Fantasy Football: 2013 Quarterback Review – Passing Performance

We’re winding down our recap of the best and worst performers from 2013 at the quarterback position. First, we looked at the critical aspect of weekly performance and then we focused on the rushing impact from this new crop of athletically gifted breed of signal callers. The one last thing to go over is pretty important as well I suppose, passing the football.

Read more about the 2013 Fantasy Season in Review

Wide Receiver Review – The Target Multiplier

Wide Receiver Review – The Red Zone

Wide Receiver Review – Hallow Routes

Running Back Review – FPPRR

Running Back Review – Rushing Production

Running Back Review – Touchdown Effect

Quarterback Review – Weekly Performance

Adjusted Yards Per Attempt

People such as Michael Salfino and others have touched on the importance of Adjusted Yards per Attempt (AY/A) and it’s correlation to winning real football games, but also as a model of efficiency from the play of the quarterback. It also has a high correlation with players that happen to score tons of fantasy points and are efficient at scoring them without necessarily having high volume. If you’re not familiar with AY/A, take a look at the all time leaderboard here.

A quarterback in dink and dunk passing attack (Alex Smith) is always going to appear efficient from a completion percentage aspect, but never going to reward you with a high ceiling. Go back to our weekly performance review and see for yourself. In our realm we cherish volume, but when that expected volume is attached to an inefficient player and it gets reduced, you’re really exposing yourself.

An efficient player with low volume is twofold. On one hand, his efficiency could be tied to that low sample, but on the other, he could ascend to high levels. As a fantasy owner, you almost always want to tie yourself to an efficient player gaining volume as opposed to an already sub par performer losing it, even if you miss along the way.

Fellow XN Sports alum, C.D. Carter came up with Fantasy Points per aimed throw (FPAT) with the help of Pro Football Focus when looking at the performance of Jay Cutler and Josh McCown here. With their assistance, we can look at quarterback attempts and scale them down to what they refer to as “aimed throws”, casting aside the spikes, throw aways and batted passes at the line of scrimmage and plays where the quarterback was hit as he threw.  Junking all of those hallow attempts, we arrive at our aimed throw totals and thus can create our new AY/A from those totals.

If you recall, both Vick and Foles showed up on the positive end of rushing efficiency despite being completely different types of athletes. Here, they show up again on the positive end despite being completely different types of passers. After only one season, Chip Kelly’s system appears beyond favorable in creating the perfect storm of passing and rushing impact for fantasy football quarterbacking. If you happen to play in Dynasty leagues and bought shares of Foles on the cheap, things are looking very rosy at the moment, but on the other hand, Foles’ true ability likely doesn’t match his production.

Another pair teammates show up from Chicago, and given the known whispering abilities of Marc Trestman, that’s not very alarming. McCown was definitely a shade above of Cutler in nearly every measurable way (more coming), but Cutler is going to be just fine owning going forward, even if he’s not as aesthetically pleasing.

Lastly, you get a trio of guys who provide that extra rushing sauce in Wilson, Newton and Kaepernick. Wilson is already given the title as the best passer of three for good reason, but neither Cam nor Kap disappoint in that regard and move the ball vertically at a high rate with minimal mistakes.

*min 150 Aimed Attempts

Two Browns show up and Brian Hoyer would’ve made the list as well (who was worse than both Weeden and just above Campbell at 7.61). It was pretty much the upmost disaster in Cleveland this season behind center, which was already proven given Josh Gordon’s dominance in the target multiplier.

Everyone else here is and was pretty irrelevant for fantasy purposes. The only quarterback to finish the season inside the top 12 overall scorers with an AY/A under 8.0 yards was Andrew Luck (7.93), and only Alex Smith (7.9) and Ryan Tannehill (7.93) joined him as top 20 quarterbacks.

FPAT Revisited

Taking C.D. Carter’s FPAT and then removing all of the rushing points generated by the quarterback, we can get  locked in on only passing fantasy points per attempt generated on aimed throws.

*Standard Scoring (25 passing yards = 1 pt, 4 pt Pass TD)

More of the same names appear on the level of excellence as usual, but we get our first appearance of Romo and Bradford in regards to signs of positivity. Pat Thorman has charted the Dallas offensive inabilities of 2013 to great extent and what the addition of Scott Linehan could mean for the entire offense altogether going forward. Romo will once again be a strong play from the discount rack.

Bradford is interesting because we really have little to believe that he could be the longterm solution in St. Louis at this point or if he even makes it to 2014 as their starter. He was averaging 37 pass attempts per game to start the season, so his totals here are promising since they came with heavy volume and for those looking to buy cheap. If he does stay, he will have the benefit of a running game as well, something the Rams didn’t even attempt to do while he was starting. In a roundabout way, Bradford may have given us the Zac Stacy magic many enjoyed last season.

*Min 150 Aimed Attempts

Opposite of the runners that were also effective passers but lacking volume, here’s where the danger zone of the fantasy football Konami Code shows up. Pryor, Smith, Manuel, Ponder and Griffin were all just brutal from a fantasy passing perspective and already came with low passing volume.  The interesting thing as well is that negative gameflow has an adverse effect on all of these players. Instead of just creating garbage points, all of these guys nearly got worse when trailing, just flailing errant throws around in soft zone coverages. It’s hard to take off and effectively adlib and run when the defense is just hanging back trying to give you clock killing completions.

Clemens wasn’t asked to do much for good reason, so if we combine the aforementioned Bradford with the security of balanced offense, that reinforces the thoughts of making him a fantasy stable quarterback we stated earlier.  Eli and Flacco close out the 2013 look at quarterbacks in all of their elite glory.

Next week we will take a look at some tight ends, but only a small basis since another XN writer has squatters rights on all things coming from the inline pass catchers.

Rich Hribar Fantasy Football Analyst

Rich Hribar is a husband, father, sports meteorologist and a slave to statistics. A lifelong sports fan and fantasy gamer. Follow @LordReebs

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