|
As you'd expect, I was left with a strong group of qualified passers, but there are some notable omissions from the top 10. The first one that leaps off the screen (and will likely attract an avalanche of angry tweets) is the absence of perhaps the league's top quarterback and most exciting deep passer: Patrick Mahomes.
Allow me to explain. We relied on a group of metrics to rank the qualifying passers. Chief among them: completion percentage over expectation (CPOE), which represents the difference between a passer's expected completion percentage (determined by evaluating a number of factors, including pressure, time to throw, distance of attempt and separation between targeted receiver and nearest defender) and actual completion percentage. A positive CPOE indicates performance above expectation, while a negative difference indicates performance below expectation. Mahomes ranked last in CPOE among the QBs who met the aforementioned statistical requirements, with a mark of -0.7 percent.
The talent around Mahomes could be working against him when it comes to CPOE. A key part of determining expected completion percentage is the separation of a receiver from the nearest defender at the time a pass arrives. A quarterback equipped with receivers who are excellent at creating separation figures to suffer in this regard because he'll have more expected completions than your average QB. With targets like Tyreek Hill, Mecole Hardman and Travis Kelce, Mahomes' situation becomes the perfect storm to produce a negative CPOE, even though we all know he is an excellent passer. As they say, speed kills, but it also can significantly hurt a quarterback's CPOE.
This is primarily why Mahomes -- who posted a 107 passer rating and 12:2 TD-to-INT ratio on deep passes -- didn't land on this list. It's essentially a requirement to end up with a positive CPOE to make the cut. If a quarterback isn't at least meeting expectation on deep throws, I'm not going to include him in the top 10.
|