Shortly after a report emerged that Netflix is going to cancel NBA docuseries Starting 5 due to poor viewership, the streamer appears ready to re-up its NFL-focused show.
According to a report by Austin Karp in Sports Business Journal, Netflix’s Quarterback is “likely” to be renewed for a third season. The show, which is co-produced by Peyton Manning’s Omaha Productions, Patrick Mahomes’ 2PM Productions, and NFL Films, debuted in 2023 and proved to be an instant success. Season 1 followed Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota throughout the 2022 season. Season 2, filmed during the 2024 season, followed Cousins again, alongside Jared Goff and Joe Burrow.
Given the two-year gap between Seasons 1 and 2, and the fact that we haven’t seen reports about a Season 3 until now, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the show’s every other year pattern continued, and Season 3 is filmed in 2026. Between Seasons 1 and 2, Netflix aired a spinoff series called Receiver which was not as well received.
Netflix’s viewership data indicates that Quarterback was far more popular than Receiver during the same time periods following their respective releases. Quarterback earned 12.7 million views during the second half of 2023, while Receiver tallied just 7.5 million views during the second half of 2024.
Karp reports that a new season of Quarterback “likely is performing somewhere in the middle of those figures — and likely on par with what Season 7 of Drive to Survive drew on Netflix during the first half of this year.”
It’s no surprise that a docuseries following players at the most important position in the most popular professional sports league in the country has proven to be a hit. The sports docuseries genre has quickly become oversaturated, but the appetite for NFL content knows no bounds.
For a series like Starting 5, it’s difficult to stand out, even with some of the NBA’s biggest stars participating. Quarterback, on the other hand, has the built-in advantage of being about football. And if it continues its every-two-years trajectory, the concept won’t become stale as quickly.
Of course, the show will still need to find willing participants, which proved to be an issue going into Season 2, leading to the Receiver spinoff. However, it shouldn’t be impossible to find three quarterbacks out of 32 starters in the league looking to raise their profiles through the Netflix treatment.