As the 2010s come to an end, there is one unmistakable N.F.L. trend: Quarterbacks are a lot more proficient than in decades past.
But the funny thing is that 10 years ago an article recapping the decade could have begun with the same statement. A steady improvement of quarterback statistics has been a theme going back to the early days of the N.F.L.’s forward-pass era. With each successive decade, numbers that seem formidable are inevitably surpassed in the 10 years that follow.
Pro football has been fundamentally a passing game for many years, a trend that may well be accelerating.
Comparing the Decades
Passing numbers were up across the board again this decade. Quarterbacks completed 21.6 passes a game, up from 19.5 last decade. They threw for 234 yards a game, up from 209. They passed for 1.6 touchdowns a game, up from 1.3.
A look at the quarterbacks who threw for the most yards in each decade since the 1940s illustrates how passing has increasingly dominated the sport.
Almost all of the top seasons by quarterbacks have come in recent years. Entering this decade, Dan Fouts held the record for passing yards a game over a season at 320.3, playing for the legendary Air Coryell Chargers team in 1982. That record was surpassed this decade nine times — five by Drew Brees alone.
More Yards, More Accuracy
Quarterbacks are not only passing more, they are passing better. Completion percentages and interception rates have improved every decade. The completion percentage for this decade was 62.2 percent, up from 59.8 percent in the 2000s. And interceptions are down as well, with just 2.6 percent of passes picked off in this decade, down from 3.2 percent.
Completion pct.
Interception pct.
The top five marks for completion percentage in a season with at least 250 attempts were set this decade (four by Brees). Eight of the 10 best interception percentages came this decade, as well as eight of the 10 best quarterback ratings.
The N.F.L. average quarterback rating this decade was 88, about eight points higher than it was just a decade ago.
AVERAGE QUARTERBACK RATING BY DECADE
AVERAGE QUARTERBACK RATING BY DECADE
Perhaps the best way to understand the quality of the modern passer is to look at some of the weakest ones. This season’s worst completion percentage for a quarterback with at least 250 attempts was Josh Allen’s 58.8 percent. That would have been the best in the league as recently as 1967, when Johnny Unitas’s rate was also 58.8 percent.
The Ever-Changing Game
It was barely the same sport in the 1930s. Statistics are a little more unreliable from that decade, but the top passer of that era, Arnie Herber, put up only 6,189 passing yards on a 40.4 percent completion rate and threw an interception 9 percent of the time. Those numbers, which today would get a player laughed out of training camp, got Herber into the Hall of Fame.
Given the size and speed of today’s athletes, it is not surprising that players are better. But the quarterbacks’ rate of improvement has soared above that of other positions. Rule changes favoring quarterbacks and receivers as well as better designed offenses based on data analytics have been major contributors to that.
Even so, quarterbacks are throwing for more yards, and doing so more effectively, despite massively bigger defensive linemen and faster secondaries. And they are completing those passes despite getting sacked at about the same rate, or even a little more than in decades past.
Take a mediocre quarterback of today, and simply add a time machine, and he could rewrite the record books.
Source: Football - nytimes.com
