The NFL’s Thanksgiving-Black Friday combo was a mess.
Every single game featured at least one vastly underperforming quarterback. One of them was Tim Boyle, so that was expected. In the cases of Jared Goff, Geno Smith and Sam Howell, it was not.
Each wound up on the wrong side of big deficits. Only Goff was able to climb back to respectability as the New York Jets, Washington Commanders and Seattle Seahawks combined to lose by 74 total points. So if you skipped holiday football to do some turkey prep or brave the crowds at the outlet shops or merely focus on the Division III playoffs instead (Mount Union, woof), you made the right choice.
That trend continued on Sunday. Derek Carr and Desmond Ridder traded off poorly thought out passes in an NFC South rivalry game between the New Orleans Saints and Atlanta Falcons. Kenny Pickett’s inability to find open receivers helped make Joe Burrow understudy Jake Browning look great by comparison. Mac Jones and Tommy DeVito were the starters in a game people actually paid money to see.
But which quarterbacks were truly the most disappointing? Fortunately, we’ve got tools to better understand just how damaging each underwhelming performances was. Using the advanced stat expected points added (EPA) can gauge how much a quarterback brings to the table compared to a typical player.
By comparing each passer’s Week 12 EPA against their 2023 adjusted average, we get a better picture of just how frustrating their days were. And we can find both of those thanks to The Athletic’s Ben Baldwin and his incredibly useful stats sites RBSDM.com and HabitatRing.com. So let’s take a look at who disappointed the most in the 12th Sunday of the 2023 season.