A comparison of QBs drafted #1 overall

[Icege]

"Bryce Young did not have a good rookie season compared to other QBs selected #1 overall. My eyes say so."

But... why don't the facts support this?

WOA THERE NOW! Whether you're a Stroud Boy sitting down and idling by or a devout member of BrySIS, I come in peace. The purpose of this write-up is to explore the validity of a common complaint echoed by disgruntled Panthers fans. This isn't proving that Bryce Young is without fault for 2023-2024. It isn't demanding that everybody only cheer for him and never criticize. Hell, it isn't even a "Bryce is good" post. It is just a statistical look at BY9's rookie season compared to other QBs taken at #1 overall.

A quick note on methodology: All of the data was pulled from Pro-Football-Reference.com, which did not have advanced stats for any QB entering the league before 2017 (Hurries, Hits, Pressures, Pressure %, Drops, and Drop %). Going back to 2000, there have been 18 QBs selected #1 overall . Blacked out boxes are for missing/invalid data. Below is the comparison:

Perhaps the only thing that Panthers fans can agree on is that, despite fears regarding his size, Bryce Young can take the punishment that an NFL defense can dish out over the course of a season. While he did miss one game, the only QB that's started more games their rookie season is Trevor Lawrence. This was in spite of BY9 being sacked, hurried, hit, and pressured more than any other rookie since 2000 except David Carr (who is also #1 for fumbles and fumbles lost, where as Bryce is #2 in both of those categories). The one stat that Young did lead in was pressure percentage... No other QB in the last 25 years has been pressured more during their rookie campaign than Bryce Young. Even with all of that working against him, his body still held up. 

This isn't anything new to anybody with a functioning set of eyes. Even people that think Bryce should still order from the kid's menu will admit that having eight different left guards and nine different right guards is probably going to make an already difficult situation for a rookie more difficult. This is where mobility helps bails teams out, and an additional area of concern for detractors. We won't see Young doing the same thing we saw Cam do such as carrying a defensive lineman downfield on his back or steamrolling a defensive back into the dirt. We did see him scramble though enough to put up the 7th highest rushing yards for a QB selected at #1 since 2000.

Also not new to fans was the underperformance of the weapons fielded by the team last season. Scheme, playcalling, and inability to separate have been beaten to death but what if I told you that the group also had the third most drops for the third highest drop percentage out of all other teams supporting a #1 rookie QB? To say that the entire offense surrounding Bryce failed him is an understatement, and it reflects in the stats.

With that context in mind, let's dive into the passing stats...

• Completions: 5th (315)
• Attempts: 6th (527)
• Completion %: 7th (59.8%)
• Passing Yards: 9th (2,877)
• Passing TDs: 11th (#11)
• INTs: 12th (10)    

Having the fifth most completions, sixth most attempts, seventh highest completion percentage, and ninth most passing yards all place Bryce Young in the top half of the sample group. He was also 12th in INTs, meaning that despite the constant duress he was under while trying to find an open target that Bryce was not turning the ball over as frequently as other QBs did their rookie year.

Being 11th in passing TDs is frustrating, but it's hard to get into the redzone with all of the aforementioned issues as well as the not-so-silent drive killer: penalties. Carolina was #4 in the league this past season for pre-snap penalties with 45. That means that every game had two to three false start penalties. In 2022, teams averaged 10.9 drives per game. If the same holds true for 2023, the Panthers averaging over ~2.64 false starts a game means that 25% of their offensive drives are being marched back five yards.

Are these all just excuses in the end and Bryce will never be able to contend for the UFC Light Heavyweight Title? Maybe. Will it make some fans any less insufferable? Definitely not. What it will do though is help make the last two hours of a three hour meeting go by much, much faster.

Hope y'all have been well. Keep Pounding!

Edited June 13, 2024 by Icege

[Waldo]

You notice that after 2007 those numbers jump up a bit? Maybe 2007 was just the J Russel effect but what comes after is the modern NFL even though it started to change in what 2004? with the CB stuff it wasn't full blown until then. It's more like comparing 90s numbers than to the modern stuff. 

