Jay Cutler threw 18 interceptions in only 15 games in 2014, the 2nd most he’s thrown in his 6 year Bears career.  Of course, due to his high number of pass attempts (561, most in his Chicago career), Cutler’s interception rate of 3.2% was actually the 2nd lowest he’s had in Chicago, but he still turned it over too much, especially when you factor in his 9 fumbles.

Like I did for the first half of the season, I’m going to go through all 10 of Cutler’s interceptions after the bye and see what went wrong. Last time, I had three categories for the interceptions, and I will be re-using those three while also adding a fourth:

1. Poor decision. This is when Cutler makes a poor decision to force a ball into traffic.
2. Poor throw. This is when the decision to throw is not necessarily a bad one, but the throw is inaccurate.
3. Miscommunication. This is when Cutler and the intended target are not on the same page, leading to a ball going to nowhere and a turnover.
4. Receiver error: This is when Cutler makes the right read and delivers a good throw, but it bounces off the receiver’s hands and is intercepted.

Let’s get right down to it.

Interception 1

Cutler’s 1st interception of the season’s 2nd half came early in the blowout loss to Green Bay.  The Bears were already trailing 7-0 when he tried to get a pass to Martellus Bennett on 2nd and 10.  Bennett was open, but Cutler failed to lead him enough, allowing safety Micah Hyde to jump in front of the ball and grab the interception.

Note: At one point, all of these gifs worked. But alas, they are now just pictures of the first frame of the gif. Sorry. 

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 2

Cutler’s next interception came later in the same game against Green Bay.  Down 48-7 in the fourth quarter, Cutler stepped up under pressure and tried to force a ball in to Matt Forte.  A Green Bay linebacker tipped it, and cornerback Casey Hayward grabbed the ball for an easy touchdown.  This was 3rd down, but the Bears were in field goal range, so Cutler should have just taken the sack and let Robbie Gould kick.

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 3

Cutler’s next interception came against Minnesota the following week.  The Bears had the ball near midfield with 15 seconds left in the 1st half.  Trying to make something happen, Cutler forced a pass deep to Alshon Jeffery that fell well short and was intercepted by cornerback Xavier Rhodes.  I’m almost tempted to call this a Hail Mary of sorts, due to the game situation, but it was still an awful throw by Cutler.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 4

With the Bears up 14-10 and on the edge of field goal range midway through the 3rd quarter, Minnesota brought a blitz on 3rd and 9.  Cutler tried to make a play by getting the ball to Brandon Marshall, but safety Harrison Smith was there for the easy interception.  This was just a whole bunch of wrong.  Cutler lofted the ball into traffic off his back foot, which is both a poor throw and a poor decision, while Marshall failed to make the correct blitz read and adjust his route accordingly.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 miscommunication

Interception 5

After avoiding any interceptions in a win against Tampa Bay, Cutler got back in the act against Detroit on Thanksgiving.  He was able to avoid turnovers until the Bears were down big in the 4th quarter, when he threw two.  The first came on 2nd and 3 with almost 10 minutes left, when a scoring drive would have gotten the Bears back in it.  Cutler tried to force a pass deep to Brandon Marshall, but underthrew him a bit.  The Detroit cornerback was able to tip it, and safety Glover Quin came diving in to grab the interception.  Cutler probably shouldn’t have throw that ball, as Marshall was well covered, but a better delivery might have resulted in a big play.

Verdict: 0.5 poor throw, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 6

Cutler’s 2nd interception against Detroit came on the final play of the game, when the outcome had already been decided.  He tried to get a pass in to Marquess Wilson in the end zone, but it went straight to Detroit safety James Ihedigbo.  It’s hard to fault Cutler too much for this one, given the game situation, but it was a poor decision to force a ball to a covered man (though it’s possible nobody was open).

Verdict: poor decision

Interception 7

Cutler’s lone interception against Dallas came late in the 4th quarter with the Bears down 2 scores.  With 1st and goal at the 10 yard line, Cutler tried to loft a pass in to Josh Morgan in the back of the end zone.  Unfortunately, Cutler left it well short, and cornerback Orlando Scandrick was able to snag the ball out of the air and seal the victory for the Cowboys.

Verdict: poor throw

Interception 8

Cutler’s worst game of the year came against New Orleans, when he threw three interceptions, starting on the first drive of the game.  On 3rd and 8, Cutler found an open Martellus Bennett sitting in a hole in the New Orleans zone, but the pass bounced off Bennett’s hands and was caught by Patrick Robinson.  Cutler did absolutely nothing wrong on this play, though I guess you could argue that his throw could have been a smidge better.

Verdict: receiver error

Interception 9

Cutler’s next interception came at the end of the first half.  The ball was snapped near midfield with 12 seconds left, and he tried to force a deep pass to Marquess Wilson.  Wilson made his break and ran upfield, while Cutler expected him to cut towards the sidelines, but either way this was probably getting intercepted, or at least falling incomplete, as Wilson was double covered.  I’m tempted to call this a Hail Mary, but the Bears did have a chance to make something happen shorter and kick a field goal here.

Verdict: 0.5 miscommunication, 0.5 poor decision

Interception 10

Cutler’s final interception of the season came late in the 3rd quarter against the Saints.  With the Bears trailing by 21, Cutler decided to go deep to Alshon Jeffery on 3rd and 3.  He had Jeffery kind of open, but the safety got there before the ball and grabbed an easy interception after Cutler overthrew his intended target.

