Burrow was the highest-graded passer last season according to Pro Football Focus.
It’s hard to take much bigger of a sophomore leap than [autotag]Joe Burrow[/autotag] did in 2021.
After registering arguably the best season from a passer in college football history, Burrow became the first overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft for the Cincinnati Bengals. He showed some promise as a rookie, though he was held back by roster holes and a torn ACL that ultimately ended his campaign prematurely.
No one knew quite what to expect from Burrow last fall, but he certainly exceeded whatever expectations were in place. He finished with 4,611 yards, 34 touchdowns and 14 interceptions while leading Cincinnati to its first playoff win in three decades and within reach of a Lombardi Trophy.
Burrow isn’t being overlooked this time around, though. After his stellar second season, he ranks as the NFL’s No. 27 overall player entering the 2022 season, according to Pro Football Focus.
It seems hard to believe that just a year ago everybody was just hoping a serious knee injury didn’t derail Burrow’s career. He came back significantly better and finished the 2021 season with the highest overall PFF grade (91.8) among quarterbacks, including the playoffs. Burrow looks like one of the game’s best already and will have an improved offensive line to work behind in 2022.
The numbers certainly back up how good Burrow looked last season as he earned an elite grade that constituted the best among NFL quarterbacks. The Bengals got better up front this offseason, and with a young, superstar-in-the-making receiver in former college teammate Ja’Marr Chase, Burrow should be on his way to becoming one of the best quarterbacks in the league, if he isn’t already.
Jalen #Hurts led the #Eagles to the #playoffs in his second season and it’s safe to say, no player in the #NFL offers more value at their position #TBvs#PHI #PHIvsTB #FlyEaglesFly
Jalen Hurts cap # this year $1,369,358 52nd highest paid QB ✅ Playoffs
❌No playoffs $32,000,000 Russell Wilson $31,000,000 Kirk Cousins $26,912,500 Matt Ryan $21,305,882 Carson Wentz $10,569,130 Baker Mayfield $10,650,000 Jared Goff
There are 32 starting quarterbacks in the NFL and about 12-13 backups that are capable of starting at some point, as well, but Hurts did what several high-profile stars were unable to this season.
John Clark of NBC Sports recently asked a question in regards to Hurts’ value, and whether he’s the best bargain in the entire league?
We took an even deeper dive thanks to Over The Cap and NextGenStats, and you look at his total production, compared to other players around the league at his position, Hurts is by far the best bargain and offers the most value.
Ohio has produced the fifth most NFL quarterbacks with a total of 34. Here is a list of all of them and where they are from.
It may not be what it once was, but the state of Ohio is still a very fertile state for producing NFL talent. A state that is as rabid about high school and college football, and has the NFL Hall of Fame within its borders is all you need to know about which sport rules the day in the Buckeye state.
And while the Ohio State football program doesn’t have the best track record for producing top-shelf NFL quarterbacks, the state itself has still sent its fair share to the highest level in the sport. In fact, with 34 total, Ohio has produced the fifth most NFL quarterbacks behind only California (141), Texas (79), Pennsylvania (54), and Florida (39).
ESPN recently partnered with Pro Football Reference to dissect several analytics and measurables when it comes to where NFL quarterbacks come from. For instance, Ohio isn’t known for its quarterback prospects performing up to expectations, and can’t thump its chest about having many starters, but the sheer volume is well above average.
We decided to put together a gallery of the 34 total NFL quarterbacks that have hailed from Ohio to take you down memory lane, or to perhaps raise your eyebrows in surprise.
Now, all we need to see is some of these OSU quarterbacks make a splash at the next level. You are on the clock, Mr. Justin Fields.
Ohio has produced the fifth most NFL quarterbacks with a total of 34. Here is a list of all of them and where they are from.
It may not be what it once was, but the state of Ohio is still a very fertile state for producing NFL talent. A state that is as rabid about high school and college football, and has the NFL Hall of Fame within its borders is all you need to know about which sport rules the day in the Buckeye state.
And while the Ohio State football program doesn’t have the best track record for producing top-shelf NFL quarterbacks, the state itself has still sent its fair share to the highest level in the sport. In fact, with 34 total, Ohio has produced the fifth most NFL quarterbacks behind only California (141), Texas (79), Pennsylvania (54), and Florida (39).
ESPN recently partnered with Pro Football Reference to dissect several analytics and measurables when it comes to where NFL quarterbacks come from. For instance, Ohio isn’t known for its quarterback prospects performing up to expectations, and can’t thump its chest about having many starters, but the sheer volume is well above average.
