Geno Smith, Glennon, Barkley and Wilson: A Metrics Breakdown and Discussion

[NUGap]

Hey y'all, because I apparently like the draft more than the NFL season, I've done a QB breakdown even though the Dolphins don't need a QB. I figured it can be helpful to see who the Bills/ Jets could draft and to hear what people think of this year's QB class. Especially considering the news that Barkley won't throw at the combine, I'd like to see what people think.

Like last year when I did these, the stats are based off of me watching game film and writing down the factors that go into a play. I marked down where the ball was caught, what the formation was, why the ball was incomplete and many more factors. In each section, I’m going to post the relevant chart and then make comments on it.


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• Both Geno Smith and Matt Barkley throw a high amount of screens at 30% and 22%. These are significantly higher than what the AvgQB throws at 17%.
• All 4 quarterbacks throw a significant amount of passes within 1-5 yards of the line of scrimmage, but Barkley’s combined 52% screens and 1-5 yard passes are by far the highest among all QBs. For a comparison Tannehill only threw 38% of his passes in that short range.
• The quarterbacks are pretty even among the 6-10 yard intermediate range, all hovering around the same 21% we see with the AvgQB.
• Mike Glennon by far is the most likely to go deep. He’s above average in both the 11-20 range and the 20+ range. The only one of the four quarterbacks to do so.
• Barkley, Smith and Wilson all hover in the combined 28% range past 20 yards, all are below average compared to last year’s QB class.

Accuracy

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This one requires a bit of explanation. The color coding are comparisons to the AvgQB, thus green is above average, yellow is average, and red is below average. I have also taken out drops, for what I call the Perfect Receiver Rating, thus the completion percentages aren’t what you’d see in the box scores.

• Both Geno Smith and Mike Glennon are elite in terms of short 1-5 yard passes. Their accuracies at 83% and 82% are better than RGIII’s last year and would have put them behind only Russell Wilson in that zone.
• The biggest red flag for me when looking at Barkley is the low completion percentage in the 1-5 yard zone. He threw in that area 30% of the time, but wasn’t at average. This however is where the numbers from last year come in handy, Tannehill threw a similar 69% in the 1-5 yard zone. So I feel like we can attribute that to the short style west-coast game.
• Geno Smith is excellent in the intermediate zones of 6-10 yards and 11-20 yards. Tyler Wilson is really not. This is what concerns me about Tyler Wilson, he’s pushing average in the 1-5 yard zone but can’t hit average at any other range. I don’t think he’ll be able to push the ball down field in the NFL. If you look at the "Results" chart at the bottom, he underthrows a significant number of his passes. That combined with his poor deeper accuracy would lead me to struggle with him.
• Barkley and Glennon are really the solid deep threats we see here. Both can hit the 11-20 range solidly and Barkley is excellent at 20+ yards. As a reference, Luck was at 50% on 20+ last year and RGIII was at 62.5%.

Adjusted Completion %
The last bit of information I have is going to require a bit of explanation. My goal was to take out the variability of systems they all played in. Thus, how would Geno Smith have performed in Mike Glennon’s shoes? This is imperfect, but it gives you a feel for how the systems helped or harmed them.

What I’ve done is taken out drops and then used my composite of targets in each zone from last year’s QBs to create an average system. Thus, I took their completion percentages, total passes, and the average system to find out what their overall completion percentage would have been in the average system.

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• The top number is the adjusted completion percentage and the bottom number is the change from their overall completion percentage (with drops already taken out)
• Thus we see that Geno’s system helped him the most, had he been forced to throw more deep routes and less screens his overall completion percentage would have gone down roughly 2.8%
• Barkley similarly was harmed due to the high amount of screens and 1-5 yard passes he throws, the “gimme” passes
• Glennon was actually helped by this. He threw many more deep passes than the others and would have benefited overall from throwing more screens and shorter passes.
• Tannehill was actually +5 in this last year, the highest of any QB in these two classes. This most likely would tell us that the system he played in asked for some of the most difficult throws in college.

Here's one further chart, I'll present without comment. It's the result of the plays (this is new). Some of it is a bit subjective, but I tried to apply the same filters to all QBs.

