Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: The QBs throwing it deep ... or not

(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:

Player	20+ Yd Atts.	20+ Yd Comps.	Comp. %	FP/Att.
Tom Brady	104	36	35%	0.83
Ben Roethlisberger	86	21	24%	0.70
Aaron Rodgers	84	33	39%	1.14
Matt Ryan	82	31	38%	0.57
Josh Allen	79	32	41%	0.94
Patrick Mahomes	78	29	37%	1.04
Matthew Stafford	75	29	39%	0.91
Derek Carr	75	29	39%	1.15
Kyler Murray	75	27	36%	0.84
Russell Wilson	74	23	31%	0.91
Justin Herbert	73	25	34%	1.04
Drew Lock	67	17	25%	0.48
Deshaun Watson	66	33	50%	1.29
Baker Mayfield	65	27	42%	0.70
Kirk Cousins	65	23	35%	0.69
Carson Wentz	61	16	26%	0.47
Teddy Bridgewater	59	25	42%	0.75
Philip Rivers	57	23	40%	0.62
Jared Goff	51	13	25%	0.52
Joe Burrow	51	9	18%	0.29
Nick Foles	48	17	35%	0.54
Daniel Jones	47	20	43%	1.00
Lamar Jackson	47	17	36%	0.86
Ryan Tannehill	45	12	27%	0.62
Sam Darnold	45	11	24%	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.