The Cynicism of the Quarterback Change

We’re rapidly approaching the end of the NFL season, which means it’s the time of year when teams really start getting stupid. Eleven weeks of action have effectively killed any early season optimism, leaving teams to face the wrath of fan bases that realize they’ve wasted yet another year. And as this time has come, we are once again witnessing an annual tradition: the pointless shuffling of the starting quarterbacks.

Over the past two weeks we have seen a couple truly perplexing quarterback decisions. The most glaring was the decision by Buffalo to bench Tyrod Taylor, a move that lasted only a single half before five interceptions by Nathan Peterman forced Taylor back into the game. Much less high profile (for several reasons) has been the pair of quarterback switches in Denver. Three weeks ago the Broncos benched Trevor Siemian for Brock Osweiler, only to realize to their horror that they were now starting Brock Osweiler, which prompted them to switch this week to last year’s first round pick Paxton Lynch.

These moves are as exhausting as they are predictable. Across the league people have mostly shrugged their shoulders, as you would expect from a series of moves involving players named Taylor, Peterman, Siemian, Osweiler, and Lynch. These teams likely aren’t going anywhere regardless of who they put under center, and it makes some sense that they would want to try something different to turn their seasons around.

The problem is, this isn’t why they made these moves. Buffalo and Denver didn’t switch quarterbacks because they hoped they would be ale to compete. They did it entirely to appease the local fanbases, making a decision that flies against all football logic and hurts their team for the sake of public relations.

First of all, we should make one thing very clear: Taylor and Siemian are the best quarterbacks on each of these rosters. You won’t hear much debate about Taylor after Peterman’s debacle last Sunday, but I think there might still be some people holding Denver’s performance against Siemian. But we saw both Siemian and Osweiler play a season ago, and Siemian was clearly better. And the coaches saw enough of both Lynch and Siemian prior to the season to convince them that Siemian was the better option at the start of the year, and nothing has happened that would change that.

These two teams made decisions at the quarterback position that made them worse, and they did so fully understanding that they would make them worse. And while they can spout half baked excuses for why they did so—Buffalo wanted to get a look at their rookie quarterback, Denver wants to know if they can move on from Lynch if they end up with a high draft pick—the real reason is much more cynical. The fans are frustrated with the product they’ve seen on the field, and it’s far easier for the coaches and owners to make the quarterbacks the scapegoats than to take blame on themselves.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but it’s particularly glaring for two teams that, despite their mediocre performances, are still very much in the race for the AFC Wild Card spot. Buffalo and Denver aren’t good football teams, but there are only four or five teams in the AFC that fall into that category, and this year a bad team is going to make the playoffs. When Denver benched Siemian, they were 3-4. When Buffalo benched Taylor, they were 5-4. Currently the last playoff spot in the AFC belongs to Baltimore, at 5-5.

There was no rational justification for any of these moves. If the sole goal of the coaching staff was to put out the best football team, Taylor and Siemian would be the starters for each of these teams.

But of course, that’s not the way things work. The first goal of an NFL head coach is not to win games—it’s to keep from getting fired. And while those two are pretty strongly correlated, they don’t always line up perfectly, and the handling of the quarterback position is another area like conservative fourth down decisions and a lack of aggression going for two where NFL coaches embrace flawed decisions in order to try to save their own skins.

It is underappreciated just how much power an NFL fanbase has on the team they follow. The fans are the ones who buy the tickets and the merchandise, money that flows to the owner who decides the coach’s fates. So if the fans are angry, the owner starts to get nervous, and if the owner gets nervous, the coach gets nervous as well.

It’s very clear in both Buffalo and Denver that these factors played into the decisions made at the quarterback position. John Elway is likely the most famous GM in the league, and after he assumed most of the credit for building their Super Bowl team, it was inevitable that he received most of the blame for their failure to sustain that level of performance after Peyton Manning’s retirement. His frustrations became clear in the media, calling out the team for being “soft”, and head coach Vance Joseph saw how quickly the blame could be turned towards him. So he tried to get ahead of it, shifting the blame to the shaky performance of his starting quarterback, ignoring the fact that Siemian has been everything they expected when they went into the season with him as their best option.

The behind the scenes struggle hasn’t been as public in Buffalo, but there has been quite a bit of speculation that the decision to start Peterman was not entirely made by Sean McDermott. There are rumors that these orders came from the ownership, to make it easier to cut him and save $16 million next year. These are the sort of calculations that truly drive NFL decision making, and these are the decisions that may have doomed Buffalo’s and Denver’s seasons.

