It's hard to believe how good Russell Wilson was in his rookie season. He compiled a passer rating of 120 in his final eight games. That was the best in entire league -- and two of the other quarterbacks in the top 5 were also youngsters.
What ever happened to the idea that you had to be an experienced veteran to thrive at quarterback? That's been changing in recent years, with more rookies playing reasonably well right away.
Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco did it in 2008. Andy Dalton and Cam Newton did it in 2011. And Russell Wilson, Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck all had a lot of success last year.
Wilson led the way, putting up better numbers in the second half of the season than even guys like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers.
Are you serious?
Griffin and Colin Kaepernick were also awfully good in the final eight games of last year. Kaepernick, of course, wasn't a rookie, but he was in his first season (half season) as a starter.
Giddyap, young bloods.
The following chart shows all quarterbacks who had at least 100 pass attempts in their teams' final eight games.
| PASSER RATING, FINAL EIGHT GAMES | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pct | TD | Int | Rating | |
| Russell Wilson | 67.2% | 16 | 2 | 120.3 |
| Robert Griffin III | 64.1% | 12 | 2 | 109.0 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 65.1% | 18 | 4 | 108.1 |
| Peyton Manning | 67.7% | 17 | 5 | 103.1 |
| Colin Kaepernick | 62.7% | 10 | 3 | 98.7 |
| Tony Romo | 64.8% | 18 | 6 | 98.4 |
| Drew Brees | 64.9% | 21 | 11 | 97.0 |
| Tom Brady | 60.6% | 18 | 5 | 96.7 |
| Matt Ryan | 68.4% | 15 | 8 | 95.4 |
| Cam Newton | 58.4% | 13 | 4 | 94.2 |
| Philip Rivers | 61.7% | 14 | 5 | 90.8 |
| Joe Flacco | 59.6% | 12 | 4 | 90.8 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 55.6% | 10 | 4 | 88.8 |
| Andy Dalton | 60.5% | 13 | 5 | 88.1 |
| Matt Schaub | 64.7% | 10 | 8 | 85.6 |
| Eli Manning | 56.6% | 14 | 7 | 84.8 |
| Carson Palmer | 61.3% | 9 | 6 | 84.8 |
| Sam Bradford | 57.9% | 13 | 6 | 82.7 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 59.4% | 9 | 7 | 80.8 |
| Matthew Stafford | 56.4% | 12 | 10 | 76.8 |
| Jay Cutler | 57.5% | 7 | 6 | 76.3 |
| Christian Ponder | 58.4% | 8 | 5 | 75.8 |
| Brandon Weeden | 60.6% | 5 | 7 | 75.0 |
| Ryan Tannehill | 57.6% | 7 | 7 | 74.0 |
| Andrew Luck | 51.2% | 13 | 10 | 73.5 |
| Chad Henne | 54.2% | 11 | 11 | 73.0 |
| Josh Freeman | 54.1% | 11 | 12 | 70.4 |
| Jake Locker | 52.9% | 6 | 9 | 65.7 |
| Brady Quinn | 56.2% | 2 | 5 | 64.9 |
| Mark Sanchez | 56.4% | 3 | 10 | 58.0 |
--Ian Allan