Next Gen Stats Review: 2023 Quarterbacks and Passing Advanced Stats

April 2, 2024

Corbin Young provides key fantasy football updates for quarterbacks from the 2023 season, using Next Gen data to help fantasy owners make the best lineup and waiver wire decisions.

We're wrapping up the Next Gen Stats review with quarterbacks after covering running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends. As someone who dives into advanced metrics often, Next Gen Stats is a free resource to look at common and slightly different stats. We often use adjusted yards per attempt, air yards, and on-target percentages for quarterbacks

However, Next Gen Stats gives us another layer of metrics for passers, including average time to throw (seconds), aggressiveness, and expected completion rate. They have other metrics like Average Air Yards Differential (AYD), Air Yards to the Sticks (AYTS), and Average Completed Air Yards (CAY). We may reference those and others throughout since each stat needs context. 

Under each subsection, we'll define the metric, look at the leaders, and figure out the relevance for fantasy football. Can we use any early takeaways for best ball, redraft, and dynasty leagues? 

Time to Throw Leaders

Next Gen Stats defines Time to Throw (TT) as the average time in seconds that the passer takes to attempt the pass after the snap. The league average for time to throw sat at 2.80 seconds in 2023. Tua Tagovailoa, Mac Jones, Trevor Lawrence, Trevor Siemian, and Joe Burrow led the league with the lowest time to throw.

When quarterbacks have low average times to throw, we typically want to monitor the intended air yards because they might be throwing the ball quickly on shorter passes. Burrow and Jake Browning from the Bengals had two lower intended air yards, which could explain some of the struggles for passing offense. It seems to be something that might be a part of the team's offense since Burrow averaged 2.40 seconds and 6.8 air yards per attempt in 2022.

That's interesting because Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins have been downfield weapons for the Bengals' passing offense. It could be the league shifting to more two-high safeties, with Chase's average depth of target going down from 12.9 (2021) to 9.8 (2022) to 9.1 (2023). We noticed Chase's targets behind the line of scrimmage increased compared to 2022, meaning he needed to create more yards after the catch.

Meanwhile, Higgins saw his aDOT maintain, with a career-high of 13.1 in 2023 compared to a career average of 12.5. That's evident in Higgins' chart above comparing the past two seasons, with a higher rate of medium and deep targets than Chase.

We could spend all day breaking down the Bengals' offense, but let's shift attention toward quarterbacks who held on the ball the longest. Justin Fields, Russell Wilson, C.J. Stroud, Jalen Hurts, and Joe Flacco had the highest time to throw. Besides Wilson, these quarterbacks averaged the highest intended air yards, aligning with the guess that more time to throw leads to more targets downfield. 

The downside for quarterbacks holding the ball longer involves a higher probability of sacks. Fields and Wilson sometimes ran higher sack rates. That's evident in Fields' 10.6 percent sack rate and 9.1 percent for Wilson. Fields had the third-highest sack rate with Wilson at eighth in 2023 among quarterbacks with 200 pass attempts. Weirdly, Fields and Wilson now play on the same team.

Aggressiveness Leaders

Aggressiveness is an interesting concept for passers, especially when we may want offenses to be more or less aggressive depending on the situation. In fantasy baseball, we sometimes want to avoid aggressive hitters, though not all. Next Gen Stats defines aggressiveness as a percentage of pass attempts headed into tight coverage. They define tight coverage as when a defender is within one yard or less of the pass catcher at the time of the completion attempt. 

We'll want to consider passers with the lowest aggressiveness rate alongside turnovers, specifically interceptions. We included interceptions per attempt, with the lower rates aligning with the passers who don't typically throw interceptions. Patrick Mahomes might be or is a unicorn because he has a higher interception rate while showing the lowest aggressiveness percentage. However, we don't know whether these interceptions occurred on passes where the defender had tight coverage. We would guess that more interceptions occur during tight coverage.

Unsurprisingly, we have mostly passers who lack fantasy relevance besides Flacco, Dak Prescott, Baker Mayfield, Justin Herbert, and Jordan Love. Flacco has typically aired the ball out, held the ball longer, and thrown interceptions as a primary pocket passer, so that's not news. 

Meanwhile, Mayfield, Prescott, Herbert, and Love limited the interceptions though they showed aggressiveness as passers. We wonder if these aggressive passers might rank highly in contested catches and targets for their receivers. Among the 2023 receiving leaders in contested targets, Mike Evans ranked third (33), CeeDee Lamb ranked eighth (30), and Romeo Doubs ranked 12th (28). 

Herbert threw the most contested targets to rookie Quentin Johnston (22) with Keenan Allen close behind at 20. Again, the context we don't have involves the alignment or misalignment of game charters from Next Gen Stats and Pro Football Focus on aggressiveness and contested catches. 

Expected Completion Rates

We love expected stats and Next Gen Stats provides Expected Completion Percentage (xCOMP). They determine a quarterback's expected completion rate based on the probability of the play. One would guess that if a pass attempt is far downfield or in tight coverage, the probability might be lower for that completion. The opposite would also be true.

Like any other expected stat, we want to know the player's (actual) performance or completion. Many of the top passers in 2023 finished highly in expected completion rate, with some performing better or worse than expected. When the list includes Mahomes, Kyler Murray, Tagovailoa, Browning, Brock Purdy, Jared Goff, Lawrence, and Burrow, it's mostly above-average passers. Browning has sneaky-good accuracy, showing him outperforming his expected completion rate. 

Desmond Ridder and Love close out the top 10 among quarterbacks in expected completion rate, though they both underperformed. Interestingly, Ridder and Love posted two of the highest aggressiveness rates, with Ridder having the sixth-worst interception rate. 

It's interesting to find Hurts behind Fields with the two lowest expected completion rates. Hurts had the third-highest completion rate over expected at 4.1 percent behind Prescott and Kirk Cousins. Or maybe it's not surprising since Hurts had one of the highest aggressive rates (15.4 percent) and the ninth-worst interception rate. However, when we consider the probability of the completion for Hurts, it might be a skill that he completed more than expected. 

On the other hand, one might expect regression for Hurts, though he has the talent and team context to be an efficient passer. Unfortunately, we don't have the 2022 data to compare for Hurts, but if he lowers the interception rate and aggressiveness, we could see the expected closer to the actual. 

Meanwhile, Bryce Young and Will Levis will have a chance to change the narrative in their second season. We can debate whether it's causation or correlation, but the new Panthers' head coach, Dave Canales, helped several quarterbacks reach high levels. 

Wilson, Geno Smith, and Mayfield posted some of their best numbers for fantasy purposes and career highs in adjusted completion rates. Young should be on that path and a potential buy-low in dynasty leagues. For context, Young averaged 12.2 fantasy points per game (No. 40) and -5.5 fantasy points over expected per game (No. 80), with the 52nd-worst adjusted complete rate at 71.9 percent ahead of Pickett.

When considering several of the Next Gen Stats for passers, Young holds the ball too long, with a lower intended air yards, while having a low interception rate with his non-aggressive approach. There's a good chance Canales will help Young take a step forward in 2024. 

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