Was Smith's fast finish a sign of things to come?

The real question is whether any of that matters. In general, I’m a Splits Happen type of analyst, but I thought I would run some numbers. As it turns out, perhaps there is some reason to think Smith’s strong December (subject to the caveats below) is a sign of good things to come.  Here’s what I did:

From 1990 to 2013, there were 51 quarterbacks who threw at least 224 passes during their rookie season. Toss out the 2013 rookies (EJ Manuel, Smith, and Mike Glennon), along with the nine quarterbacks who threw fewer than 100 passes in year two (Jimmy Clausen, Ryan Leaf, Kyle Orton, Chad Hutchinson, Andrew Walter, Bruce Gradkowski, Chris Weinke, Ken Dorsey, and Matt Stafford), and that leaves us with 39 quarterbacks who threw at least 224 passes as a rookie since 1990 and then at least 100 passes in their second season. For those quarterbacks, I calculated their Y/A and AY/A averages over their final 4 games of the season, and their Y/A and AY/A averages over the first 1-12 games of the season (with the 224 pass attempts minimum, I felt pretty confident that we would have a large enough sample on the “early” portion of the season).  Then I looked at how those 39 quarterbacks fared in their second years.

The table below shows all 39 quarterbacks, plus the 2013 rookies.  Here’s how to read the table below.  Heath Shuler, a rookie for Washington in 1994, had 150 “early” season attempts, defined as all pass attempts before the final 4 games of the season.  His early year Y/A average was 5.0 and his AY/A average was 2.8.  Shuler had 115 “late” season attempts, defined as pass attempts in the final four games.  His Y/A in the late part of the season was 7.9, and his AY/A was 7.8.  As a result, Shuler improved his Y/A by 3.0 and his AY/A by 5.0 over the final four games of the season.  In Year N+1 — i.e., 1995 for Shuler — he had 125 pass attempts, and averaged 6.0 Y/A and 3.9 AY/A.

So more than any other quarterback, Shuler showed the largest improvement in AY/A down the stretch of his rookie season. That’s not a positive sign for Smith, of course, since Shuler was, well, Shuler. But if you look at the top ten biggest improvers in AY/A (excluding Smith), they averaged 5.0 AY/A during the early part of their rookie years and then 7.9 AY/A during the home stretch. Then, in year two, they averaged 7.1 AY/A (after averaging, as a group, 6.0 AY/A as rookies). Nick Foles was a big reason for the group’s average improvement, so to the extent you believe that Foles’ breakout 2013 season wasn’t connected to his relatively strong finish in 2012, the data would be misleading. But all of the ten quarterbacks who made big jumps down the stretch in AY/A showed improvement in Year N+1 relative to their early-season numbers as rookies.

What about the quarterbacks who slumped down the stretch — and Glennon, at least statistically, would be one of the — how do they fare in year two? The eight ^[1]Why eight and not ten? Because that’s the more appropriate cutoff based on the data. quarterbacks (excluding Glennon) with the biggest dropoff in late-season AY/A averaged 5.8 AY/A in the “early” part of the season, 4.2 in the “late” part of the season, and then only 5.6 as sophomores.

We’re dealing with pretty small sample sizes here, but that’s just life when crunching numbers on NFL quarterbacks. It’s also worth keeping in mind that quarterbacks on average, fare better in year two than in his rookie year (even though many media members like to write articles about “sophomore slumps” for quarterbacks). But the 10 quarterbacks that were “fast finishers” as rookies averaged 6.0 AY/A over the full season and then 7.1 AY/A in year two; the quarterbacks who “hit the rookie wall” and struggled in the final quarter of the year averaged 5.3 AY/A as rookies over the full season and then only 5.6 AY/A as sophomores. The middle group was at 5.9 as rookies and then 6.1 as second-year passers. So there is certainly some evidence to indicate that a strong December is a good sign for a rookie quarterback and not just a “splits happen” type of event.

For Smith, the way quarterbacks like Foles, Manning, Bledsoe, Garcia, and Palmer finished their rookie years is a promising sign; however, I admit to still being a bit skeptical. In Smith’s case, his “early season” numbers are dragged down by a horrible November, not necessarily by a bad start to the season. Smith didn’t show steady progress throughout the year, he was just inconsistent and finished well; that would lend more credibility to the “splits happen” theory than Smith “figuring out the game as the season moved on.”

The better argument, in my opinion, for Smith’s future success is beyond the numbers. He played with perhaps the worst set of skill position talent in the NFL last year. According to Pro Football Focus, Stephen Hill led the team with 350 snaps on pass plays, followed by Jeremy Kerley (338), David Nelson (305), Santonio Holmes (304), Bilal Powell (280), Jeff Cumberland (261), Kellen Winslow (219), and Tommy Bohanon (118). Evaluating a rookie quarterback with those weapons is pretty challenging (especially when you remember that the “name players” in Hill and Holmes were close to useless when they were on the field). Smith finished 2nd to last (ahead of only Matt Schaub) in AY/A as a rookie season, but the Jets should add at least two wide receivers and a tight end through draft and free agency. That, more than a good December of not turning the ball over, is the most likely path to Smith becoming a viable NFL starter.