Verdict: 0.5 poor decision, 0.5 poor throw

Final tally

Over the 2nd half of the season, here’s how I have the tally for Cutler’s 10 interceptions:

• Poor decision: 4
• Poor throw: 4
• Miscommunication: 1
• Receiver error: 1

You’ll note that 3 of those 10 interceptions (numbers 3, 6, and 9) came in situations where Cutler was forced to try and make a play due to severe time limitations.  If you remove those, the numbers change to 2.5 poor decision, 3 poor throw, 0.5 miscommunication, and 1 receiver error.

Combining these totals with the first half of the season (when he had 7 non-Hail Mary interceptions) gives the following final count:

• Poor decision: 7.5
• Poor throw: 4.5
• Miscommunication: 4
• Receiver error: 1

I find it interesting that interceptions in the first half of the season were mostly due to poor decisions and miscommunications, while the 2nd half of the year saw poor throws and poor decisions as the main culprits.  This suggests that the Bears’ offense at least got on the same page a bit more as the season progressed, which is encouraging, but Cutler’s deep accuracy problems did not go away, nor did his tendency to force balls into traffic.

I don’t think Cutler’s ever going to stop making poor decisions that lead to risky throws and some interceptions, but having one of those every two games or so is not the end of the world.  What new coaches Adam Gase and Dowell Logains need to focus on will be improving Cutler’s mechanics and miscommunications among the offense.  Nearly half of Cutler’s interceptions in 2014 came from those areas, and reducing them would go a long way towards improving the offense.

On the surface, Jay Cutler appeared to have one of the better years of his career in 2014.  He set career highs in completion percentage and touchdowns and had the 2nd highest totals of his career in yards and passer rating.

Yet many people have argued that Cutler was actually not good in 2014, for a variety of reasons.  For one thing, he threw 18 interceptions, the 2nd most in his career.  He also had the 2nd lowest yards per attempt average of his career.

But the main knock against Cutler is that he accumulated too many of his stats in garbage time, when the game was already over and teams went into a prevent defense that allowed him easy access to meaningless completions, yards, and touchdowns.  I want to dig into the numbers today to see if this argument holds up.

2014

Using the database at Pro Football Reference, which lets you sort by game situation, I broke up Cutler’s statistics in 2014 into six categories: up two scores (9-16 points), up one score (1-8 points), tied, down one score, down two scores, and down three or more scores (17+ points).  I would have included up three or more scores as a 7th category, but Cutler never attempted a pass while the Bears held a 17 point lead (or greater) at any point in the season.

A first glance does seem to indicate that Cutler did indeed rely on some garbage time statistics to buoy his overall numbers.  He was at his best when the Bears were down by 3 or more scores, which can typically be described as garbage time, as the game is usually out of reach at this point.  Cutler’s completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio were all significantly higher than his season averages in these instances.  Removing this data from his numbers drops his season stat line from 66.0% completion, 6.8 yards per attempt, 28 touchdowns, 18 interceptions, and an 88.6 passer rating to 65.4% completion, 6.4 yards per attempt, 20 touchdowns, 14 interceptions, and an 85.3 passer rating.

In an attempt to visualize how this looks a little better, I’ve set up the following graph, which showcases Cutler’s passer rating, yards per attempt, interception percentage, and touchdown/interception ratio in all the various game situations.  In order to make the scales all the same, I compared their percent difference from the season average.  So a passer rating of 102.7 while down by 3 or more scores was 15.9% better than his season average of 88.6, and so on. Note that I set it up so that a lower interception percentage reads as a positive number, because this is the desirable outcome.

Here you can visually see that Cutler was at his best when the team was getting blown out, followed by when they were tied or slightly ahead.  When the Bears fell behind, his interceptions increased and touchdowns decreased, leading to a plummeting touchdown/interception ratio and lower passer rating.

All Chicago years

In order to get a better feel for what this type of data normally looks like, I compiled Cutler’s stats for all six of his seasons in Chicago in the same categories.  This has an added advantage of greatly increasing the sample size, which decreases the variation from one touchdown or interception in a smaller data set.

Here we see a similar trend, but with one important difference: Cutler’s stats when the Bears are getting blown out do not skyrocket like they did in 2014.  There seems to be a negative correlation between the team’s situation and Cutler’s performance, which can be visually seen in the graph below.

This negative trend is largely driven by interception percentage, which is at it’s three worst levels in the three categories where the Bears are losing.  This suggests that Cutler has a tendency to force passes when things aren’t going well, which compounds the problem and leads to further struggles.  Conversely, when the Bears have the lead, Cutler can play safer football, and his interception rates tend to be lower.

The numbers back up the assertion that Cutler’s performance variation is largely interception based. A regression of interception percentage against drive differential (+1 for up by 1 score, -1 for down 1 score, etc.) gives a correlation of 0.4, while the correlation for completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percentage (the other three stats that go into passer rating) are all 0.1 or lower.

