The 7 starting NFL QBs who need to bounce back from injuries in 2024

Some will be feeling the pressure more than others this season.

It’s finally starting to feel to me like the new football season is approaching. The Olympics are over (U-S-A!), preseason is in full swing, and Hard Knocks is back. Well, the normal version of the show. We also got an offseason version that followed the Giants and their GM throughout free agency and the draft. A week after it wrapped up, regular Hard Knocks premiered, this time featuring the Bears (there will also be an in-season series that focuses on the entire AFC North).

Anyway, in the first episode of the Bears’ Hard Knocks, Nick Saban stopped by and chatted with Matt Eberflus, a former player of his from Toledo. Saban offered Eberflus his theory about why so many first-round quarterbacks don’t work out: the sky-high expectations. 

As Saban said, it’s “almost impossible” for Caleb Williams to live up to what everyone hopes of him. He’s the No. 1 pick, the Bears’ roster is much more loaded than it’s been in a long time, and Chicago has been desperately waiting decades for a true franchise quarterback.

Yet he’s also a 22-year-old who is bound to have, like every first-year QB before him, some rookie moments. He will certainly be under pressure this season, but so will every quarterback in the NFL. Bryce Young will be under pressure to rebound from his disastrous debut and avoid the bust label. Trevor Lawrence and Tua ​​Tagovailoa will be under pressure to prove they were worth their new big-money contracts. Sam Darnold, Russell Wilson, and Justin Fields will be under pressure to show they can still be starters in this league (and the latter two for the same team). 

For another group of quarterbacks, there’s a different reason they’ll be feeling the heat: injuries. Seven starting QBs went on season-ending injured reserve in 2023, and all seven face expectations to bounce back from that disappointment. 

But some will be more heavily scrutinized than others. So let’s take a look at those seven quarterbacks, in order of the players who are under the least pressure to the ones under the most pressure.

7. Anthony Richardson, Indianapolis Colts

When Richardson was first drafted, I thought it’d take time for him to get acclimated to the league. But he started for the Colts right away and looked fairly comfortable out there, flashing his playmaking ability with improvised big gains and seven total touchdowns (3 passing, 4 rushing) in four games. 

However, Richardson’s gung-ho style also opened him up to some especially hard tackles. He missed Week 3 after sustaining a concussion in the prior game, and his season-ending shoulder injury a couple weeks later came on a QB run. Since then, he’s acknowledged that he has to play smarter to avoid unnecessary hits, and that showed up in his first preseason action (even if he was a little rusty, understandably). 

At just 22 years old, Richardson will have more leeway than the other, more experienced QBs on this list, particularly because his rookie year was cut short. That said, he was the No. 4 overall pick and will still need to make strides — and stay off IR — in year two.

6. Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals

Most NFL players would not get the benefit of the doubt when two of their first four seasons ended because of a major surgery. Or when they ditched their luxurious haircut for a new Eminem-like bleach blond buzzed look:

Then again, most NFL players are not in the Joe Burrow tier. After tearing his ACL as a rookie, Burrow turned around and won Comeback Player of the Year honors in his second season and led the Bengals to their first playoff win in 31 years and first Super Bowl appearance in 33 years. He followed that up with a Pro Bowl season in 2022, when Cincinnati came up just shy of another AFC title (Burrow and Co. fell in overtime to Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, the only consistent thorn in that near-dynasty’s side). 

Burrow got off to a slow start in 2023 after dealing with a lingering calf strain that he first sustained in training camp. He was looking more like himself a month into the season when the Bengals went on a four-game winning streak. Not long after, though, he hurt his wrist and underwent season-ending surgery. 

We know that Burrow can bounce back and lay claim to being one of the best quarterbacks in the league because we’ve already seen him do it before. But if he gets banged up again this year, more people than just the sports talk blowhards will believe he has an “injury-prone” reputation. 

5. Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers

Like Burrow, Justin Herbert was a first-round draft pick in 2020, has been named a Pro Bowler, and signed a lucrative extension last offseason. And like Burrow, Herbert’s 2023 season ended early. But unlike Burrow, that was the first time in his career that Herbert was sidelined due to injury. 

Herbert has also dealt with quite a bit of upheaval since he broke his finger in December. Head coach Brandon Staley was fired and replaced a month later by Jim Harbaugh. In addition, Herbert’s top three weapons in his career with the Chargers — receivers Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, as well as running back Austin Ekeler — are all with new teams. So why do I consider Herbert to be under more pressure than Burrow?

While there are a few reasons, the main one is that Herbert simply doesn’t have Burrow’s track record. Herbert is a good quarterback who has set multiple passing records, but he doesn’t have any postseason wins and also lacks much success against the Chiefs. There’s also the fact that Herbert’s backup situation is in dire straits, as we saw last year after he was shut down and as we’re seeing right now in preseason while Herbert is dealing with a plantar fascia injury in his foot.  

Although Herbert is expected to be ready in Week 1, if his new ailment sets him back at all then the entire Chargers team is in trouble.

4. Kirk Cousins, Atlanta Falcons

For the first 11.5 years of his career, Kirk Cousins had been remarkably durable, never missing a game because of injury (he did sit out one with Covid). That all changed midseason when he tore his Achilles, leading Cousins to briefly wonder if he would ever play again. Cousins eventually recovered, though the 4-4 Vikings did not. They went 3-6 the rest of the way. 

