Adam Steele is back for another guest post. You can view all of Adam’s posts here. As always, we thank him for contributing.

It’s been a few years since I updated my Marginal Air Yards metric, so that’s what today’s post will do. I decided to make this a purely style based statistic rather than trying to combine style with efficiency. As such, here is the updated formula:

mAir = (completed air yards / completions – league average) * completions

Said simply, Marginal Air Yards represents the total depth of a passer’s completions compared to league average. A quarterback who averages 7.0 AirY/C on 300 completions in a league that averages 6.5 AirY/C will be credited with +150 mAir (i.e., 0.5 x 150).

Historical air yardage data goes back to 1992, but I’ve chosen to estimate the numbers for years prior by splitting gross passing yards into 60% air yards and 40% YAC. This should sound like a big assumption — because it absolutely is — but it’s one I’m comfortable making for two reasons. One, since I’m only trying to measure playing style and not performance, if the numbers are not perfectly accurate but are directionally correct, that’s still useful information. And two, throughout most of NFL history, offenses generally moved the ball by throwing deep, and any YAC gained was considered a bonus. Therefore, I’m confident that the variance in YAC between quarterbacks was smaller in past eras than it is today.

Here is the Marginal Air Yards data for 2018:

How ‘bout them Buccaneers? The duo of Jameis Winston and Ryan Fitzpatrick tallied 1,105 mAir, the highest single season figure for any team in history. Tampa Bay turned the ball over a ton and had no chance of making the playoffs, but they sure were fun to watch! Winston and Fitzpatrick zigged when the rest of the NFL zagged, as their bombs away style existed in sharp contrast to a league that threw the second shortest average completion in NFL history (only 2014 had shallower completions).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Matthew Stafford once again wasted his rocket arm by throwing the shortest completions of any full time starter in the league. Despite his reputation as a gunslinger, Stafford has morphed into a checkdown machine in recent years.

Which quarterback posted the best Marginal Air Yards season in history? Here are the top 200 historical seasons, with all seasons prior to 1992 being very rough estimates:

Carson Palmer and Bruce Arians were a deep throwing match made in heaven, and Palmer’s 2015 MVP caliber season stands as the gold standard of gunslinging (compared to league average, at least). As Chase has written, Arians will be coaching Jameis Winston next season on what promises to be an aerial extravaganza Tampa Bay squad. In fact, all four of Winston’s NFL seasons rank in the top 10 mAir campaigns of all time, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he sets a new record in 2019.

The Randy Moss effect is clearly at work on this list, as three different Vikings quarterbacks appear in the top 35 during Moss’ first three years in the league (not to mention coaxing a long ball explosion out of Kerry Collins in 2005). Brady ’07 also makes the list, although it’s lower down than you might expect.

It’s worth noting that Joe Namath’s 1972 season makes the top 40 despite completing far fewer passes than most of the quarterbacks ahead of him. Namath is certainly in the conversation for best deep passer of all time. Chase’s pinned tweet touches on how different the modern game is from the ’72 Jets.

And now the 200 lowest Marginal Air Yards seasons of all time:

This list is populated by the quarterbacks you’d expect (David Carr, Sam Bradford, Joey Harrington, Alex Smith), but there are also some surprises. A number of HOF caliber QBs had at least one season of super short passing, including Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees, Fran Tarkenton, and several appearances from Brett Favre. Similar to Stafford defying his gunslinger reputation in today’s NFL, Favre embodied the west coast offense early in his career by offsetting his highlight reel plays with a bevy of completions at or behind the line of scrimmage. Oh, and three different Fitzpatrick seasons make this list, showing how different his playing style used to be.

What stands out to you?