Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

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Yesterday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. In this post, “Frequent Flyers or: Quarterbacks who Gained Yards through the Air,” I’ll do something similar but with passing yards instead of sacks.

Because we have the necessary passing stats dating back to 1932, I can take this study back nearly three decades further than the previous one. However, I will use Chase’s estimated sack statistics to examine net yards for all post-1960 quarterbacks.

The math is simple: for each player, subtract his individual raw totals from those of every other quarterback in the league to find the league minus player (LMP) Y/A or NY/A. Next, subtract the LMP rates from the individual player rates to find each player’s marginal rate stats. Last, multiply each quarterback’s marginal Y/A by his attempts (or marginal NY/A by his dropbacks) to find marginal yards (or marginal net yards). ^[1]It took as much time to explain as it did to set up in Excel.

Enough explanation – Let’s look at some stats. The first table displays the 1,563 qualifying QB seasons, sorted by marginal yards. Read it thus: In 2001, Kurt Warner threw 546 passes for 4,830 yards, giving him 8.85 Y/A. The average of the rest of the league was 6.69, so Warner had a marginal Y/A of 2.15. This means his 2001 season is worth 1,176 yards above expectation.

Season Yards

As before, I did not prorate player seasons to 16 games. This means that quarterbacks from the first 46 years of the NFL’s stat era get a raw deal. I also have excluded any season in which a quarterback did not attempt at least 224 passes. ^[2]This is consistent with the NFL’s threshold for rate stat qualification, but it also effectively omits almost all pre-modern quarterbacks. More importantly to me, it means two all-time great … Continue reading

Kurt Warner has three seasons in the top nine, but those seasons show up for different reasons. His 2001 and 1999 campaigns featured great Y/A numbers, but his volume of attempts has a significant impact on his totals. In 2000, however, he threw relatively few passes but posted a historically fantastic Y/A.

Dan Marino’s Ruthian 1984 would probably rate number one if the rest of the league didn’t also have a good year (as measured by Y/A). Like many great passing seasons before and after, it ended unceremoniously.

Otto Graham appears in the top 15 three times. What sets him apart from the others in that range is the fact that he didn’t exceed 285 attempts in any of those seasons. Sure, two of those seasons came against lesser defenses, but his top season came in a strong, post-merger league.

One caveat to his numbers (and the numbers of other ancient greats) is that the LMP number is based on a much smaller pool of competition. In 1953, Graham was responsible for about 6.3% of the NFL’s pass attempts. Although Marino’s 1984 season over twice as many attempts, he only accounted for roughly 4.0% of his league’s attempts. Even Peyton Manning’s 659 attempt 2013 season only represented 3.6% of the league’s 18,104 passes from quarterbacks.

For the most part, the top of the list looks like you’d expect it to. The only name that looks out of place is Lynn Dickey, who posted an incredible 9.21 Y/A in 1983. He led the league in yards and touchdowns, putting up numbers he never came close to duplicating.

If I talk about the good, I must also talk about the bad. Derek Carr’s rookie season featured a ton of attempts and two tons of futility. His 1,082 yards below expectation is by far the worst mark in history. If Ken Stabler was the Snake, we might have to call Carr the Toad. ^[3]I guess that would make Andrew Luck the Bearded Dragon.

The majority of the worst seasons have one thing in common: they are the product of a young (or just green, in Weinke’s case) quarterback given more responsibility for the offense than he was probably ready handle. Just last season featured two of the 33 worst seasons by this metric. ^[4]Note, if you will, that Teddy Bridgewater finished with a positive mark.

I don’t want to keep all the talking points to myself, so let’s move on to the career numbers.

Career Yards

I have excluded any career with fewer than 1,000 passes. The NFL’s threshold to qualify for career rate stats is 1,500 attempts, but I wanted to get Arnie Herber on the list. ^[5]If you don’t like it, you can have a refund. This leaves us with 222 quarterback careers.

As you might expect, Peyton Manning reigns supreme by virtue of being well above average on a very large number of attempts. On a per pass basis, however, Manning falls out of the top ten and only ranks fourth among active players.

Otto proves to be automatic, basically lapping the field in marginal Y/A. After Graham, there’s a significant drop, followed by Sid Luckman. After Luckman, there’s another significant drop before you get to everyone else. Again, the small league had a lot to do with it, but the two were nonetheless masterful quarterbacks.

Joey Harrington ranks a distant last with -2,667 marginal yards. It makes sense that the lower end of the scale wouldn’t be quite as extreme, as quarterbacks who put up below average rate stats tend to get fired before they can build up a large body of work. Kerry Collins is the exception, playing poorly enough to rank near the bottom but not so poorly that he couldn’t keep finding work.

Now that we’ve looked at passing yards, I think it’s important to look at net passing yards as well. This should give us an idea of who was able to provide his team the most “extra yards” in the passing game, be it by advancing the ball or by avoiding sacks (since 1960).
Season Net Yards

If you recall, Marino, Peyton Manning, and George Blanda all rank among the top most sack avoidant passers in league history. It should come as no surprise, then, to see the three of them make considerable jumps when sacks are introduced into the equation.

Aaron Rodgers is criticized for taking too man sacks, but he is so good at advancing the football that he still ranks in the top ten here. He, Drew Brees, and Tom Brady for a dominant triumvirate of 2011 quarterbacks.

I feel like I should mention Joe Namath, lest Chase refuse to run this article. The term “bomb” is often used in the context of the deep passing game. To me, the word has always seemed most appropriate when describing Namath. When he let the ball fly, you didn’t know if the result was going to be good or bad, but you knew it was going to be explosive and cause someone a lot of damage.

When you include sacks, shell-shocked Blaine Gabbert kicks Carr off the bottom rung. Interestingly, Derek and his brother David occupy the next three unfortunate spots. It’s good to spend time with family.

Speaking of family, New Orleans cult hero and worst quarterback in his family Archie Manning shows up for his performance on the ’75 Saints.

Career Net Yards

• Archie’s son, Peyton, boasts the highest marginal NY/A and is second in career dropbacks. Put those together, and you get a lead so big it looks like a mistake.

• Namath ranks second in NY/A over average, ^[6]Chase note: That’s pretty incredible, especially since he was below league average during his final two years in the league. but his low volume leaves him with a tenuous grip on tenth place.

• Air Coryell trigger man Dan Fouts is a hair shy of Namath on a per play basis, but his much greater number of attempts puts him behind only Manning and Marino in marginal net yards.

One day, Philip Rivers or Tony Romo will hold the title “greatest quarterback not in the Hall of Fame.”

What stands out to you fine humans?