Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: The fourth-quarter QBs

Tyler Loechner

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(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.)

You’re never really out of it in a fantasy football contest. Well, that’s not true. Sometimes you really are done for. But if your players still have the ball with any amount of time on the clock, anything can happen.

Today’s Stat of the Day article will look at which QBs threw the most TDs in the fourth quarter of games last season.

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Kirk Cousins, Ben Roethlisberger among league leaders in fourth-quarter TDs

The chart below shows the top 10 QBs from last year based on passing TDs in the fourth quarter of regular season games.

Player	4th Q Pass TDs
Deshaun Watson	13
Kirk Cousins	13
Ben Roethlisberger	12
Tom Brady	12
Patrick Mahomes	11
Russell Wilson	11
Ryan Tannehill	10
Carson Wentz	8
Drew Lock	8
Josh Allen	8

A few notes from this study:

Kirk Cousins is a surprise name at the top of the list. The Vikings were not a particularly bad team last year (7-9), so it’s hard to chalk this all up to “meaningless garbage time.” Cousins can be a legit fantasy weapon with Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson at his disposal, but it’s going to be inconsistent for however long Minnesota’s offense runs through Dalvin Cook, which it assuredly will in 2021.
Ben Roethlisberger is one of the top late-round QBs to target. His targets are insane: Chase Claypool, Diontae Johnson and JuJu Smith-Schuster. Yet Roethlisberger is a late-round QB — if he gets drafted at all — in most fantasy leagues. A healthy Roethlisberger could be put up big numbers in 2021.
Drew Lock, garbage time potential? If Luck secures the starting job (and holds it), he should have garbage time potential in DFS or spot starts in 2021. His 8 fourth-quarter TDs last season were good for a top 10 finish among QBs. With Courtland Sutton returning, there will be at least two big Lock-Sutton-Jeudy weeks throughout the course of the season, thanks in no small part to garbage time.