I’d like to call your attention to a few sentences I wrote five years ago. It was shortly before Labor Day, on the eve of the 2020 NFL season, and I predicted which players would lead the league in nine statistical categories over the entire 2020s decade.
I was writing about passing touchdowns and picked Patrick Mahomes as the favorite. I wrote about the reigning MVP, Lamar Jackson. In the previous section on passing yards, I had already written about some of the promising young quarterbacks in the league: Dak Prescott, Deshaun Watson, Kyler Murray and Jared Goff. I even brought up two players who had yet to take a snap in the NFL, Trevor Lawrence and Joe Burrow.
Then I got to the passing touchdowns dark-horse candidates and wrote the following three sentences:
Want to project a Hall of Fame career for Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold, Josh Allen, Daniel Jones, Drew Lock or Gardner Minshew? Be as optimistic as you want. At least one of them will probably be high on all these lists 10 years from now.
Anything stand out? Rereading it now, I feel like an archeologist digging up a priceless artifact, perfectly preserved but clearly of another time.
Allen had just completed his second NFL season. I had watched his most recent game in person, a chaotic wild-card loss to the Texans in which he caught a touchdown pass on the opening drive, and then the Bills didn’t find the end zone again the rest of the day.
There was no reason for me to expect he would be a Hall of Famer. Buffalo had made the playoffs, but finished 24th in total offense and 23rd in points. Allen started all 16 games, but finished 23rd in passing yards. Kyle Allen had more yards in fewer games.
So what happened? Allen immediately started playing like a Hall of Famer. The Bills went 13–3 and reached the AFC title game. Allen threw for 4,544 yards and 37 touchdowns. He finished second behind Aaron Rodgers in MVP voting. In the five seasons since I wrote my piece, he has been in the top five in MVP voting four times, including taking home the trophy this past year. He’s 29 years old, in an era where elite quarterbacks play into their 40s. And while he couldn’t retire tomorrow and walk right into Canton (like Mahomes), his career seems headed that way as long as he stays healthy and keeps playing even close to the level he has over the first five years of this decade.
So how much credit do I get? I didn’t identify Allen, specifically, but I was dead on knowing that somebody out of that group would take a leap. I was at least smart enough to know that there was something I didn’t know. Smart enough to know how challenging the original exercise was and how much can change in the league over 10 years. I love making long-term predictions, and it was fun enough to reread this one that I’m ready to drop another fresh batch of sentences into the world so we can dig them up five years from now like a time capsule.
We’re halfway through the decade, so now let’s make some updates. I’ll take a look at how my predictions from five years ago are doing, and see what I’d like to change if I could. This time around will be significantly easier. We have five years of numbers banked and only have to peer five more years into the future. Of course, we’ve seen how much can happen even in five years, too.
*Note: For each player’s age, I am using their official season age per Pro Football Reference, which is determined by when their birthday falls.
Passing yards
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Patrick Mahomes
I picked Mahomes and he is indeed leading the league over the past five years, with a 1,669-yard edge over Allen. Mahomes’s numbers have trended down the past two seasons, though. His 288.9 yards per game are still more than anyone else in NFL history. However, after throwing for 5,250 yards in his MVP 2022 season, he threw for 4,183 and 3,928 in his two most recent campaigns. This has been one of the biggest questions of the offseason after Mahomes and the Chiefs were blown out in the Super Bowl: Will Kansas City get back to being the high-flying passing attack from the early years of the Mahomes era, or is the team’s more recent approach here to stay?
The eventual 2020s leader is almost definitely on this graphic. With more than 5,000 yards between Justin Herbert in third place and Aaron Rodgers in 11th, it could take multiple seasons lost to injury by everyone in that top trio for somebody currently off the board to pass them all.
