We were very spoiled last year. Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III, and Russell Wilson had outstanding rookie seasons in 2012, and perhaps that set expectations a bit high for the 2013 class. No one will confuse those three with EJ Manuel, Geno Smith, and Mike Glennon, all of whom struggled for most of their rookie seasons. But while Smith and Glennon didn’t produce excellent numbers, they produced very interesting ones.

Among the 35 quarterbacks with the most pass attempts, Glennon finished a very pedestrian 27th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. But he did it in a very unique way: Glennon had an outstanding 19/9 touchdown-to-interception ratio, but he ranked dead last in Net Yards per Attempt. One reason for that is Glennon averaged only 10.6 yards per completion, the 3rd worst average among the 35 passers.

Smith finished 34th in ANY/A, largely due to his horrific 12/21 TD/INT ratio. He was a bit better in NY/A, ranking 28th, but what’s interesting about the Jets quarterback is that he ranked 7th in yards per completion. That metric is not a particularly effective measure of passer quality — after all, Matt Ryan ranked 35th — but it is a pretty good way to describe a quarterback’s style. While both Glennon and Smith were below average, they were below average in very different ways.

The table below shows the 35 quarterbacks with the most pass attempts in 2013. The quarterbacks are listed in descending order by their ANY/A average. Then, for each quarterback, I’ve listed his NY/A average, his TD/INT Ratio, and his Yards per Completion average, along with where he ranks in those three categories. As always, all tables are fully sortable and searchable.

So what can we learn from the statistical profiles of Smith and Glennon? Since 1970, there have been 97 rookie quarterbacks who (1) ranked among the top 35 passers that year in attempts and (2) were 24 years old or younger. For each of those 97 quarterbacks, I recorded where they ranked as rookies in NY/A, TD/INT Ratio, and Y/C. Then, I created a “similarity scores” for each of the three rookies to each of the other quarterbacks in this dataset. The similarity score is based on a simple formula. For example, Mark Sanchez grades out as very similar to Geno Smith. Sanchez ranked 21st in NY/A, Smith 28th (the absolute value of the difference is 7); Sanchez ranked 31st in TD/INT ratio, Smith 35th (difference of 4). Both ranked 7th in yards per completion. Therefore, Sanchez is graded as an 11 relative to Smith. Obviously a lower score indicates a more similar rookie quarterback.

But the most similar quarterback to Smith is Terry Bradshaw, who ranked 29th in NY/A (absolute value of 1), 33rd in TD/INT ratio (2), and 2nd in yards per completion (5), for a similarity score of 8. Glennon has a similarity score of 55 to Geno Smith, making him the 4th least similar rookie quarterback to Geno Smith. Of the three quarterbacks more dissimilar to Geno, two of them had outstanding rookie years – Dan Marino and RG3 — which shows just how drastic the differences were between Smith and Glennon that they could both be below average and grade as so dissimilar.

The table below shows where each of the 97 rookie quarterbacks rank in NY/A, TD/INT ratio, and Yards per Completion. I’ve also included the similarity score grade for each quarterback relative to Smith, Glennon, and Manuel in the three columns at the far right of the table. Currently, the table is sorted from most-to-least similar to Smith, but you can click on the “MG SS” column to sort the table from most-to-least similar to Glennon or the “EM SS” to do the same for Manuel.

Maybe I’m just a huge geek, but I find this table fascinating. For Smith, the most similar comps are a Hall of Famer…. and two other Jets quarterbacks (and fans don’t have particularly fond memories of either of them). The positive takeaway for Smith fans is that having a bad TD/INT ratio as a rookie is far from a death knell: Eli Manning, Troy Aikman, and Bradshaw all also ranked in the bottom three of the league in that metric as rookies. In particularly, Bradshaw and Aikman were also surrounded by a lack of offensive talent, like Smith. John Elway, Vinny Testaverde, Kerry Collins, and Dan Fouts also produced big yards per completion numbers but little else as rookies. Of course, so did Sanchez, Heath Shuler, Tony Banks, and Patrick Ramsey.

For Tampa Bay fans, the most similar quarterback to Glennon is…. Bruce Gradkowski? I’ll admit, that’s not a name I expected to see. Part of the issue is that Glennon’s place on the list is odd: his two biggest strengths as a prospect were his size and his cannon arm, and you expect the Collins/Testaverde/Bradshaw comps to be to Glennon, not Smith. This might be a case where the statistics are misleading. According to NFLGSIS, Glennon ranked 16th in average depth of pass, and 10th in average air yards per completion when looking at only completed passers. But he ranked dead last in YAC per completion, which was enough to bring him far down the yards per completion list. That jives with Pro Football Focus, which lists Glennon as having 67.3% of his yards through the air, the highest rate in the league.

The non-Bucs who rate as most similar to Glennon won’t inspire optimism among Tampa fans, either: Jeff George, Tim Couch, Blaine Gabbert, David Woodley, and… Ken Anderson? The Bengals great struggled as a rookie, but posted a positive TD/INT differential as a rookie, which was pretty rare in the early ’70s.

As for Manuel? He had weak numbers across the board, so I don’t think this similarity test will tell us much about his future.