Josh Allen and the evolution of rushing quarterbacks

When JOHNNY UNITAS retired after the 1973 NFL season, his 303 total touchdowns (290 passing, 13 rushing) were the most in NFL history.

Entering Week 1 of the 2026 season, Buffalo’s Josh Allen needed three touchdowns – by land or by air – to eclipse Unitas’ all-time mark.

Allen delivered.

Four total touchdowns (two passing, two rushing), including a 34-yard game-winning touchdown pass to Joshua Palmer late in the fourth quarter, moved Allen to 305 for his career. His leap from 301 places him 17th all-time – a nearly unfathomable feat for a player one game into his ninth season as a professional.

In fact, Allen’s 305 career touchdowns already position him atop the NFL’s all-time list through a player’s first nine seasons.

The significance of Allen’s latest milestone extends beyond a single record. His ability to produce touchdowns both through the air and on the ground represents the latest stage in a transformation of the quarterback position and what it demands of those who play it.

As the position has evolved, so too have expectations for what quarterbacks can produce on the football field.

Pro Football Hall of Famer FRAN TARKENTON was an early pioneer of the dual-threat archetype, earning the nickname “The Scrambler” for his ability to extend plays behind the line of scrimmage. ROGER STAUBACH expanded upon the model, gaining recognition for a more aggressive, downhill style of play.

As the decades have passed, other quarterbacks expanded the position’s rushing potential.

Randall Cunningham ran for a quarterback-record 942 yards in 1990. Sixteen years later, Michael Vick became the first quarterback to eclipse 1,000 rushing yards, finishing the 2006 season with 1,039.

Cam Newton set the NFL single-season record for rushing touchdowns at the position, scoring 14 as a rookie in 2011. That mark stood for 12 seasons before Jalen Hurts and Allen each scored 15 rushing touchdowns in 2023.

If the objective is hitting pay dirt on the ground, Allen has taken the position to another level.

In 2025, he surpassed Newton’s career record of 75 rushing touchdowns by a quarterback, pushing the mark to 79 – a figure scarcely imaginable when Tarkenton first began scrambling his way into the record books in the 1960s and ’70s.

With two more rushing touchdowns in the 2026 season opener against Houston, Allen has now extended the record to 81.

That level of production didn’t happen overnight.

As a rookie in 2018, Allen produced 18 total touchdowns in 12 games. Buffalo went 5-6 in his 11 starts, 1-4 in games started by three other quarterbacks. The following season, Allen produced 29 total touchdowns, leading the Bills to a 10-6 record and the first of seven consecutive postseason appearances.

From there, Allen’s production ascended, producing touchdown totals of 46, 42, 42, 44, 41 and 39 from 2020-2025, an average of 42.3 per season.

That sustained production has placed Allen in rare historical company, both for the volume of touchdowns and for how consistently he has reached the end zone throughout his career.

Through Week 1 of 2026, Allen has accounted for 305 touchdowns – 222 passing, 81 rushing and two receiving. He surpassed Patrick Mahomes’ mark of 259 from 2017-2024 (or 286 from 2018-2025, if excluding his one-start rookie season). Before Mahomes, the record over eight seasons belonged to Peyton Manning, who accounted for 253 touchdowns from 1998-2005.

At 301, Allen through eight seasons already held the record for most touchdowns through a player’s first nine seasons – breaking Russell Wilson’s mark of 289 from 2012-2020 – before taking a single 2026 snap. After one game, he has extended that mark to 305.

That’s not the only record in Allen’s sights.

Mahomes holds the NFL record for most total offense – passing yards minus sack yards, plus rushing yards – through a player’s first nine seasons, with 37,192, narrowly surpassing Peyton Manning’s 37,179 from 1998-2006.

Standing at 33,375 entering the season, Allen needs 3,818 yards of total offense in 2026 to establish the new record there, too.

Manning holds the record for most total touchdowns through a quarterback’s first 10 seasons (322) – a mark Allen can now surpass with 18 in 2026, breaking another benchmark a full season earlier than his predecessor.

Allen’s remarkable production has not come simply through accumulation. While traditional passing efficiency metrics fail to account for his impact as a dual threat, ESPN’s Total QBR does.

Since 2020, Allen has finished in the top seven every season:

• 2020: 76.6 (3rd)
• 2021: 66.3 (6th)
• 2022: 73.4 (2nd)
• 2023: 70.3 (3rd)
• 2024: 74.8 (T-1st)
• 2025: 65.4 (7th)

Dominance through the lens of advanced metrics provides further context for the larger statistical picture. Allen has not accumulated extraordinary numbers merely by virtue of playing the position for nine seasons; he consistently has performed at an elite level – through the air and on the ground.

The evolution of the rushing quarterback has been a gradual one, with each generation pushing the position beyond what previously was thought possible. Tarkenton made scrambling a weapon. Staubach made it more aggressive. Cunningham and Vick demonstrated how dramatically a quarterback could impact the game as a runner, while Newton established a new standard for scoring points on the ground.

Allen has taken elements of each and incorporated them into a broader level of offensive production. His latest milestone —surpassing Unitas’ total-touchdown mark and extending his own record for touchdown production through nine seasons —provides another measure of how far the quarterback position has evolved.

With more records within reach, his place in the evolution of the rushing quarterback is far from finished.

Ryan Michael is a pro football historian, statistician and contributor to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You can follow him on X @ryanmichael (www.x.com/ryanmichael).

This article is the latest in an ongoing series looking at quarterbacks’ achievements that have aged well over the past 80 NFL seasons. Information from Pro-Football-Reference.com’s database helped make the research possible.

More of this series

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• Y.A. Tittle’s journey from San Francisco to New York
• Analysis: An appreciation of Sammy Baugh’s historic 1943 season
• Legendary seasons for Sid Luckman, Peyton Manning separated by 70 years
• Looking back at TB12’s historic 2011 season 12 years later
• Russell Wilson’s decade of dominance in Seattle remains elite
• Roger Staubach’s 1971: The greatest season you’ve never heard about
• Silver anniversary: Randall Cunningham’s solid gold season with Vikings
• 50 years since Unitas’ last pass: Some things you might not know about No. 19
• Race to the top: Brady’s battle with Brees for the NFL’s most hallowed record
• Analysis: Did Andrew Luck exceed hype or fall short?
• Silver anniversary of John’s Elway’s sterling final game
• As cold as ice: Perception of Matt Ryan’s legacy after ‘28-3’
• Cam Newton leads high-flying 2015 Carolina Panthers
• Peyton Manning’s four-year rodeo in Mile High City
• Dan Marino eclipsed long-standing TD record 40 years ago
• Jaguars dominated in 1999 - with one Titan-ic exception
• Josh Allen and the evolution of rushing quarterbacks