[jb2288]

Great analysis. Anyone saying Bryce is a bust after 1 season based on the mess we fielded last year isn’t being honest with themselves. We will find out this year if he is or isn’t 

[Ricky Spanish]

I can appreciate the effort in order to get through long boring meetings.

Hope he bounces back and end up being our guy for the long haul. Would love to stop throwing so many resources after a QB year after year.

[Khyber53]

I've tried to make the case before that last season's team was so badly coached and put together that anyone would have struggled and failed out there. As such, there's no real way to accurately gauge what Bryce actually can bring to the table.

Look, he wasn't my choice for QB, but you can't look at the play calling, performance of other playmakers, lack of any cohesion or competency on the offensive line or even really any phase of the game and think that it didn't in some way just kill the kid.

Stroud, and what a revelation that young man was, went to a team that the prior year had been terrible and had been so for years. But what he fell into was a first class young coach, a massive rebuild (greatly assisted by the monster trade (con job) done for Deshaun Watson), and a hell of an aggressive coaching scheme on both sides of the ball. Stroud hit the AFC South at their weakest point as a division, too. But, really, Bryce did as well. Stroud arrived in a brand new Corvette and Bryce showed up in a '72 Datsun with a flat tire and a clown behind the wheel.

And yeah, perhaps the biggest take away we've got from last season that we can hang a hat on here is the kid can take a pounding and get back up. 

I hope we do better by him, and better by all of us, this season. Right now, we're looking up at the rest of the league from under the manure pile.

[Icege]

Forgot the table showing the mean, median, and mode for each stat along with Bryce's and where it ranks compared to the other 18 QBs.

[ForJimmy]

1 minute ago, YankeesWon26 said:

Bryce Young started 16 games, had 4 more TD than Richardson who started 4 games 

Bryce had 2 more TD than Levis .. yet Levis started 9 games to Bryce's 16

Supporting cast, this, supporting cast, that .. it is hard to express just how piss poor that is

Mac Jones outshined Trevor Lawrence his rookie year. Now he is his backup. Let’s just see what happens and yes supporting cast and coaching matters. It’s what ultimately ruined Mac’s career and sustained Trevor’s. 

[Basbear]

29 minutes ago, Waldo said:

You notice that after 2007 those numbers jump up a bit? Maybe 2007 was just the J Russel effect but what comes after is the modern NFL even though it started to change in what 2004? with the CB stuff it wasn't full blown until then. It's more like comparing 90s numbers than to the modern stuff. 

I thought Winston was going to be a 10-15 year problem, sooo glad he went the better josh Freeman route. I mean prime Ryan, brees, and if Winston became that guy........Id hate to be a DC for Carolina.

 

The main deal is 1st overall pick goto the worse teams. 

Looking at the list only Burrow has been able to break the loser mentally fog over those teams. Goff was reborn for the lions and you could make a case for him, but 2nd team. Luck and Cam are about the same, injuries ended great runs. 

Burrow should get more MVP votes.

[KSpan]

I don't care all that much about stats. What I care about is how did he look on the field, and that was poor-to-average for everything but the second half of the GB game. Carolina was losing every game... of course there were some passing stats generated. 

What is missing here is quantification of how many times these QBs showed something worthwhile justifying the #1 pick. That Manning season gets tossed out a lot, and while there were a lot of interceptions and not many wins, Manning absolutely looked like an NFL QB that just needed some seasoning to take the next step, which he did that following year. Bryce had little to none of that on an individual basis. 

While this is an interesting table, it tells only a fraction of the story. 

[Newtcase]

I see a lot of bad players taken #1 that were just misses.  Bryce fits right in.

[Manna]

36 minutes ago, YankeesWon26 said:

Bryce Young started 16 games, had 4 more TD than Richardson who started 4 games 

Bryce had 2 more TD than Levis .. yet Levis started 9 games to Bryce's 16

Supporting cast, this, supporting cast, that .. it is hard to express just how piss poor that is

In Bryce's defense there were a few TDs that were drops, and a few where the team could've put him into position to score a TD but ran out the clock instead. 
 

but yeah, he could've done more for sure. 

[Newtcase]

1 minute ago, Manna said:

In Bryce's defense there were a few TDs that were drops, and a few where the team could've put him into position to score a TD but ran out the clock instead. 
 

but yeah, he could've done more for sure. 

