QB Performance Plots For NFL Week 10: These Graphics Look Concussed

• 1 comments - NFL - posted by Gregory Matthews on November 15, 2012

This is a guest post by Greg Matthews (Twitter: @StatsInTheWild), founder of Stats In The Wild, a blog focused on sports analytics and data visualization. If you’re interested in guest posting on TeamRankings, email us your post and we’ll consider it.

Aside from Alex Smith, who threw only 8 passes before suffering a concussion, the top QB Ratings of the week belonged to Josh Freeman (137.5), Russel Wilson (131.0), and Andy Dalton (127.6). They combined for zero interceptions and a total of 8 touchdowns.

However, inspecting the graphic below shows they each did this with relatively low total passing yards. Freeman threw for 201 yards, whereas Wilson and Dalton threw for 188 and 199, respectively. Not impressive, but at least sufficient to win.

(Just click on the graphic below to enlarge it…)

The real story of Week 10 was injuries.  As you move down the rows of the graphic, you see some odd shapes — check out Ben Roethlisberger — and a few new names, such as Colin Kaepernick, Jason Campbell, and Nick Foles. Bear in mind when viewing this week’s graphic that  these guys only had part of a game to amass their stats, so they can’t really be directly compared to many of the other quarterbacks.

Speaking of guys who can’t be directly compared to the other quarterbacks, enter Mark Sanchez. In Week 10 his passer rating was 40.7, he completed 9 of his 22 pass attempts (40.9%) for a total of 124 yards (5.6 yards/attempt), threw zero touchdowns, and had one interception. That’s bad enough for a nearly invisible QB chart. Step it up, Mark, sheesh.