Recently, I posted a quick and dirty method to measure quarterback career value above average and above replacement. I used Adjusted Yards per Pass Attempt as the foundational stat because its inputs (yards, touchdowns, interceptions, and attempts) are on record back to 1932.
Today, I wanted to use the same model with Adjusted Net Yards per Dropback (ANY/A) as the base metric. I believe ANY/A is a more accurate reflection of quarterback production, but it does have the downside of only being recorded back to 1969 in Pro Football Reference’s database.
Thus, while the previous post covered every passer in the official stat era, this post will only cover value added since 1969. This means greats like Sammy Baugh and Sid Luckman are completely overlooked, while legends like Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath only have their worst years included (an unfortunate byproduct of this study’s limitations, to be sure).
In case you didn’t want to click back through the previous article to see the details of the formula, I’ll briefly cover the basics here:
I subtract one hundred from each quarterback’s career ANY/A+ score and divide the difference by fifteen. This gives me the number of standard deviations above average the player’s ANY/A was over the course of his career. [1]This is known as a z-score, which Chase has used quite a few times on this site. I then multiply the result by the number of career dropbacks (pass attempts plus sacks) each player has in the data set. The product is the total abstract value above average.
To find value above replacement, I do the same thing but use 85 instead of 100 as the baseline from which to subtract ANY/A. It’s far from rocket science.
The Results
The table displays the abstract career value of the 211 quarterbacks with at least 924 dropbacks since 1969. [2]I chose 924 dropbacks because that is equivalent to six seasons of 154 dropbacks. Danny Tuccitto found 154 dropbacks to be the “mandatory minimum” for comparing QB dropback numbers. I chose six … Continue reading Peyton Manning gets too much love around here, so let’s use Dan Marino as an example: Marino played in 242 games and had 8358 pass attempts and 270 sacks, or 8628 combined dropbacks. His career ANY/A+ score was 119, giving him 10929 arbitrary points of value over average and 19557 such points above replacement.
As before, I’ll forgo additional commentary and leave that to the esteemed Football Perspective readership.
References
| ↑1 | This is known as a z-score, which Chase has used quite a few times on this site. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | I chose 924 dropbacks because that is equivalent to six seasons of 154 dropbacks. Danny Tuccitto found 154 dropbacks to be the “mandatory minimum” for comparing QB dropback numbers. I chose six seasons because it seemed like a fair enough timeframe to get rid of the flotsam and jetsam. |
