Josh Allen Vs Baker Mayfield AND SAM DARNOLD

[wiley16350]

Well, with the Corona virus giving me more time on the weekends, I decided that I would work on some adjusted stats.  I had already finished Allen but never shared them because people have cited that they would like to have some kind of comparison or they think the stats are useless.  Since there are people out there that have bashed Josh Allen by claiming that Baker Mayfield was better last year, i.e. PFF, I decided I would do all of Mayfield's games to verify that belief.  I also included a chart of how the opposing QB's performed against the Bills this year to give a 3rd reference of comparison.  As I have stated before, the PFF grading system is really a big time throw vs turnover metric and they don't put enough stock into the short and intermediate throws.  Mayfield was much better at the deep ball, giving him a big advantage in the PFF system.  My turnover totals had them very similar so it is easy to see why the PFF system has Mayfield higher.

 

The problem though is that big time throws and turnovers aren't stable from year to year, so it's not really a good gauge of how good a QB can be in the long term.  I don't think it's a good gauge of how well a QB played overall in any individual year either because it excludes a lot of other information.  Even though Mayfield was much better than Allen with the deep ball and had a 1% higher adjusted completion percentage, I had Allen with a better average.  That is because Allen was more productive in the short to intermediate range.  Mayfield got a lot of his production from screens and passes to the flats and within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.  Despite being more proficient with the deep ball, Mayfield wasn't nearly as necessary for the production of points.  The Bills needed Allen to perform most of the time or they weren't very good on offense.  There was a lot of drives were Mayfield just didn't have to do much to get points whether it was YAC production or a great running game.  So the overarching point is that deep ball passing doesn't necessarily lead to point production.  There are 2 main reasons for this.  1. Mayfield had too many turnovers in the red zone.  2. Some of his best throws were dropped or interfered with and while that was good in the moment, those passes didn't always put the Browns in scoring range and they found a way to punt instead.  Point production is what matters most and being consistent in the short to intermediate range is the best way to accomplish that.  It is the main reason Tom Brady has been so good for so many years.  His deep ball consistency wanes year to year but he is always good in the short to intermediate range.  That is what is so promising about Allen last year.

 

The other main PFF metric is turnovers and while Allen and Mayfield are less than 2 turnovers apart, Allen was 0.6% better.  There is also a big difference between their turnovers.  Allen was charged with 7 more fumbles than Mayfield was.  He just had a major issue with them last year but that is just another very unstable stat from year to year so it is reasonable to expect him to improve on that.  That same differential of 7 is reversed when it comes to interceptions, with Mayfield having 7 more of those.  As we know, Allen had an issue with those early in the year but once he stopped trying to play hero ball, he was able to drastically reduce his int's.  Mayfield on the other hand, had a consistent issue with them and while he wasn't as bad as his official numbers, he still wasn't in a good enough range.  Mayfield couldn't curb his int's because they were more varied than Allen was.  He had poor throws, aggressive gunslinger throws and bad decisions.  It is the biggest problem he had last year and he needs to improve on that.  The last part of the turnover discussion is the hidden ones that don't show up anywhere in the stats.  These are bad 3rd down throws, bad 3rd down reads, sacks and other bad plays that led to the team punting.  Allen was better than Mayfield in that category too.  It isn't separated out but if you subtract the charged fumbles and charged int's from the total turnovers in the total effectiveness rating, you can find the difference.

 

Ultimately, I have a Total QB effectiveness rating (which is at the bottom of the attached sheets) that combines, passing, rushing, sacks and turnovers into a traditional QB rating stat line, adjusted based on what actually happened on the field and the circumstances they faced.  Here is the final judgment on the two.

