On Tuesday, I looked at the best passing seasons in NFL history. On Thursday, I looked at the worst passing seasons in NFL history, but by measuring quarterbacks against average. There are “problems” with that to the extent there are ever problems with anything presented as trivia, and Adam suggested a fix in the comments: use 75% of league average as replacement level, and compare the worst passers to replacement level rather than average.
Let’s look at Bobby Hoying in 1998. He was horrible that year: he averaged a league-worst 1.43 ANY/A, even worse than the dread 1.93 ANY/A by a rookie Ryan Leaf. In fact, since 1979, Hoying/Leaf ’98 (not to be confused with Sosa/McGwire ’98) are the only two players to average less than 2.0 ANY/A on 200+ pass attempts in a season. That is not likely to be seriously challenged anytime soon: JaMarcus Russell, who averaged 2.31 ANY/A in 2009, is the closest since.
How bad was Hoying that year? He threw a record 224 pass attempts without a touchdown, also unlikely to be seriously challenged ever again. The league average ANY/A that year was 5.31, and Hoying had 259 dropbacks. As a result of being 3.88 ANY/A below average, he produced -1,004 yards of value over average, as noted last week. That was the 10th-worst season of all time.
If we use replacement level, then Hoying gets compared to 75% of 5.31 ANY/A, or 3.98 ANY/A, which gives him -660 yards below replacement. That’s actually the lowest of any season in NFL history, although if you pro-rated older seasons, it drops down to 15th. The worst season by this method comes from Cardinals quarterback Ronnie Cahill in 1943. Cahill was a star running back at Holy Cross, and he played exactly how you would expect a running back at Holy Cross would play quarterback in the NFL. He threw 3 TDs against 21 INTs, had a passer rating of 33.5, and averaged -2.5 AY/A. He had the second-worst season against league average, and jumps to the lowest season once we pro-rated for the fact that 1943 was a 10-game season. This means the war-ravaged ’43 season produced the best and worst passing seasons in NFL history.
The table below shows the worst 500 seasons. I’ve sorted it by the raw data (to help bring more recent players to the top), but the ranks represent the pro-rated value. The table, of course, is fully sortable and searchable.
As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.
