C.J. Stroud and the DYAR Leaders

Things change fast in the NFL.

Last week, as we broke down the midseason award leaders, we noted that, all else being equal, the default choice for MVP should be the player leading the league in passing DYAR. And that was one Patrick Joshua Allen.

Yeah, so, about that…

You might argue that take aged like milk left in the sun after Buffalo’s face-plant against Denver on Monday night. A loss bad enough that it got Buffalo offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey fired, despite the fact that Buffalo is still third in offensive DVOA, EPA per play, and plain old yards per play. I prefer to think that it was just ahead of the curve, as the section ended with a note that it was likely that Allen’s candidacy would die as the Bills fell out of contention. It just happened much earlier and much more dramatically than anyone expected. Though, to be fair, an overly dramatic reaction to a setback is a very fitting way for Dorsey’s tenure to end.

But have no fear, because Allen already had fallen out of first place before losing 81 more DYAR on Monday night. Instead, your new frontrunner? Houston Texans rookie C.J. Stroud, who has shot into first place behind back-to-back games of triple-digit passing DYAR. A rookie – and not even the first rookie drafted, mind you – has been the most effective passer in football this season. If that doesn’t sum up what a weird year 2023 has been, I don’t know what does.

In fact, the top of the passing leaderboard is strange enough that it’s worth printing and staring at for a while. So let’s do that, then.

Yes, Allen wasn’t just passed by Stroud, but by Brock Purdy and Jared Goff last week. It’s a tight race for the top, but it’s not that tight; Allen really did have a shocker. Allen’s -67 DYAR against Denver was his lowest in over a year, since he had -86 DYAR in a two-interception, one-fumble game against the Jets last November. Even Good Josh Allen is prone to one of those sorts of games a year. You can cite the Jaguars and Falcons games from 2021 (-168 and -181 DYAR, respectively), or the Titans game in 2020 (-38 DYAR). He’s simply a more volatile quarterback than peers you would put in the same tier, quality-wise.

It does seem a bit odd that this was the game that would get Dorsey fired. It wasn’t good by any stretch of the imagination, but both he and Buffalo have had worse offensive games before and they’ll have worse offensive games again. They had an offensive DVOA of -3.7% against Denver, and that could very well tick positive by the end of the year if Denver’s defense continues its trajectory of improvement. The problem in Buffalo isn’t really the offense; it’s that the defense has fallen from a DVOA of -23.1% in the first four weeks to 17.8% in Weeks 5-10, 31st in the league. So a slight drop-off in offensive efficiency (they’ve gone from 32.1% to 19.2% in the same time frame) has resulted in a magnified drop of scoring on the field because the offense is being put in worse situations on a regular basis. I don’t think Dorsey was a great offensive coordinator, but Buffalo’s problem is that half their starting defense got hurt, and they haven’t been able to adjust for that. If you want to find a scapegoat, you should look at the defensive coordinator, but you can’t, because he’s also the head coach. 

But enough about Allen, let’s talk about Stroud some more! Do you know the last time a rookie led the league in passing DYAR? No, you don’t, and neither do we, because our database only goes back to 1981 (for now) and it’s never happened. Dak Prescott is the only rookie to have hit the top five, with 1,302 DYAR in 2016. Dan Marino, Matt Ryan, Russell Wilson and Justin Herbert are the only other rookie quarterbacks to reach the top 10. And it’s not like Stroud is flying high on a couple good games, either; while his median DYAR is slightly below his average (101 to 115), it’s still exceptionally good. Only Jared Goff (123) has a better median game than Stroud; it’s not just putting up 275 DYAR against a Tampa Bay team that was primarily composed of holes in zones that is juicing his mark.

That Stroud has grasped NFL concepts so quickly is perhaps the most impressive part. His Week 1 start saw him already hitting a 0.2% DVOA, and he has only gone up from there. He’s been fearless, he’s been confident, he’s been willing to step up in pressure and make plays. He’s been doing this with no running game to speak of, with the Texans ranking 28th in rush DVOA. His decision making has been close to unimpeachable, his pocket management exceptional. He just feels like a top-10 passer at this point in time; fans get that sort of confidence that Stroud is going to be able to make plays. That he’s doing it months into his career is remarkable. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised he’s shot up to first place on our passing leaderboards.

To be fair, it’s also helping Stroud that no one has really put up exceptional numbers to this point. Stroud’s 1,031 passing DYAR through Week 10 is the second lowest in the past decade; while he’s not a massive outlier or anything, there’s no Manning or Brady or Mahomes tearing through the league this season. It’s easier to lead a race when the pack behind you isn’t quite keeping up!

Of course, there literally is a Mahomes chasing Stroud this season. But Mahomes’ 738 DYAR is his lowest through 10 weeks since he became a starter, just behind his 754 in 2021. Mahomes finished that year with five straight games of 100+ DYAR, so it’s certainly not out of the question that he’ll catch and pass Stroud when all is said and done. But he has -82 DYAR in his last two games as he’s really fallen off the pace. That top 10 list is also missing Joe Burrow, who had -85 passing DYAR last week and has put up negative value in five of his nine games. There’s no Jalen Hurts, as Philly’s passing offense didn’t really kick into gear until Week 8. No Trevor Lawrence, Jimmy Garoppolo or Geno Smith, all of whom finished in the top 10 in passing DYAR a year ago.

