Steve Grogan is the Yards Per Completion King

by Chase Stuart on July 26, 2014

In 2013, the average completion went for 11.63 yards. That’s a pretty low number historically, although it’s actually a bit higher than some of the recent NFL seasons. Take a look at how Yards per Completion has generally been declining throughout NFL history:

If you want to discuss the quarterbacks who excelled in this metric, controlling for era is crucial. One simple way to measure the best passers when it comes to YPC is to measure how they fare in this metric relative to league average, and multiply that difference by the player’s number of attempts. For example, Nick Foles averaged 14.2 YPC last year, which was 2.6 YPC above average. Over the course of his 317 pass attempts, we could say he provided 529 yards above the average completion. That was the highest in the NFL last year, while Matt Ryan produced the lowest average.

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Rk	Quarterback	Tm	Cmp	Yds	YPC	YdOvExp
1	Nick Foles	phi	203	2891	14.24	529
2	Colin Kaepernick	sfo	243	3197	13.16	370
3	Russell Wilson	sea	257	3357	13.06	367
4	Matthew Stafford	det	371	4650	12.53	333
5	Michael Vick	phi	77	1215	15.78	319
6	Aaron Rodgers	gnb	193	2536	13.14	290
7	Peyton Manning	den	450	5477	12.17	241
8	Matt McGloin	rai	118	1547	13.11	174
9	Geno Smith	nyj	247	3046	12.33	172
10	Case Keenum	htx	137	1760	12.85	166

Showing 1 to 10 of 44 entries

Yards per completion is not as much about ability or talent as it is about style. One can be very good when it comes to yards per completion but be a bad quarterback (Matt McGloin!), or a passer could have a very low yards per completion average but still be very good (Matt Ryan!). But that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun to occasionally focus on a passer’s style rather than his effectiveness.

I used that same formula to create a list of the quarterbacks who produced the most yards over expectation — based on their number of completions and the league average yards per completion rate — over the course of their careers. The top name on the list is Steve Grogan, who easily takes the crown of YPC king. Rounding out the top five: Jay Schroeder, Joe Namath, Ben Roethlisberger, and Trent Green. The table below lists the 100 quarterbacks with the most yards over expectation (based purely on completions and league average YPC rates) since 1950:

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Rk	QB	First Yr	Last Yr	Att	Yards Ov Avg Cmp	YOAC/Att
1	Steve Grogan	1975	1990	3593	3069	0.85
2	Jay Schroeder	1985	1994	2808	2435	0.87
3	Joe Namath	1965	1977	3762	2420	0.64
4	Ben Roethlisberger	2004	2013	4346	2330	0.54
5	Trent Green	1997	2008	3740	2323	0.62
6	Terry Bradshaw	1970	1983	3901	2146	0.55
7	Ed Brown	1954	1965	1987	1996	1
8	Philip Rivers	2004	2013	4108	1799	0.44
9	Michael Vick	2001	2013	3030	1778	0.59
10	Kurt Warner	1998	2009	4070	1708	0.42

Showing 1 to 10 of 100 entries

What about the quarterbacks with the fewest yards per completion? You might think this list would be dominated by a bunch of checkdown specialists, but by using career completions as part of the numerator, we exclude a lot of lesser passers. That just serves to make the top of this list more interesting, with the perennially underrated John Brodie, the becoming-more-underrated-by-the-week Fran Tarkenton, the original #18 in Denver, Roman Gabriel, and Joe Montana all ranking in the top five.

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Rk	QB	First Yr	Last Yr	Att	Yards Ov Avg Cmp	YOAC/Att
1	John Brodie	1957	1973	4491	-2673	-0.6
2	Fran Tarkenton	1961	1978	6467	-2318	-0.36
3	Frank Tripucka	1950	1963	1600	-2268	-1.42
4	Roman Gabriel	1962	1977	4498	-2258	-0.5
5	Joe Montana	1979	1994	5391	-2131	-0.4
6	Y.A. Tittle	1950	1964	3817	-2002	-0.52
7	Brad Johnson	1994	2008	4326	-1776	-0.41
8	Steve DeBerg	1978	1998	5024	-1756	-0.35
9	Archie Manning	1971	1984	3642	-1646	-0.45
10	Joey Harrington	2002	2007	2538	-1564	-0.62

Showing 1 to 10 of 100 entries

However, if you sort this list by “Last Yr”, then you do get a bit of checkdown specialists.

Tagged as: Yards per Completion

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