Previously on “take away his X [best/worst]” plays:
- Take Away His X Best Carries And He’s Average
- Take Away His X Worst Carries And He’s Average
- Take Away His X Best Passes And He’s Average
In April, I noted that you would need to take away Peyton Manning’s best 19 passes in order to bring his stellar Net Yards per Attempt average to below league average. Today, we look at the reverse question: How many of Derek Carr’s worst dropbacks would we need to erase to bring his NY/A above league average? I’ll give you a moment to think about the answer.
[Keep thinking…]
[Are you ready?]
[Your time is now up. Post your answer in the comments!]
Let’s just say that the Oakland rookie had a very rough season. How rough? Carr was sacked 24 times for 149 yards. He also completed 15 passes that lost yards, totaling -34 yards. So there were 39 dropbacks when Carr actually lost yards for Oakland, totaling -183 yards.
On the season, Carr averaged just 5.01 Net Yards per Attempt, while the NFL average was 6.35 NY/A. Take away those bad plays, and Carr would up his average to only 5.66 NY/A. So if you want to bring Carr’s NY/A up to the league average, you need to start removing his incomplete passes, too. How many of them? 64 of them, as it turns out.
Remove the 15 completed passes for negative yards, and the 24 sacks, and 64 incomplete passes — that is, Carr’s 103 worst pass plays — and you finally bring his NY/A up to 6.35. That’s the most of any quarterback who had at least 100 dropbacks last season. Take a look. The table below shows each quarterback’s number of dropbacks, their net passing yards, their NY/A, and the number of their worst passing plays you would need to remove to bring their NY/A above league average.
| Quarterback | DB | NetYd | NY/A | Num |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derek Carr | 621 | 3124 | 5.01 | 103 |
| Blake Bortles | 529 | 2569 | 4.86 | 65 |
| Michael Vick | 137 | 513 | 3.74 | 42 |
| Josh McCown | 362 | 1980 | 5.47 | 22 |
| Ryan Tannehill | 636 | 3699 | 5.82 | 21 |
| Colin Kaepernick | 528 | 3034 | 5.75 | 20 |
| Kyle Orton | 480 | 2817 | 5.87 | 17 |
| Cam Newton | 487 | 2832 | 5.82 | 16 |
| Jay Cutler | 600 | 3575 | 5.96 | 16 |
| Austin Davis | 314 | 1822 | 5.8 | 11 |
| Alex Smith | 507 | 3055 | 6.03 | 11 |
| Teddy Bridgewater | 442 | 2676 | 6.05 | 9 |
| Jake Locker | 160 | 908 | 5.68 | 7 |
| Geno Smith | 391 | 2352 | 6.02 | 7 |
| EJ Manuel | 137 | 794 | 5.8 | 6 |
| Matthew Stafford | 645 | 3996 | 6.2 | 6 |
| Charlie Whitehurst | 203 | 1220 | 6.01 | 5 |
| Robert Griffin III | 244 | 1467 | 6.01 | 5 |
| Mike Glennon | 217 | 1327 | 6.12 | 3 |
| Shaun Hill | 246 | 1539 | 6.26 | 2 |
Leave your thoughts in the comments!