Within season

Of course, one other factor to consider is that Cutler’s statistics have fluctuated from season to season, and ignoring that can lead to a data bias.  For instance, Cutler’s worst season in Chicago was in 2009, when the Bears played from behind more than in some of his better seasons.  Looking at Cutler’s statistics in each situation compared to the other situations in the same year, therefore, is an important control.

The  chart below shows that data, looking at how Cutler’s stats in each game situation compare, on average, to his total production from that same season.  So across his six years in Chicago, Cutler has had a completion percentage 6.3% higher than his total completion percentage that season when his team is up by 17 or more points.

Now we can see a clearer relationship between the game situation and Cutler’s performance, as completion percentage (0.36), interception percentage (0.33), and passer rating (0.45) all have meaningful positive correlations (while yards per attempt and touchdown percentage do not seem to have any discernible pattern). This is nothing shocking; as the team struggles and falls behind, Cutler is forced to throw more, his completion percentage drops, and his turnovers increase, which lowers his passer rating.

Conclusions

The numbers back up the notion that Cutler’s statistics were inflated by garbage time production in 2014.  19% of Cutler’s passing attempts came with the Bears down by 3 or more scores, but those passes accounted for 23% of his yards and 29% of his touchdowns (and 22% of his interceptions).  History suggests that is not a typical pattern for Cutler, so 2014 will likely prove to be an aberration.

The fact that Cutler’s performance gets worse as the team struggles points to how important it is for the Bears to start well with him under center.  When the team plays with a lead, Cutler seems to relax and avoid turning the ball over as much, while he starts pressing and turns the ball over more when they fall behind.  So if Cutler is going to continue to be Chicago’s starting quarterback for the next couple years, building early leads (or at least avoiding early deficits) should be a clear goal for the Bears, as Cutler’s turnover tendencies are likely to do nothing but dig a deeper hole once the Bears fall behind.

Jay Cutler has gotten a lot of criticism for turning the ball over too much this year, and rightly so.  Through 8 games, he has thrown 8 interceptions and fumbled 9 times, losing 4 of them.

I want to go through each of Cutler’s interceptions and break down what went wrong.  I will be splitting the blame into one of three categories:

1. Poor decision.  This is when Cutler makes a poor decision to force a ball into traffic.
2. Poor throw.  This is when the decision to throw is not necessarily a bad one, but the throw is inaccurate.
3. Miscommunication.  This is when Cutler and the intended target are not on the same page, leading to a ball going to nowhere and a turnover.

I’m not going to bother with Cutler’s most recent interception, which came on a hail mary against New England last week.  That’s a play where you don’t care about the turnover but are just chucking it up hoping for a miracle.  I will however, break down the other seven, showing gifs of the plays (hover over gif with mouse to get it to play) and assigning where I think the blame is due.

Let’s get right down to it.

Interception 1

Cutler’s first interception of the year came in the 2nd quarter of their first game.  On a 1st and 10, he looked to tight end Martellus Bennett deep up the seam.  The pass went well behind Bennett, who ran down the field while Cutler seemingly threw it thinking he would stop. Cornerback Corey Graham saw the pass and cut in for an easy interception.

Note: At one point, all of these gifs worked. But alas, they are now just pictures of the first frame of the gif. Sorry. 

Verdict: miscommunication

Interception 2

This one came later in the Buffalo game.  Rolling out to his right, Cutler forces a pass to Bennett back into traffic that goes right to defensive tackle Kyle Williams.  It is a ball that should have never been thrown.  This play also does feature a miscommunication, as wide receiver Santonio Holmes blocks for a run instead of running the clear out he was supposed to, but it doesn’t directly feature in the interception (though Cutler likely would have run for a 1st down if Holmes had run his route).  Still, that does not excuse this pass, which simply cannot be thrown.

Verdict: Poor decision

Interception 3

After going more than 2 games without an interception (though he did have a couple potential ones dropped in that span), Cutler jumped back on the wagon in week 4 against Green Bay.  With the Bears trailing 24-17 in the third quarter, Cutler tried to squeeze a 1st down pass in to Josh Morgan on a slant.  Green Bay cornerback Tramon Williams had lined up inside of Morgan and was sitting on the slant. He did not get the interception himself, but he did deflect it to linebacker Clay Matthews.

Verdict: Poor decision

Interception 4

On the very next drive of the Green Bay game, Cutler looked for Brandon Marshall down the right sideline.  He thought Marshall was running a comeback route, while Marshall ran a go route.  Green Bay cornerback Sam Shields ended up catching the pass with nobody within 10 yards of him.

Interception 5

In the first quarter against Carolina, Cutler threw a pass to Brandon Marshall deep down the middle of the field with three defenders around the ball.  Some people argue this was pass interference, but you can never throw the ball over the middle of the field with that many defenders there.

Interception 6

Late in the Carolina game, Cutler targeted Santonio Holmes on a slant over the middle.  The pass was a little high and behind Holmes and the safety behind the play was able to catch it.

This is a bit of a tough one to decide on.  It wasn’t a bad decision to throw it, as Holmes was open.  But I’m not 100% sure whether Cutler missed the throw or Holmes was rerouted from where he was supposed to be by the linebacker in coverage.  It looks as though Cutler steps into the throw with solid mechanics, but the pass is too high for a small receiver like Holmes to catch in stride.  I’ll say this is a combination of both and split the blame between miscommunication and poor throw.

