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The original was posted on /r/nfl by /u/DiggingNoMore on 2024-06-03 16:37:49+00:00.

Background: Patrick Mahomes has thrown for 28,424 passing yards over his (currently) 96-game career. He’s averaging 296 yards per game. I was curious what I should expect his career trajectory to be (in terms of passing yards, specifically).

As we know, quarterbacks have a propensity to improve after their introduction to the NFL for some time, peak at some point, and then fall off. And this happens at different rates for different players. So what is the typical rate and how would that look if applied to Patrick Mahomes?

Methodology: In order to figure out the statistically most-likely peak and fall rate, I took every quarterback whose rookie year was 1990 or later. I chose that year because: 1) I wanted to go back far enough to get a decent sample size; and 2) I didn’t want to go back too far because the quarterback injury rate would be less representative of today’s rate, due to rule changes and improved medical developments. So 1990 sounded fine to me.

I took all the quarterbacks that started in 1990 or later and used the 52 quarterbacks1 that played at least 96 games (as many has Mahomes has currently played). For the full list of these 52 quarterbacks, see here:

Of those 52 quarterbacks, 50 of them went on to play a 97th game (Tony Banks and Marc Bulger called it a career after 96). This means, historically speaking, Patrick Mahomes has a 50 out of 52 (96%) chance of playing in his 97th game. I would argue that figure is low given Mahomes’ situation, but this is about the numbers.

Anyway, so that means that Patrick Mahomes has a 96.15% of playing a 97th game. But, assuming he does, how many yards will he throw for in that game? To figure that out, I took the 50 quarterbacks that played a 97th game. Each of them had a passing yard per game average after 96 games. And then, in their 97th game, either outperformed their running average or underperformed it. For example, after 96 games, Drew Brees was averaging 238 yards per game. Then, in his 97th game, he put up 320 pass yards. That’s 134.4% of his running average. Meanwhile, after 96 games, Brett Favre was averaging 233 pass yards and only threw for 156 yards in his 97th game, only putting up 66.7% of his running average.

I took the median of all the 50 quarterbacks who played a 97th game. I used median instead of mean so the far away outliers wouldn’t be overweighted. As it happens, quarterbacks who play a 97th game, on average, throw for 117% of their typical pass yards.

With Patrick Mahomes currently averaging 296 yards per game, this means that he’d be expected to throw for 117% of that in his 97th game, which would be 347 yards (rounded to nearest integer). And he has a 96.15% of playing that game.

I repeated this process. Of the 50 quarterbacks to play 97 games, all 50 also played 98 games. So Mahomes, if he plays 97 games, has a 100% chance of playing a 98th game. Again, I’d argue that it’s actually slightly lower, but the numbers are the numbers.

And the 50 quarterbacks together outdid their running averages again, putting up 114% of their averages (using the median quarterback again). A few games later, Scott Mitchell calls it quits, and thus only 49 of the remaining 50 quarterbacks play a 100th game after their 99th. Ergo, if Mahomes makes it to 99 games, he has a 98% chance of playing a 100th. This works multiplicatively, so if Mahomes has a 96.15% of playing a 97th game, a 100% chance of playing a 98th game, a 100% chance of playing a 99th game, and a 98% chance of playing a 100th game, that means he has a 94.23% chance of making it through all those games (0.9615 * 1 * 1 * 0.98 = 0.9423).

This carries on, lowering Mahomes’ chance of playing in his successive game every time another quarterback hangs it up. Yes, this does also mean that the numbers will change if any of the other active quarterbacks who have played more games than Mahomes keep playing.

But, as it stands, the end result of this exercise is:

Career Yards Game Number Odds of Reaching
40,000 132 65.4%
50,000 165 42.3%
60,000 198 23.1%
70,000 229 17.3%
80,000 262 7.7%
90,000 295 3.8%

See here if you want the game-by-game projection:

  1. This number excludes Patrick Mahomes himself and a couple career backups (like Koy Detmer) and I also disregarded Taysom Hill.