EAGAN — Raise your hand if you know who leads the NFL in all-time yards per pass attempt.
Nobody?
It’s Otto Graham, who played from 1946-1955, for all you history buffs out there. Otto averaged 9.0 yards per throw and three times was over 10.0 yards per pass in a single season. To put that in context: Kurt Warner averaged 9.9 in his best season with “The Greatest Show On Turf” St. Louis Rams. Matt Ryan won MVP in 2016 at 9.3 YPA.
But Graham only completed 55.8% of his career passes, an absurdly good number at the time but worse than every single NFL starter last year except Zach Wilson. Mr. Graham also led the NFL in interception percentage four times and threw picks at nearly twice the rate of Jameis Winston and Sam Darnold.
What can we conclude from these factoids? Otto Graham hucked the ball down the field constantly and won way more than he lost doing it, including three NFL Championships.
There is an opposite side of this.
As a Kansas City Chief, quarterback Alex Smith averaged just 7.2 yards per attempt but threw an interception on just 1.4% of his throws between 2013 and 2017. The only player with a lower INT% during that time span was Tom Brady (by 0.1%). Smith’s Chiefs didn’t take home a title like Otto Graham or Brady but they did win a lot. He was at the helm for 50 victories in 76 games. The only QBs with more regular season victories from ‘13-’17 are Brady and Russell Wilson.
Every football fan wants their quarterback to launch the pigskin into the air over and over because big passing plays are one of the most exciting things in sports. But avoiding turnovers has been proven predictive of success.
There’s a trade off that existed in Otto Graham’s day that hasn’t changed: As aggressiveness increases, so does the potential for higher offensive output and more mistakes. Rams QB Matthew Stafford, for example, led the NFL in picks last year. His team also led the NFL in Expected Points Added in the passing game.
Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins has always had a reputation having a playing style that closer reflected Alex Smith than Otto Graham…or Matthew Stafford.
In their “QB Annual,” Pro Football Focus charted quarterbacks’ big-time throws versus how often they have a turnover-worthy play. You can see the difference between Stafford and Cousins.
Stafford has a higher rate of both big-time throws and turnover-worthy plays than Cousins.
As Cousins takes over a Rams-style offense, the expectation is that those big-time throws will increase with upped aggressiveness.
But it’s hard to find much evidence of the Rams being philosophically more of a downfield passing team than the Vikings were last year. In terms of average depth of target, the Rams ranked third and the Vikings were 11th with only 0.5 air yard separating them. Per NFLNextGen stats, Cousins actually threw into coverage where the defender was close more often than Stafford. NextGEN’s “aggressiveness” showed Stafford throwing into tight coverage the fifth least in the league whereas Cousins was mid-pack at 18th.
Where the difference between the two QBs did show up was in their decisions with the ball. Stafford threw past the sticks the fourth most while Cousins was 29th.
Vikings offensive coordinator Wes Phillips said that the coaching staff will try to dictate the best times to take shots down the field but the quarterback has to make the call.
“I think being aggressive kind of ties to our influence on the plays we’re calling,” Phillips said on Thursday. “If you’re calling plays where there are shots available and you get it dialed up at the right time against the right coverages, we want him to let it rip, but the quarterback has also got to make us right sometimes. You’re not always going to call the perfect play or get the deep shot that you maybe called and you’ve got to check it down and put the ball in play and keep us on track, so he’s always done a really nice job of protecting the football.”
Over the last few years Cousins probably got whiplash with the messaging from his coaching staff as it pertained to aggressiveness. Mike Zimmer grew frustrated with the interceptions and fumbles that came along with a robust passing game in 2018 and told Cousins that he had people’s jobs resting on his arm so he needed to protect the football better. But last year Zimmer demanded that he gun the ball deep to Justin Jefferson more often, saying that he would live with the interceptions that came along with it.
“I think I’ll still play the position the way I’ve played it,” Cousins said on Wednesday. “I think protecting the football is extremely important. I think being aggressive is extremely important. So you want to be efficient, you also want to be explosive, and we try to do both as much as we can.”
Efficient is definitely something Cousins has been when going downfield. He ranked second in the NFL in QB rating when throwing the ball more than 20 yards and produced an absurd 135.1 rating when passing between 10-19 yards (per PFF). Interestingly, Cousins only had five big-time throws between 10-19, where Stafford had twice that many. So did Rodgers, Brady, Carr, Ryan and Allen.
There’s a selection bias in all QB stats. You only count the throws that the QB makes. If Cousins elects not to fire a ball into a tight space 15 yards down the field, he isn’t dinged by the 10-19 stat, rather he’s credited with a 0-9 completion.
Overall his checkdowns were not that effective. The Vikings lost expected points added when he checked down, per PFF. The NFL average is break-even when it comes to checkdowns but Cousins’ was -0.08 EPA per pass last year. The coaching staff may want Cousins to stick with reads that call for intermediate and deep throws rather than moving off them quickly.
“I want him to go turn it loose and feel confident that he’s got some really good players around him,” head coach Kevin O’Connell said.
The numbers suggest he can do it. Per PFF, 71% of intermediate throws and 52% of deep throws were “on target,” which is well above league average.
“Kirk is a very pure passer,” Phillips said. “He’s one of the more accurate quarterbacks in this league.”
There is an additional element that plays into all of this: Sacks and pressure. Cousins massively reduced the amount of pressure that he was responsible for from 2020 to 2021 and lowered his sack rate from 7.0% to 4.8%. Statistically sacks have been shown to be nearly as harmful as interceptions because they are drive killers and sometimes result in a turnover. And Cousins’ yards per attempt dropped from 8.6 to 5.1 (third worst in the NFL) when pressured, so it stands to reason that getting the ball out quicker would limit pressures.
Cousins’ aggressiveness vs. turnover/sack/pressure avoidance has always been a difficult give and take to master for his previous coaching staffs. Getting it right this year could be the difference between the offense gaining an extra edge and the same results.