Interestingly enough, this season has given us a chance to see this sort of process working in the other direction as well. While losing streaks have convinced Buffalo and Denver to bench their starting quarterbacks for inferior options, a series of wins have left the Minnesota Vikings with their best quarterback stuck on the bench.

Minnesota’s quarterback situation is a bit complicated, so let’s go over everything involved. In 2014 the Vikings spent a first round pick on Teddy Bridgewater, and after his first two seasons it looked like they had their quarterback of the future. He looked ready to break out headed into last year, before a random and devastating knee injury knocked him out. Desperate, the Vikings traded another first round pick for Sam Bradford, who played the best football of his career last season.

This is where they were at headed into 2017, with Bradford leading the way and Bridgewater potentially coming back. They signed journeyman backup Case Keenum as insurance, which paid off big time when Bradford got hurt following a stellar performance in their opening game. Bradford’s injury lingered, and Keenum improved after some early struggles, leading the team on what is now a seven game winning streak and holding off Bridgewater after he was cleared to play again.

It appears there is a lot going on here, but it is actually pretty simple. Bridgewater is the best quarterback on the team, and he is their long term answer at the position. When the 2018 season starts, both Bradford and Keenum will be 30 years old. Bridgewater will still only be 25, the same age as “young” quarterbacks Carson Wentz and Dak Prescott.

Keenum was never meant to be a long term answer at the position, and his performance this year shouldn’t have done anything to change that. He’s putting up excellent numbers, but most of the credit for that deserves to go to the talent around him. The offensive line is significantly better than anything either Bradford or Bridgewater has ever played with, and the combo of Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs is possibly the best receiving duo in the league. Keenum has done a lot of good things (especially moving in the pocket to evade pressure and extend plays), but he has regularly gotten away with poor decisions and inaccurate throws thanks to the talent around him.

Sooner or later things are going to fall apart for Keenum, and the Vikings will have to turn to Bridgewater. A lot of people have expressed concerns that he may be rusty, but that’s not going to get any better with him sitting on the bench. The Vikings only have five games remaining, and they need to find a way to get Bridgewater some reps during this time. Otherwise they may have no choice but to stick with Keenum through what they hope will be a deep playoff run.

(An underappreciated part of this story is the fact that all three quarterbacks are free agents at the end of the year. Bridgewater has the youth, and he is beloved in the Vikings locker room, and the coaches have been adamant that he is their long term plan. But it would still be a lot better if he got some work in on film before they had to think about offering him a new deal this offseason.)

Minnesota’s coaching staff knows that Bridgewater is their best quarterback, and they have all but said as much. But until Keenum plays poorly and they lose a game because of it, they can’t bring themselves to make the switch. Quarterbacks like Taylor and Siemian received unfair blame for their teams’ losses, and now Keenum is receiving unfair credit for his team’s wins.

This is why it is so tricky to handle quarterbacks in the NFL. At any other position players rotate routinely throughout the game, and it would be possible to get a look at someone like Peterman or Bridgewater without having to make a big, bold move. But quarterback is a unique position in all of sports in that there really is only one. He plays every snap of every game, and any move you make to change that is an all or nothing proposition.

Changing quarterback isn’t just about changing one player on the field. It has become a statement about the state of the franchise as a whole. Buffalo’s defense fell to pieces over several weeks, and the only way they could convey to their fans that they were trying to make a change was to bench a player who had nothing to do with it. Denver had no hope of competing this year, but because their fans didn’t realize that they have to keep shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. And the Vikings can’t afford to make a change in the middle of the winning streak, even if it is the best move for their team going forward.

If the only goal of the coaching staffs was to put the best team on the field, then Taylor, Siemian, and Bridgewater would be starting right now. (Actually Colin Kaepernick would probably be starting in Denver, but that’s a whole different story.) But the pressures from fans, media, and ownership drive these decisions every bit as much as the actions on the fields, forcing coaches to make decisions that they know will ultimately do more harm than good.

The Second Year Leap

Through nine weeks there has been a lot that has happened in the NFL, but no story has consistently dominated like the play of the second year quarterbacks. As veterans like Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, and Cam Newton have struggled, three hot young quarterbacks have stepped forward to fill their shoes.