Interception 7

This is the trickiest of the interceptions to figure out.  Cutler tried to get a pass in to Bennett, who was double covered, and overthrew him by a mile.  The safety coming in behind the play (a good 8 yards behind it) comes up with the interception.

On the surface, this seems like both a bad decision and a bad throw by Cutler.  But he was adamant after the game that he threw it to the spot it was supposed to go to, and Trestman indicated the same the next day.  This makes it seem like there was a miscommunication between Bennett and Cutler on what route to run, and Cutler thought Bennett was heading farther up the field.  Either way, it was still a throw into more traffic than I’d like, so I’m splitting the blame on this one.

Final tally

Here’s the final tally for Cutler’s 7 interceptions looked at here (again, I am excluding the hail mary against New England because it doesn’t really fit any of these categories):

• Poor decision: 3.5
• Miscommunication: 3
• Poor throw: 0.5

Let me be abundantly clear that I am not doing this to make excuses for Cutler.  He is obviously turning it over too much, and at that point it doesn’t really matter whether the interceptions come from miscommunications, poor throws, or poor decisions.  They have to stop, or more realistically be significantly reduced.

Rather, my intent is to try to figure out where the interceptions are coming from.  What has to change to limit the turnovers?  Let’s look at the three factors.

Poor decisions

Cutler has a penchant for forcing passes into traffic, and we see that here with half his interceptions coming from poor decisions, with several more poor decisions that featured dropped interceptions or interceptions called back by penalties..  He’s always going to be a guy who takes some chances, and that’s never going away.  With that said, one interception every two games from poor decisions is something you can live with (which is good, since that will always be there for Cutler).

Poor mechanics

The plays that need to be eliminated, or at least vastly cut down, are the miscommunications and poor passes.  I’ll talk about the poor passes first.  These usually result from poor mechanics, which has been an issue at times for Cutler this year.  It didn’t show up much in this study, but it is a big reason he is struggling so much to complete passes downfield this year.  According to Pro Football Focus, Cutler has been accurate on only 36.7% of his deep passes so far this year, 21st out of 30 quarterbacks with 15+ such attempts.  He is throwing off of his back foot too often instead of stepping into his throws, a regression back to 2012 and before habits, and that needs to change.

More relevant to turnovers are Cutler’s 9 fumbles in 8 games.  This is also largely due to poor mechanics, as he is not properly protecting the ball when the pocket collapses around him.

Miscommunications

Perhaps most troubling is the startling number of miscommunications on Cutler’s interceptions.  Four of his seven interceptions (again, not counting the Hail Mary) have involved at least some sort of miscommunication, with a 5th having a miscommunication on the play that was not directly involved in the interception.

It is baffling why there are so many of these issues on an offense that returns pretty much every key figure from last year.  Sure, two of the five miscommunications mentioned above relate to Santonio Holmes, who is new to the offense and was brought in late in the preseason.  But the other three are with Cutler and either Martellus Bennett or Brandon Marshall, who he has been playing with for a while.

I don’t know where all these miscommunications come from, but somehow Cutler needs to make sure he is on the same page as his receivers going forward.  Limit these miscommunication turnovers and avoid the rash of fumbles caused by poor mechanics, and suddenly Cutler’s play seems a lot better.

Find a way

It’s one thing to say what needs to be done.  Doing it is a different challenge. But somehow, some way, Jay Cutler needs to improve his mechanics and Chicago’s offense needs to avoid the miscommunications leading to turnovers that have plagued them through the first half of the season.

Longtime Chicago cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman was placed on season-ending injured reserve this week after he tore his triceps against San Francisco this past Sunday.  This marks the second season in a row Tillman’s season ended early due to the injury.  With two straight injury-shortened seasons and a contract that expires at the end of the season, this seems to be the end of the road for the 33 year old cornerback, though Tillman has vowed his career is not yet finished.

If Tillman has indeed reached the end of his career, he has nothing to be ashamed of.  The 2003 2nd round pick has played 12 years, all for the Bears, and generally played at a very high level.  He reached two Pro Bowls (2011 and 2012), was named a 1st team All-Pro once (2012), and holds franchise records for defensive touchdowns (9), interception return yards (675), interceptions returned for touchdowns (8), and forced fumbles (38).  Tillman also owns the franchise forced fumbles record for a single season (10, tied for NFL record) and single game (4, NFL record).

Canton worthy?

There is little doubt that Tillman is the greatest cornerback the Chicago Bears have ever had, which is no small feat considering the illustrious defensive history of the franchise, but a more interesting question posed to me by Lorin Cox was this: does Charles Tillman belong in the Hall of Fame?

This is a difficult question to answer as there are a number of factors that go into a player’s Hall of Fame candidacy.  Let’s start with a look at the numbers, which were kindly provided by Lorin. The table below compares Tillman’s vital statistics to those of several recent defensive backs who were inducted into the Hall of Fame, as well as two active players who will undoubtedly go into the Hall of Fame after they are done.  Note that all of the above statistics about Tillman’s franchise records above are from the official Wikipedia page listing Chicago Bears records. These may differ slightly from the stats listed in the table below, which are from Pro Football Reference.