 

MAYFIELD
529.50 - attempts (total plays he had a true opportunity to make a play)
403.30 - Positive (number of plays he had a positive influence on)

76.2% - Positive %

3698.75 - yards (number of yards the QB was worth, including air yards, rushing yards and avoiding sack yards)

6.99 - avg

29.27 - TD's

5.5 - TD%

32.75 - Turnovers (number of times the QB was the reason a drive ended)

5.0% - TO^%

92.3 - Total QB Effectiveness Rating

 

ALLEN
565 ATT

439.7 POS

77.8 POS%

4024.5 YDS
7.12 AVG

39.21 TD's

6.9 TD%

31.10 TO

4.4 TO%

101.1 TER

 

DARNOLD

446.75 ATT

322.6 POS

72.2 POS%

2708 YDS

6.06 AVG

28.24 TD'S

6.3 TD%

28.75 TO

5.3 TO%

86.4 TER

 

Darnold played behind the worst line of these 3 QB's but I felt like there were too many times where he contributed to pressure.  I also think that even though he was under pressure more, some of that was just blockers getting pushed near him and he refused to move in the pocket to make more room to throw.  The 2 main issues with Darnold then to me is pocket presence and decision making.  His decision making issues go back to college, so I'm not sure if how much he'll improve but less pressure should make him better in that area.  I won't say that pocket presence was a constant issue but there were some games where it was an issue that came up often.  The biggest reason Darnold was the lowest of these 3 is because he had 5 games with less than a 70 rating and 3 of those under 60.  Allen had 1 game under 80 (the Patriots game in week 4) so he was much more consistent in at least being productive even if he was turning the ball over.  Mayfield had 2 games under 70 with 1 game in the 70's.  To make it look even worse for Darnold is that he played in 3 less games than Mayfield and Allen did.  There was a period from week 9 to week 12 where I really liked how Darnold was playing and even for weeks 13-15 he played well enough so the end of the season had more good than bad.  He did finish poorly the last 2 weeks of the season because of turnovers but the Jets won those games in spite of that.

 

Honestly, I like all 3 of these QB's to some extent.  I won't make any declarations of which one is the best because they all have things to improve on and the team around them will have a lot to say about their success.  Allen needs to improve his deep ball and be more willing to check down.  Mayfield will most likely be better if his protection improves.  Interceptions were his main problem but I think it was more about pressure than his skills as he has shown in the past to be a better decision maker.  Darnold needs to be a better decision maker and maybe better in the pocket.

J.ALLEN-2019-SC.pdf 2019 - Bills Opponents.pdf B.MAYFIELD-2019-SC.pdf

S.DARNOLD-2019-SC.pdf

Edited April 28, 2020 by wiley16350
added Sam Darnold information

[BringBackFergy]

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[Phil The Thrill]

Great analysis!??????

[ganesh]

The NFL and the media is hung up on "accuracy" when qualifying aa QB.   They prefer QBs who have good/great accuracy and distance QBs that do not.  They go by Metrics dished out to them due to fantasy football.  If a QB does not meet  the metrics (65% completions) the QB is setup for failure. 

[FireChans]

1 hour ago, wiley16350 said:

Well, with the Corona virus giving me more time on the weekends, I decided that I would work on some adjusted stats.  I had already finished Allen but never shared them because people have cited that they would like to have some kind of comparison or they think the stats are useless.  Since there are people out there that have bashed Josh Allen by claiming that Baker Mayfield was better last year, i.e. PFF, I decided I would do all of Mayfield's games to verify that belief.  I also included a chart of how the opposing QB's performed against the Bills this year to give a 3rd reference of comparison.  As I have stated before, the PFF grading system is really a big time throw vs turnover metric and they don't put enough stock into the short and intermediate throws.  Mayfield was much better at the deep ball, giving him a big advantage in the PFF system.  My turnover totals had them very similar so it is easy to see why the PFF system has Mayfield higher.

