BetIQ Daily: How Many Points Were Starting Quarterbacks Worth in 2021?

Thursday's BetIQ takes a look at the 2021 NFL season and how teams fared with their Week 1 starting quarterback and without.

The Saints' performances were noticeably worse without Jameis Winston (Ken Murray/Icon Sportswire)

This will be a unique edition of BetIQ Daily, where we take a look at a bigger handicapping issue and dig into some research.

Today, we look back at the 2021 NFL season and ask “how many points were starting quarterbacks worth on average in 2021?”

Overall Numbers on Starting Quarterbacks Missing Games

Here are the overall numbers on QB missed games, where we defined “starting quarterback” as the quarterback who started Game 1 of the 2021 regular season.

  • Through the divisional round, there have been 568 “team-games” (and 284 NFL games) played.
  • Of those, 98 team-games were started by a QB other than the Week 1 regular-season starter.
  • That means 17.3 percent of all games in 2021 so far were by started by a QB other than the Week 1 starter.
  • Eleven teams had only one starting quarterback all season.
  • Twenty-one teams had at least two different quarterbacks start a game in 2021.

Method Used to Measure 2021 Value

  • We have individual “Game Scores” for each NFL team and game played in 2021.
  • These Game Scores are adjusted scores based on the scoring margin in a game, the opponent quality, and game location (home/away/neutral).
  • For the 21 teams who used multiple starting quarterbacks, we calculated the average Game Score with and without the Week 1 starting quarterback as starter.

The Results: Week 1 QB Average Points vs. Other Games

Let’s get to the summary of the results for those 21 teams from 2021 with multiple starting quarterbacks.

All of these results are based on the average (mean) results from the games with and without the Week 1 starter, and the difference in points between each.

  • Teams were +5.1 points better in games with the Week 1 starting QB, using the mean of the 21 team point differences.
  • Teams were +3.7 points better in games with the Week 1 starting QB, using the median of the 21 team point differences.
  • The mean is larger than the median because some teams had extreme split differences, where performance without starter was significantly worse.
  • These overall results suggest that in 2021, a typical starting quarterback being out was worth between 3.5 and 5 points.

Notable Individual Team Results With and Without Starting Quarterback

Finally, we’ll close with some notable results. However, these come with small-sample-size caveats of drawing broader individual conclusions.

While we had 98 overall games with a backup quarterback starting, these results for individual teams could be based on a handful or even one extreme game outcome.

Teams With the Smallest Difference With and Without Starting QB

  • Only four teams had worse average Game Scores with their Week 1 starting quarterback than without: the Jets, Browns, Seahawks, and Washington Football Team.
  • The Jets were 1.5 points worse on average with rookie QB Zach Wilson starting than in the four games without him, including the win over Cincinnati with Mike White at QB.
  • The Browns were 1.1 points worse on average with QB Baker Mayfield starting (with known injuries) than in the three games he missed.
  • Washington was 0.4 points worse with Ryan Fitzpatrick in Week 1 than its rest-of-season average.
  • Seattle was 0.1 points worse in games started by Russell Wilson, as two of the three worst opponent-adjusted games for Seattle came in the first two games after he came back from his finger injury.

Teams With the Largest Difference With and Without Starting QB

  • Minnesota lost to Green Bay by 27 points in the only game Kirk Cousins missed due to COVID-19, about 22 points worse than its average performance.
  • The New York Giants were 13.6 points worse in the six games without QB Daniel Jones at the end of the season.
  • New Orleans was 10.4 points worse on average in the 10 games after QB Jameis Winston suffered a season-ending knee injury.
  • Philadelphia was 9.8 points worse without QB Jalen Hurts, thanks to a 25-point blowout loss at home to Dallas in Week 18 when Hurts sat ahead of playoffs.
  • Denver was 8.1 points worse in the three games with Drew Lock at QB in place of Teddy Bridgewater.

Top Pick Performance Trends

Our algorithmic models use over a decade of data to predict every game across five sports.

As of post time, here are some highlights of prediction performance from our primary Ensemble Forecast model this season for playable-rated picks (52.5% confidence or better) against game-day betting lines:

  • NFL point spread picks: 48-36-2 (57%, +7.6 units)
  • College football over/under picks: 180-146-3 (55%, +17.7 units)
  • NBA moneyline picks: 88-79 (+8.8 units)

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