Looking at these numbers, two things stand out. First, if this is indeed the end of Tillman’s career, he did not play for as long as most of his compatriots. This will hurt his volume numbers some and may damage his Hall candidacy.  Second, Tillman’s numbers absolutely stack up, even on a volume basis.  He has more tackles and defensive touchdowns than three of the other seven players and has forced more turnovers than four of them.  His forced fumbles stand out well ahead of the group, thanks largely to his signature “Peanut Punch.”  If there is one place where Tillman is clearly lacking, it is in interceptions; his 36 falls well short of the rest.

When you look at per-season numbers, however, Tillman’s case begins to look even better, as you can clearly see in the table below.  His 3.27 interceptions per season fits in nicely, and his forced fumbles per season dwarfs everybody else.  Tillman rates well against his peers in both tackles per season (2nd) and turnovers per season (first by a mile).

More than just numbers

Of course, there are many more factors to consider than just numbers when evaluating a player for the Hall of Fame, especially for defensive players who are not pass rushers, as statistics often fail to accurately reflect their play.  We’ll start with the areas where Tillman excels before moving on to where he might struggle.

The 50 media members who vote for the Hall of Fame often take off-field actions into account, and Tillman’s sparkling record there can only help his cause.  Tillman was named the NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year in 2013 and has a long history of charity work and community involvement in Chicago.  He seems like a genuinely nice guy who everybody likes and respects, which can go a long way in the voting room.

Tillman also has a well-publicized signature play, the Peanut Punch.  This has increased his national profile and should help him get votes as well.  The Hall of Fame is partially about telling the story of the NFL, and being well known for something that coaches now try to teach their players helps make it easier to consider you an important part of that story.

But there is one essential area where Tillman is very lacking that I think will ultimately keep him out of the Hall of Fame.  Tillman has simply not garnered enough national awards for his play.  He has only been to two Pro Bowls and was only named an All Pro-1st or 2nd team-once.  It will be extremely hard for the national media to convince themselves that Tillman was one of the best players of his generation when he was only considered one of the best four players at his position one time in his entire career.  If he had been voted to a bunch of Pro Bowls, that might help overcome the lack of All Pro nominations, but alas, that did not happen.  It seems kind of silly that a popularity contest based on fan voting would be a factor in determining who is worthy of the Hall of Fame, but that does indeed appear to be the case.

Hall of Very Good

Now that I’ve told you that I don’t think Tillman will make the Hall of Fame, I’m sure some people are wondering if I think he should.  I’m sorry to say that, when looking at things objectively, I don’t.  Tillman was a very good player for a very long time, but I don’t think he was consistently great.  Therefore, I don’t think Tillman belongs in the Hall of Fame, as much as it pains me to say it.  To me, Tillman is the definition of a guy who belongs in the Hall of Very Good, a term I believe was coined by Peter King (though I cannot find a source to confirm this).  He was a very good player and a great man, but is just not quite at the caliber of somebody who deserves to be immortalized in the Hall of Fame.

So here we are.  It is painfully obvious that you cannot win in the NFL without a good quarterback.  It is equally apparent that, if you find that quarterback, you are eventually going to need to pay him a lot of money to stick around.

If you pay your quarterback too much money, it can hamper your ability to build a good team around him (a must for a championship winning team), leaving you with a good team that will be consistently competitive but probably come short of winning a title as teams with comparable quarterbacks playing on much cheaper deals are able to pass you by (before they have to pay their guy as well).

You have to think that there is some sort of tipping point where teams would be better off dumping a high-priced veteran and taking their chances in the draft, and the rapid recent inflation of quarterback contracts may make it that we are passed that point.  But it will take more time to really know for sure.  To date, no quarterback has won a Super Bowl on a contract averaging more than $16.5 million per year, but the first contract exceeding that didn’t come until two or three years ago, so that’s a very small sample size.

Differentiation at the top

Of course, one other thing you have to consider here is that there is a difference between quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees and guys like Matt Ryan, Joe Flacco, Jay Cutler, and Tony Romo.  All have similar contracts paying them massive amounts of money, but the second group needs better talent around them to perform at a high level (and will still likely not reach the same level as the first group on a consistent basis).

You can build a championship team around Romo, Cutler, Flacco, or Ryan, but I am not sure if you can do so while paying them that much money.  This will be an issue for teams like Seattle, San Francisco, and Carolina in upcoming years; their quarterbacks will be due for new contracts and go from being underpaid to overpaid, forcing the teams to let some of the talent around them leave because they can no longer afford to pay them.

Let’s look one more time at the groups of teams based on quarterback situation and how they performed in 2013.  One twist this time: I’m splitting the thirteen teams with established veteran quarterbacks into the four elite quarterbacks (Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, and Drew Brees) and the other nine.  Let’s see how the data looks.

Well that’s interesting.  Paying established non-elite veteran quarterbacks  big money, at least this year, didn’t seem to pay off.  Teams with those guys actually fared slightly worse, by and large, than teams with slightly worse but significantly cheaper quarterbacks.  Consider that the group that might be looking for new quarterbacks this offseason-Cincinnati, St. Louis, Tennessee, and Arizona-paid their starting quarterbacks an average of just under $5.4 million in 2013, while the nine teams with non-elite quarterbacks on veteran contracts-Atlanta, Detroit, New York Giants, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Dallas, Kansas City, and San Diego-paid their quarterbacks an average of $12.6 million.

