Bo Nix Leads NFL in Failed Completions 2024

Before the 2024 draft, one of the dings on Oregon quarterback Bo Nix was his tendency to dink-and-dunk, despite impressive arm talent. In 2023, almost a third of his passes were thrown to targets behind the line of scrimmage and his 6.3 air yards per attempt was the worst of that year’s prospects. His completion percentage? Sky high, but there were a lot of empty calories there – what we call “failed completions.” Would that continue into his NFL career?

Well, the numbers are in, and Nix did in fact lead the league in failed completions. But the story is a little more complicated than that, as end-of-season Nix wasn’t the same player as September Nix, to everyone’s massive relief.

A failed completion is any completed pass that fails to gain 45% of needed yards on first down, 60% on second down, or 100% on third or fourth down. These are the empty calories of completion percentage – the third-and-long screens that don’t break, the angle routes that get clobbered a half-yard past the line of scrimmage, and the futile checkdowns to avoid pressure. Strictly speaking, they’re still better than incomplete passes as long as they gain yardage, but they’re putting your team in difficult down-and-distances and lowering your overall chances to win.

2024 actually saw a slight decrease in failed completions, reversing the trend. The league as a whole had 3,126 failed completions and a 26.9% failed completion rate, down from 3,260 and 27.6% in 2023. We don’t want to overstate this, as it’s not like there’s been a massive change in depth of target overnight or anything. But in 2023, only four teams averaged fewer than five failed completions per game. In 2024, it was nine – the Lions, Vikings, Bills, Rams, Packers, Eagles, 49ers, Colts and Ravens. Eight of those teams regularly completed passes, too, so that’s a positive development. Any year where the overall completion rate increases and the failed completion rate decreases is a good one for fans of the passing game.

As a side note, not every failed completion is created equal. For the purposes of this article, however, we’re treating it as a binary, simply summing up successes and failures. A 7-yard completion on third-and-10 is better than a 2-yard completion, especially when you start getting into field goal range. That’s reflected in DVOA, but not here – for the purposes of this article, a failure is a failure.

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Failed Completions

In the following table, the 36 qualified quarterbacks of 2023 are ranked by ascending failed completion rate (FC%). We also included failed completions as a percentage of attempts (very little change in the rankings) as well as the average ALEX (all downs) for the season. ALEX represents the average passing yardage in the air compared to the sticks. “Passes” here refers to all passing plays, including sacks.

Let’s start with Nix. Putting a quarterback who has a tendency to dink-and-dunk into a Sean Payton offense without many great YAC threats was always going to be a recipe for plenty of failed completions. Late-career Drew Brees ended up near the top of this table nearly every year, as his arm strength diminished but his accuracy and timing didn’t. He ended up being reliant on ball placement and his receivers’ ability to turn short passes into positive plays, and will be going to the Hall of Fame in part because just how good he was at it. Rookie Bo Nix was never going to be as good as Brees, and Courtland Sutton and Javonte Williams were not going to be Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara, so a big chunk of failed completions were to be expected.

Even with those expectations, however, 126 failed completions is not a good number. Nor is a 33.5% failed completion rate. In fact, they’re rather historically not good, as Nix’s season had the sixth-most failed completions in NFL history.

It’s a counting stat, so Nix having 17 games while most of the rest of this list had 16 does factor into things. But even still, Nix’s 33.5% failed completion rate is the third worst of anyone on that table, behind only 2017 Joe Flacco and 2023 Bryce Young. Yes, the leaderboard has plenty of great quarterbacks on it – Tom Brady‘s there, Drew Brees shows up multiple times, as does Ben Roethlisberger – but they have failed completion percentages down closer to 25%. They make the list because of volume – their offenses were designed around them throwing a zillion passes, they very rarely missed, and they just accumulated failed completions as a matter of course. Nix threw fewer than 600 passes this year and still managed to come within spitting distance of all-time records, an, erm, “impressive” feat.

But we promised that the numbers weren’t quite as bad as they first appeared, and that’s because Nix wasn’t as bad as he first appeared.

In the season opener against Seattle, Nix had one of the worst games of all time from a failed-completion perspective. While he went 26-for-42, not terrible numbers for a rookie making his debut, he had 16 failed completions. Nix’s first eight NFL dropbacks were all failures by our standards – five failed completions, three incompletions. The same is true of 17 of his first 18 dropbacks. He didn’t have back-to-back successful passing plays until the fourth quarter, when he hit Devaughn Vele twice in a row for a total of 13 yards, on a drive that ended with Nix throwing an interception anyway. His 38.5% successful completion rate was quite bad, and he’d top himself before the month was over. In Week 4 against the Jets, he managed just a 25% successful completion rate, going 12-for-25 for just 60 yards. These two games had 5.3 and 5.0 yards per completion, respectfully, the second- and third-worst games of 2024 with a minimum of 25 attempts.

