The Most-Searched NFL Player in Every State (Last 12 Months)
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Travis Kelce is the most-searched NFL player in 17 states. Drake Maye owns New England and his native North Carolina. Joe Burrow is the king of the Ohio River Valley. And in North Dakota, the most-searched NFL player is a 33-year-old career backup who hasn't started a full season in years.
Using 12 months of Google search-interest data across all 50 states and Washington, D.C., Bookies.com mapped which NFL player each state Googles more than any other. The results sort cleanly along three storylines: superstar dominance, regional and hometown loyalty and a few states where the most-searched name doesn't match the most accomplished player on the field.
It's just the latest in our NFL research items, including the NFL 2026 Miles Traveled.
How to read the map: Each pin shows the single most-searched player in that state — the one beating every other NFL name in head-to-head search interest, May 2025 through May 2026. Tap any state for the breakdown. Northeastern states (Maine through D.C.) are stacked in the callout column on the right because the geography is too tight for pins.
Each State’s Most-Searched NFL Player
Google Trends head-to-head search data across all 50 states + D.C. Twenty NFL players claim at least one state.
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Three Stories the Map Tells
1. Travis Kelce isn't just the most popular tight end — he's the most-searched NFL player, period
Kelce wins 17 states. Not just the Plains and Mountain West, where Chiefs fandom radiates out from Kansas City — also Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, South Carolina, and Tennessee. He pulls 1.44 million monthly U.S. searches on his name alone, more than Patrick Mahomes (975K) and roughly on par with Joe Burrow (1.03M). For context, that puts him ahead of his own quarterback in raw search volume.
The Taylor Swift effect is the obvious explanation, and the search data confirms it: "travis kelce taylor swift" pulls 142,000 monthly searches by itself — a pop-culture overlay that drags Kelce's brand into rooms where football isn't the main subject. The result is geographic spread you'd never see for a tight end on raw football merit. And yes, it doesn't hurt the Chiefs remain among the favorites for the Super Bowl at US betting apps.
2. Drake Maye owns New England and his home state
Maye sweeps the entire Northeast — Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont — plus North Carolina, where he was born, raised, and played his college ball at UNC. Seven states, all tied to either his pro team or his home roots. His 940,000 monthly searches put him within striking distance of Mahomes and ahead of every other young QB on this map.
The cleaner read here: Maye is now the face of Patriots football in a post-Brady, post-Belichick New England. The region had a giant search vacuum, and Maye filled it. There is no Celtics-style cross-team rival absorbing attention — the Patriots are the only show, and Maye is the show within the show. And in North Carolina, he's not just a UNC alum riding college nostalgia — he's a Charlotte-area native whose home state stuck with him.
3. The biggest surprise on the map: Carson Wentz in North Dakota
This one is genuinely strange. Carson Wentz is 33, has been a backup quarterback for most of the last four seasons, and hasn't been the centerpiece of an NFL offense since his Eagles years. And yet in his home state of North Dakota, he beats every active starter — every MVP candidate, every Super Bowl champion, every rookie hype train — for search interest.
It's a clean, almost pure measurement of hometown loyalty. North Dakota produces few NFL players (Wentz himself is from Bismarck and played his college ball at North Dakota State). The state has no NFL team within hundreds of miles. So when North Dakotans search NFL, they search the guy they know — even if his on-field role is now mostly clipboard duty. It's the strongest reminder on this map that search interest isn't a stand-in for current performance.
