The 2018 NFL QB awards: Best and worst passers in 14 categories 🏈
The 2018 NFL QB awards: Best and worst passers in 14 categories
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The NFL Honors are around the corner, and a couple of quarterbacks are destined to be recognized.
Consider this the off-Broadway production of a similar awards show. Here are the best and worst quarterbacks of 2018, based on information from Total QBRand NFL Next Gen Stats. Instead of Ernst & Young or Deloitte tallying the votes, I do the honors, sprinkling a little subjectivity in when needed.
Without further ado, let's get to the distinguished -- and not-so-distinguished -- awards. Best QB of the season: Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs
Mahomes just eked out the QBR title ahead of Drew Brees this season, 81.6 to 80.7. But that doesn't capture the full extent of Mahomes' value. Not only was he the most efficient quarterback in football, but he was also the most productive from a volume standpoint. Mahomes had 722 action plays (passes + QB runs and scrambles + sacks + relevant penalties), well ahead of Brees at 562. The result is that Mahomes easily recorded the most points added above average (a translation of QBR that includes volume), ahead of Brees and everyone else.
Being more efficient than Brees on more plays makes this choice easy. Mahomes was the most productive quarterback in 2018.
Was Rosen the least productive quarterback in the NFL or did he get less help from his teammates than anyone else? Yes.
Rosen finished last in Total QBR with a 25.9. The goal of Total QBR is to better allocate credit and blame for an offense's success and failure to the quarterback beyond the scope of traditional statistics. It does a good job at doing that, but quarterbacks' statistics are still influenced by their teammates at a level beyond what QBR can see.
Rosen didn't exactly have a brick wall standing in front of him. In fact, no team had a worse pass block win rate than the Cardinals (PBWR is an ESPN metric powered by NFL Next Gen Stats). That has to be a major hindrance for a QB. Now, whether or not a quarterback is under pressure is factored into QBR, but there is reason to believe that a quarterback is still more likely to put up a stronger Total QBR with a better pass-blocking line in front of him.
Additionally, Rosen's targets basically had defenders stuck to them. No quarterback threw into tight windows at a higher rate than Rosen. No quarterback threw a lower percentage of his passes to open receivers. Only Ryan Fitzpatrick's receivers averaged fewer yards of separation. It's possible that Rosen just consistently made the wrong reads (Next Gen separation numbers are only for players targeted), but it's also possible his receivers just didn't get open.
Wilson was the most efficient quarterback on play-action this season (QBR: 89.9) ... but don't go crediting Pete Carroll and Brian Schottenheimer's archaic run-first offense for that! Credit Wilson himself, because evidence is mounting that the frequency of a team's running game really isn't a factor in play-action success.
On the touchdown against the Lions (shown in the Next Gen Stats animation below), Wilson's play-action with Chris Carson gets the safety to bite for just a second, ensuring that Tyler Lockett would face single coverage (likely anyway with an out-breaking route against single-high coverage). Wilson lofts a perfect ball to the receiver for a score.
You can slice and dice QBR in a bunch of different ways. Rosen took the dead-last prize in a bunch of categories, but don't sleep on Tannehill, who nabs this honor along with, for example, worst under-pressure QB. Tannehill's QBR on play-action passes is a staggeringly low 25.5; the next lowest this season was Joe Flacco at 47.8.
Best deep-ball passer: Wilson
Wilson actually led the league in QBR on passes 10 or more yards downfield. And 20 or more yards downfield. And 30 or more yards downfield. Good thing no team dropped back to pass at a lower rate than the Seahawks this season.
When Allen threw the ball this season, it was a disaster. He ranked second-to-last in QBR on pass plays, ahead of only Rosen. His off-target rate was by far the highest in the league. And his completion percentage above expectation was better only than that of Blake Bortles (though Kelvin Benjamin might have had something to do with that), per NFL Next Gen Stats.
Plenty of folks saw that problem coming. What most people didn't anticipate was that Allen would find a workaround. What if he didn't pass? Allen, it turned out, is quite the scrambler. Not only in quantity but quality -- he had the fifth-best QBR on runs and scrambles, adding the most expected points among all QBs in 2018. Allen recorded the fastest max speed (20.6 miles per hour) among qualifying starting quarterbacks and averaged moving 5 mph when throwing -- highest in the league. Overall, he accrued more value as a runner than any quarterback in 2018.
On a related note, Allen took home the prize for longest time to throw -- and that's when he chose to throw at all!
On a 14-yard touchdown run against the Titans (shown below in the animation from NFL Next Gen Stats), Allen eluded a defender in the backfield before running toward the goal line, juking a defender and diving in for the score.
It's hard to separate the worst QBR quarterbacks on scrambles -- Nick Mullens, Eli Manning and Rivers -- because they all barely scramble. Of course, those who don't scramble are almost certainly bad at it. For Mullens, it was literally one play (though he played less overall than the others). To separate the three, I looked at their speed: Only Tom Brady was slower than Rivers in terms of max speed on any play, and Rivers is the slowest in terms of max speed at the 90th percentile of plays.