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These are pretty much that stats I had last year. I've made a site though, mostly just to hold my data and writeups, that has more data on these QBs like red zone yardage, yardage by quarter, completion percentage by formation, completion percentage by down, etc. You can see the rest of that here:
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I've also done individual breakdowns on
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and
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. In the future I'll be posting my WR data on there (and posting a Dolphins-centric version here) as well as other positions I'll be looking at. Probably DE and CB right after I finish QBs and WRs. I hope everyone can find this useful or at least semi-interesting. I'll definitely be posting ones that apply more to the Dolphins soon enough.

[ckparrothead]

What's your Twitter name so I can credit you for some of these stats?

[NUGap]

@NUGap, appreciate it (my one follower is going to be pumped, ha..)

EDIT: But if you're so inclined and have the space, you can just link to the site at: wp.me/p375X8-26 it probably gives better info than my twitter account. No big deal though.

[ckparrothead]

To quote something you wrote in the individual QB breakdown...

He’s throwing into single coverage a lot. This is the most concerning to me, 10% of his passes were deflected after throwing into single coverage. This is one of those things you want to supplement by watching tape, because you wonder if he’s making bad decisions and throwing into tight coverage too much.

I don't see this as concerning at all. A number of things go into it obviously but one observation I often have about Barkley is that he throws a lot into single coverage in situations where he trusts his receiver to win and make a play. That's part of elevating the players around you. They either step up to the plate or they don't.

Take the following play.


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On this play he's reading the single coverage and trusting Marquise Lee to cross Ifo Ekpre-Olomu's face and...well, essentially do anything BUT what Marquise Lee actually did on the play. Ifo got a little physical with Lee and some refs might've called it, others would let it go since it's the end zone, and instead of continuing on the route Lee just gives up on the route and starts lobbying for flags before the play is even over. It's a really bad rep for Marquise Lee and something he should answer to in interviews.

That's something you notice a lot when you watch a lot of Barkley. He's throwing to his receivers and asking them to win and make a play, making the right reads and making the right throws...but sometimes his receivers were just screwing around. They weren't very disciplined.

Take the fact that less than 6% of Geno Smith's throws went incomplete despite single coverage...where Barkley had 10% of his passes go incomplete in single coverage, that tells me that Geno's targets were winning more.

[ckparrothead]

Also the fact that Geno Smith had 3x the number of passes go incomplete into double coverage as anyone else is something you notice if you watch Geno play a lot. He doesn't necessarily make good decisions consistently.

[NUGap]

To quote something you wrote in the individual QB breakdown...



I don't see this as concerning at all. A number of things go into it obviously but one observation I often have about Barkley is that he throws a lot into single coverage in situations where he trusts his receiver to win and make a play. That's part of elevating the players around you. They either step up to the plate or they don't.

Take the following play.


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On this play he's reading the single coverage and trusting Marquise Lee to cross Ifo Ekpre-Olomu's face and...well, essentially do anything BUT what Marquise Lee actually did on the play. Ifo got a little physical with Lee and some refs might've called it, others would let it go since it's the end zone, and instead of continuing on the route Lee just gives up on the route and starts lobbying for flags before the play is even over. It's a really bad rep for Marquise Lee and something he should answer to in interviews.

That's something you notice a lot when you watch a lot of Barkley. He's throwing to his receivers and asking them to win and make a play, making the right reads and making the right throws...but sometimes his receivers were just screwing around. They weren't very disciplined.

Absolutely, that was my read on it too. A lot of my data on the "single coverage" came on those 5 yard slants you see. Barkley's first and only read is to hit that slant regardless and the receiver has to be there to box out and make the play. I actually tried to be fairly forgiving towards the quarterback when marking down coverage and interceptions and overthrows. If I expected the receiver to make a play, I'd put it on the WR. There were some interceptions that were flukes that I ended up marking down as drops due to poor receiver play. That's exactly why I said you need to look at the tape more because statistics don't always tell the whole truth. When I'm trying to apply a "result" to all QBs there are going to be some flukes here and there. Luckily there are many more people smarter than I doing tape evaluation, hopefully I can just complement it with some stats.