This is only one year and is a small sample size, but it certainly suggests that paying a non-elite quarterback big money (which every one of those nine teams except Kansas City has done) is not a recipe for success.  Those teams were worse on average in wins than the teams with unsettled quarterback situations going forward, put roughly the same proportion of teams in the playoffs (two out of nine compared to one out of four), and neither group found much playoff success (combined 1-3 playoff record, with the one win coming when San Diego beat Cincinnati, so one of the teams in these groups had to win).

Paying your elite quarterback, meanwhile, appears to be an investment well worth making.  Elite quarterbacks got paid big money-an average of $15.2 million in 2013-but delivered.  All four of them made the playoffs, three of them won at least one playoff game, and one of them will be playing in the Super Bowl.  The performance of elite quarterbacks, in fact, is nearly identical to that of established quarterbacks on rookie contracts, which will be something interesting to monitor in future years.

Looking ahead

One way or another, we will see in the next several years just how intelligent the recent quarterback salary inflation is.  The early results suggest big contracts for non-elite quarterbacks will come back to haunt their teams, but it is too early to say for sure. If teams can continue to win consistently after giving quarterbacks big money, the salaries should only continue to grow.

But what if new teams like Seattle and San Francisco keep cropping up for two or three year runs when they find a good young quarterback who is extremely cheap and are able to contend by using that extra money to put a great team around them?  What if recent large contracts handed out to second-tier quarterbacks (and ones soon to be given out to guys coming off rookie deals) end up hurting teams more than they help?

It’s all about the quarterback in the NFL, but the next five to ten years should help illuminate just how much a good quarterback is worth.

Detroit Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson had a historic 2012 season, setting a new NFL record with 1,964 receiving yards. Perhaps his most impressive feat is that he did this despite going against Richard Sherman and Charles Tillman, the two cornerbacks who made the All-Pro team, in three of his 16 games. In other words, Johnson (or “Megatron,” as he has been dubbed), played three games against the two best cornerbacks in the NFL and still shattered the record for most receiving yards in a season.

How well did Johnson perform in those three games? The answers might surprise you. Let’s take a closer look at the per-game numbers.

It’s apparent that Johnson did not fare very well against top-flight cornerbacks. His completion percentage was significantly lower than either Tillman or Sherman gave up for the year (47.1% and 63.3%, respectively, per ProFootballFocus); the same was true for his yards per target against both Sherman and Tillman (7.3 and 5.9, respectively).

ProFootballFocus assigns grades for players for each individual game based on how well they perform relative to average. In the three games against Tillman and Sherman, Johnson posted three negative scores that together added up to -2.6. By contrast, his other 13 games featured 11 positive scores for a cumulative total of 28.9.

What does this mean for Johnson and the Lions?

Megatron destroys most opponents

Take a second look at those numbers Johnson posted in those other 13 games. He was stellar, averaging over 10 yards per target and 140 yards per game. Sure, some of it was against lesser opponents with terrible pass defenses (the Jacksonvilles and Tennessees of the NFL), but there were some other solid pass defenses in there too: Arizona, San Francisco, Minnesota, and St. Louis jump immediately to mind. The fact that Johnson could still break the previous yardage by over 100 yards record despite having these three poor games speaks volumes to just how incredible he was in the other thirteen.

Credit Tillman and Sherman

The success that these two cornerbacks had against such a dominant receiver speaks volumes to just how great they were last year, especially since on multiple occasions they were left to cover Johnson alone. This is also a testament to the rest of the Chicago and Seattle secondaries, especially the safeties, often helped double-team Johnson. Voters don’t always get their selections for the All-Pro teams right, but in this case they were 100 percent correct in saying that these two were indeed the best cornerbacks in football last year.

Pressing needs

If they want to become a winning team again, the Lions need other passing options to emerge as reliable targets.

Even though Johnson was unable to make plays against Chicago and Seattle, quarterback Matthew Stafford still threw his way an average of 11 times in those games. Admittedly, that was down slightly from the 13.3 targets Johnson averaged in the other 13 games, and it was also a slightly smaller percentage of total teams targets (24.1% versus 27.7% on the season); but that is still too many targets for a player  struggling to produce.

Against Seattle, Titus Young was able to take the pressure off Johnson, converting his nine targets into nine receptions, 100 yards, and two touchdowns. In the two games against Chicago, nobody was stepped up. Not coincidentally, the Lions beat Seattle and lost twice to Chicago.

Detroit has already made one move to improve their passing game this offseason, signing running back Reggie Bush, a pass-catching specialist out of the backfield. They also will get receivers Nate Burleson and Ryan Broyles back healthy. The Lions need them to take advantage of favorable coverage due to teams blanketing Johnson, which will in turn also help reduce the coverage on Johnson and free him to make more big plays.

Conclusion

Calvin Johnson is an incredible player, one who has clearly established himself as the best wide receiver in the NFL over the last two seasons. But his struggles against top-shelf secondaries show that he is not invincible, and the onus is now on Detroit to surround him with the necessary talent that will allow him to dominate against even the best competition.

Rookie bargains

When the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the NFL and players’ union was put into place prior to the 2011 season, one of the big changes from the old CBA was the rookie wage scale. Gone were the days when players drafted in the top five became the highest-paid player at their position in NFL history before playing a single down.

