SITE NEWS: We are moving all of our site and company news into a single blog for Sports-Reference.com. We'll tag all PFR content, so you can quickly and easily find the content you want.
Also, our existing PFR blog rss feed will be redirected to the new site's feed.
Pro-Football-Reference.com ยป Sports Reference
For more from Chase and Jason, check out their work at Football Perspective and The Big Lead.
ShareThisA Rookie Quarterback’s Real Best Friend
From time to time, I hear that a tight end is a rookie quarterback's best friend. I've often wondered what this is supposed to mean. Do they room together and eat dinner after practice? Is it some hypothetical ideal, where the young quarterback should realize that he can utilize the tight end as a secondary outlet? Do people actually mean that the rookie quarterback does throw to the tight end more?
Whatever the original intention or origin of this truism, it seems to me that many people perceive the latter and actually do believe that a tight end paired with a young quarterback is a good thing. This talk comes up frequently this time of year, when people are looking for "value" in their fantasy drafts.
So, dubious of such claims about tight end and rookie quarterback glory, I decided to take a look at the data. I pulled every season where a rookie quarterback at age 24 or under threw 300+ passes in a season since the merger, and then looked at the reception distribution on those teams. 26 seasons made the list. I divided the receptions on those teams into WR1, WR2, WR3, RB1, and TE1. Here are the percentage of team receptions that went to each:
WR1: 23.8%
WR2: 16.1%
RB1: 15.4%
TE1: 10.4%
WR3: 8.1%
Others: 26.4%
For a quick and incomplete comparison, here is the distribution for the ten highest scoring teams from 2009
WR1: 23.6%
WR2: 15.6%
RB1: 11.9%
TE1: 15.9%
WR3: 10.7%
Others: 22.3%
I know that the tight end versus running back usage rates have changed a little in recent years, but there is no truth to the adage that a tight end is a rookie quarterback's best friend. Apparently, the Jeff Komlo to David Hill combo back in 1979 was quite memorable, and I'm going to attribute the rise of the "tight end is a young quarterback's best friend" mantra to that historic combination. It appears though, that it is a running back as a receiver who receives a relative percentage increase with rookie quarterbacks, while tight ends are, well, whatever the opposite of a young quarterback's best friend.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at 6:38 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.
At first, I thought it would make sense that the tight end would be a natural outlet for an underconfident rookie QB, as I would assume the timing requirements to hit a tight end would be simpler, as their route is more likely to be "get open". However, as I thought about it a little more, I got to thinking that tight ends are probably quite a ways down on the checkdown list on most plays. Therefore, most rookies probably haven't developed the patience, pocket presence, and aptitude to check down far enough to throw many passes to the tight end. As they get further along in their career, how often do you hear them say the game slows down for them? This is probably why veteran QBs are typically better at checking down during a play, and why veterans are more likely to hit a tight end.
Running backs, on the other hand, are different. They share the backfield with the quarterback. Because most coaches probably compensate for a rookie QB's lack of experience and savvy, they probably dummy down the game plan a little. This probably makes the running back more likely to stay in and block and/or become available as a safety valve for the rookie QB to throw to, mainly short or screen passes (often in a panic or to stave off panicking). With more veteran and higher quality quarterbacks, running backs become more a part of the passing game and run more complex routes. Since they are probably usually well down on the checkoff list, and since the pass required to hit them takes more timing, it is less likely they will catch the ball.
Good stuff that seems to pretty much defy conventional wisdom. I guess the only things that would make it better (but would be impossible right now due to lack of data) would be to use targets rather than receptions, and you'd have to separate the rookie's attempts from the other passers on his team that season.
Roethlisberger threw 21 passes his rookie year to the wonderful duo of Jerame Tuman and Jay Riemersma, connecting 12 times.
Matt Ryan had 18 completions to Justin Peelle and Ben Hartsock.
Manning had 55/326 completions (16.9%) to his TE's.
It probably depends on who the tight end is. For example, (and it's probably a cliched example) Drew Bledsoe had Ben Coates in his early years and they became one of the premiere quarterback-receiver tandams in the AFC if not the entire league in the mid-and-late-90s.
Remember the Bill Parcells quote that Drew Bledsoe is married to Ben Coates?
And in the regular season game against Cleveland all four of Bledsoe's INTs were on passes intended for Coates.
I would think that most rookie quarterbacks would favor a) the best receiver, b) the closest receiver, or c) some random spot on the field because PANIC NFL PASS RUSH PANIC. I'm a little surprised that rookie QBs didn't hit WR1 more often, but then I saw the Lions last year with a rookie QB and one of the best WRs in the league, and all too often PANIC PANIC set in and who knows where the ball would end up.
I doubt there's enough data for any meaningful conclusions yet, but it would be interesting to see how the targets are distributed for rookie QBs vs. experienced QBs. Granted, that doesn't necessarily lead to fantasy advice unless you can somehow project NFL completion percentage from NCAA completion percentage or other things like that.
Maybe those numbers actually prove the old adage true. Maybe a tight end IS a rookie QB's best friend. He just doesn't take advantage of him.
You said the top 10 offenses utilize the TE more than rookie's offenses (who rarely crack the top 20 even.) Therefore, you could say a TE is ANY QB's best friend, as the ability to hit the TE goes hand in hand with running a top 10 offense. If a Rookie QB would find the TE more often, than that would lead to more positive things.
Maybe it is a chicken or the egg paradox.
Does targeting a TE make the offense better, or do good offenses allow a QB to find the TE?
The raw percentages don't really tell enough of a story. Most teams who start a rookie will do so because they were horrible the year before. What's the TE% for rookie QB by W/L? If the (few) teams that had a rookie QB & a winning record had a disproportionate usage of TE compared to teams with a losing record...
However... Correlation Causation
Do better teams throw more to their TE or do better teams simply have better TEs to throw to?
Cory at post 3 is right.
In 1993, Drew Bledsoe was, if I'm not mistaken, the youngest starting qb in league history. Since the 1993 Pats' wrs were not exactly early versions of Wes Welker and Randy Moss, Bledsoe probably looked to throw to Coates as his "Go to" guy.
That just makes sense. At his peak, though it was fairly short, I thought Coates was the best te I ever saw. Why not throw to him as often as possible.
Bledsoe's quick matuartion led many analyists to believe that by throwing so often to his te, it helped him (Bledsoe) mature quicker. So from that point on, all the NFL talking heads believe that a rookie qb should throw to his te a lot to help accelerate his devolopment.
In fact, Bledsoe threw so often to Coates was simply because Coates was hands down he Pats' best receiver at the time, just like Cory posted. If the '93 Pats had Welker & Moss, chances are Bledsoe's rookie season would have looked something like Matt Cassel's 2008 season.
If that actually did happen, where Welker and Moss were with New England back in '93, then all you would hear is how a rookie qb's best friend is a tough and elusive slot wide receiver who can gain lots of yards-after-the-catch, or YAC.