When the book on you entering the season is that you’re a dink-or-dunker, and then you have multiple September games filled with failed completions, your reputation gets set in stone early. Noodle-armed Nix can’t push the ball downfield, and thus the Denver offense was going to be stuck in neutral all year long. But the thing is, Nix started opening things up more and more as the season went along.

Nix had a 45.8% failed completion rate in Weeks 1-4, which would have been last on the season-long table by a country mile. Only pre-benching Bryce Young, at 48.4%, was worse. As he grew more comfortable, however, those numbers began to drop. We don’t want to make it sound like Nix all of a sudden was slinging the ball all over the field. His intermediate passing touch still needs work, and he had multiple double-digit failed completion games late in the year. But after week 4, his failed completion rate dropped to 30.0%, which was merely eighth-worst among qualified passers.

…OK, still being in the bottom 10 isn’t something that’s going to garner you a ticket-tape parade, and Nix did still lead the league with 88 failed completions from Week 5 onward. But that was only four more than Aaron Rodgers, and Caleb Williams and Geno Smith were both within 10, as well. Prorate that over a full season, and Nix does still enter the all-time top 10 in failed completions, but only because of the expanded schedule. A 30% failed completion rate is bad, but it’s something you can work on and live with. A 45% failed completion rate washes you out of the league. Denver will hope that Nix will learn to hit some of those intermediate post routes going forward because this still isn’t an acceptable number for someone you hope will be your long-term starter. But positive development is positive development and should be noted when it happens.

Elsewhere, Deshaun Watson became the fifth quarterback in league history to pass the 40% failed completion barrier, joining 2023 Tommy DeVito, 2023 Bailey Zappe, 2018 Nick Foles and 2015 Nick Foles. We’ve assuredly seen his last snap in a Cleveland uniform, and quite possibly his last snap in any sort of uniform whatsoever – there’s not a huge market for quarterbacks with terrible stats, a re-injured Achilles tendon, and a laundry list of off-field allegations.

The Saints, after coming out of the gate hot in the first couple weeks, ended up with two quarterbacks near the very bottom of our table. Derek Carr was last in the league with a 22.1% failed completion per attempt mark, with Spencer Rattler not that far behind. With Carr possibly out for 2025 and Rattler likely to lose his job to Tyler Shough, this is most relevant for the 2025 Seahawks. Klint Kubiak takes his offense to Seattle for Sam Darnold, who didn’t have many failed completions at all in 2024. I do not believe the Seahawks will employ Justin Jefferson this season so Darnold’s numbers here should drop, but it would be surprising as they fell as low as Carr or Rattler.

Your biggest year-to-year improvement goes to Kyler Murray, who fell from a 31.8% failed completion rate in 2023 to 22.8% last season. Murray only played half of 2023 as he was coming back from his torn ACL and wasn’t really at full speed even by the end of the year. Better health was certainly a factor, but so was Marvin Harrison Jr. replacing the likes of Marquise Brown and Rondale Moore as top targets, as well as Trey McBride taking a significant step forward in year three. Murray joins Joe Burrow and Patrick Mahomes as quarterbacks who saw their failed completion percentage drop by at least 5% last season.

On the other end of the spectrum was C.J. Stroud, who shot up from 22.3% in 2023 to 28.9% in 2024. Like many of Stroud’s other sophomore slump stats, you can put a significant chunk of the blame here on the offensive line, as Stroud’s pressure rate jumped from 28.5% to 37.6% a year ago. Some of these failed completions are sack-avoiding dumpoffs. I would expect his numbers to drop in 2025 if they find a way to keep Stroud upright more often.

Successful Completion Percentage

Elsewhere on the table, Anthony Richardson Sr. developed his one neat trick to lead the league in failed completion percentage as a proportion of your attempts – simply never complete any passes to begin with! Only 10.8% of Richardson’s pass attempts were failed completions, which sounds amazing if you have zero context. Of course, Richardson only completed 47.7% of his passes in general. He was one of just six qualified passers to complete less than half his passes in a season and had the lowest completion percentage since Tim Tebow‘s 46.5% in 2011.

A better way to look at avoid failed completions is with successful completion percentage, the percentage of all pass attempts that end in a successful completion. This is where we count all failed completions as incomplete passes, removing some of the empty passing calories from completion percentage around the league.

Having a successful completion percentage above 55% is some rarified air. Both Jared Goff and Joe Burrow would crack the all-time top 20, with Goff finishing mere hundredeths of a percent outside of the top 10. Burrow had the lower failed completion percentage, which isn’t a surprise. The Bengals’ offense was more vertical than the Lions’, and Burrow averaged a full air yard more than Goff in 2024. But Goff had the superior completion percentage in general, and the Lions averaged 1.9 yards more of YAC than the Bengals, helping push Goff to the top of the successful completion percentage table. Goff had a 61.1% success rate on completions behind the line of scrimmage compared to Burrow’s 50.7%. That stretches out to 64.2% on throws of two air yards or less, second to only Patrick Mahomes‘ 65.3% and far ahead of Burrow’s 57.4%. The Lions were deadlier on shorter passes, finding plenty of room to catch and run, and succeeding on those higher-percentage plays means Goff takes the crown here.

