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By Bob Sturm Sep 1, 2021
No sport is followed more than football in this country. More people love it and more people think about it daily, and yet if you turn on the radio or even overhear a conversation, it seems most people aren’t sure how to fully understand the finer points that make all the difference in the world.
Nowhere is this more true than the position of quarterback. We want to be able to measure why this quarterback is better or worse than that guy — but how? There is no player in the sport more important than QB1. But when we look for winning quarterbacks, we forget that many teams are built to win with much less assistance from this one position than others. Some coaches actively set up their game plans to minimize the impact of the QB as much as possible, knowing their guy is not equipped to handle it.
But how do we ever know on the outside? It is so difficult. Passer rating? No way. It helps, but when someone takes a screen pass that you could have thrown and runs 80 yards for a touchdown, the passer rating takes an amazing jump, despite the passer doing next to nothing.
ESPN’s QBR? Well, they tried to make it better and probably succeeded to a certain extent. But when the QBR numbers were slotting Mitch Trubisky third in the NFL, we quickly realized that this metric was too heavily rewarding a QB for running at an artificially high level, like fantasy football would. Actual football knows that yards are yards (it surely doesn’t matter how they are acquired if you still need to get 10 for a first down) and to add something to passing stats, we must make the mix correct. Any metric that claims Trubisky was near or at the top of the league in QB play in 2018 was not doing a very good job, which I assume even the creators would concede.
Stats alone are dangerous to believe. So we add the tape. And while film study is important and should be done by anyone in evaluation, it is very difficult to learn what one is looking for and it takes more hours in a week than most could ever dream of spending unless this is their only purpose in life.
I am not here to offer solutions, to be honest. I don’t think you can expect to see a stat and conclude much more than a general opinion. I don’t think you can watch film of one quarterback without understanding what “normal” should be amongst peers in other places with other supporting casts, schemes and situations. More than that, I am trying to express the difficulty in understanding this position. And that isn’t just for the starter because it also applies to who should be your backup QB and your developmental players. You would need to see the practices and the reps to know about these matters in the classroom and on the practice field, but this is what I believe the evaluation process must ask and answer. So, if you are trying to figure out where Dak Prescott slots amongst his peers or even in his own career developmental arc or if you are trying to understand how Cooper Rush is a better idea than Garrett Gilbert or even Cam Newton, here are my thoughts in a more general sense.
Cooper Rush (Kyle Terada / USA Today)
Help not to lose the game
Not to be Mike Singletary here, but the single biggest question that should be asked about any quarterback you allow in your room at this level is the question of does he understand that the QB alone can singlehandedly lose football games? “Can’t win with him” is why attention to detail is the first box that must be checked. This isn’t optional. You cannot hurt the team as a QB. You must make sound decisions. Will mistakes happen? Yes. But if they happen too often, you must go. This has nothing to do with speed, size, arm strength, or literally any physical attribute. This is why mental tests, classroom learning, note-taking and knowing the scheme and the offense like nobody else are the top priorities. It is why backup QBs must be intelligent. And it is why you don’t just sign a guy because you think he is better or more accomplished than the guy who has been in every meeting since 2017. In other words, this is probably why Cooper Rush is the best they can do right now. If you have a backup QB, you aren’t worried about him winning games. You are worried about him not losing games. And this is why you don’t hire an out-of-work famous QB who is known for questionable decision-making and knows nothing about your offense. Don’t lose games and you can do a lot in this sport. Understand a punt is a much more desirable outcome than a pick. Play on time and don’t hold the ball. You hold the ball and get sacked — that is when the ball comes out. And the ball coming out leads to losing football. Can’t do it.
Arm talent matters. Physical traits matter. Intangibles matter. But football IQ matters more. You need to know that the guy who is in control of this game more than anyone can handle what you are giving him. The moment that stops is the moment you better keep looking for the right guy. If forced to choose, you always bet on the football IQ, but you obviously need both physical and mental to be a starter on Sundays.
Help to win the game
This is more of what we are looking for in a starting quarterback. Sure, you want a backup QB understanding that if he ever wants to be considered for QB1, he better do this, too. But more than anything, this is what we need to consider you amongst your contemporaries as a guy worth valuing at a very high level. This is why we argue is so-and-so a franchise QB or is he a bus driver? And what do those terms even mean?
To be honest, it would take a book to fully hash it out, but for the sake of keeping this at a reasonable riffing word count, allow me to hit on a few concepts here and perhaps we can expand on them at a later date.