 

The problem though is that big time throws and turnovers aren't stable from year to year, so it's not really a good gauge of how good a QB can be in the long term.  I don't think it's a good gauge of how well a QB played overall in any individual year either because it excludes a lot of other information.  Even though Mayfield was much better than Allen with the deep ball and had a 1% higher adjusted completion percentage, I had Allen with a better average.  That is because Allen was more productive in the short to intermediate range.  Mayfield got a lot of his production from screens and passes to the flats and within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.  Despite being more proficient with the deep ball, Mayfield wasn't nearly as necessary for the production of points.  The Bills needed Allen to perform most of the time or they weren't very good on offense.  There was a lot of drives were Mayfield just didn't have to do much to get points whether it was YAC production or a great running game.  So the overarching point is that deep ball passing doesn't necessarily lead to point production.  There are 2 main reasons for this.  1. Mayfield had too many turnovers in the red zone.  2. Some of his best throws were dropped or interfered with and while that was good in the moment, those passes didn't always put the Browns in scoring range and they found a way to punt instead.  Point production is what matters most and being consistent in the short to intermediate range is the best way to accomplish that.  It is the main reason Tom Brady has been so good for so many years.  His deep ball consistency wanes year to year but he is always good in the short to intermediate range.  That is what is so promising about Allen last year.

 

The other main PFF metric is turnovers and while Allen and Mayfield are less than 2 turnovers apart, Allen was 0.6% better.  There is also a big difference between their turnovers.  Allen was charged with 7 more fumbles than Mayfield was.  He just had a major issue with them last year but that is just another very unstable stat from year to year so it is reasonable to expect him to improve on that.  That same differential of 7 is reversed when it comes to interceptions, with Mayfield having 7 more of those.  As we know, Allen had an issue with those early in the year but once he stopped trying to play hero ball, he was able to drastically reduce his int's.  Mayfield on the other hand, had a consistent issue with them and while he wasn't as bad as his official numbers, he still wasn't in a good enough range.  Mayfield couldn't curb his int's because they were more varied than Allen was.  He had poor throws, aggressive gunslinger throws and bad decisions.  It is the biggest problem he had last year and he needs to improve on that.  The last part of the turnover discussion is the hidden ones that don't show up anywhere in the stats.  These are bad 3rd down throws, bad 3rd down reads, sacks and other bad plays that led to the team punting.  Allen was better than Mayfield in that category too.  It isn't separated out but if you subtract the charged fumbles and charged int's from the total turnovers in the total effectiveness rating, you can find the difference.

 

Ultimately, I have a Total QB effectiveness rating (which is at the bottom of the attached sheets) that combines, passing, rushing, sacks and turnovers into a traditional QB rating stat line, adjusted based on what actually happened on the field and the circumstances they faced.  Here is the final judgment on the two.

 

MAYFIELD
529.50 - attempts (total plays he had a true opportunity to make a play)
403.30 - Positive (number of plays he had a positive influence on)

76.2% - Positive %

3698.75 - yards (number of yards the QB was worth, including air yards, rushing yards and avoiding sack yards)

6.99 - avg

29.27 - TD's

5.5 - TD%

32.75 - Turnovers (number of times the QB was the reason a drive ended)

5.0% - TO^%

92.3 - Total QB Effectiveness Rating

 

ALLEN
565 ATT

439.7 POS

77.8 POS%

4024.5 YDS
7.12 AVG

39.21 TD's

6.9 TD%

31.10 TO

4.4 TO%

101.1 TER

J.ALLEN-2019-SC.pdf 42.06 kB · 3 downloads 2019 - Bills Opponents.pdf 39.77 kB · 3 downloads B.MAYFIELD-2019-SC.pdf 41.31 kB · 0 downloads

This was a really cool analysis by the numbers but you’ll need to be a little more objective in how you editorialize the QB’s. 

 

How can you claim turnovers vary widely from year to year, say it’s “reasonable” Josh improves his fumbles, and then say Baker had a consistent issue with turnovers, when he threw much less as a rookie?

 

In Baker’s first seven games, he had 7 TD’s to 12 INT’s. In his last 9, he had 18 TD’s to 9 INT’s. I guess only Josh gets credit for cleaning up the TO’s midway through the year.