Goff is also helped by his low volume, so Cincinnati fans can be pleased with the fact that Burrow lead the league with 367 successful completions, 51 more than any other quarterback in football. In 2023, Goff led league with 317, so to hit that volume level is beyond impressive. Leading the league with a 20.2% failed completion percentage despite leading the league in pass attempts is an impressive achievement. Brock Purdy, who finished second in failed completion percentage, had over 350 fewer dropbacks than Burrow did.

The quarterback who saw his successful completion percentage drop the least from their actual completion percentage was Richardson. Richardson’s aDOT was a full 2.8 yards past any other quarterback, and deep passes do not result in failed completions, so it’s no surprise he isn’t dinged from dinks and dunks. Limiting ourselves to the top 10, Purdy saw the lowest drop between his total and successful completion percentages, just ahead of Burrow – the 49ers threw deep more than they ever had in the Shanahan era, without much of their customary short YAC stuff, which we’ll talk about at a later date.

On the flip side, the quarterback whose reputation takes the biggest hit from the successful completion percentage table is Derek Carr, dropping 22.9% and falling from ninth in completion percentage to 30th in successful completion percentage. Carr has been a regular in these columns for years, with three of the top 20 failed completion seasons of all time to his name.

Failed Receptions

What about the receivers on the other end of those failed completions? It’s worth taking a look at that, even though appearances here generally have more to do with usage and scheme than a receiver’s individual talents. We exclude running backs from these tables; they would otherwise dominate due to their roles in checkdowns and emergency outlets. For the record, however, Alvin Kamara led all players with 38 failed receptions, with Bijan Robinson (31) and De’Von Achane (31) just behind him among running backs.

There are plenty of good receivers on the failed receptions leaderboard – CeeDee Lamb, Malik Nabers and Jaxon Smith-Njigba all stand out. “Throw the ball to them and let them make a play” is generally a good offensive strategy, and their high number of failed completions just reflects their high overall usage rate and the trust their offenses have in them. Similarly, it’s far from the end of the world for a tight end outlet like David Njoku to finish high on the table in failed receptions; a large part of his role is “be there to catch the ball so we get something, rather than nothing.”

This is not the case for Wan’Dale Robinson, your failed reception king. The Giants offense wasn’t exactly humming in 2024 – see Nabers’ appearance on this same list – but Robinson has made a career out of catching short passes and doing nothing with them. Robinson has seen his failed reception rate increase every year he’s been in the league, and this year, he got the volume to go with it. His 7.5 yards per reception were the worst in NFL history for a wide receiver with at least 50 catches. It’s 11th worst if you drop that threshold to 25 receptions, joining illustrious names such as 2023 Kadarius Toney (6.3) and 2021 Ray-Ray McCloud (7.1). You have to be pretty ineffective to get this many targets and not be able to do anything with them, but Robinson proved up to (down to?) the challenge. He has the most receptions on the failed reception rate table as well … and is still penciled in as a starter for the 2025 Giants. Good luck, Jaxson Dart.

David Njoku, CeeDee Lamb and Garrett Wilson also return to the total failed completion leaderboard from 2023.

Robinson, Njoku and Evan Engram return to the failed reception rate leaderboards from 2023, but it’s Curtis Samuel who just squeaks past our 30-reception threshold to take the top spot this year. Over half of Samuel’s receptions failed to hit our standards in 2024, which isn’t the best start to his three-year, $24 million deal. A lot of that came from his 7-for-8 day for 52 yards in the Week 18 finale, though, so maybe having more Josh Allen and less Mitchell Trubisky in his sample will help in 2025.

The successful reception rate table is generally a list of deep threats, so it’s no real surprise that Alec Pierce, Tee Higgins and Mike Evans make return appearances from the 2023 list here. Pierce benefitted the most from Anthony Richardson’s all-deep shot offense. His 22.3 yards per reception were 57th-most in NFL history, and the most since DeSean Jackson had 22.5 in 2010. Pierce’s only failed reception came from Joe Flacco, not Richardson, and even that was a respectable nine-yard gain on second-and-16. That’s hard to top with any decent amount of sample size. Special kudos has to go to Higgins, though, with just three failures on 73 catches. For much of the season, it looked like Higgins would take first place overall, before a 10-yard catch on third-and-13 in Week 14 knocked him behind Pierce’s pace. Still, no surprise Higgins became the most expensive WR2 in football this offseason with numbers like these.