In our hobby, phrases are sometimes said so often and with great conviction that they become accepted as fact. Statements like "Third-year WRs are going to break out" and "Short RBs can't be every down runners" are simply entrenched into the minds of the majority of fantasy footballers regardless of the actual truth behind each phrase. Today, we'll take a look at a couple of statements involving quarterbacks. If you have any other such adages regarding QBs, RBs, WR, and/or TEs that you'd like investigated, drop me an e-mail at gray@footballguys.com. Hopefully, we'll be able to get to all of them.

Statement One

"A young, inexperienced quarterback will often dump the ball off for short gains to his RBs and TEs." The conventional wisdom is that a young QB will be more easily flustered in the pocket and will be more apt to throw the ball short rather than wait for long plays to develop. The RBs and TEs on such a team will see an increase in production while that team's WRs will see a corresponding decrease in production.

Statement Two

"A young, inexperienced quarterback will often have a favorite receiver and force the ball to him when in trouble." The conventional wisdom is that a young QB will not be able to progress through all of the reads in a play and will be more likely to throw to the guy he most trusts to catch the ball. Obviously, this favorite receiver will see an uptick in stats while the rest of the receivers on the team will have less production.

The Statistics

Going back to the 1990 season, each team was examined to see if a quarterback threw at least 75% of the team's passes. This is because we don't have data on who threw each pass to each receiver. For example, if two or more QBs split the season and a TE ended up with a lot of yards, we don't know which of the QBs threw to the TE more often. So we narrowed it down to seasons where one guy threw the majority of the passes. Since 1990, there have been 279 such cases (the entire list is at the bottom of this page).

In each of these 279 cases, we recorded the following:

• "Quarterback" - the quarterback that threw at least 75% of the team's passes that year
• "Year" - the season of the case in question
• "Age" - the age of the QB
• "Att" - his number of career attempts prior to that season
• "TE&RB%" - the percentage of total passing yards caught by TEs and RBs
• "Leading Rec" - the team's leading receiver
• "Pos" - the position of the team's leading receiver
• "LeadRec%" - the percentage of total passing yards caught by that receiver

Obviously, the key stats for us are "TE&RB%" and "LeadRec%". If our initial statements are valid, these percentages will be higher for the young, inexperienced quarterbacks.

Examining the Numbers

Average numbers by age group.

A quick aside about the 21-22 group:
It's small. That should tell us that QBs generally don't throw the majority of a team's passes before the age of 23, but that's not the point of this study. Also note that Drew Bledsoe is the only 21-year old in this group, and he shows up again as a 22-year old. With two of the six total entries, it would be accurate to say that Bledsoe has a lot of influence in this age bracket. With such a small size and the great influence of a single player, it would be acceptable to discount the numbers found in this group.

Let's examine the averages from the "% of Yds to TEs & RBs" section. Both the mean and median are highest for the 21-22 age group (which we are hesitant to put much weight into) and are second highest for the 23-24 age group. That would certainly fall in line with Statement 1 from above that young quarterbacks are more prone to throw to TEs and RBs. Of course the difference is not enormous, but the young quarterbacks do seem to go to their TEs and RBs more often.

Now let's examine the averages from the "% of Yds to Leading Rec" section. The mean and median are very low for the 21-22 age group (but remember we can discount this group due to the extremely low sample size). The highest mean and median is found with the 23-24 age group. This is consistent with Statement 2 from above that young quarterbacks are more prone to lock in on a favorite receiver. However, these averages only slightly decrease until you get to the 36+ age group. Not sure how legitimate Statement 2 with regard to age.

Average numbers by experience.

A quick aside about the 0 group:
It's pretty small. That should tell us that QBs generally don't throw the majority of a team's passes without any prior experience, but that's not the point of this study. With such a small size and the great influence of a single player, it would be acceptable to discount the numbers found in this group.

Let's examine the averages from the "% of Yds to TEs & RBs" section. The highest mean and median are found in the 601-1200 attempts group, and the 3601+ attempts group is quite high as well. That does fall in line with Statement 1 from above that inexperienced quarterbacks are more prone to throw to TEs and RBs. However, with the 3600+ group so high as well, it's hard to give this info much meaning.

Now let's examine the averages from the "% of Yds to Leading Rec" section. The mean and median for the 1-600 group is quite high (second highest mean and highest median). However, as before, this is of questionable value as some more experienced groups have high averages as well. It appears that there is very little (if any) correlation with regards to experience.

Conclusions

Statement 1: "A young, inexperienced quarterback will often dump the ball off for short gains to his RBs and TEs."

This seems to be true with the "young" part, but the "inexperienced" descriptor may be off. There are examples (Ben Roethlisberger, Tony Banks, and Kerry Collins) where the adage does not ring true. At the same time, there are examples (Drew Bledsoe, Peyton Manning, and David Carr) where the statement is dead on. Overall, however, it seems like this just depends on the setup of the offense and whether the team's RBs and TEs are good pass-catchers.

Verdict: Could be, but definitely not the slam dunk that people make it out to be.

Statement 2: "A young, inexperienced quarterback will often have a favorite receiver and force the ball to him when in trouble."

This statement seems to hold even less water than the prior adage, but it also seems to apply more to the "young" than the "inexperienced". Guys like Bledsoe, Byron Leftwich, and Kyle Boller were able to spread the ball around (none had a receiver catch more than a quarter of the team's passing yards). However, guys like Roethlisberger, Banks, and Favre were much more "locked on" to a favorite receiver. The question begs here: "Did one guy catch a lot of yards simply because he was far and away the best pass-catcher on the field?"

Verdict: Unsure, but leaning toward saying nothing exists here.

All of the Data