What would a "second year jump" look like for bryce young compared to his contemporaries

[electro's horse]

I decided to look at the difference in statistical performances between the first and second year starting for some QBs to see what insights we can gather about what a 2nd year jump would look like for Bryce. I decided to use rate stats for this, and I chose four that I thought were pertinent to our little guy.

Completetion% - passes completed/attempted

TD% - Completed passes leading to a TD

Int% - Completed passes that went to the wrong dude

Air yards per attempt (AY/A) - how far the ball travels in the air per pass, regardless of whether it was caught or not.

These were chosen not for any specific reason. I welcome people to look at other stats if they think they're more relevant. I got my information from https://www.pro-football-reference.com/

Obvious caveat that compared to other sports there simply isn't a ton of data for quarterbacks to fit any kind of meaningful statistical model. Cowboys led the league last year in passes per game at just under 38. For comparison, the average pitches per game per team in MLB is 146. You can see there's just a lot more individualized data points available for comparison. And obviously it's difficutl to compare QBs across systems and across skill positions and blah blah blah. This is not meant to be predictive, just add some recent historical context to predictions for this season. Also I didn't use excel for this because I've made it this far in life not being able to use it and I'm not going to change now; i wrote this out and did the math in between charting because I was bored.

I decided to compare him to recent QBs who've started in their first year. Again, reasonable people can disagree on who I chose here and that's fine. The QBs are Jalen Hurts, Kyler Murray, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Tua Tag..., Justin Herbert, and Brock Purdy.

I also did the numbers for Daniel Jones, Joe Burrow, and Lamar Jackson, but excluded them because they're outliers. Jones got worse pretty much across the board, Burrow got better with every stat except one, and Lamar Jackson basically turned into football jesus.

I looked at the percentage change in each of the chosen QBs stats between their first and second year starting and averaged it out, and got this. Note that there are not a lot of dramatic increases here anywhere.

Completion % - +3.37 average increase - I feel like this is about what you'd expect. Getting more familiar with system, learning how to check down, take what the defense gives, game slows down etc. Standout here was Jalen Hurts who went from 52% to 62.5 for a +9.3% change. Good lord.

TD % - +0.85% - again, not much change here, just under 1%. Now if you're throwing 300 times a year (for example), that's about 2.5 extra TDs per year, and in a game where the average score differential is under 7 points, that's pretty important. Burrow increased his by 3.3% which is insane, until you look at Lamar's +5.5%. Goodness.

Int % - MINUS 0.14% - I'm not going to do a statistical analysis but I suspect this isn't even significant. Joe Burrow actually went up, but I attribute that to game situations etc.

Air Yards/Attempt - +0.75 yards. Again, not huge. Joe Burrow for funsies actually increased his by 2.3 yards. Trevor Lawrence increased his by 2.1 yards, and more on that a little later, if there's interest. So uh, let's look at Bryce's stats, and see what the average increase from these players would get him too and where that would rank him in 2023.

BRYCE YOUNG

Completion% - 58.8% (31st 2023) Increasing this by 3.37 would bring him to 63.17%, good for 24th in 2023 between Sam Howell and Joshua Dobbs

TD% - 2.1% (31st in 2023) Increasing this by 0.85 would bring him all the way up to 30th in 2023, between Mac Jones and Zach Wilson. He essentially moves up one spot.

Int% - 1.9% (14th in 2023) Decreasing this by 0.14% moves him to 10th in the NFL, between Gardner Minshew and and Kirk Cousins.

AY/A - 5 (33rd in 2023, last in the league) Increasing this by 0.75 yards per attempt gets him all the way up to 30th in 2023, between Zack Wilson and Sam Howell.

so what does any of this mean?  As I stated, this is not meant to be a definitive or an authoritative statistical analysis.  I was just throwing some poo against the wall. Just glancing over all this I think my main takeaways are

1. There's just not a lot of data, so there's not a lot of change.

2. With only a few exceptions, QBs don't really change that much between their first and second seasons. There are a few notable exceptions, like Lawrence with his completion percetnage, Hurts with his AY/A, and Jackson with his completion%, but for the most part what these stats are in the first season are what they'll be in the second

3. Bryce's completion%, ay/a, and TD% were so bad in 2023 that even with a similar bump that his contempories had, he's still a bottom tier QB. to put this another way, for Bryce's Ay/a to be top 20 in 2023, he'd need to be 6.77 yards per attempt; this is what Jalen Hurts did that year. I think most of us would agree that in the second year, a QB worth 2 first rounders should be top 20 in yards traveled through the air per pass. For bryce to get there, he'd need to increase his ay/a by 1.77 yards. This doesn't seem like a lot, but this is per attempt. This includes his throws behind the line of scrimmage. An increase of 1.77 yards would be more than double the average of the players I charted, and would be more in their second season than anyone not named Trevor Lawrence (2.1) or Joe Burrow (2.3).

