Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
It’s a big season for Kolton Miller, Dylan Parham, and the other members of the Las Vegas Raiders offensive line. They’re under a lot of pressure to prevent pressure.
What’s the reason? Look at the track record of new Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He’s consistently been one of the worst quarterbacks in the league under pressure – and last season was his worst one yet.
The Raiders were 10th last season in ESPN’s Pass Block Win Rate. They ranked eighth in adjusted sack rate and 19th in pressure rate allowed, although those two stats are also related to Derek Carr‘s decision making at quarterback.
Meanwhile, Garoppolo had an awesome season overall – he shockingly finished No. 1 among qualifying quarterbacks in passing DVOA – because he faced very little pressure. A lot of that has to do with Garoppolo’s playing style and the Kyle Shanahan scheme rather than just Trent Williams and the 49ers offensive line. The 49ers were just 20th in Pass Block Win Rate. They were 10th in adjusted sack rate and eighth in pressure rate allowed.
Without pressure, Garoppolo averaged 8.5 yards per play, including sacks and scrambles. With pressure, that dropped to 1.8 yards per play. With DVOA, only Zach Wilson had a larger gap between performance with and without pressure, and only three quarterbacks (Wilson, Matt Ryan, and Mac Jones) had a lower DVOA under pressure than Garoppolo.
This has been a consistent problem for Garoppolo. The only year where he didn’t have a huge gap was 2020, when he didn’t have enough passes to qualify for our rankings.
| Jimmy Garoppolo and Pressure, 2019-2022 | |||||
| Year | Press | Yds Press | DVOA Press | Yds No Press | DVOA No Press |
| 2018 | 33.6% | 3.7 | -110.4% | 7.8 | 52.4% |
| 2019 | 25.9% | 3.9 | -81.3% | 8.6 | 63.6% |
| 2020 | 22.9% | 3.3 | -46.7% | 7.9 | 50.7% |
| 2021 | 23.4% | 3.1 | -95.4% | 9.2 | 64.7% |
| 2022 | 20.7% | 1.8 | -122.1% | 8.5 | 78.4% |
You can see the problem here. That’s a really low pressure rate last year. More pressure means more of that bad performance, which means Garoppolo overall won’t be anywhere near as good as he was in 2022.
Past analysis has found that quarterback performance under pressure is not as consistent as performance from a clean pocket. That might give Raiders fans a reason not to worry so much about Garoppolo. But at least when it comes to DVOA over the last few years, this isn’t true. The year-to-year correlation of DVOA under pressure is the same as the year-to-year correlation of DVOA without pressure for quarterbacks with at least 200 passes in consecutive years since 2015.
Garoppolo = Tagovailoa?
As long as we’re in the Kyle Shanahan system, let’s also talk about Tua Tagovailoa. Tagovailoa had the highest DVOA in the league without pressure last season. With pressure, his DVOA ranked 28th out of 34 qualifying quarterbacks. Tagovailoa has been less consistent in this area than Garoppolo, although one wonders how much last year’s change was due to the Mike McDaniel (similar to Shanahan) offensive scheme. In 2021, Tagovailoa was much closer to the average gap between DVOA with and without pressure. In 2020, he had one of the league’s smallest gaps.
And as noted above, Zach Wilson was another quarterback with a huge gap in his performance with and without pressure. Without pressure, Wilson somehow managed to rank sixth in DVOA among qualifying quarterbacks. With pressure, he was the worst quarterback in the league. He had a smaller but similar gap in his first season, 2021. Wilson faced an above-average pressure rate of 29.1%, so that was a lot of opportunity to be very bad.
The five worst gaps between DVOA with and without pressure also included Taylor Heinicke and Mac Jones last season, which makes a lot of sense when you think about their play styles, but both of those quarterbacks had lower-than-average gaps in 2021.
Best Quarterbacks Under Pressure
Last year’s best quarterback under pressure will not surprise you. It was Patrick Mahomes. The next quarterback might surprise you because Daniel Jones was No. 2. (This includes scrambles, which is a big reason why.) Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, and Joe Burrow complete last year’s top five quarterbacks under pressure. For Burrow, this was a big change from the year before. He went from -98.3% DVOA under pressure in 2021 to -55.2% in 2022.
The smallest gap between DVOA with and without pressure will probably surprise you; it belonged to Pittsburgh rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett. Pickett ranked seventh in DVOA with pressure but 29th in DVOA without pressure. Other quarterbacks who had a small gap between performance with and without pressure included Justin Herbert and Davis Mills.