Last week we saw the pinnacle of this performance, as Dak Prescott, Carson Wentz, and Jared Goff combined to throw for 759 yards and 10 touchdowns with no interceptions. All three led their teams to victories, a consistent trend for the league leading Eagles at 8-1, the closely following Rams at 6-2, and the up and down but still competitive Cowboys at 5-3. Wentz is receiving MVP buzz, and Goff is leading one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL, a year after Prescott won Offensive Rookie of the Year.

The most remarkable thing about these performances is that we really didn’t see them coming. Entering the 2017 season the reviews of last year’s quarterback class were decidedly less than positive. Wentz was divisive, after a rookie year with a few glowing ups intermixed with many downs. Goff was largely similar, just without the high points. Even Prescott was met with some skepticism, seen by some as a product of the talent surrounding him.

A lot of people wrote Wentz and Goff off coming into the year. I didn’t quite go that far, but I came close. It’s common to hear people argue not to dismiss a player after their rookie season, but it’s just as common for that advice to be wrong. Players do improve in the NFL, but they rarely go from bad to good in the way that Wentz and Goff have this year.

Quite a few people are sitting on high horses now about sticking with these young passers through their struggles a year ago. And after hearing enough about this, I decided to put some numbers to it. I wanted to take a look at the improvements experienced by Wentz and Goff, to compare them to see just how unusual these sort of jumps are.

Thanks to Pro Football Reference, I was able to pull together a list of every quarterback since the merger that threw at least 100 passes in each of their first two seasons. This gave me 126 players to work with, starting from Dennis Shaw and Terry Bradshaw in 1970 and working up to the three drafted last year.

There are a lot of metrics out there to measure quarterback play, but for something like this I think the best option is to use ANY/A+. If that means nothing to you, I’ll break it down piece by piece. Y/A stands for “yards per attempt”, which is as straightforward as it sounds. The N stands for “net”, which means that sacks are thrown into both the numerator and the denominator. The A at the very beginning is for adjusted, which is where things start getting complicated. This formula adds 20 yards for each touchdown and subtracts 45 for each interception to give an overall value for each dropback the quarterback takes. Finally, the + just means that this number is adjusted based on the league average that year. A value of 100 is league average, while higher numbers indicate better performance. This makes it easier to compare players across eras.

For all 126 quarterbacks I plotted their ANY/A+ in their rookie years versus their ANY/A+ in their second seasons. Take a glance at the chart below and you’ll see almost immediately that there is a pretty good relationship between the two. Generally speaking, quarterbacks who perform better in their rookie years also perform better the following season. This isn’t surprising, but it does lend credence to the theory that what we are seeing from Wentz and Goff is unusual.

 

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that the orange circles represent the three quarterbacks drafted in 2016. Prescott is the one on the far right, an excellent rookie year that is surpassed only by three others in history (Pat Haden, Dan Marino, and Marc Bulger if you’re curious). Wentz is squarely in the middle of the pack, and Goff is far to the left, beating out only the likes of Bert Jones and Alex Smith.

These three quarterbacks were spread extremely wide over the course of their rookie seasons, but they’re bunched pretty tightly this year. Through nine weeks Goff leads the way with an ANY/A+ of 123 with Wentz a little ways back at 117 and Prescott bringing up the rear with “only” 112. I like ANY/A+, but I think gaps of this size over a nine game sample are mostly meaningless, and it’s fair to say that all three are performing at statistically a very similar level.

It’s clear from the chart that both Wentz and Goff have experienced remarkable improvements. Wentz’s ANY/A+ has jumped by 32 points, in the 92^nd percentile among all second year quarterbacks. Goff has jumped by 69 points, by a significant margin the biggest improvement since the merger. Even when you take into consideration that someone with a bad performance is likely to improve simply by reversion to the mean, Goff still exceeds expectations by 51 points, the second highest of all time.

The improvement by Wentz this year is remarkable. The improvement by Goff is quite literally unprecedented. It’s enough to get me to dig into the components of ANY/A+ to see where this improvement is coming from.

In the table below I’ve laid out for each passer the main statistics that go into ANY/A+. For each I created a similar chart to the one above and calculated how their performance this year stacks up against what we would have expected from their rookie seasons. In each case the number given is a percentile value, with higher numbers suggesting that they outperformed previous rookie to sophomore growths.

	ANY/A+	Y/A+	TD%+	INT%+	SACK%+
Carson Wentz	94%	96%	98%	57%	14%
Jared Goff	98%	97%	66%	72%	98%
Dak Prescott	57%	25%	90%	58%	74%

There are a few things that we can take from this table. First of all, it is impressive to see just how across the board the improvement has been. Both Wentz and Prescott improve by more than the median quarterback in 3 of the 4 categories, and Goff is better than the median in all four. He has increased his touchdowns and his yards per attempt while decreasing his interceptions and his sacks, and he has done it more impressively than the majority of prior rookie quarterbacks.

