Fantasy Football Today: Five quarterback regression candidates for 2024 you need to know before your drafts

2024 fantasy football the season is coming and we are increasing the content in fantasy football Today. One of my favorite off-season shows is always the Regression Candidates show. It is extremely important to take regression into account when projecting for the upcoming Fantasy Football season. Instead of relying on past production and the points achieved, the objective is to discover how and why the production emerged to project whether it will continue or not. Regression can occur in several ways. There are positive and negative regression candidates. One of the main areas of regression to focus on is touchdowns. They are worth a lot for our Fantasy Football game, but they are not so easy to project year after year.

On Monday’s episode of Fantasy Football Today, Adam Aizer, Dave Richard, Jamey Eisenberg and Heath Cummings dove into some of the top 2024 regression candidates at quarterback. You’ll find that embedded below, and there will be a deeper dive into each player we mentioned here today, plus more on the running back regression candidates. We’ll focus on five of these regression candidates below, but first, let’s start with some Aizer stats (we’ll include two fun ones at the running back position as well)!

• Jordan Love led the Packers in rushing touchdowns with four in 2023.
• Over the past two seasons, Lions running backs have scored a combined 31 rushing touchdowns inside the 5-yard line. Bills running backs, on the other hand, have scored just 27 rushing touchdowns inside the 5-yard line over the last SIX seasons.
• Alvin Kamara has 11 rushing touchdowns in 41 games over the past three seasons. The year before, he scored 16 rushing touchdowns.

Here are five quarterback regression candidates for the 2024 season:

Jordan Love, QB, Packers

Love had the fifth-highest touchdown rate in 2023. He finished with the second-most touchdown passes in the NFL and the fifth highest number of pass attempts. A big factor in Love’s touchdown rate was his combination of efficiency and volume in the red zone, in addition to his efficiency in the deep passing game. Love has thrown eight touchdown passes of 20 or more yards, ranking ninth in the NFL. He also had the second-most pass attempts and touchdowns in the red zone and the second-most touchdown passes in the green zone. Will Love see any regression in these two areas in 2024? Don’t be so sure! Consider this: The Packers’ red zone pass rate over the past five seasons: seventh-highest, 15th-highest, sixth-highest, 12th-highest and sixth-highest. They were in the top 15 in all five seasons under Matt LaFleur and in the top seven in three of the five seasons.

Patrick Mahomes, QB, Chiefs

Not all regression candidates are negative regression candidates and Mahomes is the perfect example. Mahomes has a career-low yards per attempt and touchdown rate in 2023 while also having a career-high interception rate. The situation has changed drastically for Mahomes in 2024. Travis Kelce, who suffered an injury last season and played 200 fewer snaps than he normally would, is fully healthy heading into training camp. The Chiefs also upgraded the wide receiver corps by adding Marquise Brown and first-round draft pick Xavier Worthy. Digging deeper into Mahomes’ 2023 numbers to project the regression, we see that he had the third-most red zone pass attempts — touchdowns should regress to Mahomes’ career average in 2024. He also took a big step forward. behind when it came to touchdown passes of 20 yards or more. Over the past six seasons, Mahomes has thrown touchdown passes of 20-plus yards through the air 15 times in 2018, 15 in 2019, 15 in 2020, 11 in 2021, seven in 2022 and just three last season. The additions of Brown and Worthy should help it get back to double digits in 2024.

Brock Purdy, QB, 49ers

Purdy was a surefire QB1 in 2023, but Fantasy managers will have to ask themselves how likely he is to maintain his hyper-efficiency in 2024. Purdy averaged nearly 10 yards per attempt (9.6) in 2023! The second best YPA among quarterbacks was Tua Tagovailoa with 8.3 ypa. Only four quarterbacks have averaged more than nine yards per attempt over the past 10 seasons. This number typically tends to regress with examples in recent years including Deshaun Watson, Joe Burrow and others. Burrow averaged 8.9 yards per attempt in 2021 and that number dropped to 7.4 in 2022. Matt Ryan averaged 9.3 in 2016. That was a big exception. He dropped to 7.7 YPA in 2017 – that was closer to his career average. Purdy will have to remain as efficient per pass to maintain his fantasy production because the 49ers are still one of the highest rushing teams in the NFL. Here’s where the 49ers have ranked in passing attempts per game over the last seven seasons: 32nd; 20th; 29th; 16th; 29th; 26th; 32nd.

Josh Allen, QB, accounts

When it comes to Allen (and Jalen Hurts), the main question will be how much regression each of these dual-threat quarterbacks will see from a rushing production standpoint. Allen cashed in 15 rushing touchdowns in 2023 after scoring eight, nine, eight, six and seven rushing touchdowns in his first five NFL seasons. Nearly doubling his previous touchdown total had a huge impact on his Fantasy production and where he finished among quarterbacks. He had a career-high 11 rushing attempts from the 3-yard line or closer and scored on eight of them. Allen had just 30 combined carries from the 3-yard line or closer in the first five seasons of his career.

Of course, when it comes to Allen, there is also the opportunity for positive regression when it comes to what he can contribute through the air. Allen also threw 35-37 touchdown passes in three consecutive seasons before throwing just 29 in 2023. His touchdown rate was his lowest in four seasons.

Jalen Hurts, QB, Eagles

Hurts now has two consecutive seasons with 16 carries inside the 3-yard line, but has scored nine touchdowns from that range in 2022 (13th overall) and 13 TDs from that range in 2023 (15th overall). Hurts’ rushing touchdowns over the past three seasons: 10, 13, and 15. It’s easy to assume this number will regress, but it’s important to keep in mind that Hurts has been able to rush for touchdowns at a significant rate, although the Eagles running backs have accumulated 15, 18 and seven rushing touchdowns over the past three seasons. The Eagles have never had a red zone back like Saquon Barkley during Hurts’ career and if the star back takes enough of those red zone carries, Hurts could move back into the back-end QB1 range in 2024.