(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

Only a few QBs truly excel in deep passing — and Julio Jones might be in for a bit of a surprise in Tennessee if he thinks he’s going to a team that really airs it out more than Matt Ryan in Atlanta.

In today’s Stat of the Day article, we will review the league’s top (and bottom) QBs on deep balls, which we define as passes that travel at least 20 yards in the air.

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While old man Tom Brady paced the league in deep passes in 2020, young gun Joe Burrow has a lot of improving still to do

Here are the 2020 passing leaders based on deep ball. We have attempts, completions, completion rate and fantasy points per attempt on deep passes in the chart below:

Player20+ Yd Atts.20+ Yd Comps.Comp. %FP/Att.
Tom Brady1043635%0.83
Ben Roethlisberger862124%0.70
Aaron Rodgers843339%1.14
Matt Ryan823138%0.57
Josh Allen793241%0.94
Patrick Mahomes782937%1.04
Matthew Stafford752939%0.91
Derek Carr752939%1.15
Kyler Murray752736%0.84
Russell Wilson742331%0.91
Justin Herbert732534%1.04
Drew Lock671725%0.48
Deshaun Watson663350%1.29
Baker Mayfield652742%0.70
Kirk Cousins652335%0.69
Carson Wentz611626%0.47
Teddy Bridgewater592542%0.75
Philip Rivers572340%0.62
Jared Goff511325%0.52
Joe Burrow51918%0.29
Nick Foles481735%0.54
Daniel Jones472043%1.00
Lamar Jackson471736%0.86
Ryan Tannehill451227%0.62
Sam Darnold451124%0.40

There is a lot of data in the chart above, and instead of writing a few paragraphs about the nuggets that jump off the screen, we’ll do some bullet points instead:

  • Tom Brady attempted nearly 20 more deep balls than any other QB in the league last year. At age 85. Bruce Arians gives zero Fs, and Brady is still above average on the deep balls.
  • Carson Wentz attempted 61 deep balls last year but completed just 16 of them. T.Y. Hilton may be in for a long season if Wentz can’t turn it around.
  • Daniel Jones attempted only 47 deep balls, but completed 43% of them, second-highest rate in the league. Kenny Golladay is going to be better than you think.
  • Ryan Tannehill attempted just 45 deep passes and completed only 27% of those — among the lowest in the league. Julio Jones reportedly wanted to join a team with a QB that aired it out more than Matt Ryan, but this suggests the Titans ain’t it.
  • Joe Burrow has his work cut out for him. He attempted 51 deep balls but completed only nine of them, for an atrocious 18% completion rate.

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