We decided to put together a gallery of the 34 total NFL quarterbacks that have hailed from Ohio to take you down memory lane, or to perhaps raise your eyebrows in surprise.
Now, all we need to see is some of these OSU quarterbacks make a splash at the next level. You are on the clock, Mr. Justin Fields.
Houston Texans coach David Culley talked about the situation surrounding QB Deshaun Watson.
New Houston Texans coach David Culley did not shy away from the 400-pound gorilla in the room.
Instead, he did what Jimmy Johnson always advised: you hit it with everything you got.
Quarterback Deshaun Watson and his disgruntlement with the organization is no secret. It is the only action Houston sports has seen put of its football team in January after a disappointing 4-12 season.
Culley fielded a question in his introductory press conference about Watson and his request for a trade, and was very candid about what his plans were with the three-time Pro Bowler from day one as the new coach.
“The only thing I knew was I was being interviewed for head coach, Deshaun Watson is a Houston Texan,” Culley said via Aaron Wilson of the Houston Chronicle. “That’s all I was concerned about and all I knew. He is a Houston Texan I want him to be a Houston Texan, and the reason I am in this position is because he is going to be a Houston Texan.”
If Culley can get Watson to buy in and call off the trade, it will be his first big win in the eyes of Houston sports fans.
Stop diagnosing what’s wrong with Carson Wentz. This is who he is.
With the Eagles playing on Monday Night Football this past week, the nation was once again forced back into discussing what’s happened to Carson Wentz since his 2017 season when he was widely seen as an MVP candidate.
Since that time, Wentz has been one of the worst starters in the NFL, ranking 27th in adjusted yards per attempt. Mitch Trubisky, Andy Dalton and Sam Darnold are the only quarterbacks who have attempted at least 1,000 passes over that time below him on the list.
There are a few popular theories for why Wentz has regressed since his breakout sophomore campaign: The knee injury he suffered at the end of 2017, his declining supporting cast, bad coaching and poor mechanics have all been offered up as explanations for his poor play.
But what if we’re overlooking the most obvious explanation for his apparent regression? What if there was no regression? What if he just wasn’t very good to begin with?
I get why that’s hard to believe with the numbers Wentz put up in 2017, when he threw 33 touchdowns against only seven interceptions while producing a QBR of 77.2. He also finished second in EPA behind NFL MVP Tom Brady. Throw in all those highlight-reel plays we saw during that 2017 season, and it’s easy to see why fans in Philly were so excited for what was surely going to be a bright future.
But when you look at how Wentz compiled those numbers, it’s easier to see why he’s been unable to match the heights of his 2017 season.
During that season, Wentz was unfathomably good in the red zone and on third down. Those are two areas where you want your quarterback to excel; but, due to sample size issues, a player’s production in those two statistical categories in a given season tells us very little about how he’ll perform in the future. Those numbers are subject to a lot of season-to-season variances, as a result. It’s much more useful to look at how he performed outside of the red zone and on early downs, where we have more plays and, therefore, a more substantial sample size.
Well, when you take out third and fourth downs, Wentz drops from second in EPA/play all the way down to 23rd! Before third down, he was a bottom-10 starter, and his early-down production in 2017 is awfully similar to his career baseline:
via Sports Info Solutions
How about the red zone? In 2017, Wentz produced a red-zone success rate of 61.7%, which led the league by a comfortable margin. Outside of the red zone, though, Wentz dropped down to 18th in success rate. That was actually the lowest mark of his career before the 2020 season:
via Sports Info Solutions
All signs point to 2017 being an aberration for a player who’s been a middling-to-bad quarterback for about 80% of his career. I know he looks even worse in 2020, but that’s what happens to a quarterback with a smaller margin for error. There isn’t really a big difference between how he’s playing now and how he was playing then. Everything else around him has deteriorated, which just magnifies his deficiencies.
For instance, in 2017, Wentz produced an adjusted completion percentage — which takes into account things like receiver drops, spikes to stop the clock, throw aways and passes disrupted by contact from a defender — of 69.6%, per PFF. That was the worst of his career! During this rock-bottom season in 2020, that number is at 70.9%. His turnover-worthy play percentage has peaked in 2020 at 4.65%, but that’s not much of an increase over his career rate, which was sitting at 3.7% coming into the year.
This 2020 season is basically the inverse of his 2017 season. His true talent level is probably somewhere in the middle, where you’ll find a mediocre starting quarterback. So maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Instead of asking why Wentz has regressed, we should be asking why he’s failed to progress.
