How do the four 2021 rookie quarterbacks who have started compare to previous rookie QBs after their first 4 games?

by Jason Pauley

About one-fourth into the 2021 season, the group of first-round quarterbacks has not done well collectively. They all fall into the bottom 17% in passer rating rankings.

• Mac Jones is the best of the bunch with an 84.7 passer rating, but he’s still only ranked 26th out of 31 qualifying quarterbacks
• Trevor Lawrence has a 66.4 rating (ranked 29th)
• Zach Wilson has a 62.6 rating (ranked 30th)
• Justin Fields doesn’t have enough attempts to qualify but his rating of 53.9 would put him at 31st.

(Trey Lance, with only 19 attempts is excluded from this analysis)

But they are rookies and it’s the first 4 games of their lives, so they should rank low, right? It’s really not fair to compare Justin Fields to Lamar Jackson, Pat Mahomes, and Justin Herbert…but it is fair to compare these rookies’ first four games to Lamar Jackson, Pat Mahomes, and Justin Herbert’s first four games (one might argue that Mahomes have a year to sit and learn puts his first four games at an advantage).

So, let’s throw away any comparisons of the four rookie QBs to their current peers, and look at how this rookie group has done in their first four games compared to the first-round quarterbacks going back to 2015. There are 20 first-round quarterbacks since 2015, 17 with enough games to be included in the comparison (P.Lynch, J.Love and J.Rosen are excluded).

The average passer rating for the comparison group in their first four games was 84.4. Only Mac Jones is above that average with an 84.7 passer rating. T.Lawrence (66.4), Z.Wilson (62.8), and J.Fields (53.9) are all way below the average and are in the bottom 5 of this group, along with J.Goff (66.1) and D.Haskins (61.6).

This chart shows the rest of the first-round quarterbacks’ passer ratings in their first four games.

We know how they compare to past quarterbacks in their initial four games, and it’s not good (for three of them). But it’s almost certain that this isn’t the best of what we are going to see out of these quarterbacks. What does recent history tell us about improvement over their next four games? What about their careers (so far)?

Here is the same chart, showing how these quarterbacks performed after their first four games (white dot = next 4 games; grey dot = career)

• 70% of the players (12 out of 17) improve over the next 4 games. With an average improvement of 9% taking their collective passer rating of 84.4 to 91.8
• All 5 QB’s that came out hot (passer rating of 90+) were the 5 that declined of the next 4 games
• The data is similar when looking at their career passer rating vs their first four games. 70% improve (the same 5 declined). The average improvement was 8% compared to their first 4 games, with a collective passer rating of 91.4

It’s not ideal to be in the far right on this chart like Fields, Wilson and Lawrence are, however, we also saw some of the biggest improvements from guys who started off with the lowest passer ratings in their first 4 games. Guys like J.Goff and J.Allen who started the first quarter of their first season with ratings in 60’s both improved the most with gains of over 20 points and their career ratings now sit at over 90. In addition to just being new and learning the game, there are other factors that can highly influence a small sample size of 4 games (schedule strength is the most obvious one). What we see when we group the quarterback’s performance in top, 2nd best, 3rd best and bottom quadrants is the worse a quarterback starts off, the greater improvement, the better they start off you might even expect a decline when compared to career passer rating. The table below shows how each group compares to their first 4 games. This is good news for our rookie quarterbacks at the bottom of the rankings on this list.

This table illustrates how the delta between career passer rating and first-4-game passer rating is inversely correlated.

We should expect improvement from all, you probably didn’t need to read all of these words to know that. Everyone gets better at their job after the first month. But what these charts do, is put their performance into perspective. We know they are some of the worst-performing QBs in the NFL so far this year. But knowing where they stand against past quarterbacks through 4 games can give us additional data (which still isn’t good for three of these players) and knowing the trends in what happens to past quarterbacks after their initial four games adds another layer of data (which is promising for all of our 2021 rookies). Right now, all we have is information representing maybe 2% of their careers, and as fans, many of us are going to form some early opinions on this information. The fact is, every quarterback will have some anomalous 4 game stretches at various points in their careers, and most certainly in their first four games. My goal here was to explore what past quarterbacks have done and to provide a comparison or different perspective to what we are seeing out of these rookies right now. The next 4 games are going to be more interesting than the first, I hope all 4 of these quarterbacks follow the historical trend and improve significantly.

Notes:

This analysis is based on small samples sizes (20 quarterbacks; 4 games) so assumptions made here lack the confidence of a much larger dataset.

Past quarterbacks’ first four games use an average of averages, not a weighted average or total passer rating through four games. It’s based on the data I had and how I could work with it. I’m also only using their first four games in which they had 10+ attempts (avoiding late-game garbage time or a game where they came in for a few plays).

Source: pro-football-reference