Fewer Shots, Better Results: The NFL’s deep ball is more efficient than ever

Matthew Stafford is a great example. In 2015, he went just 15-for-50 on deep pass attempts. This regular season, the likely MVP went 40-for-85.

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NFL offenses are constantly trying to generate explosive plays. It’s why defenses across the league in recent seasons have turned to split-safety coverages with as many as four deep coverage defenders willing to allow access to easier yardage and enticing offensive play-callers into running the ball more often. 

In some respects, it has worked. The league-wide pass play rate decreased for the second consecutive season, and total passing yardage across the entire league in 2025 dipped to its lowest mark in 16 seasons.

Total regular-season passing yardage is down almost 8% since 2021 — the first season the league moved to 18 games. 

Meanwhile, the league-wide average depth of target has lingered around 8.2 yards for the fifth consecutive year, a small but substantial downturn from the early 2010s when quarterbacks threw the ball around 9.0 yards downfield on average. 

Despite having the additional game, just six quarterbacks eclipsed 4,000 passing yards in the 2025 regular season, fewer than in any of the previous 15 seasons. 

One of the most common arguments relating to the NFL’s pendulum swing toward defensive football is that offensive line pass protection just isn’t at the same level it was a decade ago. 

However, quarterbacks are holding the ball longer than ever before in the PFF era. The league-wide average time to throw across all regular-season pass attempts increased for the eighth time in nine seasons in 2025, reaching a PFF-high 2.86 seconds. 

It wasn’t long ago that quarterbacks who held the ball for longer than three seconds on average were considered too slow at processing NFL defenses. Those players are now creeping toward the mean in the modern league. 

So, with all this extra time quarterbacks appear to have, you would have guessed they would be throwing deep more frequently than ever. However, the percentage of total pass attempts that traveled 20-plus yards downfield dropped below 12% six years ago and hasn’t returned since. 

Is the NFL just less high-octane than it used to be? Has the aerial attack slowly gone stale as defensive football enjoys something of a minor renaissance?

Watching this year's playoffs, it certainly hasn’t felt that way. We’ve been treated to some excellent football — one of the greatest wild-card weekends in memory, a multi-overtime divisional round and an epic offensive display between the Seahawks and Rams on conference championship weekend while the elements became the main character in Denver. 

Why do all of these numbers point toward the passing game being less fruitful, yet the standard of quarterbacks around the league remains fairly stable to the naked eye? The unsurprising answer is that quality always beats quantity. 

While the quantity of deep passes has undoubtedly decreased, the quality is higher than ever. 2025 was a banner year for the deep ball. 

39.6% of deep pass attempts (20-plus yards downfield) were completed in the 2025 regular season. That’s the highest deep completion percentage of the PFF era (since 2006). 

Despite attempting 236 fewer deep passes than in the 2015 season, NFL quarterbacks this year connected with their receivers for 22 more completions. 

Look no further than Matthew Stafford, who played in both 2015 and 2025. The younger version of Stafford went 15-for-50 on deep pass attempts. The likely MVP went 40-for-85 this regular season. 

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All quarterbacks to participate in both seasons — including Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson — completed more of their deep pass attempts this season compared to 10 years ago. Well, with the understandable exception of Philip Rivers. 

It may be proof that the players themselves haven’t necessarily gotten better. Instead, offensive play-callers are designing better methods of creating space for pass catchers downfield. 

The passer rating on pass attempts beyond 20 yards cracked 100.0 for the second time in PFF history. It was previously done in 2020, but turnover luck may have played a factor, as 72 turnover-worthy deep balls went unpunished that year, compared to just 42 this season. 

In fact, the turnover-worthy-play rate of just 7.6% on deep passes in 2025 was the lowest of any season since 2009.

Quarterbacks are clearly taking fewer chances than ever when pushing the ball downfield, which corresponds to our argument of quality over quantity. 

So far, we have been discussing all throws of 20 yards and beyond. When stretching this out even deeper, to only pass attempts beyond 40 yards downfield — a distance virtually associated with only deep post and go routes — 2025 suddenly starts blending in with all other years. 

The league-wide completion percentage is still at its highest mark since 2020 but drops to fifth overall behind a few years in the mid-2010s. The overall passer rating on those throws ranks a much more inconspicuous ninth among PFF’s 20 years of data, with no turnover-luck to fall back on as an excuse — albeit in a sample size almost 10 times smaller than our original dataset.

Clearly, the 2025 season separated itself from the pack in the areas just beyond the intermediate level, not miles downfield. That region of the field accounts for a much larger variation of routes beyond just the classic posts and nine routes on the perimeter. 

2025 saw a 54.9% completion rate on deep crossing routes — the highest of the PFF era. The same applies to deep seam routes, of which 47.1% were completed, more than in any other year. However, seam routes unsurprisingly remain prone to turnover-worthy plays.

Corner routes of 20-plus yards did not enjoy the same success. While more than half of all corner routes thrown this year were at least 20 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, less than 38% of those throws wound up in the receivers’ arms.

Those passes were easy money for quarterbacks in the past. Signal-callers produced a 110.8 passer rating on the throws in 2021, as well as similarly high marks throughout the 2010s. 

This year, the passer rating on deep corners was all the way down at 93.9, despite the turnover-worthy-play rate being the lowest it has been in more than a decade. 

Once again, that points more toward quarterbacks avoiding unnecessary risk, as opposed to being trigger-shy downfield. 

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The league hasn't fallen out of love with the deep ball; it has just become more selective about when and where to deploy it. What ostensibly appears as a decline in offensive ambition is really just quarterbacks and play-callers acknowledging that modern defenses are built to limit explosive plays. 

Quarterbacks are no longer asked to force low-percentage shots into coverage for the sake of volume. Offensive minds are creative enough to find answers underneath. The result is fewer deep attempts but a higher return on investment when those throws are actually made.

Defensive structures have forced offenses to be more patient, more precise and ultimately more efficient. The deep ball still matters — perhaps more than ever — but in today’s NFL, it’s no longer about how often you throw it. Instead, it’s about how well you choose your moments.