Battle Red Blog
Where does Stroud rank among NFL starting quarterbacks?
Everyone knows I love statistics and I love what statistics can tell us. There is no greater controversial topic in the NFL than ranking quarterbacks. Usually, it is simplistic analysis that leaves out relevant information that can help us. This article is going to be thorough and hopefully enlightening as the Texans tack forward. Make no mistake, C.J. Stroud is the quarterback of the future, but these numbers could tell us a lot about what he needs to work on and maybe who should be working with him.
I’ll start by outlining my methodology. I started by picking the 32 quarterbacks over the last two years with the most starts. That means that Drake Maye takes a backseat even though he is technically the New England Patriots starter. Instead, we went with Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew. We looked at only the games that they played with passing yards per game, TD%, INT%, completion PCT, TD/INT ratio, yards per attempt, and attempts per sack.
There are really thtee ways to look at these numbers are far as Stroud is concerned and we will do all of it. First, we can simply compare him with the average in each category that the 32 quarterbacks put up. If he is average or above in every category then he is an above average quarterback. If he is average or below then he is average or below. We will start there. The average will be in parentheses. His ranking amongst the 32 quarterbacks is also there as well.
Yards Per Game: 244.8 (228.2) (11th)
Completion PCT: 63.5 (65.3) (25th)
TD%: 5.5 (4.7) (10th)
INT%: 2.2 (2.1) (20th)
TD/INT: 2.50 (2.24) (15th)
YPA: 7.60 (7.21) (8th)
Sack%: 11.46 (14.88) (23rd)
We are off to a good start here. Stroud is better than the average score in every category except completion percentage, interception percentage, and attempts per sack. I see some immediate ties between those numbers, but we also need to look at our third tests before we get to the implications. I would point out that he was only top ten in two categories, so anyone arguing that Stroud is a top ten quarterback has a lot of heavy lifting to do.
The composite ranking is 16th amongst those various categories. That feels a lot closer to the truth. I might be tempted to put him a few spots higher in the ranking, but I think we know what we are dealing with. Our last test is something I am borrowing from the baseball world. Similarity scores are a Bill James invention used to compare players with other players that are similar.
So, what we are doing is looking at each category individually and comparing Stroud with the quarterbacks closest to him in each category. The idea is that the names we see repeatedly are the guys most similar to him. Obviously then we can get an idea of which tier he fits into and whether we...
