Rookie Preseason Passing Brilliance (Revisited)

[percyhoward]

I'm personally ready for a new QB era here and hoping Dak will kick some butt out there. I would love to see this team enjoy more post season success.

All of us would.

But if Dak (or whoever succeeds Romo) is great and the rest of the team is just average (or worse), don't expect the results to be any different from the last 10 years.

 

[ThreeandOut]

This first part is an update of a post I made a couple of weeks ago on the highest preseason passer ratings of rookie QB in the last 10 years. Minimum 40 attempts and a preseason rating of 95. The QB's rating in real games (if any) is at the end. Adding in 2016 performances, the only new names are those of Prescott and the Lions' Jake Rudock.

137.8 Dak Prescott 4th Dal 16 --
129.6 Brett Hundley 5th GB 15 --
122.6 Brett Ratliff FA NYJ 07 --
111.2 Teddy Bridgewater 1st Min 14 87.0
110.3 Russell Wilson 3rd Sea 12 101.8
110.1 Nick Foles 3rd Phi 12 87.3
110.0 Blake Bortles 1st Jac 14 80.0
109.9 Colt Brennan 6th Was 08 --
108.3 Jay Cutler 1st Den 06 86.0
108.2 Derek Carr 2nd Oak 14 83.7
106.6 Jeff Tuel FA Buf 13 45.1
105.3 Bruce Gradkowski 6th TB 06 65.8
100.2 Matt Flynn 7th GB 08 85.7
99.9 Trent Edwards 3rd Buf 07 75.5
99.0 Jimmy Garoppolo 2nd NE 14 91.9
97.6 Zach Mettenberger 6th Ten 14 75.4
96.3 Jake Rudock 6th Det 16 --
96.5 Brady Quinn 1st Cle 07 64.4
95.9 Sam Bradford 1st StL 10 81.0
95.5 Matt Leinart 1st Ari 06 70.2

I didn't expect at the time of my previous post that Romo would go down in the next game, meaning that Dak would only play 3 games. Eliminating preseason game 4 gives us a smaller, but actually a better sample to draw from. I took these same 20 QB and compared their performances in games 1-3 only, removing any players with fewer than 40 total attempts (Dak had 50), any who had more than 20 attempts in the first game (Dak had 12), any who did not have at least 10 attempts with a rating of 85 in the third game (Dak had a 23 attempts with a 99 rating), and any who had more than two-thirds of his attempts in just one game.

137.8 Dak Prescott 39 of 50 454 yd 5 td 0 int
119.4 Russell Wilson 35 of 52 464 yd 5 td 1 int
112.2 Nick Foles 36 of 57 507 yd 6 td 2 in
99.5 Blake Bortles 28 of 46 435 yd 1 td 0 int
84.6 Sam Bradford 27 of 49 270 yd 2 td 0 int

What does it mean? Maybe nothing. Small samples and exhibition games can be very misleading, and this is a combination of both.

Amazing preseason performance though. No other can match its consistency.

For the QBs on this list that played in the regular season, on average the regular season rookie year QB rating was about 25 points lower than the preseason. If Dak's regular season QB rating is 25 points lower, that's a rating of 112. Russell Wilson lead the league last year in QB rating at 110.

 

[JDSmith]

For the QBs on this list that played in the regular season, on average the regular season rookie year QB rating was about 25 points lower than the preseason. If Dak's regular season QB rating is 25 points lower, that's a rating of 112. Russell Wilson lead the league last year in QB rating at 110.

Sure, but we all know that his passer rating in the preseason was inflated by the fact that he threw a pick and it got called back because of a post interception penalty. How often does that happen? If it had been a pass interference or something that had an affect on the play it would be normal to discount the interception, but Dak got a gift from the gods when he threw it and got hit a second later it what was deemed roughing the passer.

That roughing the passer was good for an 11 point swing in his passer rating.

 

[jobberone]

Sure, but we all know that his passer rating in the preseason was inflated by the fact that he threw a pick and it got called back because of a post interception penalty. How often does that happen? If it had been a pass interference or something that had an affect on the play it would be normal to discount the interception, but Dak got a gift from the gods when he threw it and got hit a second later it what was deemed roughing the passer.

That roughing the passer was good for an 11 point swing in his passer rating.

Still impressive either way.

 

[ThreeandOut]

Sure, but we all know that his passer rating in the preseason was inflated by the fact that he threw a pick and it got called back because of a post interception penalty. How often does that happen? If it had been a pass interference or something that had an affect on the play it would be normal to discount the interception, but Dak got a gift from the gods when he threw it and got hit a second later it what was deemed roughing the passer.

That roughing the passer was good for an 11 point swing in his passer rating.

Fair enough, subtract another 11 points off his rating to put him at 101 (closer to 102). That puts him around 5th in QB rating last year.

 

[JDSmith]

Still impressive either way.

Absolutely, almost exactly the same as Russell Wilson did in his first preseason. And Wilson has turned out pretty good, and he was solid as a rookie. If we get that we're in great shape.