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The Full List: All 51 Winners
Twenty NFL players claim at least one state. Travis Kelce leads with 17. Drake Maye is second with seven. Joe Burrow and Aaron Rodgers tie for third with three each. Five players win two states. Eleven players win exactly one.
| PLAYER | STATES | WHERE |
| Travis Kelce | 17 | AK, AZ, AR, CA, FL, IA, MI, MO, MT, NE, NM, OK, OR, SC, SD, TN, UT |
| Drake Maye | 7 | CT, ME, MA, NH, NC, RI, VT |
| Joe Burrow | 3 | KY, LA, OH |
| Aaron Rodgers | 3 | PA, WV, WI |
| Jayden Daniels | 2 | DC, VA |
| Fernando Mendoza | 2 | IN, NV |
| Patrick Mahomes | 2 | KS, TX |
| Jaxson Dart | 2 | MS, NJ |
| Josh Allen | 2 | NY, WY |
| Ty Simpson | 1 | AL |
| Bo Nix | 1 | CO |
| Jalen Hurts | 1 | DE |
| Bijan Robinson | 1 | GA |
| Puka Nacua | 1 | HI |
| Ashton Jeanty | 1 | ID |
| Caleb Williams | 1 | IL |
| Lamar Jackson | 1 | MD |
| JJ McCarthy | 1 | MN |
| Carson Wentz | 1 | ND |
| Sam Darnold | 1 | WA |
Regional Breakdown
The Kelce Belt: 17 states from coast to coast
Travis Kelce's 17-state empire isn't a regional bloc — it's a brand. He wins states that have no business sharing a most-searched NFL player otherwise: Alaska and Florida. Arizona and Missouri. Tennessee and Oregon. The closest thing to a regional pattern is a thick block from Kansas City's natural backyard — Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas — into the Mountain West (Montana, New Mexico, Utah) and West Coast (California, Oregon).
Why does Kelce travel so well? Three factors compound. His Chiefs have been the AFC's defining franchise for the last six seasons. His personal brand — podcast, Swift relationship, off-field appearances — is unusually cross-demographic for an NFL player. And tight end isn't a position fans typically focus on, meaning when Kelce dominates search, it's because they're searching the person, not the football.
The Maye Wall: New England + the Carolinas
Drake Maye is the only player on the map who wins an entire census region. The full Northeast core — every state from Maine to Connecticut — plus North Carolina, where he was born and raised. Seven states, all tied to either his pro team or his roots. No other player on this map combines a regional pro-team sweep with a hometown-state win the way Maye does.
Quarterback country: the Ohio Valley and the Steel Belt
Joe Burrow wins Kentucky, Louisiana, and Ohio — a search footprint that maps almost perfectly to his football biography (LSU for college, Bengals for the pros, with Ohio as both his current pro home and the state where he played his high school ball). Aaron Rodgers wins Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — his old Packers state, his new Steelers state, and West Virginia in between. Together those six states form a quarterback-dominated stripe through the eastern half of the country.
College and hometown ties
Several state winners are best explained by where the player went to school, not where they currently play. Fernando Mendoza wins Indiana, where he played his college ball before going No. 1 overall to the Raiders (he also takes Nevada, his new pro state). Ty Simpson wins Alabama, his college state, despite being drafted by the Rams. Ashton Jeanty wins Idaho, where he was the Boise State Heisman runner-up. And Carson Wentz wins his home state of North Dakota despite barely playing — a reminder that for states with few homegrown NFL players, local connection beats current relevance every time.
The expected results
Several wins make obvious sense and serve as the baseline against which the surprises stand out. Bijan Robinson wins Georgia (Falcons star, drafted by Atlanta). Caleb Williams wins Illinois (Bears QB and the No. 1 pick from a year ago). Lamar Jackson wins Maryland (Ravens franchise player). Sam Darnold wins Washington (Seahawks starter). JJ McCarthy wins Minnesota (Vikings starter). And Puka Nacua wins Hawaii — Polynesian heritage plus Rams stardom is the cleanest matchup on the map.
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Methodology
This map is built from 12 months of Google search-interest data (May 2025 – May 2026), measured at the state level. For each state, we ran head-to-head comparisons between a curated slate of 20 high-interest NFL players — established stars (Kelce, Mahomes, Rodgers, Burrow, J. Allen, L. Jackson), young starting QBs in their first or second pro seasons (Maye, Daniels, Williams, McCarthy, Dart), incoming rookies (Mendoza, Simpson, Jeanty), and a handful of skill-position stars (Hurts, Bijan, Nacua, Nix, Wentz, Darnold). The state's winner is the player who scored highest in interest within that state's search market.