Smith looks to go deep against the Bucs.

Among the 35 quarterbacks with the most pass attempts, Glennon finished a very pedestrian 27th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. But he did it in a very unique way: Glennon had an outstanding 19/9 touchdown-to-interception ratio, but he ranked dead last in Net Yards per Attempt. One reason for that is Glennon averaged only 10.6 yards per completion, the 3rd worst average among the 35 passers.

Smith finished 34th in ANY/A, largely due to his horrific 12/21 TD/INT ratio. He was a bit better in NY/A, ranking 28th, but what’s interesting about the Jets quarterback is that he ranked 7th in yards per completion. That metric is not a particularly effective measure of passer quality — after all, Matt Ryan ranked 35th — but it is a pretty good way to describe a quarterback’s style. While both Glennon and Smith were below average, they were below average in very different ways.

The table below shows the 35 quarterbacks with the most pass attempts in 2013. The quarterbacks are listed in descending order by their ANY/A average. Then, for each quarterback, I’ve listed his NY/A average, his TD/INT Ratio, and his Yards per Completion average, along with where he ranks in those three categories. As always, all tables are fully sortable and searchable.

So what can we learn from the statistical profiles of Smith and Glennon? Since 1970, there have been 97 rookie quarterbacks who (1) ranked among the top 35 passers that year in attempts and (2) were 24 years old or younger. For each of those 97 quarterbacks, I recorded where they ranked as rookies in NY/A, TD/INT Ratio, and Y/C. Then, I created a “similarity scores” for each of the three rookies to each of the other quarterbacks in this dataset. The similarity score is based on a simple formula. For example, Mark Sanchez grades out as very similar to Geno Smith. Sanchez ranked 21st in NY/A, Smith 28th (the absolute value of the difference is 7); Sanchez ranked 31st in TD/INT ratio, Smith 35th (difference of 4). Both ranked 7th in yards per completion. Therefore, Sanchez is graded as an 11 relative to Smith. Obviously a lower score indicates a more similar rookie quarterback.

But the most similar quarterback to Smith is Terry Bradshaw, who ranked 29th in NY/A (absolute value of 1), 33rd in TD/INT ratio (2), and 2nd in yards per completion (5), for a similarity score of 8. Glennon has a similarity score of 55 to Geno Smith, making him the 4th least similar rookie quarterback to Geno Smith. Of the three quarterbacks more dissimilar to Geno, two of them had outstanding rookie years – Dan Marino and RG3 — which shows just how drastic the differences were between Smith and Glennon that they could both be below average and grade as so dissimilar.

The table below shows where each of the 97 rookie quarterbacks rank in NY/A, TD/INT ratio, and Yards per Completion. I’ve also included the similarity score grade for each quarterback relative to Smith, Glennon, and Manuel in the three columns at the far right of the table. Currently, the table is sorted from most-to-least similar to Smith, but you can click on the “MG SS” column to sort the table from most-to-least similar to Glennon or the “EM SS” to do the same for Manuel.

Maybe I’m just a huge geek, but I find this table fascinating. For Smith, the most similar comps are a Hall of Famer…. and two other Jets quarterbacks (and fans don’t have particularly fond memories of either of them). The positive takeaway for Smith fans is that having a bad TD/INT ratio as a rookie is far from a death knell: Eli Manning, Troy Aikman, and Bradshaw all also ranked in the bottom three of the league in that metric as rookies. In particularly, Bradshaw and Aikman were also surrounded by a lack of offensive talent, like Smith. John Elway, Vinny Testaverde, Kerry Collins, and Dan Fouts also produced big yards per completion numbers but little else as rookies. Of course, so did Sanchez, Heath Shuler, Tony Banks, and Patrick Ramsey.

For Tampa Bay fans, the most similar quarterback to Glennon is…. Bruce Gradkowski? I’ll admit, that’s not a name I expected to see. Part of the issue is that Glennon’s place on the list is odd: his two biggest strengths as a prospect were his size and his cannon arm, and you expect the Collins/Testaverde/Bradshaw comps to be to Glennon, not Smith. This might be a case where the statistics are misleading. According to NFLGSIS, Glennon ranked 16th in average depth of pass, and 10th in average air yards per completion when looking at only completed passers. But he ranked dead last in YAC per completion, which was enough to bring him far down the yards per completion list. That jives with Pro Football Focus, which lists Glennon as having 67.3% of his yards through the air, the highest rate in the league.

The non-Bucs who rate as most similar to Glennon won’t inspire optimism among Tampa fans, either: Jeff George, Tim Couch, Blaine Gabbert, David Woodley, and… Ken Anderson? The Bengals great struggled as a rookie, but posted a positive TD/INT differential as a rookie, which was pretty rare in the early ’70s.

As for Manuel? He had weak numbers across the board, so I don’t think this similarity test will tell us much about his future.