Best QB at getting first downs before reaching third down: Rivers
Third-and-manageable ought to be an off-limits phrase for offensive coordinators, because the entire concept actually hurts the chances of converting first downs. The offense should be aiming to convert a first down before third down, and some quarterbacks are better at executing that. None better, in fact, than Rivers, who converted a first down on 40 percent of his first- and second-down action plays among qualified passers, beating out Brees and Jared Goff.
Rosen was the worst, converting on only 25 percent of his first- and second-down action plays.
Expectation-shattering duo: Drew Brees and Michael Thomas, Saints
One of the more interesting metrics emerging from the NFL's Next Gen Stats work is completion probability and the resulting completion probability above or below expectation. A more detailed explanation can be found here, but essentially it predicts the likelihood of a completion based on factors such as whether a quarterback is under pressure or how close a defender is to the target.
It's an interesting tool, but one drawback is that it doesn't distinguish between the receiver and the quarterback. So if a QB has a high completion percentage above expectation, that's probably a good sign, but at least some of that credit belongs to his receivers. How much is hard to say.
But what we can say is this: Brees and Thomas were standouts. Brees led the league is completion percentage above expectation (plus-7.4 percent) by a good margin, while Thomas finished second among receivers with at least 50 targets at plus-16.2 percent. That was behind only Lockett, who does deserve mention with Wilson (third in completion percentage above expectation) because Lockett's targets were way further downfield than Thomas' on average, meaning the completion percentage boost was worth more on those plays.
This Brees-to-Thomas touchdown against the Bengals (shown below in the animation from NFL Next Gen Stats) had a 28 percent chance of completion with the wideout tightly covered and near the goal line. Still, the duo pulled it off.
Disappointment duo: Allen and Kelvin Benjamin, Bills
We mentioned Allen's struggles in terms of completion probability before, but Kelvin Benjamin managed to have a catch percentage 15 points below expectation during his time in Buffalo. And that was after he struggled to get open!
Certainly the Bucs were not convinced that Winston was an asset, because they left him on the bench at times this season in favor of veteran journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick. But Winston actually finished eighth in Total QBR due to a few factors.
For starters, his main asset is that he's willing to take chances that pay off over the long run. His passes averaged 10.8 air yards (second most) and 1.5 air yards beyond the sticks, highest in the league. On average, passes thrown beyond the line to gain have a much higher QBR than those behind it. Some of the credit here might go to Dirk Koetter and Todd Monken for the offensive scheme, but give some to Winston for being willing to execute the approach.
Winston's aggression shows up in other ways as 20.4 percent of his passes were thrown into tight windows (1 yard of separation or less), per NFL Next Gen Stats, the third highest in the league behind only Rosen and Fitzpatrick. It's hard to know whether that's really a good or bad thing (he did have a completion percentage above expectation of 1.9 percent).
One other note on Winston: No qualifying quarterback had a lower percentage of his passing yards come from yards after catch in 2018 than Winston, per NFL Next Gen Stats.
Ultimately, what is quite clear is that Winston's on-field performance was not what sank the Bucs this season.
A season ago, then-rookie Mitchell Trubisky ranked 29th in Total QBR with a 32.4. Just one year later, he vaulted himself up to third (72.8) on that same list. That's actually a slightly larger QBR jump than Goff made from 2016 to 2017 (and Goff was truly horrid in his rookie campaign).
So how did Trubisky do it?
It was all about his legs. He would have been a runaway winner for the best runner award (above) had Allen not sneaked in there and stolen it from him. The reality is that Trubisky as a pure passer was solid but unexceptional. On plays that actually involve a pass attempt, he ranked 12th in QBR. He did benefit from one of the better pass-blocking offensive lines standing in front of him, but a slightly lower-than-average percentage of his targets were open or wide-open.
No quarterback (who qualified in both halves of the season) improved in QBR from the first half (35.8) to the second (70.4) more than Mayfield. Hmm, what could have changed in Cleveland at the midway point of the season?
Let's just say teams in search of a quarterback this offseason would be smart to ignore Tyrod Taylor's 2018 when evaluating him.
Newton fell from a 65.6 QBR in the first half of the season to a 43.2 in the second half. But there's an easy explanation for the drop-off: Newton's ailing shoulder, which apparently is bad enough that it could prevent him from playing in 2019. Worst play-action passer: Ryan Tannehill, Miami Dolphins
You can slice and dice QBR in a bunch of different ways. Rosen took the dead-last prize in a bunch of categories, but don't sleep on Tannehill, who nabs this honor along with, for example, worst under-pressure QB. Tannehill's QBR on play-action passes is a staggeringly low 25.5; the next lowest this season was Joe Flacco at 47.8. Best deep-ball passer: Wilson
Wilson actually led the league in QBR on passes 10 or more yards downfield. And 20 or more yards downfield. And 30 or more yards downfield. Good thing no team dropped back to pass at a lower rate than the Seahawks this season.
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The 2018 NFL QB awards: Best and worst passers in 14 categories 🏈
Best QB of the season: Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs
Worst play-action passer: Ryan Tannehill, Miami Dolphins
Best deep-ball passer: Wilson
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