Which Quarterbacks Saw Their Stock Rise the Most in 2025?

Heading into the 2025 NFL season, the quarterback conversation was dominated by four men. The AFC’s supposed ‘Big Four.’

Patrick Mahomes had reached at least the AFC Championship game in all seven of his seasons as a starter in Kansas City, converting those deep January runs into five Super Bowl appearances—including the last three on the spin—winning three of them. Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson was a two-time MVP winner and redefined the very definition of dual threat. Bengal Joe Burrow led the entire league in both passing yards and touchdowns in 2024, while Buffalo’s Josh Allen was the reigning MVP. 

Then, 2025 happened. 

‘Big Four’ No More?

Mahomes and the Chiefs started 0-2 before capitulating to 6-11 and missing the playoffs for the first time since the mercurial QB was drafted out of Texas Tech. Jackson struggled with fitness issues all year, looking a shadow of his former self as the Ravens also missed out on the playoffs. 

Burrow, as ever, spent much of the campaign on the treatment table. He was out for over half the season as Cincy also missed the postseason for the third straight year. In fact, Allen was the only one of the four who did make it to the playoffs, but he didn’t cover himself in glory when the pressure was on. The reigning MVP turned the ball over no fewer than four times in the Divisional Round defeat to the Broncos, allowing his best chance at lifting the Lombardi to fall through his fingers. 

But while these four were floundering, leaving fans wondering if the NFL was on the brink of a new era, three more quarterbacks managed to rise to the occasion, elevating their stock and proving to the world that they do indeed belong in the conversation when it comes to the league’s elite. 

Drake Maye

Let’s start with the absurdity. A 22-year-old second-year quarterback simultaneously leading the NFL in completion percentage (72.0%), yards per attempt (8.93), EPA/play, QBR, and passer rating (113.5). All five. At the same time. In his first full season as a starter. For context: even the greatest quarterback who ever wore a Patriots jersey, Tom Brady, never achieved that quintet in a single season. 

That was Drake Maye’s 2025. 

New England went 4-13 in each of the two campaigns preceding last term, and the rebuild felt like purgatory. Then they found their guy, and suddenly it’s 4,394 yards, 31 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, and a 14-3 record that ended in a first AFC East title since Brady left Foxborough, plus a Super Bowl appearance. The machine works when the quarterback is generational, and Maye is that guy. 

He’s locked into his rookie deal through 2027. Elite production at cost-controlled money is the most valuable asset in the entire NFL. It’s worth more than most franchises’ entire rosters. While other teams are restructuring contracts to survive, New England is building around a 22-year-old who already plays like a ten-year veteran, and online betting sites now know exactly what he brings to the table. 

The early 2026 NFL lines at Bovada currently list Maye and the Patriots as a +1600 shot to leave SoFi Stadium with the Lombardi for a record-breaking seventh time next February. The Big Four’s absence opened the door for Maye once before. Will they do it again next season? 

Sam Darnold

You know the speech. The one every GM gives when a young quarterback is struggling—the cautionary tale about evaluation gone wrong, about investing a top-10 pick in a guy who can’t process fast enough. That cautionary tale had a name for half a decade: Sam Darnold. Jets dysfunction. Panthers disaster. San Francisco placeholder. Then the Vikings—who’d given him a genuine shot after a 14-win season—looked at what they had and decided J.J. McCarthy was the answer instead. They let Darnold walk. 

Seattle signed him when the league had written his obituary. The Seahawks proceeded to go 14-3. Darnold threw for 4,048 yards and 35 touchdowns, engineered a comeback from 16 points down in the fourth quarter against the Rams, threw for 374 yards and three touchdowns in the NFC Championship, and then—28 years old, six years after everyone said he’d never be good enough—hoisted the Lombardi Trophy at Super Bowl LX. The first quarterback from the 2018 draft class to win it all. Not Baker Mayfield. Not Josh Allen. Sam Darnold.

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The Vikings watched from home. The franchise that cut him to make room for McCarthy—a team that had Darnold for one more year at $13.4 million cap hit —sat in their living rooms while their former quarterback held the championship they could’ve had. Now they pivot to Kyler Murray while the bookies list Seattle as a +900 second favorite to repeat as champions. Talk about proving the doubters wrong. 

Bo Nix

Don’t oversell this. Nix isn’t Maye or Darnold in terms of narrative fireworks—and that’s precisely what makes his story interesting. An 87.8 passer rating proves that he is a quarterback who still has stretches of happy feet and questionable progression reads mixed with genuinely impressive displays. The Broncos’ pass rush—the league’s best in sacks—created favorable situations all season. The defensive cocoon was real, and Nix benefited from it enormously. 

And yet. Fourteen regular season wins. AFC Championship appearance. And on the biggest stage of his young career, in overtime against Josh Allen—the man who’d been anointed the AFC’s new alpha—Nix’s Broncos scored the field goal that ended Buffalo’s season. And it was the young QB who was responsible for the triumph: 279 yards, three touchdowns; monstrous drives down the field in both the fourth quarter and overtime to leave Allen addressing the press in tears post-game. 

Champ Bailey has watched enough football to know the difference between a managed game manager and a developing franchise quarterback. When he says he expects Nix to “separate himself” in Year 3, that carries weight. The talent is real. The ceiling is genuinely unknown. The Broncos have genuine Super Bowl ambitions, and Nix is the gravitational center around which everything revolves.