With a couple of days to sober up from Sunday's game and a little thought into the matter I started to wonder when we could expect to see the corner turn for Matt Stafford. My initial thought was that this would have been an argument for sitting him at the start of the season - and in a way it still is, but that is all water under the bridge. The decision is made and reversing it now would be a pretty bad idea.
Stafford's first couple of games have been pretty bad. So far he is either the worst or second worst starting quarterback in the NFL (Jamarcus Russell is simply awful, despite his game winning drive on Sunday). That isn't good, and if it was predictable then it is really difficult to support the decision to play him this early. On the other hand, these games weren't the easiest for any quarterback on a bad team to handle. Often you see arguments for waiting for an advantageous schedule position to insert a rookie. The Lions chose to ignore the schedule when selecting their quarterback. The results weren't terribly surprising. Stafford was forced into a position where he would have to lead a comeback against New Orleans, and then was put in a spot where he would face one of the tougher defenses in the NFL.
None of this excuses the team for the decision, or Stafford for his play, but it perhaps explains things a bit. Stafford did seem to play within himself a little more on Sunday. As with the prior week, when he tried to go downfield bad things typically happened, but at least this week he was finding open players on checkdowns rather than just locking in on Calvin Johnson and heaving the ball into triple coverage.
But this isn't about that. I got a little curious about when we could expect to see Stafford make that leap. In his case, even an improvement from awful to merely poor would do a lot to reinforce the faith that so many have put in him. While it is impossible to predict when - or if - Stafford will make any kind of sudden improvement, we can certainly look at other quarterbacks as guideposts. The good news is that Stafford's experience is not atypical. He's on the low side of normal, but other than a few notable exceptions most quarterbacks have started out similarly their rookie year:
Player Game 1+2 Att Comp Pct Yds TD INT
Stafford 67 34 50.7 357 1 5
Weinke 63 40 63.5 499 1 1
Carr 47 16 34.0 232 2 3
Harrington 70 35 50.0 449 3 4
Ramsey 67 31 46.3 455 1 4
Leftwich 64 36 56.3 567 3 3
Boller 60 29 48.3 230 1 2
Grossman 32 32 51.6 406 2 1
E Manning 58 23 39.7 228 1 2
Roethlisberger 47 29 61.7 337 2 1
Smith 39 17 43.6 166 0 5
Frye 44 29 65.9 646 3 1
Orton 49 29 59.2 291 1 1
Fitzpatrick 81 47 58.0 398 0 6
Young 50 24 48.0 218 1 3
Leinart 77 46 59.7 485 4 1
Cutler 51 27 52.9 331 4 2
Gradkowski 75 45 70.5 409 4 1
Edwards 59 45 76.2 410 1 2
Ryan 46 22 47.8 319 1 2
Flacco 48 28 58.3 258 0 0
As every circumstance is pretty different it is difficult to peg Stafford. It is very safe to say that guys like Roethlisberger and Cutler and Edwards had stronger starts, tougher to say the same about players like Eli who had both the benefit of a stronger supporting cast as well as several weeks to absorb the game before being inserted into the lineup.
Looking ahead to games 3 and 4 we see:
Game 3 Att Comp Pct Yds TD INT
Weinke 30 18 60.0 160 1 1
Carr 22 12 54.5 99 0 1
Harrington 41 25 61.0 309 2 1
Ramsey 27 12 44.4 204 1 0
Leftwich 42 24 57.1 256 0 3
Boller 21 12 57.1 98 1 1
Grossman 10 6 60.0 31 0 0
E Manning 21 6 28.6 148 0 2
Roethlisberger 21 16 76.2 231 1 1
Smith 24 16 66.7 185 0 3
Frye 32 21 65.6 198 0 1
Orton 39 17 43.6 117 1 0
Fitzpatrick 24 10 41.7 69 1 1
Young 25 13 52.0 161 1 0
Leinart 32 13 40.6 203 0 2
Cutler 31 21 67.7 261 2 1
Gradkowski 26 13 50.0 104 0 0
Edwards 21 11 52.4 153 0 1
Ryan 18 12 66.7 192 1 0
Flacco 31 16 51.6 192 1 0
Game 4 Att Comp Pct Yds TD INT
Weinke 47 29 61.7 275 1 3
Carr 29 16 55.2 188 2 2
Harrington 29 16 55.2 199 0 0
Ramsey 35 23 65.7 213 3 0
Leftwich 27 15 55.6 158 1 2
Boller 26 15 57.7 140 0 3
Grossman 35 16 45.7 227 0 2
E Manning 25 12 48.0 113 0 0
Roethlisberger 25 21 84.0 193 2 0
Smith 22 9 40.9 77 0 1
Frye 39 20 51.3 183 0 0
Orton 26 16 61.5 117 1 0
Fitzpatrick
Young 15 7 46.7 87 1 0
Leinart 35 14 40.0 157 1 1
Cutler 23 12 52.2 179 2 1
Gradkowski 48 20 41.7 139 0 0
Edwards 21 14 66.7 130 0 1
Ryan 41 21 51.2 158 0 0
Flacco 27 18 66.7 153 0 2Even at this point we don't see much improvement for most quarterbacks. Eli Manning continued to struggle. Ryan remained effective while Flacco was still on the interception streak that marred his rookie year.
If this tells us anything it is that it will be quite a while before we can really determine what Stafford will become. Whether it is wise to be playing him at all is a different argument for a different post, but that decision is made. It is very likely that Stafford will continue to produce just about the same as he has for the next few weeks with any improvements incremental and not necessarily reflected in the statistics.
Posts