Houston has actually asked Watson to do more … and he has thrived.
Deshaun Watson has spent his entire career making other people look smart. So it’s no surprise that it happened again after just about every NFL fan rejoiced when the news of Bill O’Brien’s firing broke. Deshaun was free from what many believed to be an unimaginative offense and would finally be able to flourish.
Since O’Brien’s firing, Watson has more than flourished. He’s been the NFL’s best quarterback no matter the lens you choose to view it through. Since Week 5, Watson is Pro Football Focus’ highest-graded quarterback at 92.7. He leads all quarterbacks in success rate and trails only Patrick Mahomes in EPA per play. He’s averaging 9.0 yards per attempt, which leads the league. He’s thrown 19 touchdown passes — only Mahomes has thrown more — and two interceptions — only Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees (who has missed several games) have thrown fewer.
I could keep going, but you get the picture. He’s been very good.
Watson is thriving but not necessarily for the reasons one might suspect. It’s not that he’s been freed from an offense that put too much on his plate. It’s actually the opposite. With O’Brien out of the picture, Texans offensive coordinator Tim Kelly is heaping even more on that plate, as Watson’s personal quarterback coach Quincy Avery told me this week.
“I think they’re putting more on Deshaun’s shoulders in terms of him figuring situations out to create plays down the field,” Avery said. “I think when your head coach is a play-caller, there’s a tentativeness to your play-call selection. That made it difficult for him to call the game in a way that he necessarily wanted to, but now he’s able to call it as he sees it and there’s not too many chefs in the kitchen.”
Kelly has been smart enough to recognize what he has in Watson and what he has is one of the smartest pocket passers in the NFL. We rarely hear the fourth-year quarterback described in those terms. Beyond the obvious explanation for why that is — good old fashion racial bias — Avery has another theory explaining why the NFL world at large hasn’t recognized that aspect of Watson’s ever-expanding skillset.
“There’s a bit of racial bias there and then they’ve seen him do these super athletic plays and say ‘Well, he’s just successful because he can do X, Y and Z.’ But his ability to process information and recall things in the middle of a game are as good as it gets.”
That isn’t just the talk of a biased trainer, either. The numbers back up everything Avery is saying there. Strip out all of the scrambles, and all of the schematic shortcuts that reduce a quarterback’s thinking, and Watson stands out from the rest of the league. Here’s a look at how the league’s quarterbacks stack up in EPA on straight dropbacks (so no play-action) that stay in the pocket…
via Sports Info Solutions
You see those two bars towering over the rest of the league? That’s Watson and Mahomes … and Watson isn’t the one in second.
When you strip out two of those most-used schematic shortcuts, screen passes and RPOs — meaning we’re just looking at “pure” dropbacks now — the gap between Watson and the rest of the league, including Mahomes, grows…
Watson hasn’t just developed into a pocket passer. He’s developed into an elite pocket passer while still providing that second threat (his running ability) that every team is looking for in a quarterback. That combination is rare, and it allows him to not just get the most out of what’s around him — which is hard enough for a lot of quarterbacks — but he’s actually elevating it. Avery explained:
“They’re not creating a bunch of situations where people are just open and he’s benefitting from the play-calling being so great. He’s able to quickly diagnose things [without that schematic help]. You see him have to diagnose things and have to create plays within the pocket. He does everything you ask a quarterback to do and you don’t see those other guys — those system guys — do anything outside of what the offense is asking them to do.”
Watson has always had the ability to beat teams with his mind — just not to this extent. But there’s been a natural progression. A slow climb to the summit he’s reached in 2020. How did it happen? Getting the necessary reps to build up that mental Rolodex.
“Teams used to think they could trick him by sending pressure at him,” Avery says. “They’ve realized they can’t do that anymore. He knows exactly where the issues in protection are and where to go with the ball to beat the defense … [Early in his career] he just didn’t have that data to comb through as he was seeing things previously. It’s become a situation where he goes out on a field and he doesn’t feel like there’s any situation he hasn’t seen before.”
Watson’s own assessment of his improvement sounds awfully similar…
“I’ve just been that quarterback — that point guard,” Watson said before the Texans’ 41-25 win over the Lions on Thanksgiving. “Just taking the game in and really learning how to master my craft as a quarterback and read defenses and tell you what the defense is giving me.”