Edited April 13, 2020 by FireChans

[Don Otreply]

Just watched the Holy Grail, during which god came from on high and shed his holy light on this troubling situation, conveying that anyone named baker is a sissy boy, and as such Joshua has the almighty’s blessings to put the opponent to the sword, it has been spoken, it shall be so, praise be to god... 

I had to drink a shot every time “king of the Britons was said, Christ, I didn’t think I would last through the whole flick..,

 

Go Bills!!!

[John from Riverside]

Soooooo Allen was better then Mayfield last year (and Baker had the better O team around him)

[wiley16350]

8 minutes ago, FireChans said:

This was a really cool analysis by the numbers but you’ll need to be a little more objective in how you editorialize the QB’s. 

 

How can you claim turnovers vary widely from year to year, say it’s “reasonable” Josh improves his fumbles, and then say Baker had a consistent issue with turnovers, when he threw much less as a rookie?

 

In Baker’s first seven games, he had 7 TD’s to 12 INT’s. In his last 9, he had 18 TD’s to 9 INT’s. I guess only Josh gets credit for cleaning up the TO’s midway through the year.

Well first of all I was talking about fumbles being unstable, not turnovers.  Essentially, fumbles are more of a fluke thing than int's.  Int's have to be improved by the QB making changes to how he plays the game or understands defenses.  Fumbles can be fixed without the QB necessarily making an effort to avoid them.  Baker's turnover consistency was about this year and doesn't say anything about last year.  The stats you show about Bakers turnovers are just what he was officially charged with.  If you look at my charts, I had him with 8.5 int's in the first 8 games and 10.5 in the last 8 games.  I also had him with some blame for an int in 13 of 16 games.  So I guess that is how I can say that it was a consistent problem.  Allen on the other hand had 7 games out of the first 11 with some blame for an int and then finished the regular season with 5 straight (4.5 actually because he only played half of week 17) games without an interceptable pass.  In total he had 7 out of 15.5 games where he deserved an interception.  That seems to be better than Mayfield.

[FireChans]

4 minutes ago, wiley16350 said:

Well first of all I was talking about fumbles being unstable, not turnovers.  Essentially, fumbles are more of a fluke thing than int's.  Int's have to be improved by the QB making changes to how he plays the game or understands defenses.  Fumbles can be fixed without the QB necessarily making an effort to avoid them.  Baker's turnover consistency was about this year and doesn't say anything about last year.  The stats you show about Bakers turnovers are just what he was officially charged with.  If you look at my charts, I had him with 8.5 int's in the first 8 games and 10.5 in the last 8 games.  I also had him with some blame for an int in 13 of 16 games.  So I guess that is how I can say that it was a consistent problem.  Allen on the other hand had 7 games out of the first 11 with some blame for an int and then finished the regular season with 5 straight (4.5 actually because he only played half of week 17) games without an interceptable pass.  In total he had 7 out of 15.5 games where he deserved an interception.  That seems to be better than Mayfield.

Oh, your first line of your second paragraph said turnovers and big time throws aren’t stable from year to year. If you are only talking about fumbles in that scenario, I wonder how you came to that conclusion when Allen had 8 fumbles in 11 games as a rookie, and then 14 in 15.5 games in his second year. Seems like a pretty negatively stable statistic to me.

[wiley16350]

3 minutes ago, John from Riverside said:

Soooooo Allen was better then Mayfield last year (and Baker had the better O team around him)

I would say yes.  There is no doubt he had more skill talent around him.  The offensive line is debate-able in terms of pass protection.  I would have to delve into my numbers more before committing to either one of those.

[wiley16350]

4 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Oh, your first line of your second paragraph said turnovers and big time throws aren’t stable from year to year. If you are only talking about fumbles in that scenario, I wonder how you came to that conclusion when Allen had 8 fumbles in 11 games as a rookie, and then 14 in 15.5 games in his second year. Seems like a pretty negatively stable statistic to me.

I had Allen with only 3.5 fumbles last year, fumbling 0.8% of his plays.  This year I had him fumbling 11.25 of 704 plays for 1.5%.  Pretty much twice as much.

