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ShareThisInexperience at quarterback in the AFC West
In this thead at the footballguys message board, a poster named "Lash" points out that, because they play in a division where the other starting quarterbacks could be JaMarcus Russell, Brodie Croyle, and Jay Cutler, the San Diego Chargers figure to get lots of games this year against inexperienced quarterbacks.
That, combined with the fact that the Chargers themselves don't exactly have a ten-year vet at the helm, prompted me to see if any division has ever had such a collective lack of experience at the quarterback position. It turns out that, even if Josh McCown and/or Damon Huard start in place of Russell and/or Croyle, this will be among the greenest quarterback divisions of the last 30 years.
I looked at all divisions since 1978, defined their quarterback to the one who threw the most passes for them during that season, and then measured that quarterback's experience by counting the number of NFL passes he had thrown prior to that season. Then I averaged those figures for all teams in the division.
That sounds complicated, but it's not. Let me illustrate with the 2007 AFC West:
QB Career passing attempts ======================================== Rivers 490 Cutler 137 Croyle 7 Russell 0
The average is 159, which would be by far the lowest since 1978. Even if we slot Huard and McCown in there in place of Croyle and Russell, we'd get 505, which is still very low.
1985 AFC Central 233 Bernie Kosar 0 Mark Malone 380 Warren Moon 450 Boomer Esiason 102 1979 NFC Central 421 Doug Williams 194 Jeff Komlo 0 Tommy Kramer 73 Mike Phipps 1405 David Whitehurst 433 1988 NFC Central 495 Jim McMahon 1321 Wade Wilson 703 Rusty Hilger 157 Vinny Testaverde 165 Don Majkowski 127 1980 NFC Central 525 Doug Williams 591 Tommy Kramer 639 Lynn Dickey 876 Gary Danielson 451 Vince Evans 66 1989 NFC Central 533 Mike Tomczak 505 Bob Gagliano 30 Wade Wilson 1035 Don Majkowski 463 Vinny Testaverde 631 1990 NFC Central 535 Rich Gannon 21 Jim Harbaugh 286 Don Majkowski 1062 Vinny Testaverde 1111 Rodney Peete 195 1986 AFC Central 555 Bernie Kosar 248 Boomer Esiason 533 Warren Moon 827 Mark Malone 613 1986 AFC East 589 Ken O'Brien 691 Jim Kelly 0 Dan Marino 1427 Jack Trudeau 0 Tony Eason 825 2004 NFC West 594 Tim Rattay 163 Matt Hasselbeck 1282 Marc Bulger 746 Josh McCown 183
Here are the most experienced divisions full of quarterbacks:
2006 NFC North 3610 Brad Johnson 3797 Jon Kitna 2837 Rex Grossman 195 Brett Favre 7610 1995 AFC East 3473 Dan Marino 6049 Drew Bledsoe 1120 Boomer Esiason 4291 Jim Harbaugh 1961 Jim Kelly 3942 2005 NFC East 3178 Donovan McNabb 2586 Mark Brunell 3880 Drew Bledsoe 6049 Eli Manning 197 1997 AFC West 3107 Craig Whelihan 0 Warren Moon 6000 John Elway 6392 Jeff George 2712 Elvis Grbac 430 1996 AFC East 3085 Jim Harbaugh 2275 Jim Kelly 4400 Frank Reich 461 Drew Bledsoe 1756 Dan Marino 6531 2005 AFC West 3056 Kerry Collins 4517 Drew Brees 1309 Trent Green 2822 Jake Plummer 3577 1998 AFC West 3036 Rich Gannon 1404 John Elway 6894 Donald Hollas 115 Craig Whelihan 237 Warren Moon 6528 2005 NFC North 2995 Joey Harrington 1472 Kyle Orton 0 Brad Johnson 3503 Brett Favre 7003 1994 AFC East 2993 Jim Harbaugh 1759 Dan Marino 5434 Drew Bledsoe 429 Jim Kelly 3494 Boomer Esiason 3851 1998 AFC East 2974 Doug Flutie 341 Drew Bledsoe 2901 Peyton Manning 0 Vinny Testaverde 4177 Dan Marino 7452 1981 AFC Central 2868 Ken Anderson 3060 Ken Stabler 2938 Terry Bradshaw 3283 Brian Sipe 2191 1997 AFC East 2830 Drew Bledsoe 2379 Neil O'Donnell 2059 Dan Marino 6904 Todd Collins 128 Jim Harbaugh 2680
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 4:40 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
I hope that the current AFC West quarterbacks don't turn out as bad as the previous most inexperienced group. What ever happened to those guys anyway? Kosar? Moon? Esiason? never heard of them.
Clearly, "quarterback experience" is a must. I mean, look at the most experienced division of all time, last year's NFC North. How can we so soon forget how dominating that division was? Minnesota and Green Bay rode the experience of Brad Johnson and Brett Favre to the playoffs, and Kitna made the Lions the surprise team of the league. If only Chicago had an experienced quarterback, this whole division could have been really special.
Note the 2005 AFC West on the most experienced list: none of those QBs are still on the same team.
I just love the fact that 5 of the 10 worst are in the mighty 1979-1990 NFC Central.
1979-1980, only two QBs carry over. 1988-1990, only two QBs carry over per year.
That's some fine quarterbacking, right there.
This was cool. What if we tried looking at this from a foresight instead of hindsight perspective? In other words, instead of looking at how many passes each QB HAD thrown, look at how many passes they would GO ON TO throw in the future?
Excellent idea Vince. Look for that in a future post.
Great breakdown. I had said something similar about the lack of experience there and if the Broncos new additions can manage a pass rush, they may get quite a few chances for INT's..
Also interesting seeing two top ones for youth in 1986 with some great names (Kelly, Marino, Moon, Esiason, Kosar, O'Brien) and then see Marino and Kelly on one for the oldest 10 years later.