This seems a bit ambitious. Gardner has had one really good season in the NFL, in 2020, where he posted a fantastic 4.3 CPOE. If you describe that as 'not a good season,' I'm not all that sure you like him very much.
Gardner in 2023 almost exactly replicated his stats from 2019 (about 0 EPA/Play, -3.3 CPOE), ignoring that he ever got better in the middle. 2023 was a down year at a time when he really really didn't need one. It could've been his chance to break out for real and become a starter teams wanted, but the accuracy was gone. You did some digging into where it went, but that can't explain it all. The really good LV offence should help this some. They carried Aidan O'Connell to an okay season last year, but there's only so far your surrounding players can take you.
If I were a fan, I would've liked my team to target all of Russell Wilson, Jacoby Brissett and Sam Darnold over him, in addition to being players in the Justin Fields market, and maybe also putting in some calls on Jake Browning. All of these players have been above average in terms of accuracy at least once in the last three years. Gardner has not. With all the good options gone, I suspect Vegas was forced to settle for Gardner Minshew. While this is an extremely good sixth option, I'm not sure if 'the most underrated QB in the NFL' is an appropriate label. I'd likely go Sam or Jacoby for that title.
I just feel like Gardner Minshew is a able to produce more than any other QB. Let's compare Brissett and Minshew. Minshew's thrown 8 more TDs then him, even though he's played 30 games less. Minshew is only 700 yards away from beating Brissett's career yardage. On to Darnold, he doesn't have a good completion percentage and has SO MANY interceptions, so to me, it can't be him either.
In 2020, think about how many games Gardner played. What's happening here is almost like in baseball where a player plays one game on the season, gets a hit in every at-bat, gets injured for the season, and then claims that they had the best average. Now, I know this isn't that kind of stat, neither is it the same case because he appeared in 9 games, but if he had played bad in those other games, then his CPOE could've definitely gone down. If he had played good, his CPOE would've gone up. We just don't know, so I guess I was wrong about "bad" season.
Let's look at Jacoby first. I'm happy the stat you brought up is touchdowns, because it gives me a chance to make a statement.
As an offence, who cares who scores the touchdowns?
What you're doing by bringing up TDs is punishing Jacoby for his best season coming on the 2022 Browns, a team who liked to use the run in the red zone. In all, 1313 offensive touchdowns were scored in 2022. 750 of these were scored via the pass. That's 57%. On the 2022 Browns, in the 11 games Jacoby played, they scored 31 touchdowns. Only 12 came via the pass. If the Browns had scored as many touchdowns via the pass as expected, Jacoby would've had about 18 touchdowns that year. That's a 28 touchdown pace, and a much more accurate reading of Jacoby's skill level. On the other hand, let's look at Gardner's best year in 2020.
BTW, Gardner did play half a season in 2020. It's not like a baseball player playing one month with good stats. He qualifies for the end of season leaderboards.
In the eight games he played, the Jaguars scored 21 offensive touchdowns, of which an unreasonable 16 came via the pass. With a more reasonable touchdown rate, Gardner's 16 becomes more like 12, and combining both these adjustments together Jacoby has thrown more touchdowns, with about five more games (177 more pass attempts) of action. It's fairly even.
I don't care about touchdown passes at all. The job of a QB is to put his team in positions to score. Nobody cares who actually does the scoring, so this is neither a boost to Jacoby nor a dig on Gardner. It's just an example of the type of exercise you have to do to nullify scheme's impact on the touchdown pass count.
Onto Sam Darnold.
Sam is bad to make mistakes. No arguments there, but we're comparing him to Gardner Minshew. In his breakout 2022, Sam was slightly worse than average at avoiding mistakes. In 2023, Gardner was exactly average. Gardner's good at avoiding interceptions, but those are only one kind of mistake.
In terms of accuracy, you're entirely ignoring pass difficulty when looking exclusively at completion percentage. That's what CPOE is for. Sam is always aggressive and trying deep passes. In 2022, his average pass was the eighth longest in the NFL, and he's always been in the top half. Gardner on the other hand has always been one whose average pass has been really easy.
When consistently trying such deep passes, you don't need such a high completion percentage to be productive, and yet, once excluding spikes and throwaways, Sam had a 68.9 in 2022. That's mightily impressive. Even his 65.9 from 2019 (taking into account the difficulty of the throws) impresses me. Gardner had a 65.6 in 2023, while attempting much easier passes. In terms of accuracy, it's never been a contest between these two.
