The 49ers offensive production has been driven by its skill position players.
Let’s start by recognizing that none of today’s analysis is about the quarterback himself; rather, it is about the situation that each team’s quarterback finds himself placed in. Let’s begin with Game Script.
Average Points Differential
Garoppolo has 266 plays this season: 226 pass attempts, 12 sacks, and 28 rushes. On average, during each of those 266 plays, the 49ers have led by 5.4 points. That makes life a lot easier for Garoppolo compared to just about every quarterback. Matt Ryan, on the other hand, is constantly in a situation where the pressure is on for him to score: his average play has come with the Falcons trailing by 10.0 points.
Quarterback Plays Avg MOV Tom Brady 384 7.8 Jimmy Garoppolo 266 5.4 Teddy Bridgewater 228 2.1 Patrick Mahomes 266 2.1 Lamar Jackson 356 1.7 Matt Moore 102 1.1 Kirk Cousins 293 0.6 Aaron Rodgers 364 0.5 Matthew Stafford 329 0.4 Josh Allen 325 -0.6 Kyle Allen 221 -0.7 Jared Goff 342 -1.1 Drew Brees 91 -1.1 Dak Prescott 310 -1.4 Deshaun Watson 379 -1.6 Jacoby Brissett 285 -1.7 Mason Rudolph 182 -1.9 Mitchell Trubisky 244 -2.7 Russell Wilson 359 -2.7 Joe Flacco 300 -2.8 Jameis Winston 363 -3.0 Carson Wentz 359 -3.1 Derek Carr 271 -3.1 Philip Rivers 359 -3.4 Gardner Minshew 370 -3.5 Baker Mayfield 306 -3.5 Marcus Mariota 207 -3.8 Kyler Murray 402 -4.3 Cam Newton 100 -5.2 Sam Darnold 203 -5.4 Case Keenum 207 -5.7 Daniel Jones 312 -5.9 Ryan Tannehill 146 -6.1 Ryan Fitzpatrick 209 -7.7 Andy Dalton 381 -8.8 Matt Ryan 318 -10.0 Eli Manning 93 -13.2 Josh Rosen 129 -14.9 Luke Falk 89 -18.3
Defense/Special Teams Help
Next, let’s look at how each offense’s supporting cast has helped/hurt his team. For this, I am using Football Outsiders’ DVOA numbers, and specifically, their non-SOS adjusted DVOA numbers (i.e., VOA) for defense and special teams. Why non-adjusted? For purposes of how much help a quarterback/offense receives from its defense and special teams, I don’t think strength of schedule adjustments are applicable.
As a reminder, for DVOA, negative numbers are good for the defense, while positive numbers are good for the offense and special teams. So to calculate team help, I will take each defense’s VOA and then subtract their special teams grade. Therefore, the more negative the number, the better here. And the 49ers’ offense is receiving the second most help from its defense/special teams in the NFL, while the Falcons are receiving the second-least amount of help. Of course, this is going to be highly correlated with the Average Margin numbers posted above.
