About 12 years ago, Doug and I wrote about where the league leaders in attempts ranked in yards, and vice versa. I only remember one thing about that post, and it’s about Jon Kitna. You probably don’t spend much time thinking about Jon Kitna these days, but here’s one of the quirkiest stats in NFL history.
In 2001, Jon Kitna led the NFL in pass attempts, but ranked 16th in passing yards.
That’s really, really hard to do. He averaged just 5.5 yards per pass attempt, among the worst performances by any passer in the last two decades.
Cincinnati actually had a remarkable set of weapons: Darnay Scott was 29, Corey Dillon was 27, Peter Warrick was 24, T.J. Houshmandzadeh was 24, and Chad Johnson was 23. Johnson and Houshmandzadeh were rookies, though, and far away from becoming the players they would become, while Scott was at the tail end of a good career. The Bengals even had a pair of strong blockers in FB Lorenzo Neal and TE Tony McGee. The offensive coordinator was Bob Bratkowski – who was in his first year in Cincinnati, but would remain until 2010 – while the head coach was Dick LeBeau. The next season, Kitna averaged 6.7 yards per pass attempt: he threw for nearly the same amount of yards, but on 108 fewer attempts.
But his 2001 season is a performance that is unlikely to ever be matched. The graph below shows where the league leader in pass attempts in each season ranked in passing yards. It should be pretty easy to understand, and even easier to find Kitna.
The other player who sticks out is Drew Bledsoe, who ranked 11th in passing yards in 1995. Outside of Kitna and Bledsoe, only four quarterbacks who led the NFL in pass attempts since 1970 ranked outside of the top five in passing yards. Jim Hart (1974) and Jim Zorn (1976) both ranked 7th, while Vinny Testaverde (2000) and Brett Favre (2006) both ranked 6th.
Of the 49 seasons since 1970, the league leader in pass attempts ranked 1st in passing yards 24 times, and ranked 2nd another 10 times. This all just makes Kitna’s performance all the more remarkable.