His mastery of the craft is most apparent when the Texans put him in empty. The defense knows he’s passing the ball. They know he only has five blockers in protection and has to get rid of the ball quickly. It doesn’t matter; he still dominates … and that’s been the case for two years running. After finishing second in success rate on empty dropbacks in 2019, he’s leading the NFL in 2020 — and nobody is within five percentage points of him.
Watson is making better (and quicker) decisions, but he hasn’t sacrificed the big-play ability. He’s still making those highlight-reel plays at a high rate.
But he’s found the perfect balance between playing smart and being aggressive. According to PFF, Watson has the lowest “Turnover Worthy Play Percentage” in the league, while only Rodgers ranks ahead of Watson in “Big-time Throw Percentage.”
That Watson has been able to avoid those negative plays — but still make the more difficult ones — while playing for a losing team is quite remarkable.
Everybody already knows Watson is special, but, because of the Texans’ record, I don’t know if the football-watching public has caught on to just how special he’s become. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say he’s already the second-best quarterback in the league and that the gap between him and that alien in Kansas City is almost negligible. The two are already putting up similar numbers and only one of them has Andy Reid, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce.
Of all of the impressive numbers I offered up throughout this piece, this one might be the most impressive: Watson is only 25 and will only get better from here.
How can Watson get better? With the way he’s playing right now, it’s hard to find a significant deficiency, but Avery says he and Watson have already targeted some areas of his game to work on. He’s just not willing to divulge them publicly.
Obviously, the Texans bringing in a coach who puts Watson in a position to succeed will help — Avery prefers a scheme that puts the mental burden on the quarterback — but with the way he’s trending, it probably doesn’t matter who’s calling the plays.
For truly elite quarterbacks, which Watson has become, it hardly ever does.
Touchdown Wireranks Buffalo’s situation as the 13th-best among quarterback scenarios
What does improvements in win totals, passing yards, touchdowns thrown, and interceptions tossed mean to a team’s quarterback situation?
Well, it gets them a little more respect.
Touchdown Wire ranked every NFL team’s quarterback situation ahead of the draft. Buffalo, who has received some criticism regarding the consistency of quarterback Josh Allen, has moved into a promising land. TD Wire ranks Buffalo’s situation as the 13th-best among quarterback scenarios.
Here the breakdown on the Bills:
Josh Allen is sort of like Lamar Jackson. Not as a talent, but as the future of the Buffalo Bills. He also has to find a way to stay healthy and keep improving. The Bills look like they have finally found a stable quarterback. He simply has to stay on the field.
Allen improved his passing yards per game by 20 yards from his rookie season to his second year in the league. He doubled his touchdown (10-to-20)total while cutting down on interceptions (12-to-9).
The Bills are in decent shape with Allen, many hope to see another step forward from Allen in Year 3. His prior mentioned improvements gives one faith in his abilities to do so.
Buffalo has the highest ranking among AFC East teams. The New York Jets slotted in at 23rd, Miami Dolphins 26th, and New England Patriots at 30th. The landscape of the division has changed massively with the departure of Tom Brady to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers via free agency.
Buffalo Bills defensive end Shaq Lawson says Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson is the best in the NFL at his position.
Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson is considered to be a part of the upper echelon of NFL quarterbacks. His dual threat abilities, aggressiveness and leadership, make for a tough beat for any defense. But is he the best quarterback in the NFL?
A member of his next opponent the Buffalo Bills seems to think so. On Tuesday, defensive end Shaq Lawson told Buffalo media that Watson is the best quarterback in the NFL.
“He’s the best quarterback in the league, I personally think,” Lawson said. “I always say that. I played two years with him. He’s a guy that’s made incredible plays throughout his football career and things like that.”
Lawson played with Watson at the University of Clemson. He also played with wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins. He sees playing the two on Saturday in the wild-card round as a treat.
“It’s going to be a challenge to stop him this week,” Lawson said. “Him and DeAndre Hopkins. I went to school with him and grew up with him so, I know both of those guys well. So, having the opportunity to go against both of those guys, It’s a great feeling.”
Watson finished the 2019 season second in the NFL in total touchdowns, with 34. He passed for 26, rushed in another seven and caught a touchdown from Hopkins. Despite so, he hasn’t received MVP consideration, as Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson, Christian McCaffrey and Michael Thomas highlight candidates to win the prestigious individual award.
On Saturday, Lawson will line up on a Bills defense with the sole purpose of taking down Watson. Buffalo boasts one of the NFL’s best pass defenses, which could realistically give the Texans quarterback fits.
However, according to Lawson, it won’t just be the Bills defense giving Watson fits. The Texans quarterback will do the same to them on Saturday.