| Rk | Team | Defense | Special Teams | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NE | -46.6% | 0.2% | -46.8% |
| 2 | SF | -38.2% | 1.2% | -39.4% |
| 3 | CHI | -5.7% | 5.3% | -11% |
| 4 | BUF | -12.1% | -1.2% | -10.9% |
| 5 | PIT | -9% | 1.5% | -10.5% |
| 6 | DAL | -10.2% | -0.4% | -9.8% |
| 7 | LAR | -7.8% | 1.5% | -9.3% |
| 8 | CAR | -6.5% | 2.6% | -9.1% |
| 9 | NO | -6.4% | 2.4% | -8.8% |
| 10 | MIN | -6.4% | 1.6% | -8% |
| 11 | DEN | -7% | -1.3% | -5.7% |
| 12 | NYJ | -1.5% | 3.9% | -5.4% |
| 13 | TEN | -6.9% | -1.8% | -5.1% |
| 14 | BAL | -0.6% | 4.2% | -4.8% |
| 15 | PHI | -4.8% | -0.1% | -4.7% |
| 16 | TB | -2.8% | 1.9% | -4.7% |
| 17 | CLE | 0.1% | 4.6% | -4.5% |
| 18 | JAX | 0.1% | 2.8% | -2.7% |
| 19 | KC | 2.2% | 3% | -0.8% |
| 20 | HOU | 3.1% | 3.3% | -0.2% |
| 21 | GB | 3.2% | 0.1% | 3.1% |
| 22 | WAS | 3.3% | 0.2% | 3.1% |
| 23 | LAC | 4.5% | 0.6% | 3.9% |
| 24 | DET | 9.4% | 4.7% | 4.7% |
| 25 | IND | 4.8% | -1.3% | 6.1% |
| 26 | SEA | 4.5% | -3.2% | 7.7% |
| 27 | NYG | 9.8% | -0.9% | 10.7% |
| 28 | OAK | 18.6% | 2.7% | 15.9% |
| 29 | CIN | 20.8% | 4.7% | 16.1% |
| 30 | ARI | 19.8% | -1.5% | 21.3% |
| 31 | ATL | 23.2% | -4.1% | 27.3% |
| 32 | MIA | 27.8% | -1% | 28.8% |
So why is this article highlighting Garoppolo and not his old quarterback mentor, Tom Brady? After all, the Patriots and 49ers quarterback situations rank 1st and 2nd in both metrics so far. But in our final category, we see a divergence between Brady and Garoppolo.
Quarterback Air Yards + Rushing Yards
How much is a quarterback responsible for his offense? With players like Lamar Jackson, it’s tricky: we need to include his rushing performance as that’s a big part of his total contribution. The same goes for Kyler Murray, who actually leads Arizona in rushing.
So we could take a quarterback’s passing yards plus rushing yards, and divide that by the total yards for the offense (excluding sack yards). However, I want to go one step further and also remove YAC. Why? When we discuss the difficulty level a quarterback faces, I think YAC is a part of that analysis. Quarterbacks who dump it off to the running back, or get a lot of yards after the catch from their receivers, have life easier. This isn’t a criticism of the quarterback, but a 5-yard pass play that goes for 20 yards makes life easy for the quarterback. And I would never claim that YAC is always more on the receiver than Air Yards: on a a 40-yard bomb that an athletic wide receiver goes up and grabs, life is easy on the quarterback, too. He doesn’t have to have great timing or even make an accurate pass; he only needs to throw it deep and let his wide receiver do the hard work.
Still, on average, YAC is more about the receiver and Air Yards are more about the quarterback. So which quarterbacks have it easy/hard here? I am going to use the following formula to assign a percentage of his team’s offense to each quarterback:
(Quarterback Air Yards + Quarterback Rushing Yards) / (Total yards of offense [1]Note that this does not subtract sack yards lost. by all players)
All Air Yards data comes from PFR, and I am doing this at the quarterback position level for each team rather than the individual quarterback (to account for teams that have played more than one quarterback this season).
Using this formula, Matt Ryan (together with Matt Schaub) have been responsible for over half of all Falcons yards this year, which is a lot! Another way of saying this: Atlanta ranks 1st in passing yards and 29th in rushing yards, so the passing game is an outsized part of the Falcons offense. In addition, about 61% of all Falcons passing yards have been air yards, which is also higher than average: this means Atlanta quarterbacks are responsible for most of the offense’s yards, and they can’t just rely on their running backs or yards after the catch.
