Stampede Blue
Thanks to the nflFastR project, Pro Football Focus and NFL NextGen Stats for the timely sources of data.
For those of you new to this, I will publish key QB stats each week judging how well the upcoming opponent QB has performed. Yes, O-Line, receivers, and play-calling impact these numbers but they are primarily QB measures. I will probably modify the charts throughout the season. Commentary will be brief but feel free to let me know in the comments that stats aren’t everything. (click charts for larger view).
After the Bronocs decided to pay Pittsburgh $38M to take Russell Wilson off their hands, they found themselves without a starting QB. Enter first round draft pick Bo Nix. After 13 starts, Nix finds himself on an 8-5 team that is in the hunt for a wildcard spot.
For those that believe wins are a QB stat, then that must mean he is pretty good. For those that believe that only film study reveals how good a QB is, then you will have to go watch his 13 games (and probably all the other NFL games for reference). For everyone else, I can tell you what the numbers say.
There is a pretty clear trend that Nix has been improving since day 1. His EPA efficiency has risen from the bottom of the league to being above average in 4 of his last 5 games. He’s getting more and more yards per dropback and that is resulting in more first downs.
He’s still far from great, but his last 7 games have been more good than bad.
His passing depth is all over the place. On the whole it is about league average, but he has not been afraid to throw the ball deep. His depth on completions has been trending up.
Broncos receiving has been the Courtland Sutton show. He has more than twice the number of yards and targets of any other pass catcher. Running Back Javonte Williams has been a regular outlet earning more targets than the Denver #2- #4 wide receivers.
Even though Williams is targeted a lot, they are low value completions.
Nix’s accuracy has generally been poor, but recently he had some good games. He’s not hitting on the super-deep throws (26+ yards), but he has been good in the 21-25 yard range.
His time to throw was growing and out of hand until the last few games. Some of those games can be explained by passing depth, but in general he is holding the ball too long.
He doesn’t really favor either side of the field and he’s not much of a deep ball threat overall.
(Use the right-left arrows to toggle between stats for the week and the season).
