Quarterback is the most important position in football, and as the league turns more towards a dominant passing attack, the QB has risen up the list of priorities of fantasy managers as well.

In part one of this series, I described the reality of the growing prominence of the fantasy quarterback and explained the shell of my 81 QB model that predicts fantasy success or failure.

In part two, we’ll go over one of the two most important parts of the model, the “death knell” statistic.  If a player fails to measure up to this standard either on a physical level or through their college career, the chance of them succeeding in the NFL is near or at zero.

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Death Knell Standards for Quarterbacks

There are characteristics that can doom a QB if they don’t meet a certain threshold, but can be a great strength if they have them in spades.  Every standard discussed in the following sections can be seen as success trends if they more than exceed what is discussed.

Ball Velocity

Ball velocity when leaving the QB’s hand is crucial to predict future failure, but a higher speed can also show promise.  There are no successful NFL QBs today that throw under 50MPH, and there wasn’t one QB in my model that was successful throwing under that speed.  I’m not the only one that has found this relationship, /u/LNhart at reddit had a fine post where he charted out QB throw velocity, and their resultant NFL success.  A weak arm shows that they can’t control the ball as well as they need to.  They often will have to force balls down field inaccurately and will be unable to fit balls into tight windows more than ten yards down the field.  A two mph change in ball velocity doesn’t seem like an enormous difference, but it translates to three feet traveled on a twenty-yard throw in same time frame. NFL windows are often measured in inches not feet, one can’t expect to succeed consistently when the intermediate throw is compromised.

These problems can be fixed by changing mechanics, like foot placement, body twist, throwing motion etc. It is thought that by putting on weight in the upper body that this stat can also be bolstered.  Unfortunately, if this is already covered, then a QB with a top speed under 50 MPH has been shown to be nearly doomed in the NFL.

Though there is a positive correlation with ball speed and success at the NFL level.  Here’s a great chart that discusses current NFL starters:

graphic courtesy of @MontelNFL

Career/Last Year Completion Percentage

It’s often said that accuracy is one of if not the hardest thing to teach a QB.  You’re either able to lead receivers and hit them in stride, or on the numbers or you’re not.  The numbers show this is in fact true. 58.6% completion rate is the magic number for success at the NFL level.  Anything below this and the likelihood of success is basically zero. 60% is the usual cut off with some exceptions like Matt Ryan.

A quote from /u/jaguargator9 over at Reddit makes it clear: “From 2002-2014, there were 31 quarterbacks that had a completion percentage of 58.5% or worse, but ended up getting drafted. Of those 31 quarterbacks, only one of them (David Garrard) ended up becoming a decent starter. Some, like Seneca Wallace, Matt Flynn, Chad Henne, and even Jim Sorgi to an extent, became quality backups.”  None of the players in my 81 QB set were successful with a last year or full career completion percentage under 58.5, and it was exceedingly rare to find a successful QB with a completion percentage under 60.  These outliers may have been exposed to great coaching in the NFL, or had a team that couldn’t live up to standards in college.  As we see here, it is usually the QB that creates the opportunity, and more often than not D1 athletes can do something with those opportunities.  If you can’t create them in college, how can you create them in the NFL?

Hand Size

Although this is not a hard and fast rule, a QB with a hand size less than 9.125” often fails in the NFL.  This is exacerbated in rough playing conditions.  If the player is forced to play in cold, rainy, snowy, or windy conditions on a regular basis, they will not be able to grip the ball well enough to endure hits without fumbling, or put sufficient grip on the ball to throw it like they would usually want to. There are a few notable exceptions to this rule (Tony Romo, Mike Vick, and Ryan Tannehill), but they have all played in warmer climates, or inside a dome (Vick’s couple years in Philly are the outlier here, but by then he had learned to play the game well enough to compensate for his worsened control).

Beyond the failure standard, hand size is also correlated with success.  Johnathan Bales at Rotoworld created a formula to determine how much value a quarterback will likely offer in the draft: HS/H*100 (hand size divided by height multiplied by 100). The higher the result, the more likely the quarterback will be to offer value.

Here we see one of the reasons Jared Goff had such a hard time his first year, 9/76*100= 11.84.  This is most certainly on the low end of the spectrum of hand impact.

Russell Wilson, is a perfect example of how this equation functions, although he is 71 inches tall, he has 10.25-inch hands.  Thus (10.25/71*100 = 14.44). Drew Brees is also a great example of how longer hands on a smaller frame makes for a QB with better ball control.  He comes in at 73” with 10.25” hands (10.25/73 * 100 = 14.04)

That’s just an unbelievable difference, suggesting Wilson and Brees were bound to offer far, far more value than Goff, or Tannehill from the get go, yet their height held them back into the third and second rounds respectively.

QB Success/Failure Analysis Series