QB Performance Plots for Week 15: Sanchez Finally Loses It

December 20, 2012 - by Gregory Matthews

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.

In Week 15 Matt Ryan and Drew Brees both led their teams to blowout, shutout victories with passer ratings of 142.6 and 124.6, respectively. Ryan completed 23 of 28 passes for 270 yards and 3 touchdowns, whereas Brees went 26 for 39 for 307 yards and four touchdowns and neither quarterback through an interception.

Ryan Tannehill also had a standout performance completing about 76% of his 28 passing attempts for 220 yards and two touchdowns. He also added 52 yards rushing on eight attempts and, most importantly, no interceptions.

So maybe Miami actually has a quarterback … or maybe it’s because they were playing the Jaguars. Either way Tannehill had a good week leading his team to a 24-3 victory.

(Just click the graphic below to enlarge it…)

Tom Brady’s performance produced an odd looking graph this week in his game against the 49ers, with a large red wedge for passing yards along with tiny wedges for everything else. This is the graph of a furious comeback and we’ve seen these before from players like Tony Romo in Week 12 and Eli Manning in Week 2.

In all of these games, each quarterback’s team fell behind by multiple touchdowns and in each case they all came back firing pass after pass to at least make the game exciting. Of the three, only Manning’s Giants were able to complete the com from behind victory, however.

This week’s worst performance was turned in by, and lately I feel like I say this every week, Mark Sanchez. Sanchez completed only 13 of his 28 passing attempts (just over 46%) for 131 yards and a touchdown. Adding his four interceptions, you end up with the tiny little dot of a graph for Sanchez.

It’s repeated performances like these that have eliminated the Jets from the playoffs, and ultimately gotten Sanchez benched as Greg McElroy will start the Jets’ week 16 game against the Chargers.

It seems strange that it took this long to bench Sanchez. He currently has the worst passer rating, 67.9, of any quarterback in the NFL this year who has played in at least ten games. His touchdown to interception ratio is 0.76. Further, the three guys directly above him are all rookies (Weeden, Luck, and Tannehill), each of whom have a passer rating over 70.

Happy Holidays!