Of Fumbles and Quarterbacks (part 3)

To be more fair to the running quarterbacks, we can add rush attempts to the pass attempts to get a better read on playing time, but while we're doing that, we might as well throw in two other categories: pass receptions and sacks. The first is going to be of minute importance in most cases, but in a few others, as with Billy Kilmer or Kordell Stewart, they're an important part of the overall picture. Sacks, well, they're pretty important too, particularly since so many quarterback fumbles come on sacks. More on this later. This does create a problem, though. Since the NFL only started officially keeping sack stats in 1969, any passers whose careers took place before 1969 are excluded from our pool. This drops us to 94 quarterbacks being studied.

The numbers don't actually change that much, actually. Dave Krieg replaces Don Meredith in the bottom 5 because Meredith is an older player, and Jim McMahon replaces Joe Namath in the top group for the same reason. The distribution is a bit more skewed now, with a longer right tail ending with Bert Jones. The running quarterbacks do benefit, of course, the most notable being Kordell Stewart, who moves from slightly below average to well above. And of course, the numbers are centered around a lower mean, 1.60% instead of 1.81.

What kind of difference are we talking about here? Well, based on a season with 500 attempts, a figure that is often but not always reached in a 16 game season, the guys at the bottom of the list would fumble 10-12 times. The guys at the top would fumble 3-5 times. Cut that in half for fumbles recovered by the offense, and you've got several extra turnovers a year for the guys at the bottom of the list compared to the guys at the top. Significant, but not overwhelming. Three INTs would equate to 2.5 points of passer rating over 500 attempts, so that's approximately the kind of difference we're talking about with these guys' careers. And that's the difference between the very best and the very worst. Compare the extremes to the middle, and the difference might be put into better context.

Of course, there's another side to look at as well. Looking at the players at both extremes, you might begin to suspect something about the reason these particular quarterbacks find themselves pushed out to the edges of the graphs. More on that in part 4.