A provocative discussion with a familiar rhetorical trick
A couple of things occur to me as I begin this screed. The first thing is that I have been provoking a lot of folks lately here and at Crawfish Boxes with seemingly crazy notions. I don’t deliberately set out to do that, but sometimes my mind just takes me where it wants to take me.
Secondly, our instant gratification world wants us to make far too many snap judgments on things. Sam Darnold is in his seventh year in the league and fifth as a primary starter and suddenly seems to have gotten it. Sometimes it takes guys a little longer. Geno Smith arguably claimed the Seattle Seahawks job late in 2021 and hasn’t given it back. He was 31 at the time.
I usually employ the Player A and B test when crunching baseball numbers. It is a sport that lends itself to that sort of the medium. Football has more external factors. There is coaching, skill position players, the offensive line, and support from the defense. The raw numbers are simply that. We can read far too much into those numbers, but the numbers are what we have and what we will look at.
We are looking at two quarterbacks. One of them has not played every game, so we will look at things from a per game basis instead of looking at season totals. We will add some numbers together to give everyone a more complete picture of what we are talking about. Instead of touchdowns and interceptions, we will look at touchdown percentage and interception percentage. We will look at passing yards per game, rushing yards per game, and the relevant rating statistics.
Player A: 3.4 TD%, 2.6 INT%, 179.4 PYPG, 18.8 RYPG, 76.2 Rating, 47.0 QBR
Player B: 3.6 TD%, 2.3 INT%, 229.8 PYPG, 14.6 RYPG, 86.0 Rating, 49.2 QBR
It would appear that Player B is the better player, but it is not that cut and dried. Player A has four rushing touchdowns where Player B has none. That was not included in the above. If we add that on a per game basis we see that Player A essentially missed out on four games, so let’s look at total touchdowns.
Player A: 12 Passing TD, 4 Rushing TD, 12 Games = 1.33 TD per game
Player B: 19 Passing TD, 0 Rushing TD, 16 Games = 1.19 TD per game
Since I am guessing most of you have figured out who we are comparing here, let’s look at Player A once he returned to the lineup in October and Player B since that same time. In other words, we are looking at just the last nine games. This time we will include completion percentage and raw yards, touchdowns, and interceptions.
Player A: 172/285, 60.4%, 1854 yards, 12 TD, 6 INT, 113 Rushing, 3 TD
Player B: 178/297, 59.9%, 2014 yards, 9 TD, 8 INT, 159 Rushing, 0 TD
Now, let’s be clear. I am not saying that Player A is a better quarterback than Player B or that he has been a better quarterback over the last nine games. What I am saying is that it is debatable and that by itself is an indictment. What it is essentially says is that narratives only hold up so long. As you probably already figured out, Player A is Bryce Young and Player B is C.J. Stroud.
It’s here when we go over the normal caveats. A quarterback’s statistics are dependent on the team around the player, the coaching/system, and whether a player spends most of his time ahead or coming from behind. So, this does not mean that the Texans or Panthers made a mistake. In fact it says the exact opposite. It says that we don’t know yet.
Similarly, beyond 2024 there will be a debate between Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels, and Caleb Williams. Daniels has the upper hand based on his rookie season, but we should have learned our lesson a long time ago when there was a similar debate between Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck. Rookie seasons are exactly that. They are just one year.
If you put Stroud’s rookie season up with his second year then it really is no contest. but it has still been just two seasons. We don’t know what the future will hold, but I think there is enough evidence here to suggest that maybe the Panthers didn’t pick the wrong guy. Maybe both would have struggled in those conditions and maybe the better guy is coming to the surface at the end of his second year.
Perhaps after two seasons we have seen exactly what we thought we would see. When conditions are good, Stroud will succeed. He usually has better ball placement and he might be a slightly better decision maker. Yet, when conditions aren’t good Young might be the better choice because he is slightly more elusive and maybe a bit more experienced from his days at Alabama at making plays off schedule.
What we can’t know is what the future will hold for both organizations. Maybe the Texans add a couple of linemen, make adjustments on offense, and get the magic back from 2023. Maybe the league has figured out the Texans, they don’t make changes, and we see more of this from C.J. Stroud.
Similarly, maybe the Panthers are able to add more offensive talent now that they have their first round pick and Young can take the next step with some support. They also could fail to add that talent and Young could flounder as a part of an organization unable to surround him with top-tier talent.
The future is unwritten and that is when these questions will be answered. If the past has taught us anything it is that a rush to judgement almost always ends up being a grave mistake. We don’t know who the best quarterback is from the 2023 draft and we won’t know for some time.