[JOE IN HAMPTON ROADS]

41 minutes ago, Don Otreply said:

Just watched the Holy Grail, during which god came from on high and shed his holy light on this troubling situation, conveying that anyone named baker is a sissy boy, and as such Joshua has the almighty’s blessings to put the opponent to the sword, it has been spoken, it shall be so, praise be to god... 

I had to drink a shot every time “king of the Britons was said, Christ, I didn’t think I would last through the whole flick..,

 

Go Bills!!!

King of the who?

[Gugny]

I think War and Peace is the Cliffs Notes for this post.

[wiley16350]

19 minutes ago, FireChans said:

Oh, your first line of your second paragraph said turnovers and big time throws aren’t stable from year to year. If you are only talking about fumbles in that scenario, I wonder how you came to that conclusion when Allen had 8 fumbles in 11 games as a rookie, and then 14 in 15.5 games in his second year. Seems like a pretty negatively stable statistic to me.

I'll clarify the turnovers being unstable because I can see where I may have contradicted myself.  Fumbles are completely unstable because they are more about what is happening around the QB rather than what the QB is necessarily doing.  There are certain things that increase the likelihood of a fumble and not all defenses do those things.  Pressure from behind, getting hit while throwing, having the ball punched out from behind while the QB is running are near certain fumble opportunities no matter who the QB is.  That can change drastically from year to year because it depends on opponent and the players around the QB.  Fumbles are more about bad luck or tough circumstances than they are about skill.  Interceptions are unstable in the sense that QB's that face more pressure are more likely to throw them and some situations can influence a QB to take chances he shouldn't take.  That means the better the environment for the QB, the less likely he is to throw an interception, for most QB's.  For those reasons some QB's can swing some from year to year if they're on an unstable team.  With that said, a QB's personality and ability to read defenses can make him consistent in making bad decisions.  That is what you have to determine by watching the film.  Jameis Winston and Brett Farve were consistent in making bad decisions and forcing throws and it wasn't necessarily the team around them that was influencing that.  A QB like Drew Bledsoe was more about the team around him and the circumstances that he was playing in.  His int's would tend to come in bunches in games where his team was over matched.

[Don Otreply]

10 minutes ago, JOE IN HAMPTON ROADS said:

King of the who?

King of the auto correct it would appear 

[JOE IN HAMPTON ROADS]

1 minute ago, Don Otreply said:

King of the auto correct it would appear 

Well I didn't vote for him

[MJS]

1 hour ago, ganesh said:

The NFL and the media is hung up on "accuracy" when qualifying aa QB.   They prefer QBs who have good/great accuracy and distance QBs that do not.  They go by Metrics dished out to them due to fantasy football.  If a QB does not meet  the metrics (65% completions) the QB is setup for failure. 

What's Fantasy football have to do with it? Josh Allen is well thought of in fantasy football. He puts up more points because of his rushing ability. I'd wager that those who play fantasy football have a better opinion of Josh Allen than those who don't.

[ganesh]

More completions, more yards per play...and that means more chances for points...and that drives fantasy football.  Don't tell me the fantasy gurus don't love those 65% completion QBs...These QBs also involve more of others than just them scoring points...more receptions, more TDs for others too...

[Billl]

1 hour ago, wiley16350 said:

I had Allen with only 3.5 fumbles last year, fumbling 0.8% of his plays.  This year I had him fumbling 11.25 of 704 plays for 1.5%.  Pretty much twice as much.

So instead of having 22 fumbles, he actually has 15.75?  Am I understanding this correctly?

[Ralonzo]

2 hours ago, Don Otreply said:

Just watched the Holy Grail, during which god came from on high and shed his holy light on this troubling situation, conveying that anyone named baker is a sissy boy, and as such Joshua has the almighty’s blessings to put the opponent to the sword, it has been spoken, it shall be so, praise be to god... 

 

Your arm's off.