2025 prediction: Patrick Mahomes
I’ll stick with him. He has the head start already. And despite feeling like he’s trending down, he did have more passing yards than Allen and Herbert last season. I feel confident the Chiefs will remain good around him. He has been banged up with various lower-body injuries but I don’t think he puts himself in danger as a runner quite as much as Allen (Andy Reid doesn’t even let Mahomes QB sneak anymore). Herbert is a tempting pick, but Jim Harbaugh is not allowed to go back to college football, and I think he would like to run the ball 6,000 times a season.
Passing touchdowns
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Patrick Mahomes
I went with Mahomes for both passing categories. “Let’s not overthink this,” I wrote at the time, and once again I was right about the first half of the decade. The key difference when it comes to touchdowns is that Mahomes and Allen have separated themselves from the rest of the pack by a lot more. Injuries are always a wild card given how they could wipe out an entire season (for example, Dak Prescott would have a chance to be in the top five if not for missing significant parts of two seasons). That said, Burrow and Herbert are just as likely to miss time as the two leaders. It would be silly to pick anyone to overtake them.
2025 prediction: Patrick Mahomes
I’ll stick with Mahomes here for the same reasons listed above. My other consideration is that Allen scores so many rushing touchdowns that it takes opportunities away once he gets to the red zone. That’s no problem if you’re a Bills fan; they count the same on the scoreboard. But they don’t count the same in this exercise. Allen’s passing touchdown total has decreased in four consecutive seasons: 37, 36, 35, 29, 28. He’s had 15 and 12 rushing touchdowns the past two seasons. That’s likely related, and a reason to believe the trend.
Rushing yards
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Saquon Barkley
Derrick Henry is (literally) running away with it, and the only question is whether he can delay Father Time the way backs such as Frank Gore and Adrian Peterson did—as opposed to the way 99% of NFL running backs see their primes come to a screeching halt.
So far this is playing out exactly as I predicted, when I highlighted Barkley and Josh Jacobs because they were more likely to remain productive starters in the 2028 and ’29 seasons. (I didn’t mention Taylor, who was a second-round rookie in 2020.) Henry could run up a big enough lead that it doesn’t matter, but his three closest followers are in range, for now, where they could make up the difference in two seasons.
I do want to mention that five years ago I named Lamar Jackson as my dark horse for this category, and it was my favorite pick in the whole column. He was 22 years old, had just finished sixth in the league with more than 1,200 rushing yards, and was the player on the list most likely to still be a high-end starter in 2029! But, sadly, I think he is too far back to come out on top. He is 12th on the list with 4,272 yards. Even if he can duplicate that production, which would be tough given that it was historic for a quarterback, it likely wouldn’t hold off every back on the list. But he does seem to have a decent chance of finishing in the top five.
2025 prediction: Saquon Barkley
I’ll stick with Barkley. This may be a case of stubbornly sticking with my original prediction, especially given that he is behind two players who are younger than he is. But the man did just rush for 2,000 yards and should get to play the rest of his prime behind an outstanding offensive line. Henry is probably his biggest threat. The Titan-turned-Raven has averaged 102.6 yards per game over the past five years. Three more seasons at his usual production level may be enough.
Rushing touchdowns
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Ezekiel Elliott
The fact that I picked Zeke five years ago is a perfect reminder of how quickly some running backs hit the wall. He is in 11th place over this time span with 34 rushing touchdowns, but after reaching double-digits in 2021 and ’22, he had just three in each of the past two seasons.
Henry once again has a sizable cushion over the field, but look who’s in second place! Jalen Hurts has 55 and he’s not the only quarterback on the list, with Allen in fifth with 48.
2025 prediction: Jalen Hurts
I can’t believe it, but I’m going with Hurts! I wrote a story in December 2020 about Cam Newton’s spectacular rushing touchdown total—he had 69 at the time and finished the season with 70. One of my favorite little parlor games was to keep track of the running backs that he was leapfrogging on the career list. I wrote about how it was so otherworldly, almost unfathomable for a quarterback, and how that makes it tricky to measure his career value, which I think is still underrated. I would never have believed at the time that just five years later two quarterbacks would be on their way to blowing past Newton’s career total of 75.