Green Bay’s offensive hallmark in the last five years has been their passing game, which makes perfect sense when you consider that they have an all-time great quarterback in Aaron Rodgers. However, two successive playoff failures have made many think that Green Bay, which has not had a rusher go over 750 yards since 2009, needs a feature back who can give them a solid running game.

Many fans are looking longingly at free-agent running back Steven Jackson, who has been a very good running back on many very bad St. Louis Rams teams in the last eight years. ESPN NFL analyst John Clayton has also publicly stated that he thinks this would be a great idea, suggesting that signing him for $5 million would be a great deal for the Packers.

On the surface, this move makes perfect sense. Putting a dangerous running back in an offense that is already explosive can only help improve it. But is this actually the case, and would such a hefty investment be worth it for an older back?

Steven Jackson has already played eight years in the NFL, and he has almost 2400 career carries.  That’s some serious mileage, and it’s fair to worry about diminishing returns once a player has taken that many hits. Let’s look at other running backs in the last twenty years who have more than 2400 carries, and see how they fared.

Looking at the table, it’s hard to think that signing Steven Jackson would be a good idea. Only three of the eleven backs in similar situations to him improved their production after 2,400 carries, and one of those (Warrick Dunn) did so in an extremely limited sample size (186 carries). Of the 33 100-or-more carry seasons by these backs after they had ,2400 carries, only seven (21%) averaged better than their first 2,400 carries. By contrast, nineteen of them (58%) found the backs performing at a clip that was at least 0.3 yards per carry worse than their average from their first 2,400 carries.

To put these numbers in perspective, Steven Jackson has averaged 4.2 yards per carry in his career so far. Based on historical numbers, then, he would have roughly a 20% chance of averaging 4.2 yards per carry or more for the Packers, and close to a 60% chance of averaging 3.9 yards per carry or less. There were 31 NFL running backs who had 100 or more carries while averaging 3.9 yards or more in 2012, including five rookies, four of whom were drafted in the third round or later.

This is the second part of a two-part series. In part one, we looked at consistency trends of quarterbacks throughout the NFL. Here we are going to examine in greater detail the consistency and production of the four NFC North quarterbacks.

The previous installment featured a study of all 24 NFL quarterbacks who have started at least twenty games for the same team between 2011 and 2012.  Conveniently, Jay Cutler, Christian Ponder, Aaron Rodgers, and Matthew Stafford—all four quarterbacks in the NFC North—fit that description.  So let’s look a little closer at those four in an effort to better understand just how they compare to each other in terms of consistency and overall production.

Consistency

The overall numbers showed that Aaron Rodgers was far and away the most consistent of the four quarterbacks; his passer rating standard deviation of 20.5 marked him as the third most consistent in the NFL. Matthew Stafford came in at 23.5, slightly more consistent than average, while Christian Ponder was on the other side of average with a standard deviation of 27.2. With a standard deviation of 30.0, Jay Cutler came in as the least consistent quarterback in the entire league.

Let’s dig in a little deeper to see more clearly the distribution of their games relative to their average passer rating that season. The chart below compares the percentage of games that are within 10.0 points of their average, between 10.1 and 20.0 points of their average, between 20.1 and 30.0 points of their average, and more than 30.0 points away from their average. The table also lists the percentage of games in which the quarterback is more than 50 points away from his average, but it should be noted that this is a subset of the 30 point group and those two are therefore not exclusive of each other.

There are a few interesting trends to note here. First, observe that Rodgers, the most consistent quarterback, has a significantly lower percentage of game right at his average than either Stafford or Ponder. What makes Rodgers so consistent is that he avoids the extremely varying games that are more than 30 points from his average passer rating. All of his games basically fall within a range of 60 points (i.e., ± 30 from his average).

That is not the case for the other quarterbacks, particularly Cutler and Ponder; nearly one-third of their games fall more than 30 points from their average passer rating. A large reason why Cutler has the largest standard deviation an insanely high proportion of his games — 16.0% — fall more than 50 points from his average. This is more than four times the NFL average and nearly doubles that of any other quarterback.

Overall production

It is important to note that all of the statistics discussed to this point have been about quarterback’s average and their production relative to that average. This ignores the difference between the average production of the quarterbacks, which can be fairly substantial when you consider that Aaron Rodger’s average passer rating of 114.9 is nearly 30 points better than that of Matthew Stafford, the second-best quarterback in the division with an 88.1 passer rating.

So let’s put some clarity in this discussion by looking at real numbers instead of simply averages. The table below shows the percentage of games that have fallen in various passer ratings by the average NFL quarterback (the 24 in the overall study) and each of the four NFC North quarterbacks. The graph below that shows the same numbers in a visual format.

These numbers show three clear groupings in the NFC North quarterbacks. Ponder produces an abnormally high number of bad games without really having many really good ones (only one game with a passer rating above 120), making him a below-average NFL quarterback. To be fair, Ponder has only finished his second year, so he still has significant room to grow. Stafford and Cutler both have roughly average numbers, at least in terms of their most typical passer ratings, although Cutler does have an atypically high number of really bad games.

The true standout here is Aaron Rodgers, as he incredibly has no games with a passer rating below 75 in the last two years (in fact he has none below 80); he is the only quarterback in this study who can claim that remarkable feat. The typical Rodgers game resides in the very good category, with relatively equal numbers of average and great games.

