On Friday, I posted the chart, showing how running backs fared in the two halves of the season – which ones improved and declined. It seemed to generate some interest, so I figured I’d try the same concept with quarterbacks.
As with running backs, I’m not listing all of them. Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick, for example, played in only one half of the season each. So to be listed here, a player must have attempted at least 100 passing in both his first eight games and his last eight games.
I decided to use the NFL’s “passer rating” as the stat of choice. That league generated number is a composite of four different statistics, combining touchdowns, interceptions, yards-per-attempt and completion percentage. Each of those categories is weighted evenly – worth 39.6, I know, because if you throw nothing but incompletions but at least don’t get intercepted, that’s your rating. They set it up originally so that if you were up around 100, that went you were doing really well.
For this exercise, I wanted to look not at overall ratings but at which guys moved a lot – who got a lot better and who got a lot worse.
Five really picked it up in the second half of the season: Kirk Cousins, Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, Matthew Stafford and Sam Bradford. (Give Bradford some credit; he played just well enough to cause the Eagles to panic into giving him a really bad contract that they will surely regret.)
Five declined by over 20 rating points: Nick Foles, Aaron Rodgers, Derek Carr, Tom Brady and Marcus Mariota.
I also see Tyrod Taylor is a decliner, and he’s been widely discussed this week, with the Bills apparently not crazy about him – they’re carefully looking at the rookie quarterbacks and letting him twist in the wind without a contract extension. Taylor could have helped his cause by playing better in the second half of last year.
| PASSING: 1st-2nd halves of season | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Player | 1-8 | 9-16 | ~Rat |
| Kirk Cousins | 82.9 | 126.1 | 43.2 |
| Cam Newton | 81.4 | 116.7 | 35.3 |
| Russell Wilson | 95.0 | 124.3 | 29.3 |
| Matthew Stafford | 84.1 | 110.1 | 26.0 |
| Sam Bradford | 79.5 | 96.0 | 16.5 |
| Teddy Bridgewater | 83.4 | 94.4 | 11.0 |
| Blake Bortles | 83.2 | 93.5 | 10.3 |
| Alex Smith | 92.1 | 99.8 | 7.7 |
| Jay Cutler | 89.6 | 95.2 | 5.6 |
| Drew Brees | 100.8 | 101.3 | 0.5 |
| Jameis Winston | 84.0 | 84.4 | 0.4 |
| Ryan Tannehill | 88.7 | 88.8 | 0.1 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 94.6 | 94.4 | -0.2 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 89.3 | 86.9 | -2.4 |
| Matt Ryan | 92.3 | 85.6 | -6.7 |
| Carson Palmer | 110.2 | 99.3 | -10.9 |
| Eli Manning | 99.9 | 87.6 | -12.3 |
| Brian Hoyer | 97.1 | 83.4 | -13.7 |
| Andy Dalton | 111.0 | 96.6 | -14.4 |
| Tyrod Taylor | 108.9 | 93.3 | -15.6 |
| Philip Rivers | 102.1 | 84.6 | -17.5 |
| Marcus Mariota | 101.5 | 79.7 | -21.8 |
| Tom Brady | 113.5 | 89.7 | -23.8 |
| Derek Carr | 104.3 | 79.2 | -25.1 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 108.2 | 80.5 | -27.7 |
| Nick Foles | 79.7 | 48.9 | -30.8 |
—Ian Allan