Hurts has already taken away Newton’s single-season record (he and Allen both had 15 in 2023), and his totals the past four seasons are 10, 13, 15, 14. Yeah, yeah, you can complain about the tush push and say they shouldn’t count, or you can worry that the tush push will eventually be outlawed. But they do count, and I think that he’s going to keep running the ball into the end zone.
Henry led the league with 16 rushing scores last year, his third time leading the league. He has seven consecutive double-digit seasons and six of them are at least a dozen. The mark could be his. But if he slows down at all, Hurts should have a chance to top him.
Receptions
Past five years:
2020 prediction: CeeDee Lamb
This might have been my single-best prediction five years ago, considering Lamb was an incoming rookie who had not played an NFL snap. He was also the third wide receiver drafted that year (behind Henry Ruggs III and Jerry Jeudy). He is in fourth place this decade, but within 30 catches of the leader and at least five years younger than everyone ahead of him.
Davante Adams is the current leader, thanks to starting the decade with four consecutive 100-catch seasons, but I don’t know that we can expect him to reach his career highs from 2020 and ’21 when he had 115 and 123 in his final seasons with Green Bay. Tyreek Hill saw a drop-off of 38 catches last season from the 119 he had in both 2022 and ’23, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see his numbers keep trending that way as the decade winds down.
I extended the leaderboard to 15 for receptions because there are so many talented players bunched together, and the five additional guys are all still in their 20s (Terry McLaurin turns 30 next month). Amon-Ra St. Brown and Ja’Marr Chase both made the list despite being rookies in ’21 and thus only having four seasons within this time span.
2025 prediction: Justin Jefferson
I’d love to be right about my initial prediction with Lamb, but the smart money here is on Jefferson. I failed to mention the fellow 2020 rookie (the fifth receiver off the board that year) when I wrote my initial column. He is only one reception behind Lamb, but has done it in four fewer games. It’s so close, though. This could easily come down to health, luck or which quarterback is throwing to them four years from now. I’m just playing the odds that most people would probably take Jefferson to have the better career at this point. We’re about to mention him again shortly.
Receiving yards
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Chris Godwin
Godwin felt like a bit of a dart throw at the time, but he was a reasonable choice. He had just tallied 1,333 yards in 14 games during a breakout third season as a 23-year-old. He also had Tom Brady coming to town as his new quarterback in 2020. Now eight years into his career, that season remains his only Pro Bowl year and he hasn’t gotten within 200 yards of that total. He also fell further off pace by missing more than half of last season.
I did list Chase as my dark-horse candidate five years ago, even though he was not yet in the league. When we had last seen him, Chase had 1,780 yards and 20 touchdowns for the historic LSU offense that won a national title with Joe Burrow. He then opted out of the 2020 college season due to COVID-19, but I noted that he had a chance here even though he’d only have nine seasons to pile up the numbers. It would be incredible if he could pull it off. He’s sitting in 10th place despite missing that full 2020 season … as well as six games in the four seasons he has suited up in the NFL.
2025 prediction: Justin Jefferson
After taking Jefferson in receptions, it would be strange not to go with him again here, where he has a lead of nearly 500 yards on second place, and more than 1,000 yards on anyone within five years of his age. Through five seasons with the Vikings, his 96.5 receiving yards per game are more than anyone else in NFL history has for a full career. He likely wouldn’t even need to keep up the same pace to maintain his lead.
Receiving touchdowns
Past five years:
2020 prediction: A.J. Brown
A.J. Brown has 41 touchdowns since the original story came out and I think I’ve retweeted myself after maybe 10 of them:
I predicted AJ Brown would lead the NFL in receiving touchdowns during the 2020s, and I can’t believe I’m gonna think about this article every time he scores for the next 10 years. I need to make shorter-term predictions. https://t.co/SpM0h3C4c7
— Mitch Goldich 🐙 (@mitchgoldich) October 13, 2020
I’ll note here that I picked Barkley and Brown to each lead the league in one category, and then the Eagles acquired both of them and won a Super Bowl. That’s neat. Brown is fifth in both yards and touchdowns, leaving himself possibly in range.
