whole.
In fact, both 2022 and 2023 were each individually the two lowest passing seasons per game in the following since 2010:
Yards per attempt
Yards per game
Attempts per game
Average net yards per attempt
We also saw a sack rate of 7.1% for QBs which was the highest since 1998.
As a whole the quarterback play has been pretty bad the last two years.
What changed?
The likes of an era with the following QBs are now retired:
Tom Brady
Ben Roethlisberger
Drew Brees
Phillip Rivers
Matt Ryan
Just to name a few these are all gone and out of the league. Each year these QBs would constantly be amongst the league leaders in passing yards and this era is unfortunately over.
We’ve struggled to fully “replace” these guys. And while there are a lot of great QBs in the league today, some of our best QBs aren’t our typical pocket passers. Guys like Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hurts aren’t going to put up massive passing numbers each season similar to the guys above.
The underwhelming quarterbacks to have come out of the draft in the last three years is a big reason why.
We’ve had some big busts and underwhelming play from the following QBs:
Zach Wilson
Trey Lance
Justin Fields
Mac Jones
Kenny Pickett
Bryce Young
You could even make an argument that Trevor Lawrence has been underwhelming but he’s clearly not on the level these guys were.
When we add in the fact that teams invested serious capital into these players, even with poor performance they will still get playing time early in their careers (except Lance).
So with the component that we’ve had some pretty bad QBs playing for 4-5 teams like in this span, while also adding in the fact that injuries from top QBs were at a higher rate than previous years during this span it makes sense why some of these passing numbers have been down league-wide.
It’s also very important to note that passing offenses as a whole have changed over the past couple years with defenses forcing teams to not beat them over the top with explosive defenses.
What I would argue for is we have plenty of QBs this year that are competent enough and are being schemed better than previously.
The amount of stable QBs this year that we have seen have high levels of success in the league at some point and/or potential for so is pretty long:
Lamar Jackson
Patrick Mahomes
Justin Herbert
Josh Allen
Tua Tagovailoa
CJ Stroud
Joe Burrow
Matthew Stafford
Dak Prescott
Kyler Murray
Jordan Love
Caleb Williams
Jared Goff
Jalen Hurts
Aaron Rodgers
Kirk Cousins
Brock Purdy
Anthony Richardson
Jayden Daniels
Drake Maye
Trevor Lawrence
JJ McCarthy
Bo Nix
That’s 23 teams where we could reasonably call a QB “good” or have the potential to be good or great.
This doesn’t include guys like Will Levis, Baker Mayfield or Bryce Young who reasonably could be on this list next year with improved performances (or in Baker’s case another good year).
With guys like Richardson, Maye, Daniels, McCarthy, and Nix the jury is certainly still out on them (and Caleb to an extent), but they are all good prospects with fun ceilings if things come together.
The league as a whole has good QBs and probably more good QBs than we have ever seen before.
There was a time when QBs like Derek Carr and Andy Dalton were 10 year starters despite being okay QBs. Every single one of these QBs on this list above are QBs we would probably take over them in their primes.
So while over the past few years have missed out on the elite QBs from the previous generation, we are building new ones here.
Given a full season of health it’s very likely we see that transpire across the league as a whole with a QB revolution.
So we know a bunch of these QBs could do very well this year. But what if we added another element into our research?
The impact of elite receivers on QBs
Passing weapons and how they effect these quarterbacks stats year-to-year.
I wanted to look at each of the following when it came to these QBs and the ceiling they possess in a season.
QBs who paced for 4,000 yards
One thing I looked at was if that QB had a WR/TE go for 1,300 or more yards in a season how would that effect the QB’s passing numbers for that season.
Total 1300+ Yard Receiver Seasons • 49 instances
Unique QB Seasons • 47 (due to two teams having dual 1300+ yard receivers)
Qualification Criteria • QB must have started 10+ games
QB Performance with 1300+ Yard Receiver • 42 out of 47 QBs (89.4%) paced for 4,000+ passing yards
Notable Exceptions • 5 QB seasons did not pace for 4,000 yards despite having a 1300+ yard receiver
The five instances were:
Deandre Hopkins 2017 - Deshaun tears ACL after 6 games plays with Tom Savage/TJ Yates
Mike Evans 2018 - Winston gets hurt after 9 games but the team as a whole has 5,358 passing yards
George Kittle 2018 - Jimmy G gets hurt and Mullens/Beathard start the rest of the year. 4,248 combined passing yards as a team
Davante Adams 2022 - Derek Carr gets benched after 15 games had 3501 passing yards at the time. Stidham throws for 628 yards next two games.
DJ Moore 2023 - Fields wasn’t close to pacing this number as DJ Moore became a massive outlier here.
QBs who actually would have got 4,000 yards (17 game adjusted)
36 of 47 QBs would have hit it given a 17 game season (78.7%)
The other five of this sample that missed it were the following:
2023 Matthew Stafford - played 15 games had 3965 yards
2019 Drew Brees - played 11 games had 2979 yards
2022 Jalen Hurts - played 15 games had 3701 yards
2022 Tua Tagovailoa - played 13 games had 3548 yards
2022 Dak Prescott - played 12 games had 2860 yards
2021 Lamar Jackson - played 12 games had 2882 yards
Now how many of these QBs paced for 4,500 yards?
