From Romo and Flacco to Kaepernick, Assessing Dropoff For Teams Playing With Multiple QBs
By Jason Lisk
Eight different teams have had multiple quarterbacks, where no individual has started more than 10 of the 13 games because of injury, ineffectiveness, or some combination. In Monday’s Musings column, I pointed out just how much better the Colts have been with a mostly injured Andrew Luck, versus Matt Hasselbeck, and how the difference in schedules faced may hide that fact.
In that same light, I thought it would be interesting to compare all the situations where a team didn’t have one starter make at least 11 starts by the same method. Basically, I looked at the margin of victory or defeat in all games when a QB threw the majority of passes, and compared it to others on the roster. Then, I used the simple rating system ratings for each team at pro-football-reference.com to adjust the strength of schedule. Adding those two together gave us a schedule-adjusted point margin for games involving that QB.
Here are the results:
Is Joe Flacco E-L-I-T-E? Well, when compared to Jimmy Clausen, he certainly is. If you just compared it to the two starts from Matt Schaub, Flacco would come in at 4.3 points better in games he started.
The dropoff with Romo has been noticeable. For all of Matt Cassel’s numerous faults, the Cowboys have been relatively better with him in versus Brandon Weeden. The Cowboys were about 6 points better with Romo versus Cassel games, and a whopping 14 points better with Romo in versus Weeden. But at least Weeden throws a nice ball.
Big Ben and Luck both check in above 6 points in dropoff as well.
After that, the biggest difference is actually in San Francisco, where the 49ers have been more than 4 points better since Blaine Gabbert took over for Colin Kaepernick.
Johnny Manziel has been largely similar to Josh McCown in terms of the overall team performance.
Meanwhile, what will the Broncos do? Brock Osweiler hasn’t been a significant improvement in overall team play. There have been fewer turnovers, but too many stretches without much offense. Considering all games, Osweiler is slightly ahead. If you throw out the Chiefs disaster when Manning played with a foot injury, though, it swings back. And given that Osweiler hasn’t blown the doors off, I suspect we see Manning again before the season ends. As I noted in this playoff breakdown, it could be in a situation where the Broncos still need a win.
[photos via USA Today Sports Images]