Baker Mayfield has thrown a league-high 21 touchdown passes, and if history is any indication, he won’t be cooling off much for the duration of the season.
That’s how it tends to play out when a quarterback is hot for the first half of the season. In the 32-team era, 28 quarterbacks have thrown at least 20 touchdown passes in their team’s first eight games. All of those guys went on to finish with top-10 overall numbers. All but five of them finished with top-5 numbers.
Of these previous 28 quarterbacks who had Baker-type starts to their seasons, I see three who threw only 11-12 touchdowns in the second half of the season. All of the others tossed at least 14. That is, they started hot and they stayed hot.
Perhaps most surprisingly (and I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t have the numbers in front of me), of these other 28 quarterbacks, not one of them missed a game with an injury. Four of them chose to sit out meaningless games at the end of the season, but none of them actually suffered an injury. They started 448 of a possible 452 games.
Mayfield is a little different in that he just lost his two receivers. Chris Godwin is out for the year, while Mike Evans (hamstring) should miss at least a couple more games. But Mayfield is playing well enough that I think he’s going to continue to put up top-10 numbers for the duration.
For the chart below, it’s a mash-up of what guys did in their first eight games (using search tools at Pro-Football-Reference) and how they finished the season. The “fantasy points” assume 6 for touchdowns, 4 for TD passes, 1 for every 20 passing yards and 1 for every 10 rushing yards. The final column shows where they ranked among quarterbacks in that season.
| QUARTERBACKS WITH 20-PLUS TOUCHDOWNS IN FIRST EIGHT GAMES | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player (1st 8) | GS | Pass | TDP | Run | TDR | F Pts | Rk |
| 2004 | Peyton Manning, Ind. (26) | 16 | 4,557 | 49 | 38 | 0 | 427.7 | 2 |
| 2004 | Daunte Culpepper, Min. (21) | 16 | 4,717 | 39 | 406 | 2 | 450.5 | 1 |
| 2007 | Tom Brady, N.E. (30) | 16 | 4,806 | 50 | 98 | 2 | 462.1 | 1 |
| 2007 | Ben Roethlisberger, Pitt. (20) | 15 | 3,154 | 32 | 204 | 2 | 320.1 | 8 |
| 2011 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. (24) | 15 | 4,643 | 45 | 257 | 3 | 455.9 | 2 |
| 2011 | Tom Brady, N.E. (20) | 16 | 5,235 | 39 | 109 | 3 | 446.7 | 4 |
| 2012 | Drew Brees, N.O. (22) | 16 | 5,177 | 43 | 5 | 1 | 437.4 | 1 |
| 2012 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. (21) | 16 | 4,295 | 39 | 259 | 2 | 411.6 | 2 |
| 2012 | Peyton Manning, Den. (20) | 16 | 4,659 | 37 | 6 | 0 | 383.6 | 6 |
| 2013 | Peyton Manning, Den. (29) | 16 | 5,477 | 55 | -31 | 1 | 498.8 | 1 |
| 2013 | Drew Brees, N.O. (21) | 16 | 5,162 | 39 | 52 | 3 | 437.3 | 2 |
| 2014 | Andrew Luck, Ind. (22) | 16 | 4,761 | 40 | 273 | 3 | 443.4 | 1 |
| 2014 | Peyton Manning, Den. (24) | 16 | 4,727 | 39 | -24 | 0 | 394.0 | 3 |
| 2014 | Philip Rivers, S.D. (20) | 16 | 4,286 | 31 | 102 | 0 | 348.5 | 9 |
| 2015 | Carson Palmer, Ari. (20) | 16 | 4,671 | 35 | 24 | 1 | 382.0 | 5 |
| 2015 | Tom Brady, N.E. (22) | 16 | 4,770 | 36 | 53 | 3 | 410.4 | 2 |
| 2016 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. (20) | 16 | 4,428 | 40 | 369 | 4 | 446.3 | 1 |
| 2016 | Drew Brees, N.O. (21) | 16 | 5,208 | 37 | 20 | 2 | 422.4 | 2 |
| 2018 | Patrick Mahomes, K.C. (26) | 16 | 5,097 | 50 | 272 | 2 | 496.1 | 1 |
| 2018 | Andrew Luck, Ind. (23) | 16 | 4,593 | 39 | 148 | 0 | 405.9 | 4 |
| 2020 | Aaron Rodgers, G.B. (24) | 16 | 4,299 | 48 | 149 | 3 | 440.3 | 3 |
| 2020 | Tom Brady, T.B. (20) | 16 | 4,633 | 40 | 6 | 3 | 410.3 | 7 |
| 2020 | Patrick Mahomes, K.C. (21) | 15 | 4,740 | 38 | 308 | 2 | 437.8 | 4 |
| 2020 | Russell Wilson, Sea. (28) | 16 | 4,212 | 40 | 513 | 2 | 435.9 | 6 |
| 2021 | Matthew Stafford, LAR (22) | 17 | 4,886 | 41 | 43 | 0 | 416.6 | 5 |
| 2021 | Tom Brady, T.B. (25) | 17 | 5,316 | 43 | 81 | 2 | 457.9 | 3 |
| 2021 | Joe Burrow, Cin. (20) | 16 | 4,611 | 34 | 118 | 2 | 392.4 | 7 |
| 2022 | Patrick Mahomes, K.C. (21) | 17 | 5,250 | 41 | 358 | 4 | 493.9 | 1 |
| 2024 | • Baker Mayfield, T.B. (21) | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
—Ian Allan