Biggest Surprises of 2020 - Quarterback

The 2020 NFL season is in the rearview mirror, but before we look ahead to 2021, let's take some time to look back.

Every year, there are big surprises in the league. Someone comes out of nowhere to have a huge year. Someone we thought was about to regress due to age has a much better season than expected. Things we thought would happen don't happen.

Today, let's look at the quarterbacks who were the most surprising this season.

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Josh Allen - Buffalo Bills

Allen finished the 2020 season as the overall QB1 if we include Week 17, finishing as the only quarterback with over 400 fantasy points.

While I was relatively high on Allen coming into the season, I thought his ceiling was going to be somewhere around QB5. There was no way he was outscoring a healthy Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, or Deshaun Watson, right?

Well, wrong. Allen technically was the QB2 through Week 16, but he was behind Kyler Murray, who I didn't include on that above list. Mahomes had four fewer fantasy points than Allen at that point, a gap that expanded when Mahomes sat out Week 17.

So, how did Allen do it? He figured out how to be a pro quarterback.

Allen's accuracy had been a big issue, as he completed 52.8 percent of his passes as a rookie, then 58.8 percent last year. A nice improvement, but Allen was still 39th out of 42 quarterbacks with 100 pass attempts in completion percentage. He was better than Dwayne Haskins, David Blough, and Josh Rosen. That was not good!

But this season, Allen figured out how to get the ball to his receivers. The addition of Stefon Diggs explains some of it, but I think the bigger explanation is just that Allen was in his third season and was figuring out NFL defenses. The game slowed down for him. He completed 69.2 percent of his passes, which ranked fifth in the NFL. If we take Taysom Hill out, it would rank fourth. Add in Allen's rushing upside, and *boom*, we have the QB1.

Justin Herbert - Los Angeles Chargers

Herbert, the third quarterback taken in this year's draft, was supposed to sit behind Tyrod Taylor for a while and then maybe get some starts near the end of 2020. Then, Taylor punctured his lung (I mean, technically the team doctor punctured his lung...) and Herbert was thrown into the starting lineup in Week 2.

From Week 2 to Week 17, Herbert scored the sixth-most fantasy points among quarterbacks, just ahead of Russell Wilson.

That Herbert was very clearly the best of the rookie quarterbacks this year was a shock. The Oregon product had a great rookie year, completing 66.8 percent of his passes with 32 touchdowns and six interceptions, but there were concerns about his 2018 numbers when he had a 59.4 completion percentage.

But Herbert was dishing the ball right out of the gate. He was fifth in passing yards per game. He was in the top 10 in completion percentage when pressured. Seventh in EPA. He managed to complete 66.6 percent of his passes and threw interceptions on just 1.7 percent of his passes. You might have wanted him to throw the ball deeper -- he was 26th in air yards per attempt and 21st in deep-ball completion percentage -- but overall, it was a really encouraging rookie campaign.

Herbert has established himself as a QB1 play going forward. That's not what we expected heading into the season.

Kirk Cousins - Minnesota Vikings

Kirk Cousins finished 2020 as a fantasy QB1. Bet you didn't expect that when Stefon Diggs was traded.

I've long been a defender of Cousins. You can find plenty of examples on this website of me arguing for Cousins being a solid fantasy quarterback. But heading into 2020, I was lower than I've ever been on him, seeing him as a low-end QB2 who might have the occasional QB1 game.

And that was how he was being drafted, with FantasyPros having him at QB22 in their average of the ADPs from four of the biggest fantasy providers.

So, what happened? Justin Jefferson, for one. The rookie had one of the best seasons ever for a rookie wide receiver -- if not THE best -- and helped Cousins finish with the third-most yards per attempt. Add in that Cousins is very accurate -- he was second in clean pocket completion percentage and 10th in accuracy rating -- and you can see why he overperformed expectations. An accurate passer with two high-quality weapons plus an elite running back to take the pressure off of him...yeah, Cousins being drafted all the way down at QB22 was a big miss, wasn't it?

Also, we should probably remember that Cousins always ends up being better than he's ranked:

Since becoming a full-time starter in 2015, Cousins has played six seasons and has finished as a QB1 four times, and then as a high-end QB2 the other two years. Maybe we should start to realize that Cousins is one of the highest-floor guys you can draft.

Ryan Tannehill - Tennessee Titans

This shouldn't have been a surprise, but I know that it was for many people.

Tannehill finished as the QB7. I know he still gets a lot of flak for his Miami days, but we should probably acknowledge that Tannehill in 2019 was the overall QB3 from Week 7 on, so... again, this should not have been a surprise. Freed of Adam Gase, Tannehill is a top-10 NFL quarterback.

Shockingly, Tannehill wasn't doing his damage via play-action. You might think the run game and the threat of Derrick Henry would set up a lot of great stuff in play-action, but he was actually 33rd in play-action completion percentage.

Instead, it was just the Titans keeping him clean and giving him chances to throw. Tannehill was fifth in clean pocket completion percentage. He was also third in true completion percentage and second in true passer rating.

Tannehill is a very efficient passer. He also continues to throw touchdowns on a high percentage of his throws, as this was the third year in a row he had a touchdown rate of six percent or higher. I was worried before the season that might not be sustainable, but while his touchdown rate did drop from 7.7 to 6.9, it remains high, ranking third in the NFL this year.

Hopefully, you don't sleep on him again in next year's drafts. His ADP in 2020 was QB21. It won't be nearly that low next year.

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