Adams leads again here, followed by Mike Evans, and this is the one category where I could see one of the older guys hanging on. Adams will be in his age-37 season and Evans in his age-36 season in 2029—or they could be out of the league entirely, even if that feels hard to believe now. The last wide receiver to catch a touchdown pass at age 36 or older is Danny Amendola, who had three in 2021. Larry Fitzgerald had one the year before that, the final season of his career. The last players with at least five were Anquan Boldin and Steve Smith Sr. in 2016.
2025 prediction: Ja’Marr Chase
I’ll go with Chase here, largely for the age-related concerns above. There was a reason I instantly ruled out any receiver who entered 2020 at age 26 or older in the original column. I have to stick to my guns here.
Chase is in fourth place, is significantly younger than everyone above him and, again, did this in only four seasons. This is the one category where he even leads Jefferson. Would it surprise me if Jefferson overtook him? Of course not. Same for Brown. DK Metcalf is in their age bracket, but his touchdown numbers have been down the past three seasons as he now joins Aaron Rodgers in Pittsburgh. Give me Chase.
Sacks
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Nick Bosa
The 2020s sack leader has become a fun race, with three great players separated from the pack but clustered tightly together. T.J. Watt has led the league in sacks in three of the past five years, after his brother, J.J., finished tied for second with 96 sacks in the 2010s (Von Miller had 106).
My guy Bosa is in fourth, and definitely within striking distance given his youth compared to the three names above him. Only three players 34 or older have had at least eight sacks in a season since 2018: Cam Heyward, Brandon Graham and Jerry Hughes. It’s also necessary to point out that Micah Parsons, like Ja’Marr Chase, is a member of the ’21 draft class who is rocketing up this list despite playing only four seasons. He turned 26 in May and will now spend the next five years in basically the same age range as the three guys at the top of the list were over the past five seasons.
2025 prediction: Micah Parsons
I wanted to take Garrett, who has never led the league in sacks but has just been a consistent force over the past seven seasons with annual totals of 13.5, 10, 12, 16, 16, 14, 14. But I’m going with youth here. It just feels too likely that the players at the top of this board will be slowing down and/or battling injuries come 2028 and ’29, while Parsons is still wrecking quarterbacks. A lengthy holdout over his contract this season could complicate things. But I think there’s just too much time left for him to make up the difference.
Interceptions
Past five years:
2020 prediction: Tre’Davious White
Interceptions is definitely the hardest (and, frankly, most random) of all the stats to predict. Part of that is because the numbers are lower and more bunched up. Part of it is because we see players have outlier seasons and then never coming close to matching those numbers again. Oftentimes the best corners get fewer opportunities because teams stop throwing in their direction entirely.
I mentioned it was random at the time … I am not using this as an excuse now because I picked White coming off a six-interception season and then watched him collect only six more interceptions across the following five seasons! (Though, uhh, I did do that.)
Diggs is a perfect example, too. He had 11 of his 20 interceptions in one season (2021) and that’s enough to place him second on the list, despite having three, one and two in the three years since.
2025 prediction: Derek Stingley Jr.
I’m going way down the board here and taking Derek Stingley Jr., who is tied for 24th with 11 picks. He’s done it in three seasons, and had only one interception in nine games as a rookie. He has a great pedigree as the No. 3 pick in the 2022 draft and he made the first-team All-Pro team last season. He is younger than everyone above him (though Kerby Joseph, who had nine last season, is an enticing option). But I also think the Texans have built a great secondary, which will prevent teams from staying away from Stingley.
Stingley is tied with reigning Defensive Player of the Year Pat Surtain II, who is only a year older, but he has racked up those 11 interceptions in 29 fewer games.
And with that, I look forward to checking back in five years from now to see what I got right. And, honestly, it should be fun to see what I got wrong.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Updating NFL Stat Leader Predictions For the 2020s Decade.