The reason I use accuracy so much is because when changing teams, that's the one thing that seems to remain consistent. All have showcased high level accuracy, Jacoby and Sam (and Russ and Jake Browning) have all just done it more recently. 2020 is rapidly getting to be a long time ago.
I understand and do agree with most of what you're saying.
But, why are we only looking at CPOE? Let's look at QBR, where Minshew ranked 13th in 2023. In 2021 with the Panthers, Darnold ranked 29th. In 2019, Darnold ranked 25th. Looking at RAW in 2019, Darnold ranked 26th. In 2023, Minshew finished 15th. Brissett didn't do any better, but.....
While I hate to say it (lol), I do believe Brissett is valid, but no way in any way is Sam Darnold even in contention for most underrated QB.
You are correct that I think Jacoby is well ahead of both these two, and some established starters as well.
I must admit to never having looked at a QBR leaderboard in my life. QBR is basically a fancy way of presenting EPA/Play, so I can just look at that instead.
I insist on looking at CPOE because that is a measure of an underlying skill, correlated with, but not directly connected to results. Results will be dependent on scheme, surrounding talent, luck, etc.. Throw accuracy is not as dependent on all those things.
Therefore, CPOE (along with sack rate) is the stat that tends to remain the most consistent when switching teams. If we were debating the merits of players that weren't switching teams, I'd be a lot more on your side. In that circumstance, results matter a lot more, but when players are switching teams, past results don't seem to correlate too well with past results.
Look at Ryan Tannehill as an example. He's the Gardner Minshew of a few years ago. He went from one of the worst QBs (in terms of results) in the NFL in 2018 to one of the best in 2019, but his excellent throw accuracy was there throughout the process. Sam Darnold hasn't been as good as Ryan Tannehill yet, but he did post a 4.8 CPOE in a season just two years ago, and took a Panther team that was dead and got within one game of the playoffs with it. I wrote an article about it way back then.
It's a small sample in 2022, but that's impressive. You can't do it without real talent. He deserves a real chance on a real team. Hopefully he gets it this year.
Is he better than Gardner Minshew? To me, it's about the same. Sam has done better stuff, but done it in an even smaller sample than Gardner's, but it has come more recently. In the end, I wouldn't put any money on a bet deciding who's better.
It's possible I'd bet on Jake Browning over either of these two. It's a shame he's stuck in Cincinnati.
This seems a bit ambitious. Gardner has had one really good season in the NFL, in 2020, where he posted a fantastic 4.3 CPOE. If you describe that as 'not a good season,' I'm not all that sure you like him very much.
Gardner in 2023 almost exactly replicated his stats from 2019 (about 0 EPA/Play, -3.3 CPOE), ignoring that he ever got better in the middle. 2023 was a down year at a time when he really really didn't need one. It could've been his chance to break out for real and become a starter teams wanted, but the accuracy was gone. You did some digging into where it went, but that can't explain it all. The really good LV offence should help this some. They carried Aidan O'Connell to an okay season last year, but there's only so far your surrounding players can take you.
If I were a fan, I would've liked my team to target all of Russell Wilson, Jacoby Brissett and Sam Darnold over him, in addition to being players in the Justin Fields market, and maybe also putting in some calls on Jake Browning. All of these players have been above average in terms of accuracy at least once in the last three years. Gardner has not. With all the good options gone, I suspect Vegas was forced to settle for Gardner Minshew. While this is an extremely good sixth option, I'm not sure if 'the most underrated QB in the NFL' is an appropriate label. I'd likely go Sam or Jacoby for that title.
I just feel like Gardner Minshew is a able to produce more than any other QB. Let's compare Brissett and Minshew. Minshew's thrown 8 more TDs then him, even though he's played 30 games less. Minshew is only 700 yards away from beating Brissett's career yardage. On to Darnold, he doesn't have a good completion percentage and has SO MANY interceptions, so to me, it can't be him either.
In 2020, think about how many games Gardner played. What's happening here is almost like in baseball where a player plays one game on the season, gets a hit in every at-bat, gets injured for the season, and then claims that they had the best average. Now, I know this isn't that kind of stat, neither is it the same case because he appeared in 9 games, but if he had played bad in those other games, then his CPOE could've definitely gone down. If he had played good, his CPOE would've gone up. We just don't know, so I guess I was wrong about "bad" season.
What do you think about that?
Let's look at Jacoby first. I'm happy the stat you brought up is touchdowns, because it gives me a chance to make a statement.
As an offence, who cares who scores the touchdowns?