In 2023, league average TD percentage was 4.1% For Bryce to get there he'd need to essentially double his 2.1%, which is MORE than double the average of the players sampled at 0.85% increase.

conclusion - based on these four stats, for Bryce just to become a top 20 QB, he'll need an essentially meteoric improvement between his first and 2nd season relative to the players i crunched the numbers on.

probably needs the preseason reps

[Basbear]

Thanks for the leg work fitz! This shows no matter if a historic leap forward happens, panthers need to bring in other QBs *and allow them to compete for the starting job. 

[X-Clown]

Jared Goff would be one to aspire for.

Completion percentage Went up from 54.6 to 62.1 - +7.5%

TD percentage went from 2.4 to 5.9% - +3.3%

INT percentage down from 3.4 to 1.5% +1.9%

AYA went from 4.3 to 8.5% - +4.2%

I realize he only started 7 games his rookie year - but he was similarly awful. Of course it makes a huge difference going from whatever Jeff Fisher and friends were doing to Sean McVay.

[electro's horse]

7 hours ago, X-Clown said:

Jared Goff would be one to aspire for.

Completion percentage Went up from 54.6 to 62.1 - +7.5%

TD percentage went from 2.4 to 5.9% - +3.3%

INT percentage down from 3.4 to 1.5% +1.9%

AYA went from 4.3 to 8.5% - +4.2%

I realize he only started 7 games his rookie year - but he was similarly awful. Of course it makes a huge difference going from whatever Jeff Fisher and friends were doing to Sean McVay.

Yeah I was thinking of including him but the Sean Mcvay factor is huge. I also didn’t include Jordan love for obvious reasons. 
 

bryce defenders, if there are any left, want to look to Trevor Lawrence for hope. Interesting that Lawrence went from a gimmicky coach with no NFL head coaching experience to an nfl veteran former QB who won a Super Bowl with the eagles. Bryce is doing the opposite. 

Edited August 9, 2024 by electro's horse

[NAS]

You can’t use his horrible rookie season as baseline and consider a 2 TD increase to be a reasonable improvement.  Going from 11 to 13 TDs is not a jump. He better hit 18-20 or it’s a miserable fail.

[electro's horse]

4 minutes ago, NAS said:

You can’t use his horrible rookie season as baseline and consider a 2 TD increase to be a reasonable improvement.  Going from 11 to 13 TDs is not a jump. He better hit 18-20 or it’s a miserable fail.

I’m not sure what else we can use as a baseline  

It’s a reasonable improvement relative to a bunch of other qbs that don’t have his limitations.  

I agree that it would be hideous. That’s the point. 18-20 would basically take an unheard of improvement. 

[hepcat]

In layman’s terms a second year jump would be an increase in every measurable statistic because he was ass awful his first year 

[X-Clown]

54 minutes ago, electro's horse said:

Yeah I was thinking of including him but the Sean Mcvay factor is huge. I also didn’t include Jordan love for obvious reasons. 
 

bryce defenders, if there are any left, want to look to Trevor Lawrence for hope. Interesting that Lawrence went from a gimmicky coach with no NFL head coaching experience to an nfl veteran former QB who won a Super Bowl with the eagles. Bryce is doing the opposite. 

I am in the “maybe there’s a 2-3% chance that this works with a different coach and better system, we might as well try, god I hope this works, if it doesn’t move on fast after this year” camp. I don’t think Lawrence’s second coach would sign off on/draw up screen passes to Ian Thomas at least.

[strato]

Why compare him to himself?

Baseline should be in the average range of QBs that went on to have great success in the NFL. 

[SmokinwithWilly]

2 hours ago, electro's horse said:

I’m not sure what else we can use as a baseline  

It’s a reasonable improvement relative to a bunch of other qbs that don’t have his limitations.  

I agree that it would be hideous. That’s the point. 18-20 would basically take an unheard of improvement. 

Well he did throw close to that, if you include the pick 6's. 

[Wundrbread33]

9 minutes ago, strato said:

Why compare him to himself?

Baseline should be in the average range of QBs that went on to have great success in the NFL. 

Getting a livable raise from a minimum wage job is tough. You start so low. 
 

The best way to get a purposeful raise is to just find another job. 
 

Here’s to the 2025 draft. 

[Waldo]

[CanadianCat]

3 hours ago, electro's horse said:

bryce defenders, if there are any left, want to look to Trevor Lawrence for hope. Interesting that Lawrence went from a gimmicky coach with no NFL head coaching experience to an nfl veteran former QB who won a Super Bowl with the eagles. Bryce is doing the opposite. 

I'll put myself in that boat. I think he will bounce back in a big way this year. 

Lets GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[33inNC]

Yea, but all of these guys actually have the physical talent to be an NFL QB. Bryce is too small and has no elite physical abilities to speak of. Even his "super processor" seems to not work in the NFL. 

Prove me wrong, Bryce.