Fantasy: QB Pass Distribution Analysis: Deep Pass Yards

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 from 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 completions and fantasy success of a quarterback. Today we’re taking a look at the amount of yards a QB gets from long passes, and how it relates to the amount of fantasy success realized by the QB.

Quick, name the top five QBs in yards from passes of 20+ yards or more. Would you believe me if I told you Peyton Manning wasn’t one of them in any year? What if I told you Jake Delhomme was one of them? Well, you’d better believe both of those statements.

One word of caution before we move on is to not overvalue yards and touchdown data in determining fantasy success, as they have serial correlation with fantasy results. Or in layman’s terms: the more yards and touchdowns a player gets, the better their fantasy numbers will be. The purpose of this exercise is to see if there’s a more important way that yards are accumulated. Now let’s look at the numbers to see what other interesting facts can be found

When you take a look at all passers over the last three years, there was a significant correlation between the number of passing yards accumulated on passes of 20+ yards and fantasy success.  The relationship over the last three years of data was:

But as has been the case the last two days, this relationship got weaker as we moved up the minimum number of total pass attempts from no required minimum to a minimum required number of total pass attempts to 480. Here are the correlations of each year as we increase the number of total pass attempts:

Once again, 2008 seems to stick out like a sore thumb in this data, as well as 2010 with a minimum of 480 attempts.  What might this mean? Again, as was the case yesterday, it could be the case that an increased amount of deep completions would ultimately lead to an increased amount of yards accumulated from a long pass. So when trying to decide between the top-tier signal callers who throw it upwards of 25 times a game, one thing to look at is who has a legitimate deep threat to stretch the field.

Next time we’ll take a look at what impact throwing those homerun deep ball touchdowns has on a quarterback’s fantasy success.