I had assumed that Cousins, who was hitting free agency, would re-up with Minnesota. Instead, he opted to sign a hefty four-year deal with the Falcons, a team that has failed to find a reliable QB successor to Matt Ryan. Cousins could fit the bill. He has an accurate arm and boasted a 101.2 passer rating in his time with the Vikings. On the other hand, Cousins will soon be 36 and has just one postseason win to his name. 

Oh yeah, and the Falcons shocked the football world, and Cousins most of all, in April when they used their No. 8 pick on another quarterback, Michael Penix Jr. If Atlanta falls short of the playoffs again in a wide-open NFC South, it could decide to part ways with Cousins and hand over the reins to Penix Jr. In that case, it’d be hard to say who had more regrets about him choosing to leave Minnesota: the Falcons, the Vikings (whose first-round pick, J.J. McCarthy, is already out for the year), or Cousins himself. 

3. Daniel Jones, New York Giants

Last offseason, the Giants faced a dilemma: Should they use their franchise tag on running back Saquon Barkley or quarterback Daniel Jones? And should they then extend the other? Whatever they decided would be risky. In the end, they tagged Barkley and signed their QB to a new four-year deal worth up to $160 million. That contract drew plenty of criticism at the time, but the Giants didn’t really have better options at the most important position on the field. 

The hope was that Jones would continue to build off the progress he made in Brian Daboll’s first season. Unfortunately, Jones tore his ACL in early November, the second time he’s been placed on season-ending IR in his career. Even before then, Jones struggled to stay healthy (he sat out three games with a neck injury) and generally failed to recapture the magic of the previous year. He finished 2023 with a 2:6 TD: INT ratio and a 36.3 QBR in six appearances. 

As revealed in the aforementioned offseason Hard Knocks, the Giants tried to trade up from the No. 6 pick to draft a quarterback this April, but none of the QB-needy teams ahead of them would budge. So Jones heads into 2024 as the starter once again, with more weapons and better blocking, at least on paper. Yet he’s clearly on thin ice. If Jones’ performance doesn’t live up to his massive salary, the Giants could use the out in his contract and move on for real.

2. Aaron Rodgers, New York Jets

The Jets bent over backwards to lure Aaron Rodgers to New York last offseason after his eye-rolling “darkness retreat.” They signed two of his favorite receivers (Randall Cobb and Allen Lazard), and brought on Rodgers’ former OC, Nathaniel Hackett (who flamed out as a head coach), to helm the offense. Then they parted with a few draft picks to land the four-time MVP in a trade. 

All that trouble would have been worth it if Rodgers had been in MVP mode. Or if, y’know, his season had lasted longer than four snaps. But, as we all know unless you’ve been in a darkness retreat for the past year, Rodgers tore his Achilles on the first series of his Jets debut and his season was over. He hinted about coming back in 2023, though it was all BS like most everything else that comes out of his mouth these days. 

Rodgers is exhausting, particularly when he’s not playing football. In the last 5-10 years, I sadly think many of us know someone who has gone from “conspiracy theory curious” to full-on brainwormed nut who is estranged from his family. That’s Rodgers off the field. Once he’s back on the field in Week 1, he’ll be 40 years old and trying to play like he did three years ago. If he accomplishes that, then maybe he can stick to talking about football and not regurgitate whatever nonsense he heard on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Another shortened or otherwise disappointing season, however, could mean that Rodgers has worn out his welcome in New York. 

1. Deshaun Watson, Cleveland Browns

It’s been four very long years since Deshaun Watson played a full season. In 2020, he led the NFL with 4,823 passing yards while sporting an impressive 33:7 TD:INT ratio and 112.4 passer rating, but he was toiling away on a flailing team. I thought the Texans were wasting his talents and should trade him, as he requested, to a franchise that would use him properly. 

Well, we don’t always know the full story, do we? Soon after, more than a dozen women filed lawsuits against Watson for sexual misconduct — the number eventually grew to 26 — and he sat out the 2021 season. Although a grand jury did not indict him on criminal charges, the civil lawsuits were still active when the Browns traded for Watson in March 2022. 

It was a shameless move for Cleveland, a franchise with rotten luck at the quarterback position. It was also a baffling move considering what the Browns gave up, besides any goodwill, to add Watson: a fully guaranteed $230 million contract, plus numerous draft picks that the up-and-coming Texans used on key players. (They also sent Baker Mayfield packing and he eventually landed on his feet with the Buccaneers.)

Since then, Watson has started 12 times for the Browns. The NFL handed him an 11-game suspension in 2022, and then he missed most of 2023 with a shoulder injury. He was pretty bad in both abbreviated seasons and was outplayed by backups both years. First, it was Jacoby Brissett and then it was 38-year-old Joe Flacco, who got off his couch in November to return to the AFC North and lead the Browns to the playoffs (where they lost to, who else, but the Texans). 

Due to his massive dead money caps for the next three seasons, Cleveland is stuck with Watson whether he ever regains his old form or not. Winning wouldn’t excuse Watson’s alleged actions, or the Browns’ unseemly pursuit of him, but it would make this unpalatable situation a little easier to swallow for the fans.