This clearly illustrates the difference between Rodgers and the rest of the NFC North quarterbacks. A bad game for Rodgers, when his passer rating is in the eighties, is an average game for Cutler, Ponder, or Stafford. An average game for Rodgers is a very good or great one for one of the other three.

This is not an earth-shattering revelation. Rodgers is clearly the best quarterback in the NFC North and by most statistical measurements is also the best quarterback in the NFL. It is truly remarkable, however, to look at just how large the gap is between Rodgers and the rest of the quarterbacks in the division.

Conclusion

This is the part for all you lazy bums who don’t feel like doing much reading (that’s all of you, including me). I’m going to put my findings in simple, easy-to-digest bullet points so you can skip all the long, confusing words above!

• Aaron Rodgers is one of the most consistent quarterbacks in the NFL because he is exceptional at avoiding games with extreme passer ratings (relative to his average).
• Jay Cutler is the least consistent quarterback in the NFL because he has an incredibly high rate of games that are either really good or really bad.
• A bad game for Aaron Rodgers is an average game for any other NFC North quarterbacks.

Introduction

Football announcers are fond of saying that an outstanding quarterback is “consistently excellent” — or conversely bashing an underachieving quarterback by saying he “needs to improve his consistency.”

Based on comments like this, there seems to be a prevailing theory out there that the elite quarterbacks in the NFL are separated from the pack by their consistency.  Do the statistics back this assertion up?  Let’s dive in and take a look.

Because I am a giant stats nerd, I just had to dig into this and see if there was any truth to the conventional wisdom. This is the first installment of a two-part series in which I will examine the consistency of NFL quarterbacks. This installment will explore league-wide trends, while the second part will focus on the four NFC North quarterbacks.

To the statsmobile!

Numbers and tables

To find the simplest method possible of measuring quarterback consistency, I looked at the standard deviation of game-by-game passer ratings for quarterbacks in the last two years. Ignoring playoff games, I included only quarterbacks who made at least 20 regular-season starts for the same team between 2011 and 2012. A total of 24 players qualified for this study. These numbers were chosen to find the best middle ground between getting a large enough pool to do a meaningful study and having a large enough sample size for each individual to get meaningful results.

The table below shows the 24 quarterbacks examined, along with their passer rating over the last two years and the standard deviation of their single-game passer ratings. A lower standard deviation means there is less variability — or in other words, that a quarterback is more consistent.

Looking at the spread of this data, we can see that it shows what statisticians call a “normal distribution,” which is a fancy way of saying that the frequency of the numbers peaks around the mean (average) and tapers off toward either end of the range. In this case, the range is roughly 20 to 30.

Lessons

A quick glance also tells us that more consistent does not necessarily equal to better: five of the six least consistent quarterbacks rank in the top ten for passer rating over the last two years. Indeed, there is almost no correlation between a quarterback’s average passer rating and his standard deviation(r²=0.002). In other words, there is no indication that consistency is necessarily a marker of excellence, for a quarterback can just as easily be consistently bad as consistently good.

This makes intuitive sense. St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford has put up the most consistent passer rating in the NFL the last two years — but no one would accuse him of being an excellent quarterback. There is no value found in being consistently mediocre.

The next two most consistent quarterbacks, however, have been two of the best in recent years. Ask the average NFL fan to name the best two quarterbacks of 2011 and 2012, and the most common answers would likely be Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady (Drew Brees would be in the mix as well), and indeed, they rank as two of the top three in passer rating. Interestingly, though, seven of the top ten highest-rated quarterbacks rank in the bottom half for consistency.

This suggests that, among the top quarterbacks, what separates the truly elite players from the rest is their ability to avoid bad games and be consistently excellent. The numbers suggest that may be possible, as the correlation between passer rating and standard deviation rises to 0.38 if the sample size is limited to the top ten highest passer ratings It should be noted, however, that 0.38 still represents a relatively low correlation.

Now I want to look briefly at one interesting case for a quarterback who did not qualify for this study because he missed the 2011 season: Peyton Manning. I am looking at quarterbacks playing for the same team, so rather than combine his 2010 and 2012 numbers (which featured him plying his trade in two different cities), I decided to look at his numbers from 2009 and 2010. In those years, Manning posted a passer rating of 95.6 with a standard deviation of 22.2. His passer rating would rank only sixth in this study — likely because he missed out on the passing bonanza that was 2011, when defenses suffered tremendously from the lockout and shortened training camp — while his standard deviation would score him as the fifth most consistent quarterback.

These numbers actually muddy the waters a little bit: Manning falls short of the elite benchmark in passer rating but is still relatively consistent (similar to Ben Roethlisberger).

Conclusion

Those of you who don’t like wading through a whole long article full of numbers — in other words, all of you — can skip straight to this point and read what I learned in easy-to-digest bullet points!

• There is no statistical relationship between consistency and effectiveness for NFL quarterbacks.
• It looks possible, but is not proven, that the truly elite quarterbacks are separated from the merely good ones by being consistently good.
• Second-tier quarterbacks are some of the most inconsistent in the NFL, probably because they fluctuate so often between good and mediocre.

Stay tuned for an upcoming look at the NFC North quarterbacks!