It's even more interesting to see where players have struggled. Wentz has actually gotten worse from last season to this season when it comes to taking sacks. After being slightly above average with a SACK%+ of 107 last year, he’s putting up a well below average value of 88 this season. But this has come with a sharp increase in Y/A+ and TD%+, suggesting that he is making more big plays deeper down the field. After a very conservative rookie year, Wentz has started attacking defenses, and his play has leapt as a result. His interceptions haven’t improved as much as Goff’s but they’ve still dropped more than the average passer from their first to their second seasons.

Goff’s sack percentage tells an interesting story as well. His touchdowns and interceptions have both turned around fairly drastically, but they pale in comparison to his sack numbers. Goff is not being hit nearly as much as he was a year ago, and it isn’t hard to see why. This offseason the Rams went out and added a pair of veteran free agency linemen, center John Sullivan and tackle Andrew Whitworth, one of the best pass blockers of the past decade.

Both players have stepped up their games, but it’s hard to say how much of that is development on their own merits and how much is the talent brought in around them. In addition to the two linemen, Goff’s receiving corps was completely rebuilt, bringing in Robert Woods via free agency, Sammy Watkins via a trade, and Cooper Kupp via the draft. It’s rare to see an offense undergo this much change from one year to the next, but Philadelphia isn’t far behind, with new receivers for Wentz in Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith as well as new running backs LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi.

There really isn’t an easy answer to the question of how much of this improvement is due to the quarterback and how much is due to the talent around him. But we can answer some other questions about how a quarterback’s first and second year productivity corresponds to their career success. Above I listed the worst and best rookie seasons of all time, and it was a fairly mixed bag. Bert Jones and Alex Smith were the only passers with rookie seasons worse than Goff's, and while neither is an all time great, they both became competent starting quarterbacks. The best three rookie seasons belong to Dan Marino, Marc Bulger, and Pat Haden—a Hall of Famer and two middle of the road starters.

To try to sort through this, I went through my list and collected the career ANY/A+ for every quarterback who threw more than 1000 passes in his career. This dropped 33 quarterbacks from my list (sorry, John Skelton), but it still gives a pretty good sample size to work with.

For each of the metrics I listed I ran four different regressions and pulled out the R-squared value. For each metric I took the rookie and sophomore year value and regressed them both against the career numbers for the given metric and for ANY/A+ as a whole. (For those who aren’t familiar with R-squared, it’s a measure of the strength of a relationship. Essentially it’s a number between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 meaning the relationship is stronger.)

Below is a table of these R-squared values.

	vs Self		vs ANY/A+
	Rookie	Sophomore	Rookie	Sophomore
ANY/A+	.15	.23	.15	.23
Y/A+	.26	.25	.11	.22
TD%+	.09	.15	.11	.13
INT%+	.14	.20	.02	.03
SACK%+	.49	.43	.03	.02

There are a few things we can take from this table. The numbers are low, but for football stats these are pretty impressive R-squared values. On the whole it appears that a quarterback’s second season is more meaningful to his career success than his first, which isn’t surprising. It’s slightly odd that this same relationship doesn’t appear to hold true for Y/A+, and that INT%+ and SACK%+ have so little predictive power when it comes to total career ANY/A+. This suggests that the drastic turnaround experienced by Goff in these areas may not have much meaning over the full course of his career. The lack of consistency in TD%+ also doesn’t bode well for Wentz, most of whose success has been driven by a potentially unsustainable jump in touchdown rate.

There’s a lot of margin for error in these numbers, and ultimately all of this doesn’t mean much. The only real answers will come as we watch these players play out their career, when we’ll have a chance to see whether their early career jumps were more like Dan Marino’s, or more like Nick Foles’s.

But we have these tools, so we might as well use them. So I ran one final regression, this time using both rookie and sophomore year ANY/A+ regressed against the career value. This regression returned a coefficient of first year ANY/A+ of .13 and a coefficient of second year ANY/A+ of .24, with an R-squared of .27. And if you plug the first two years from Goff, Wentz, and Prescott into this formula, you get the following career results.

	Career ANY/A+
Carson Wentz	102
Jared Goff	100
Dak Prescott	106

So there you have it. I won't guarantee these results, but if they do happen, I will hold this article over everyone for the rest of my life.