Here’s a table of all quarterbacks with and without pressure in 2022. It’s in order of DVOA under pressure, starting with Mahomes.
| QBs With and Without Pressure, 2022 | ||||||||
| Player | Pass | Pct Press | Yds Press | DVOA Press | Yds No Press | DVOA No Press | Yds Dif. | DVOA Dif. |
| Patrick Mahomes | 720 | 27.1% | 4.8 | -25.8% | 8.5 | 65.5% | -3.7 | -91.3% |
| Daniel Jones | 565 | 33.1% | 3.4 | -39.0% | 7.2 | 47.9% | -3.7 | -86.8% |
| Josh Allen | 650 | 20.5% | 5.0 | -42.2% | 7.7 | 54.8% | -2.7 | -97.0% |
| Lamar Jackson | 377 | 29.7% | 3.1 | -50.7% | 7.4 | 54.0% | -4.3 | -104.6% |
| Joe Burrow | 673 | 24.2% | 3.1 | -55.2% | 7.6 | 49.3% | -4.5 | -104.6% |
| Justin Herbert | 757 | 31.4% | 4.0 | -56.0% | 7.2 | 32.6% | -3.2 | -88.6% |
| Kenny Pickett | 443 | 27.8% | 3.0 | -58.1% | 6.4 | 22.2% | -3.5 | -80.4% |
| Kirk Cousins | 698 | 29.9% | 3.4 | -60.6% | 7.4 | 38.1% | -4.0 | -98.7% |
| Jared Goff | 624 | 24.5% | 3.4 | -60.7% | 8.2 | 55.9% | -4.8 | -116.6% |
| Ryan Tannehill | 370 | 31.9% | 2.0 | -63.9% | 8.5 | 55.1% | -6.5 | -119.0% |
| Derek Carr | 543 | 27.3% | 4.0 | -65.1% | 7.2 | 29.4% | -3.1 | -94.4% |
| Geno Smith | 650 | 31.5% | 3.2 | -65.4% | 7.9 | 65.3% | -4.7 | -130.7% |
| Justin Fields | 439 | 40.1% | 3.5 | -71.2% | 7.3 | 26.5% | -3.8 | -97.7% |
| Marcus Mariota | 351 | 29.9% | 2.6 | -72.7% | 7.9 | 43.5% | -5.4 | -116.2% |
| Russell Wilson | 565 | 31.7% | 3.4 | -73.8% | 7.2 | 25.0% | -3.8 | -98.8% |
| Trevor Lawrence | 633 | 20.1% | 3.0 | -74.9% | 7.4 | 52.8% | -4.4 | -127.7% |
| Joe Flacco | 202 | 30.2% | 3.7 | -75.9% | 5.3 | 17.3% | -1.5 | -93.2% |
| Carson Wentz | 314 | 33.8% | 1.8 | -78.3% | 7.0 | 19.4% | -5.2 | -97.7% |
| Davis Mills | 526 | 30.8% | 2.9 | -82.1% | 6.9 | 10.9% | -4.0 | -92.9% |
| Jalen Hurts | 541 | 26.8% | 2.2 | -83.2% | 8.8 | 59.6% | -6.6 | -142.8% |
| Aaron Rodgers | 585 | 21.4% | 2.3 | -84.7% | 7.0 | 27.3% | -4.7 | -112.0% |
| Jacoby Brissett | 413 | 27.6% | 3.3 | -88.5% | 7.6 | 63.8% | -4.3 | -152.3% |
| Matthew Stafford | 337 | 32.0% | 1.9 | -89.8% | 7.3 | 46.4% | -5.5 | -136.2% |
| Dak Prescott | 429 | 21.2% | 1.9 | -96.2% | 7.8 | 36.6% | -5.9 | -132.7% |
| Kyler Murray | 437 | 25.2% | 1.4 | -96.3% | 6.8 | 27.3% | -5.4 | -123.6% |
| Tom Brady | 756 | 17.6% | 2.1 | -99.1% | 6.8 | 40.1% | -4.8 | -139.2% |
| Andy Dalton | 414 | 18.1% | 1.8 | -103.3% | 7.6 | 31.7% | -5.8 | -135.0% |
| Tua Tagovailoa | 430 | 19.8% | 1.3 | -108.0% | 9.7 | 78.8% | -8.4 | -186.8% |
| Baker Mayfield | 385 | 29.1% | 1.2 | -111.0% | 6.9 | 20.8% | -5.7 | -131.8% |
| Taylor Heinicke | 289 | 37.0% | 2.1 | -119.5% | 8.6 | 78.1% | -6.5 | -197.6% |
| Jimmy Garoppolo | 329 | 20.7% | 1.8 | -122.1% | 8.5 | 78.4% | -6.8 | -200.5% |
| Matt Ryan | 508 | 29.7% | 1.6 | -137.3% | 7.3 | 21.0% | -5.7 | -158.3% |
| Mac Jones | 494 | 23.9% | 1.0 | -145.8% | 7.3 | 35.1% | -6.3 | -180.9% |
| Zach Wilson | 278 | 29.1% | -0.3 | -153.5% | 8.2 | 64.1% | -8.5 | -217.7% |
| NFL AVERAGE | 27.2% | 2.7 | -79.9% | 7.5 | 40.0% | -4.8 | -119.9% | |
All 2022 pressure data here comes from FTNData.com.