A few honest caveats. Search interest measures who people are Googling, not who they like best, who they bet on most, or who they'd put on their jersey. It captures both fans ("what's the Chiefs' schedule") and pop-culture searchers ("travis kelce taylor swift"). It also captures storyline searches — a player in the news for an injury, a trade, or a controversy gets a search spike whether the underlying coverage is positive or negative.
That's part of why this snapshot is interesting: it's a measure of how much oxygen each player commands in the cultural conversation, state by state. The data covers the full last 12 months, smoothing out short-term news cycles.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the most popular NFL player right now?
By Google search volume over the last 12 months, Travis Kelce leads all NFL players with roughly 1.44 million monthly U.S. searches on his name alone — ahead of Aaron Rodgers (1.35M), Joe Burrow (1.03M), Patrick Mahomes (975K), and Drake Maye (940K). On the state-by-state map of who each state Googles most, Kelce wins 17 states, more than any other player.
Which NFL player is most-searched in each state?
The full state-by-state breakdown is in the interactive map above and the winners table further up the page. The top-level summary: Travis Kelce (17 states), Drake Maye (7), Joe Burrow and Aaron Rodgers (3 each), then Jayden Daniels, Fernando Mendoza, Patrick Mahomes, Jaxson Dart, and Josh Allen all winning 2 states each. Eleven other players win a single state.
Why does Travis Kelce dominate so many states?
Three reasons. First, the Chiefs are the dominant AFC franchise of the last six seasons, which produces baseline search demand across a wide geography. Second, Kelce's personal brand — his podcast, his off-field appearances, and his relationship with Taylor Swift — pulls in non-football searchers from demographics most NFL players don't touch. Third, tight end is a position that doesn't usually drive star-level individual search, so when Kelce dominates, it's the person being searched, not the position.
Why is Drake Maye the most-searched player in North Carolina?
Maye is from Huntersville, North Carolina, and played his college ball at UNC. Even though he's now the Patriots' starting quarterback, his home state's search interest still tilts toward him over Panthers players, AFC South stars, or the broader pool of NFL names. It's the cleanest example on this map of hometown loyalty beating proximity to a player's current team.
Why does Carson Wentz win North Dakota?
Hometown loyalty in a state with very few NFL connections. Wentz is from Bismarck, played college ball at North Dakota State, and remains the most prominent NFL player ever produced by the state. North Dakota has no NFL team within hundreds of miles, very few homegrown NFL players, and no obvious in-state football identity to compete with him. So even though Wentz has been a backup for most of the last four seasons, he stays the default NFL search target for his home state.
How was this data collected?
Google search-interest data for 20 high-profile NFL players, measured at the state level across the trailing 12 months (May 2025 – May 2026). Each state's most-searched player was determined by head-to-head comparison within that state's search market. The list of 20 players was selected for relevance and search volume, not exhaustively — it's possible an off-the-radar player out-Googles a top-20 name in a particular state, but the data on the most-searched stars is the cleanest cross-comparison available.
Did Taylor Swift cause the Kelce effect on this map?
Partly. "travis kelce taylor swift" pulls 142,000 standalone monthly searches in the U.S., and "travis kelce and taylor swift" adds another 62,000. That's roughly 200,000 monthly searches that wouldn't exist without the relationship — about 14% of Kelce's total search volume. It's not the whole story (he was already an MVP-level player and a podcast star), but it's a meaningful share of his cross-demographic appeal, and it's why his map footprint looks more like a pop-culture figure than a tight end.
The Takeaway
If you wanted a one-sentence summary of NFL star power in 2026: it's a tight end with a podcast in 17 states, a hometown quarterback owning all of New England, and one career backup in North Dakota proving that for states with thin football identities, the local kid still wins — no matter what his role is on Sunday.
Bookmark this map. We'll refresh it as the season unfolds — the shifts between now and February will tell their own story.
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