Numbers: Is Tim Tebow underrated?
Tim Tebow listens to a question during a news conference where he was introduced as a quarterback for the Jets. (March 23, 2012) Credit: Craig Ruttle
Doubters say Tim Tebow suffers from an inaccurate throwing arm. Maybe he just suffers from being a victim of traditional football stats.
Since Tebow boarded his private jet to join the Jets, we've been trying to figure out how to equate him with the typical NFL quarterback and, especially, Mark Sanchez. After all, the two new teammates have entirely different styles of play. Sanchez is a pocket passer and Tebow has succeeded as a scrambler.
But the one stat that seems to kill any chance of a comparison and also manages to bury Tebow in the public eye is completion percentage. Tebow has an awful 46.5 percentage, while Sanchez sat at 56.7 in 2011.
But here's our question: How strong is completion percentage in determining a quarterback's effectiveness?
After all, it's really only a means to an end -- that end being yards. What good is an accurate quarterback who produces less yards than an inaccurate one? And it's not as if Tebow's inaccuracy is resulting in turnovers. He threw just six interceptions last year, an average of one pick every 45.16 attempts. Sanchez threw 18 interceptions last season, an average of one every 30.16 attempts.
So we tried something new: measuring exactly how many yards of offense each player produced, regardless of how or how efficiently they did it.
We started by adding each player's rushing yards to his "air" yards. Air yards, an advanced football statistical metric, measures the passing yards from the line of scrimmage to the receiver, eliminating any yards after catch and preventing a receiving corps from skewing the results one way or the other.
But Tebow and Sanchez didn't play in the same number of games last year, so to make the final result even clearer we divided their total yards by the number of plays they were directly involved in producing offense for (passing attempts + individual rushing attempts).
Tebow produced 4.38 yards per offensive play in 2011.
Sanchez produced just 3.36 yards per offensive play.
For some perspective, Aaron Rodgers produced 4.87 yards per offensive play in 2011 and Eli Manning had 4.44.
Tebow tops Sanchez for two reasons:
(1) He was a much better rusher. Forget the big number, the 660 rushing yards he gained in 2011. Tebow averaged 5.4 yards per attempt last season. Sanchez had just 2.8 yards per attempt.
(2) But Sanchez, who's widely regarded as the better passer, lost out in air yards as well. Tebow had 3.9 air yards per attempt in 2011, tied for 17th with Kevin Kolb and Jason Campbell. Sanchez, at 3.4 air yards per attempt, was tied for 29th with Joe Flacco. For comparison, Rodgers led the NFL with 4.9 air yards per attempt, Carson Palmer was second (4.8) and Manning was third (4.7).
Tebow may not be the type of quarterback we're used to seeing be successful in the NFL. But if he keeps producing and winning games, he might force us to re-examine the way we measure passers, and the way we look at football stats in general.
Cody Derespina's "The Numbers Game" is a Newsday app-only exclusive.