28 of 47 (59.8%)
How many would have hit this given a 17 game schedule?
25 of 47 (53.2%)
So basically what the data is telling us is: if you have an elite WR having an incredible season you have over a 50% chance of your QB throwing for 4,500 yards even when accounting for injuries.
And assuming your QB stays healthy and plays enough, you’re almost a lock to pace for 4,000 yards on the season.
Potential 1,300+ yard players this year
CeeDee Lamb
Tyreek Hill
Ja’Marr Chase
Amon-Ra St. Brown
AJ Brown
Justin Jefferson
Garrett Wilson
Puka Nacua
Drake London
Cooper Kupp
Marvin Harrison Jr
Jaylen Waddle
Deebo Samuel
Brandon Aiyuk
Nico Collins
Stefon Diggs
DJ Moore
Keenan Allen
DK Metcalf
Devonta Smith
Chris Olave
Amari Cooper
Tee Higgins
Travis Kelce
Malik Nabers
That’s a rough guideline of the likeliest guys to hit that number based on their profiles and production so far in the league (minus Marvin Harrison and Malik Nabers). There’s an argument that maybe I missed out on a player or two and maybe put on an extra player or so, but hopefully they will be covered in the next section.
QBs with a potential 1,300+ player
Dak Prescott
Tua Tagovailoa
Joe Burrow
Jared Goff
Jalen Hurts
Sam Darnold
Aaron Rodgers
Matthew Stafford
Kirk Cousins
Kyler Murray
Brock Purdy
CJ Stroud
Caleb Williams
Geno Smith
Derek Carr
Deshaun Watson
Patrick Mahomes
Daniel Jones
That’s 18 QBs that given the health of their top WR and somewhat decent performance should be pacing for 4,000 yards this season.
And this also gives us a good glimpse on who is reasonable to bet on in this market.
Out of these QBs I think Deshaun Watson offers the most “benching” material and it was when Joe Flacco was in last year in which Amari Cooper saw his biggest games.
Daniel Jones also seems like someone who might be an outlier here because him being benched is fully within the cards even though Drew Lock has looked terrible so far in preseason and camp.
If Olave has a big season we could see Carr put up some decent passing numbers.
I’ll touch on that later and who has the best values amongst these guys.
So having one potential elite WR is great, but what about having two guys who are good WRs?
Impact of two stud passing weapons
I wanted to see what passing seasons looked like if two players on the same team had 1,000+ receiving yards.
Total Dual 1000+ Yard Receiver Duos • 33 instances • Average of 4.1 per year
QB Performance with Dual 1000+ Yard Receivers • 4,000+ Yard Pace: 33 out of 33 QBs (100%) • 4,500+ Yard Pace: 23 out of 33 QBs (69.7%)
Adjusted for 17-Game Season • Projected 4,000+ Yard QBs: 27 out of 33 (81.8%) • Projected 4,500+ Yard QBs: 21 out of 33 (63.6%)
Notable Observations • Even backup QBs (e.g., Kyle Allen, Trevor Siemian, Teddy Bridgewater) paced for 4,000+ yards • All QBs missing 4,000 yards in 17-game projection were due to injuries • Significant increase in 4,500+ yard potential with dual 1000+ yard receivers
Quite actionable!
So who are the duos (or trios) this year that are most likely could amass 1,000 yards each?
Rams - Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua
Bengals - Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins
Dolphins - Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle
Texans - Nico Collins and Stefon Diggs and Tank Dell
Bears - DJ Moore and Keenan Allen (also Rome Odunze)
Seahawks - DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett or Jaxon Smith-Njigba
Eagles - AJ Brown and Devonta Smith
49ers - Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk and George Kittle
Chiefs - Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice or Hollywood Brown (also Xavier Worthy)
Falcons - Drake London and Kyle Pitts
Lions - Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam Laporta
Cardinals - Marvin Harrison Jr and Trey McBride
Ravens - Zay Flowers and Mark Andrews
Buccaneers - Mike Evans and Chris Godwin
Jaguars - Calvin Ridley and Deandre Hopkins
Vikings - Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison
That’s 16 duos where we could reasonably see multiple 1,000 yard receivers from.
Obviously injuries are going to play a huge part in this on why we won’t see a majority of these come to fruition.
But if we can make a bet that given health that there are extremely strong bets for the QB to have a big season, then we should find which of these offenses has the highest floor given an injury.
The Chiefs, Texans, Bears, 49ers and even the Seahawks all have very high floors given their QBs health. If one of their weapons went down they would still possess two players that are really good and could elevate the QB play.
What makes the Texans and Bears most unique is they each possess two guys individually who could go for 1,300 and the third weapon is a high upside player that could reach 1,000.
It might not be crazy to say this, but in modern NFL history these two teams might have some of the best WR trios of all-time on paper.
When betting on these QBs I want to bet on them in which there is at least one player capable of going for 1,300 yards in a scenario where the other gets hurt.
Teams like the Ravens feel very thin given the state of the offense.
So knowing this what do the betting markets look like and how can we take advantage?
What exactly are we looking for in QBs to bet on this year?
Two or more players capable of reaching 1,000 yards
One player capable of reaching 1,300 yards
And what do we need to have happen for these QBs to hit their marks?
Simply to stay healthy and play at least 16 games.