In structure/scheme and out of structure/scheme
This is basically what divides the special from the good. Can you be successful in the play that is called? Yes? OK, but can you win on a play where your right tackle gets beaten, or the snap is bad, or nobody is open? Can you improvise or sandlot your way through a situation and get the ball where very few others could ever do it? Improving after a play breaks down is what you see on the highlight films every Sunday, but they are not called plays or coached much. Yes, there are “fire drill” rules to this part of the play (roughly 2.5 to three seconds after the snap), but they are generally something you would not want someone unqualified to try often. “Out of structure” was what Tony Romo always had a knack for, and it helped him become a better quarterback in structure as his career progressed.
Winning inside the pocket and inside the scheme doesn’t always come easy, but it is a good sign that a young QB is starting to “get it” and understand how the entire offense should operate. Some quarterbacks — this already has been suggested of Justin Fields in preseason action — do not trust the scheme or the structure and instantly are trying to get to the “out of structure” portion of the play when they do not see their first idea and bail out of the pocket and try to use their feet or movement to “make something happen.”
Clearly, the best of the best can do both. This is where Dak Prescott has taken huge steps forward. He used to be completely in structure, but with each year passing, he is more comfortable with the second portion of a play that is breaking down.
Big-time throws vs. turnover-worthy plays
Here is the ultimate melding of helping a team win and avoiding helping a team lose. PFF has been doing this behind closed doors for a long time and I have completely adopted it, even though their information is not readily available for the public. Years ago they penned an essay about this entire discussion and the way they attempt to grade passers. The measurement of touchdown-to-interception ratio or differential is good but flawed with all of the noise of wide receiver screens and shovel-pass touchdowns along with things like dropped interceptions and not factoring in a fumble-prone QB.
So, they measure (BTTs) big-time throws thusly: “a big-time throw is on the highest end of both difficulty and value. While the value is easy to see statistically, the difficulty has more to do with passes that have a lower completion percentage the farther the ball is thrown down the field. Therefore, the big-time throw is best described as a pass with excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown farther down the field and/or into a tighter window.”
Now, again, this could take a few reels of tape and a few hours to fully define, but hopefully, you understand the concept. Now, what are (TWPs) turnover-worthy plays? There are two ways to achieve a turnover-worthy play: throw a pass that has a high-percentage chance to be intercepted or do a poor job of taking care of the ball and fumbling.
Again, a little gray area, but the general concept is spot on.
Then, we measure BTTs vs TWPs for QBs to try to find a ratio that resembles TD/INT but better.
And yes, the merits of the findings seem to make sense. Best three in BTT percentage since 2019? Russell Wilson, Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes. Lowest BTT percentage? Jimmy Garoppolo, Andy Dalton, Drew Brees.
Highest TWP percentage since 2009? Kyle Allen, Jameis Winston, Drew Lock. Lowest TWP percentage since 2019? Russell Wilson, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers.
I doubt if any of those names are real shocks in any of those four subsets. Prescott was 13th and 19th, but we sort of knew Dallas doesn’t try to make the entire plane out of Prescott. These metrics aren’t the be-all, end-all, because it does not account for death by a thousand paper cuts, but it certainly tells you who is helping their teams win or lose on a more personal basis. And yes, Rodgers and Wilson are very good at quarterback.
There are more things to discuss, such as measuring “overall passing” versus just “pure passing situations,” which should be about handing your QB the ball in a two-minute drill where you are almost assuredly not calling a single run play and the defense is deploying its best pass defenses and seeing how good your QB is there. It is easy to pass on first-and-10 when the box is filled to stop the run, but what do you do on third-and-12 when the opponent is bringing one more rusher than you can defend? This is usually when veteran quarterbacks have an advantage because they have seen it all and are prepared for most of it.
And even measuring a quarterback’s rushing ability in the sense of designed runs versus scrambles. As we said earlier, designed runs are “in structure/scheme” of the offense and scrambles are “out of structure/scheme” and when you need QB1 to go make a play.
This is a position that is beyond complex and the evaluation is equally complex. You might want to have a backup QB who is a lesser version than your starter or you might want a backup who is basically a coach and is there purely for his ability to be smart and make intelligent decisions. This is defined by your long-term or short-term approach. Do you want your backup to be most equipped to handle half of a game after the starter is knocked out or more equipped to take over the starting job in 2023? You probably can’t have both at the same level.
This is a game you can enjoy on any level of consumption. But I have always found the deeper we look, the more fascinating it gets — and quarterback is the most fascinating of them all.
