Fantasy: QB Pass Distribution Analysis: Deep Pass Completions

Ever wondered how much impact accuracy has on a quarterback’s fantasy success? How about how many times they just step back and sling a deep ball? All this and more will be looked at over the offseason, as every quarterback to throw a ball in the last three years will be analyzed on all that and more. We will look even more in depth by sorting quarterbacks first by all quarterbacks, to a minimum of 160 pass attempts, an average of at least 10 pass attempts a game, all the way up to 480 pass attempts, an average of at least 30 pass attempts a game. By the end, we should hope to uncover any hidden secrets to determining fantasy success for a quarterback, as well as the impact a QB has on the players around him and their fantasy success.

Yesterday we looked at the relationship between long pass attempts and it’s relationship with fantasy success. However, just because a QB airs it out doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll connect on a high percentage on them. So that’s why today we’ll be looking at the relationship between long pass completions and its impact on determining fantasy success.

As with yesterday’s article, there are lots of big names adorning the top of the list in most passes of 20+ yards completed.  Drew Brees paced the field as the only player to complete 30 or more in each of the last three years.  Eli Manning actually led the league last year, and had the third most the year before (can somebody say Hakeem Nicks?). But Eli hasn’t nearly been as high up the fantasy leader board as his deep ball completions are. So let’s take a first look at the total data over the last three years to try to gain some insight on what impact these completions have in determining fantasy success. Here are the correlations between deep pass completions and a quarterback's fantasy numbers from passing:

All of these correlations seem to be pretty strong.  But sure enough, just as with the pass attempts from yesterday, this relationship got weaker as we moved up the minimum number of total pass attempts from no required minimum, all the way up until we got to a minimum required number of total pass attempts to 480. Here are the correlations between deep pass completions and a quarterback's fantasy numbers from passing each year as we increase the number of total pass attempts:

2008 seems to stand out as an odd year, as there is a significantly stronger relationship between the number of deep pass completions and fantasy success. However, the last two years seem to show a lot less importance on completing more long passes when determining a player’s fantasy numbers. But there are still some stronger relationships with this than there were with just attempting to throw the deep ball, which could imply that having a strong arm and a deep threat at WR could be beneficial to a quarterback’s fantasy success.

Next time we’ll take a look at the relationship with how many yards are accumulated by launching a deep pass and the number of fantasy points a quarterback scores.