Instead, also squeezing past Allen this week were Jared Goff and Brock Purdy. Goff makes sense; he was second behind Patrick Mahomes in DYAR a season ago and this would be his fourth top-six ranking in his career. By this point, the NFL community has more or less gripped who Goff is; a quarterback who can slice and dice over the intermediate areas of the field in a well-designed offense loaded up with play-action. When that’s working, like it’s doing for Ben Johnson in Detroit, Goff can put up incredible numbers. We’re comfortable with that, and we mentally rank Goff somewhere on the border of the top-10 quarterbacks in the league even when his numbers are higher than that.

Just mentioning an evaluation of Purdy, on the other hand, riles up the blood and triples sales of pitchforks, tar and feathers nationwide. There is no doubt that Purdy benefits from a well-designed offense with a fantastic collection of skill position players, and that his 982 DYAR would be lower if he had to play in Carolina or New England. It’s also fair to note that, in the 43-year history of DVOA, there have been at least two or three other offenses that could also be described as well-designed with good skill position players; that is, in fact, the point of building an offense. 

Purdy’s not on pace to shatter the record books like Stroud, but he is on pace for 1,854 passing DYAR. That would be the third-most for a second-year player in DVOA history, behind Dan Marino and Patrick Mahomes. (That Purdy is not as good as a pair of first-ballot Hall of Famers is the kind of insight you can only get here at FTN.) That’s true even if you project Purdy for 16 games rather than 17; there’s somewhat of an aching chasm between Mahomes’ 2,031 DYAR and third-place Lamar Jackson’s 1,261. Jimmy Garoppolo’s highest total was 863; Purdy’s already passed that. There’s an outside shot he could catch the Kyle Shannahan Offense record of 1,885, set by Matt Ryan in his MVP year, though if he does it will likely because he has the benefit of the 17-game season. We could write a small novella trying to sift through the advanced data on Purdy – he throws to the most open receivers in the league! He’s sixth in EPA on perfectly-covered passes! And round and round we go – but for now, we can just say that he’s a good quarterback and quietly back up while the peanut gallery defenestrates themselves.

Poor Carolina – they go ahead and pick Bryce Young and have to watch the players drafted immediately before and after top the leaderboard. What might have been.

The one thing that Stroud, Goff and Purdy have in common? They’re the only three qualified passers to have no games with negative DYAR this year. They all have games with negative YAR before opponent adjustments, but Cleveland and Baltimore are both very good defensively, and so they slip to the top side of the ledger. If even your worst days keep your needle moving forward, it makes sense that you’re going to be in the top three in DYAR.

Of course, Stroud’s highs have been a bit better than Goff’s and Purdy’s. We can separate successful and unsuccessful plays into two buckets, finding out who is racking up positive DYAR when things are going well, and who is shedding DYAR on negative plays. A sort of Pangloss versus Chicken Little ranking, if you will – everything is the best of all possible worlds versus the sky is falling. Get ready for a big table!

Stroud remains in first place in passing DYAR if you look at only positive plays, and he has the highest DVOA in the league on his successes, too – when things are going right for him, they’re going more right than for anyone else in the league. Goff stays in third place, but Purdy falls to ninth – still good, and he’s second in DVOA on those plays, but he’s over 250 DYAR behind Stroud when things go well. Instead, Purdy gets a huge chunk of his value from avoiding negative plays, and that 56% success rate is out of this world. Purdy does deserve credit there for avoiding sacks and handling pressure well – that’s the area where he is an undoubtably massive improvement over Jimmy Garoppolo – but that’s also reflecting how easy life can be when you have four different Pro Bowl-caliber weapons to throw to on any given play. Purdy is excelling while working in the CERN of NFL offenses; Stroud is putting up his numbers working in a cave with a box of scraps.

Other fun notes from that chart:

Sam Howell is another quarterback people have a hard time evaluating, and you can see why there. Howell jumps to fifth in DYAR when you just look at positive plays, but is last by a landslide on negative ones, with 549 more DYAR lost than second-place Zach Wilson. To put that in perspective, Daniel Jones is last with -552 DYAR; Howell is basically a full Jones worse than Wilson when things go wrong. It will not stun you that this is because of sacks; Howell has lost -732 DYAR on his 47 sacks as he strives to become one with the field at FedEx stadium. But don’t think he’s a one-dimensional bad player; he also leads the league with -849 DYAR on incomplete passes and is second in both interceptions and failed completions. A true four-tool bad play player offset by sheer volume of good plays; his 197 successful passing plays leads the league because Washington passes in head-scratching volume.

Who leads the league in DYAR lost on interceptions? It’s not Josh Allen. Despite leading the league with 11 INTs, Allen is only sixth with -383 DYAR on picks. A decent chunk of Allen’s picks come on third-and-long; they’re glorified arm punts. Those are the kinds of interceptions you can live with. Instead, it’s Mac Jones with -540 DYAR on 10 interceptions that leads the league, a fact which probably does not stun Patriots fans. Don’t sleep on Bryce Young, though; he’s only thrown seven picks but has -389 DYAR on them and could be a sleeper to climb this list going forwards. 

Your leader in lost DYAR on failed completions is Josh Dobbs at -235, because Arizona is still working a little bit with the Kliff Kingsbury Zillion Screens Playset. Then again, Kirk Cousins is fourth at -212, so things may not get better for Dobbs in Minnesota. At least in that sense, as opposed to every other football sense.