The full list, below:
| Rk | Tm | QB Air Yards | Air Yards % | QB Rush Yards | Offensive Yards | Perc |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | TAM | 1586 | 65.9% | 99 | 3201 | 52.6% |
| 2 | ATL | 1636 | 60.7% | 63 | 3243 | 52.4% |
| 3 | DET | 1609 | 64.4% | 66 | 3267 | 51.3% |
| 4 | MIA | 1057 | 60% | 64 | 2272 | 49.3% |
| 5 | BAL | 1044 | 55.9% | 646 | 3507 | 48.2% |
| 6 | SEA | 1537 | 61.4% | 203 | 3691 | 47.1% |
| 7 | DAL | 1460 | 61.3% | 175 | 3574 | 45.7% |
| 8 | LAC | 1464 | 56% | 23 | 3331 | 44.6% |
| 9 | CIN | 1162 | 51.6% | 55 | 2728 | 44.6% |
| 10 | ARI | 1149 | 51.5% | 313 | 3314 | 44.1% |
| 11 | HOU | 1348 | 55.4% | 279 | 3717 | 43.8% |
| 12 | CHI | 943 | 57.4% | 52 | 2287 | 43.5% |
| 13 | NYG | 1163 | 52.1% | 196 | 3151 | 43.1% |
| 14 | TEN | 1152 | 53.4% | 175 | 3077 | 43.1% |
| 15 | BUF | 965 | 54.2% | 247 | 2815 | 43.1% |
| 16 | PHI | 1232 | 59.1% | 142 | 3230 | 42.5% |
| 17 | KAN | 1456 | 51.3% | 83 | 3650 | 42.2% |
| 18 | NWE | 1430 | 56.1% | 1 | 3418 | 41.9% |
| 19 | GNB | 1283 | 51.6% | 102 | 3343 | 41.4% |
| 20 | JAX | 1212 | 51.4% | 235 | 3526 | 41% |
| 21 | LAR | 1220 | 51.5% | 16 | 3168 | 39% |
| 22 | WAS | 908 | 51.9% | 63 | 2554 | 38% |
| 23 | NOR | 1056 | 48.7% | 118 | 3096 | 37.9% |
| 24 | CAR | 1038 | 55.7% | 0 | 2926 | 35.5% |
| 25 | IND | 872 | 48% | 116 | 2855 | 34.6% |
| 26 | CLE | 945 | 48.1% | 75 | 2951 | 34.6% |
| 27 | DEN | 999 | 49.6% | 33 | 3022 | 34.1% |
| 28 | NYJ | 685 | 45.8% | 0 | 2026 | 33.8% |
| 29 | OAK | 1018 | 50.4% | 27 | 3111 | 33.6% |
| 30 | MIN | 1103 | 49.8% | 44 | 3593 | 31.9% |
| 31 | PIT | 684 | 41.7% | 59 | 2381 | 31.2% |
| 32 | SFO | 877 | 48.6% | 32 | 3191 | 28.5% |
As you can see, the 49ers rank dead last in this metric. This isn’t necessarily surprising: the 49ers rank 2nd in rushing yards and 22nd in passing yards, in large part because the team is almost always playing with the lead. So this is a run-heavy offense, which means the team relies less on Garoppolo. In addition, San Francisco is one of only 8 teams that has more yards gained after the catch than before the catch. Because more of Garoppolo’s passing yards have come due to YAC then air yards, we can also say that makes his life easier. This year, Kirk Cousins and Teddy Bridgewater have been Garoppolo-lite: their average pass has come with their teams in the lead, they both rank in the top 10 in D/ST help, and they have more YAC than air yards (and for Bridgewater, his air yards number is even lower than the Saints average as a whole).
So does this mean Garoppolo is a bum and Ryan is secretly having a great year? No: that’s not the takeaway of this article. But comparing Garoppolo to Ryan is pretty difficult given the vastly difference circumstances each player faces. Garoppolo isn’t asked to do too much, relatively speaking: his running backs help a lot, his receivers help a lot, and his defense and special teams help a ton. The 49ers are not leaning on Garoppolo all that much, and that would be true whether he was the best quarterback in the NFL or the worst. Meanwhile, the Falcons are as close to a one-unit show as you can find: Atlanta has terrible defense/special teams, and doesn’t add much value on the ground. The Falcons are relying on Ryan and the team’s passing game to win: if they don’t play exceptionally well, Atlanta is going to lose (and, in fact, they might lose even when Ryan does play exceptionally well).
We spend lots of time analyzing quarterback performance, but it’s also instructive to evaluate quarterback situations: i.e., independent of the quarterback, how easy or hard is life on him? And this year, the 49ers quarterback is in the most QB-friendly situation in the NFL. While not a knock on Garoppolo, what this does it make it harder to evaluate him as a quarterback. In mathematical terms, I’d say our confidence level in grading Garoppolo isn’t very high, and the error bars, or our level of uncertainty, is significant.
What do you think?
References
| ↑1 | Note that this does not subtract sack yards lost. |
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