What you're doing by bringing up TDs is punishing Jacoby for his best season coming on the 2022 Browns, a team who liked to use the run in the red zone. In all, 1313 offensive touchdowns were scored in 2022. 750 of these were scored via the pass. That's 57%. On the 2022 Browns, in the 11 games Jacoby played, they scored 31 touchdowns. Only 12 came via the pass. If the Browns had scored as many touchdowns via the pass as expected, Jacoby would've had about 18 touchdowns that year. That's a 28 touchdown pace, and a much more accurate reading of Jacoby's skill level. On the other hand, let's look at Gardner's best year in 2020.
BTW, Gardner did play half a season in 2020. It's not like a baseball player playing one month with good stats. He qualifies for the end of season leaderboards.
In the eight games he played, the Jaguars scored 21 offensive touchdowns, of which an unreasonable 16 came via the pass. With a more reasonable touchdown rate, Gardner's 16 becomes more like 12, and combining both these adjustments together Jacoby has thrown more touchdowns, with about five more games (177 more pass attempts) of action. It's fairly even.
I don't care about touchdown passes at all. The job of a QB is to put his team in positions to score. Nobody cares who actually does the scoring, so this is neither a boost to Jacoby nor a dig on Gardner. It's just an example of the type of exercise you have to do to nullify scheme's impact on the touchdown pass count.
Onto Sam Darnold.
Sam is bad to make mistakes. No arguments there, but we're comparing him to Gardner Minshew. In his breakout 2022, Sam was slightly worse than average at avoiding mistakes. In 2023, Gardner was exactly average. Gardner's good at avoiding interceptions, but those are only one kind of mistake.
In terms of accuracy, you're entirely ignoring pass difficulty when looking exclusively at completion percentage. That's what CPOE is for. Sam is always aggressive and trying deep passes. In 2022, his average pass was the eighth longest in the NFL, and he's always been in the top half. Gardner on the other hand has always been one whose average pass has been really easy.
When consistently trying such deep passes, you don't need such a high completion percentage to be productive, and yet, once excluding spikes and throwaways, Sam had a 68.9 in 2022. That's mightily impressive. Even his 65.9 from 2019 (taking into account the difficulty of the throws) impresses me. Gardner had a 65.6 in 2023, while attempting much easier passes. In terms of accuracy, it's never been a contest between these two.
The reason I use accuracy so much is because when changing teams, that's the one thing that seems to remain consistent. All have showcased high level accuracy, Jacoby and Sam (and Russ and Jake Browning) have all just done it more recently. 2020 is rapidly getting to be a long time ago.
I understand and do agree with most of what you're saying.
But, why are we only looking at CPOE? Let's look at QBR, where Minshew ranked 13th in 2023. In 2021 with the Panthers, Darnold ranked 29th. In 2019, Darnold ranked 25th. Looking at RAW in 2019, Darnold ranked 26th. In 2023, Minshew finished 15th. Brissett didn't do any better, but.....
While I hate to say it (lol), I do believe Brissett is valid, but no way in any way is Sam Darnold even in contention for most underrated QB.
(And ye, idk why I brought up TDs.)
You are correct that I think Jacoby is well ahead of both these two, and some established starters as well.
I must admit to never having looked at a QBR leaderboard in my life. QBR is basically a fancy way of presenting EPA/Play, so I can just look at that instead.
I insist on looking at CPOE because that is a measure of an underlying skill, correlated with, but not directly connected to results. Results will be dependent on scheme, surrounding talent, luck, etc.. Throw accuracy is not as dependent on all those things.
Therefore, CPOE (along with sack rate) is the stat that tends to remain the most consistent when switching teams. If we were debating the merits of players that weren't switching teams, I'd be a lot more on your side. In that circumstance, results matter a lot more, but when players are switching teams, past results don't seem to correlate too well with past results.
Look at Ryan Tannehill as an example. He's the Gardner Minshew of a few years ago. He went from one of the worst QBs (in terms of results) in the NFL in 2018 to one of the best in 2019, but his excellent throw accuracy was there throughout the process. Sam Darnold hasn't been as good as Ryan Tannehill yet, but he did post a 4.8 CPOE in a season just two years ago, and took a Panther team that was dead and got within one game of the playoffs with it. I wrote an article about it way back then.
It's a small sample in 2022, but that's impressive. You can't do it without real talent. He deserves a real chance on a real team. Hopefully he gets it this year.
Is he better than Gardner Minshew? To me, it's about the same. Sam has done better stuff, but done it in an even smaller sample than Gardner's, but it has come more recently. In the end, I wouldn't put any money on a bet deciding who's better.
It's possible I'd bet on Jake Browning over either of these two. It's a shame he's stuck in Cincinnati.