Kyler Murray and Cam Newton have already both rushed for double digit touchdowns this season, a mark reached just five times by quarterbacks in the Super Bowl era prior to 2020. But they are far from alone:
- Josh Allen, who is having a breakout season as a passer, has 8 rushing touchdowns.
- Lamar Jackson has not been the force he was in 2019, but he has equaled his rushing touchdown production (7) from last season.
- Taysom Hill has rushed for six touchdowns (and then a 7th in week 16), while Teddy Bridgewater and Carson Wentz have five apiece.
- Justin Herbert, Ryan Tannehill, and Jared Goff each have four rushing touchdowns, and seven other quarterbacks have three rushing touchdowns. There are 17 quarterbacks this season with at least three rushing touchdowns, with two weeks remaining in the 2020 regular season.
In short: there have been a ton of rushing touchdowns this season by quarterbacks. With two weeks left to play, NFL quarterbacks have rushed for 110 touchdowns in 224 games (or 448 team games). That’s an average of one every four games, or about 4 per 16 games. Which is… an enormous amount. As recently as 1993, when there were 28 teams, NFL quarterbacks rushed for 28 touchdowns all season, or 1 for every 16 team games. In both 2009 and 2010, NFL quarterbacks rushed for 46 touchdowns, or 1.44 per team game. Three years ago, quarterbacks scored “only” 63 touchdowns on the ground, or just under 2 per team game. This year, we might double that mark! The graph below shows quarterback rushing touchdowns per team game for each year since 1970, with 2020 through 15 weeks. To call it a big outlier would be an understatement:
So, as a famous coach might say, what the hell’s going on out here? Lamar Jackson has three touchdown runs of over 35 yards, but he’s still an outlier. The two longest runs by non-Jackson quarterbacks belong to New York quarterbacks Sam Darnold (46 yards) and Daniel Jones (34 yards, and not an 88-yard score); those are the only five quarterback touchdown runs of 25+ yards so far this season.
Instead, it is the 1-yard touchdown run that has changed things. A whopping 35% of all rushing touchdowns have come from just one yard away, and 49% of all rushing touchdowns have come from 1 or 2 yards. For Newton, he has 5 touchdowns from the 1-yard line and another 2 from the 2-yard line; in Buffalo, five of Allen’s 8 scores have come from within six feet. The graph below shows how many of the 110 touchdowns have come from each yardline.
As John Turney notes, quarterbacks have scored 24% of all rushing touchdowns, which is also the highest mark ever; that is consistent with a takeaway that quarterback rushing touchdowns are vulturing rushing touchdowns from other players rather than replacing passing touchdowns. Further evidence for that theory is that passing touchdowns are also at an all-time high right now (1.7 per game). For what it’s worth, quarterbacks have also scored 23.5% of all 1-yard touchdowns this season, which means they are not getting a disproportionate number of the 1-yard touchdowns (relative to all other rushing touchdowns).
Finally, here is the length of each rushing TD, from shortest to longest (from left to right) for each quarterback, sorted by the number of QB rushing TDs (from top to bottom).
So, what do you think is going on?