Also I'm a big fan of Barkley's. I really liked him last year when I did all the stats. I haven't written it up yet, but his numbers hardly changed at all in terms of the passing game. He got a bit less accurate, but his deep ball actually drastically improved. I think he got a bad rap this year, but anyone who liked him last year should still like him this year.

---------- Post added at 06:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:58 PM ----------

Here's Barkley v. Barkley

Targets
	Barkley 2011	Barkley
Screens	24.34	21.98%
1-5 Yards	26.55	30.22%
6-10 Yards	16.81	18.68%
11-20 Yards	16.81	17.58%
20+ Yards	15.49	11.54%

PRR Comp%
	Barkley '11	Barkley
Screens	94.34	85.00
1-5 Yards	70.69	69.09
6-10 Yards	70.59	67.65
11-20 Yards	61.76	59.38
20+ Yards	40.63	52.38
Total	70.62	68.68

[Twitches Brew]

Awesome job, NUGap. Much appreciated.

[ckparrothead]

Just out of curiosity was looking at Barkley and Russell Wilson's stat splits. I excluded freshman performance and looked at them against Ranked opponents.

Russell Wilson completed 54.9% of his passes with 7.6 YPA, 6.57% TD and 2.86% INT against Ranked opponents. A 89.4 passer rating.
Matt Barkley completed 60.8% of his passes with 7.5 YPA, 5.97% TD and 2.98% INT against Ranked opponents. A 91.3 passer rating.

Actually pretty similar.

[NUGap]

Just out of curiosity was looking at Barkley and Russell Wilson's stat splits. I excluded freshman performance and looked at them against Ranked opponents.

Russell Wilson completed 54.9% of his passes with 7.6 YPA, 6.57% TD and 2.86% INT against Ranked opponents. A 89.4 passer rating.
Matt Barkley completed 60.8% of his passes with 7.5 YPA, 5.97% TD and 2.98% INT against Ranked opponents. A 91.3 passer rating.

Actually pretty similar.

Although these aren't specifically against ranked opponents, we can make the comparison happen. This is Wilson 2011 versus Barkley 2012.

Comp%
	Wilson	Barkley
Screens	100.00	85.00
1-5 Yards	92.59	69.09
6-10 Yards	63.16	67.65
11-20 Yards	68.18	59.38
20+ Yards	38.10	52.38
Total	70.10	68.68

Targets
	Wilson	Barkley
Screens	8.82	21.98%
1-5 Yards	26.47	30.22%
6-10 Yards	20.59	18.68%
11-20 Yards	21.57	17.58%
20+ Yards	22.55	11.54%

I remember doing this last year and being impressed with Wilson's accuracy in the 11-20 range and how often he threw it deep. I mean people were talking about how short he was but he was going 20+ yards 23% of the time. Granted his completion percentage wasn't great, however it's most likely because he was going deep often.

I don't know how many similarities I see, at least in the nitty gritty of their college stats, but you of course have to account for system and everything. And that doesn't take away from their performances against good opponents. I loved how distributed Wilson's targets were in college, it just showed me that he was willing to throw that ball at whatever depth whenever he needed to (and the Wisky system). But I still see things I like in Barkley's game, like that his completion percentage doesn't drop off drastically at any certain point. You see that with Tyler Wilson especially.

As an aside, for anyone interested, I just finished up Tyler Wilson's breakdown. You can pretty much get the same numbers on the comparative charts, but sometimes it's helpful to see them in a vacuum. I'm just going to say I'm not a fan.
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[NUGap]

Just talking straight QBs, I don't understand why Barkley is getting overlooked. I guess I do, but I don't think it's right. Everyone thinks they know Barkley, he's the name that was thrown about last year and this year, thus people are bored with him. For kicks and grins, I checked the page views on each individual breakdown I put up. Glennon has been up for like 3 hours and Barkley for 2 days and Glennon already has more views. Now, I actually like Glennon a bit, but I feel like Barkley is getting screwed. I suppose he's not the flavor of the day, but still. I don't know if that's going to translate to draft day and if teams will have the same mentality fans will. Will people be surprised when he goes higher than they think? I don't know, it's strange though.

EDIT: Again, for anyone interested, Glennon's individual stats are here:
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