If it seems like you saw less game action for starting quarterbacks in the NFL preseason, well, you did.

Teams are putting less priority on preseason snaps for starters, so much so that 10 starting quarterbacks didn’t throw a single pass in their preseason, with another 10 starters throwing 10 passes or fewer over their three games. The average NFL starter attempted just 10.1 passes in the preseason this year, which represents a 30% drop from the average of 14.3 in the 2021 preseason.

“I don’t feel like I need to play him in the last game,” Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Todd Bowles said of holding starter Baker Mayfield out of the preseason, even with a new offensive coordinator in Josh Grizzard. “It’s really practice habits, No. 1. How hard are you practicing? How many game situations have you been in, and all of those type of things. The energy you come in with – are you getting the ball out in 7-on-7, or are you patting it and holding it because you’ve got all day? He played in Pittsburgh (in joint practices with the Steelers) like it was a game on Thursday, especially the two-minute situation. It was all sped up for him and he’s done a bunch of practices like that as well. So I feel like the experience of the quarterback and how he practices has something to do with it. It’s the chemistry with everybody going in sync.”

It isn’t just experienced quarterbacks getting held out this year. Michael Penix Jr., a second-year quarterback who started three games as a rookie, didn’t play a snap for the Falcons, nor did Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders, another second-year player. 

Michael Penix’s only action this preseason only consisted of warming up before games. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

As for those who do play, they’re out of games sooner due to the risk of injury. Four years ago, seven starting quarterbacks had more than 25 passes in the preseason, but this year, only two did, and those were on the last two teams with real quarterback competitions, the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints.

There’s a wide disparity in how NFL coaches value preseason game experience, and some of the league’s most established quarterbacks still play more than unproven passers who more legitimately need the work. Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, who led the NFL in passing yards and touchdowns last season, played 24 snaps in the preseason, fifth-most among starters. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who’s been to five of the last six Super Bowls and won three of them, ranked in the top 10 with 14 preseason snaps.

“For me, I wanted to get out there,” Mahomes said after playing against the Chicago Bears this weekend. “The preseason is the preseason, [and] we understand it. You want everybody to stay safe and have your health and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, you’re a football player [and] you’ve got to play football. There’s risks that are involved with that, and so, we on this team, we want to get out there and give chances to showcase that what we’re doing is paying off … It was a small step, but it was a step in the right direction.”

Patrick Mahomes was one of the busier starting quarterbacks this preseason. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

While teams want to protect their starters, backups can get hurt, too. Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Aidan O’Connell sustained a broken wrist in Las Vegas’ preseason finale, leaving them without an experienced backup to Geno Smith and perhaps working to add a veteran less than two weeks before the season begins.

The balance between preparing players for games that matter but also preserving them to make sure they get to Week 1 is an organizational decision. Atlanta’s Raheem Morris said he will err on the side of safety, even if it means less game work for key players with a pivotal divisional game against the Bucs looming in their opener.

“Really, for me, it’s about mitigating injury,” Morris said. “You don’t get any mulligans. If we get a significant player that we know what he’s capable of doing, to watch him to play against a very vanilla defense or a very vanilla offense … There’s no mulligans, so the things that I can control, I want to do for us, our community, our fans, our organization, as best I can.”

Fans, too, are torn between trusting the judgment of coaches to preserve players and lowering the risk of injury, but also knowing they’re paying for preseason tickets as part of a season ticket package and are often watching players who won’t be a part of the team in the regular season.

As the NFL ponders expanding again from a 17-game schedule to 18 games, doing so would likely coincide with reducing the preseason from three games to two, just as it dropped from four to three preseason games when the regular season added a 17th game in 2021. That would mean fewer opportunities to play anyone, shifting the importance more to practice and joint practices.

It’s not unlike the major changes that have evolved in the last 20 years to do away with two-a-day practices and limit the amount of full-contact practices teams can have, something that is met with initial resistance, but eventually becomes accepted as the norm.

“It’s evolved in a natural way, but it’s also evolved in a reactionary sort of way,” Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said. “The rules that govern what it is that we do, how we put our calendars together, how we work, the amount of work we’re allowed, the time of hours a day that we get with the guys. All of that has changed over the course of my 19 years here. 

“I just look at the tools at my disposal in terms of readying this group, and the guidelines I have to subscribe to in an effort to do so. I don’t think I waste a lot of time comparing this group’s preparation to one 15 years ago, because it’s not apples to apples.”

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is pushing for an 18-game regular season, which would shrink the preseason to two games. (Photo by Perry Knotts/Getty Images)

Does the lack of preseason preparation have quarterbacks playing worse in the first month of the season? In theory, defenses would face the same uphill climb, but the numbers show a more drastic quarterback improvement from the start of the season to the end of the season than what they showed a decade ago, when teams had one more preseason game to get them ready for the year. Last year, for instance, the league’s collective touchdown to interception (TD/INT) ratio in the first four weeks of the season was 1.81, but that jumped to 2.21 in the final four weeks of the season. 

The overall passing numbers are much improved from a decade ago for a number of reasons. But if you look at 2015, the TD/INT ratio in the first four games was 1.73. That number in the last four games of the 2015 season was 1.95. The 2024 TD/INT ratio difference had an improvement of 22% from start to finish, compared to a 13% improvement in 2015. 

Whether that worse start and greater improvement are a function of less preseason work would be difficult to prove, but it’s logically part of it.

Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.

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