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.

On Monday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. Yesterday, I looked at the quarterbacks who gained the most or fewest yards through the air per attempt or dropback. As you may have guessed, I’m keeping the theme going today. This article, “Sharpshooters or: Quarterbacks who were Good at Completing Passes,” is an examination of how passers stacked up statistically against their peers in the not-super-important category of completion rate.

I specifically mentioned that this is a look at how players’ stats compare with those of others instead of a look at how accurate those players were. Given the disparate offensive systems in which quarterbacks play, I think this is an important distinction. One can be an accurate passer and have an underwhelming completion rate, and one can be an inaccurate passer and have a good completion rate. ^[1]Maybe the first guy plays for Bruce Arians and the second plays for Chip Kelly.

That said, I am going to use the word “accurate” throughout the article because it’s easier and takes up less space. I’d also like to point out that, even though I have spike data going back to 2002, I’m not going to incorporate it. I didn’t think it would be fair to players with incomplete data. ^[2]Sorry Ben Roethlisberger. Stop spiking the ball so much.

I’m not going to belabor the methodology. If you read the previous two articles, you’ll get what I did here. Just replace sack rate or Y/A with completion rate, and you’re good to go.
Let’s get into the numbers.

Single Season Completions

The following table displays the relevant stats of the 1,563 quarterback seasons with at least 224 pass attempts. Read it thus: In 2011, Drew Brees completed 468 of 657 attempts for a record 71.23% completion rate. The completion rate of the rest of the league’s quarterbacks was 59.7%, giving Brees a marginal completion percentage of 11.54. This results in (657 * 11.54% =) 76 marginal completions.

Let me start with a shout out to Sammy Baugh. His 1945 season didn’t meet the minimum attempt threshold, but it deserves mention nonetheless. He completed 128 or 182 passes; his rate of 70.3% remained the record for nearly four decades. His 26.6% marginal rate looks like a typo, and it results in him being worth 48 completions above expectation, despite his low volume of attempts.

After Baugh’s 1945 season, the first quarterbacks to break the 70% mark were Bill Walsh disciples Ken Anderson and Joe Montana. Although they clear the threshold for pass attempts, neither played a full season when he broke seventy.

Afterwards, another Walsh quarterback, Steve Young, broke the 70% mark. In doing so, he became the first quarterback to achieve the feat in a full, 16-game season.

Then we have Drew Brees. Brees is famous for passing for more than 5,000 yards four times in his career. However, he is also the only passer to break the 70% mark more than once in his career (and he did it in seasons with 514 and 657 attempts!). In NFL history, more quarterbacks have thrown for over 5,000 yards (5) than have completed more than 70% of their passes (4). ^[3]With the NFL’s minimum 224 attempt threshold. Brees did both in the same season.

When you sort the table by the column “Marg Cmp%,” you’ll see Otto Graham leap to the top. Completing nearly 65% of your passes is impressive today; it’s even more impressive when the rest of the league is completing passes at a 47% rate.

You can say the same about Ken Stabler, who led the NFL in Cmp%, TD%, and Y/A in 1976 but lost the MVP nod to Bert Jones because he turned the ball over too often. The tales of the Snake ignoring the playbook seem overblown when you look at his amazing accuracy numbers. It wasn’t just a one-season fluke; his career stats support his case for being the most accurate passer of his generation.

Career Completions

The following table shows the 222 quarterback careers with more than 1,000 pass attempts. Read it like you read the first one.

Although Brees is the most accurate passer of all time, Peyton Manning is far behind, ranking fifth in career completion rate. When you factor in Manning’s advantage in passing volume, as well as the fact that he played in a slightly more depressed passing environment, he ends up leading the pack in career marginal completions.

The three primary Walsh quarterbacks (Anderson, Montana, and Young) all rate highly. They all rank in the top thirteen in marginal completion rate and in the top ten in marginal completions.

Brett Favre, Dan Marino, and Tom Brady don’t stand out as having historically great marginal completion rates, but they were still solid in the area, ranking between 38th and 41st all time. Combine their above average rates with a large volume of passes, and you get three guys who rank in the top twenty for marginal completions.

When we look at career marginal rate, Baugh’s numbers jump off the screen. Over the course of a career spanning two very different generations of offensive football, Slingin’ Sammy managed to complete passes at a rate nearly twelve points higher than his peers.
Len Dawson ranks a distant second, and he can probably thank coach Hank Stram (and some questionable defensive competition) for that. Stram realized Dawson wasn’t the classic field general in the Johnny Unitas mode, but instead possessed a mix of accuracy and athleticism. The innovative Hall of Fame coach utilized a moving pocket to capitalize on Dawson’s strengths. Given the Texans/Chiefs rank as the runaway most efficient offense of the AFL, I’d say the experiment worked.

A brief word on two quarterbacks who fell short of the thousand attempt cutoff. Two time NFL champion Ed Danowski only attempted 637 passes in his career. However, he was 8.9% better than the rest of the league, giving him 57 completions above expectation. Cecil Isbell was also a champion, takin over for Hall of Fame passer Arnie Herber almost seamlessly. He completed 411 of his 818 career attempts, which is 48 more than average.

I’ve previously commented on the biggest underachievers as well, but I’ve exhausted my negativity. You can be as negative as you’d like in the comments.