He had more dropped interceptions than dropped touchdowns.  But in reality those happen to every QB so it's not a very relative defense or indictment.  

[strato]

Bry

3 hours ago, Icege said:

"Bryce Young did not have a good rookie season compared to other QBs selected #1 overall. My eyes say so."

But... why don't the facts support this?

WOA THERE NOW! Whether you're a Stroud Boy sitting down and idling by or a devout member of BrySIS, I come in peace. The purpose of this write-up is to explore the validity of a common complaint echoed by disgruntled Panthers fans. This isn't proving that Bryce Young is without fault for 2023-2024. It isn't demanding that everybody only cheer for him and never criticize. Hell, it isn't even a "Bryce is good" post. It is just a statistical look at BY9's rookie season compared to other QBs taken at #1 overall.

A quick note on methodology: All of the data was pulled from Pro-Football-Reference.com, which did not have advanced stats for any QB entering the league before 2017 (Hurries, Hits, Pressures, Pressure %, Drops, and Drop %). Going back to 2000, there have been 18 QBs selected #1 overall . Blacked out boxes are for missing/invalid data. Below is the comparison:

Perhaps the only thing that Panthers fans can agree on is that, despite fears regarding his size, Bryce Young can take the punishment that an NFL defense can dish out over the course of a season. While he did miss one game, the only QB that's started more games their rookie season is Trevor Lawrence. This was in spite of BY9 being sacked, hurried, hit, and pressured more than any other rookie since 2000 except David Carr (who is also #1 for fumbles and fumbles lost, where as Bryce is #2 in both of those categories). The one stat that Young did lead in was pressure percentage... No other QB in the last 25 years has been pressured more during their rookie campaign than Bryce Young. Even with all of that working against him, his body still held up. 

This isn't anything new to anybody with a functioning set of eyes. Even people that think Bryce should still order from the kid's menu will admit that having eight different left guards and nine different right guards is probably going to make an already difficult situation for a rookie more difficult. This is where mobility helps bails teams out, and an additional area of concern for detractors. We won't see Young doing the same thing we saw Cam do such as carrying a defensive lineman downfield on his back or steamrolling a defensive back into the dirt. We did see him scramble though enough to put up the 7th highest rushing yards for a QB selected at #1 since 2000.

Also not new to fans was the underperformance of the weapons fielded by the team last season. Scheme, playcalling, and inability to separate have been beaten to death but what if I told you that the group also had the third most drops for the third highest drop percentage out of all other teams supporting a #1 rookie QB? To say that the entire offense surrounding Bryce failed him is an understatement, and it reflects in the stats.

With that context in mind, let's dive into the passing stats...

• Completions: 5th (315)
• Attempts: 6th (527)
• Completion %: 7th (59.8%)
• Passing Yards: 9th (2,877)
• Passing TDs: 11th (#11)
• INTs: 12th (10)    

Having the fifth most completions, sixth most attempts, seventh highest completion percentage, and ninth most passing yards all place Bryce Young in the top half of the sample group. He was also 12th in INTs, meaning that despite the constant duress he was under while trying to find an open target that Bryce was not turning the ball over as frequently as other QBs did their rookie year.

Being 11th in passing TDs is frustrating, but it's hard to get into the redzone with all of the aforementioned issues as well as the not-so-silent drive killer: penalties. Carolina was #4 in the league this past season for pre-snap penalties with 45. That means that every game had two to three false start penalties. In 2022, teams averaged 10.9 drives per game. If the same holds true for 2023, the Panthers averaging over ~2.64 false starts a game means that 25% of their offensive drives are being marched back five yards.

Are these all just excuses in the end and Bryce will never be able to contend for the UFC Light Heavyweight Title? Maybe. Will it make some fans any less insufferable? Definitely not. What it will do though is help make the last two hours of a three hour meeting go by much, much faster.

Hope y'all have been well. Keep Pounding!

BrySIS? Really? Trying too hard man. I mean, I have said and heard some stupid poo people say trying to be funny. This is up there.

Edited June 13, 2024 by strato

[CPF4LIFE]

Well...if bryce doesnt make a pro bowl by next year and even if he does is everybody ready to give him damn near 300 million? Because thats what its gonna be.