NFL Aging Curves by Position: Rookie QBs, Third-Year WRs, and Age-30 RBs

(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

To see this table in graphical form, click here . (The values are adjusted up or down slightly so the lines won’t collide.)

According to the table, a quarterback’s peak age is 25 for all but one of the stats, with 26 to 28 not far behind. There seems to be a steep, upward trend at the beginning of a quarterback’s career, and a gentler fall from their peak.

Notice how the curves of touchdowns and interceptions are much more extreme compared to completion percentage and yards per attempt, which have a moderate slope.

Not coincidentally, touchdowns and interceptions both have a worse year-to-year correlation than do completion percentage and yards per attempts—in other words, it’s more likely for a player to have abnormal numbers in TDs and INTs than in completions or yards.

A quarterback’s biggest statistical jump is from age 24 to age 25: Take a league-average 24-year-old, and the next year (in 450 attempts), he’ll add 1.6 points to his completion percentage, 67 passing yards, almost two touchdowns, and two-fifths of an interceptions.

That equates to 11 more fantasy points over the course of a season—or roughly the difference between the Nos. 13 and 19 quarterbacks last year.

Last year, Jay Cutler and Aaron Rodgers made the leap from their age-24 to their age-25 seasons. This year? Well, Brady Quinn is the only qualifying player who seems to have at least a part of the starting job locked up; Tyler Thigpen, Kevin Kolb, Drew Stanton, and Troy Smith round out the 25-year-olds.

Quinn showed some promise last year, throwing for 239 yards and two touchdowns in a Week 10 game against Denver (though he followed that up with 14 completions in 36 attempts for 185 yards at Buffalo). Think about picking Quinn late in your fantasy draft, and it could pay off.

Age isn’t the only way to split up quarterbacks; experience matters, too. Although an "experience curve" looks roughly the same as an aging curve, we see that rookie quarterbacks have a major increase in production to their sophomore season. (So much for the sophomore slump.)

Rookies had a four percent increase in completion percentage and yards per attempt, a five percent increase in touchdown percentage, and an eight percent decrease in interception percentage.

Both Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco would see a 10-point increase in fantasy points if those percentages held up. Those 10 points wouldn’t have moved Ryan up in his rank among QBs last year (in terms of fantasy points), but it would have moved Flacco from No. 19 to No. 14, right behind Ryan.

Though Ryan and Flacco may regress to the mean, the increase from their second-year experience may offset that regression.

Running Backs

Few running backs have had the late-career outburst that John Riggins did. Riggins had just one 1,000-yard season through age 28, before a miraculous career turnaround that included four 1,000-yard performances in the next six seasons, not including his 533 yards in eight games in the strike-shortened 1983 season.

From age 22 to age 28, Riggins had 4,655 rushing yards and 28 touchdowns; Riggins had 2,000 more yards and almost 50 more touchdowns from 29 to 36 in the same amount of time (he skipped his age-31 season due to contract disputes).

Let’s see if that trend holds steady for every running back.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?