Projecting Ponder: 2012 Stats

by yanksrule08 on Jan 10, 2012 11:52 AM CST

I'm sorry to piggyback on your post, CCNorsemen, but I after I saw your great analysis, I decided to share some analysis that I have been working on, as it seems like it would be a good companion piece to your post.

While CCNorsemen's post looked back at this past season and what might have been for Ponder, I have been looking into the future and what we might expect from Ponder next season.

My analysis began with amassing every quarterback since 1998 that started at least 9 games in both his rookie and sophomore year. I ended up with 20 quarterbacks. One caveat to this is I included Stafford, who started 10 games his rookie year, but only played in 3 games his 2nd year due to a shoulder injury. I used his 3rd year stats (this past season) in place of his 2nd year stats. It could be argued that his progression from 1st year to 2nd* year is not indicative of a quarterback's normal maturity, since he had an extra year of seasoning while sitting on the bench. But I decided to use him.

The stats I tracked were Completion Percentage, Yards Per Attempt (YPA),Touchdowns Per Attempt (TD%) and Interceptions Per Attempt (INT%). Everything is in Per Attempt averages, since attempts can vary widely, and raw totals are not always indicative of true performance.

Here are the stats from the 20 quarterbacks:

	First Year				Second Year
Player	Comp %	YPA	TD %	INT %	Comp %	YPA	TD %	INT %
Stafford	53.3	6.0	3.4	5.3	63.7	7.5	6.0	2.3
Sanchez	53.8	6.7	3.3	5.5	54.8	6.5	3.4	2.6
Freeman	54.5	6.4	3.4	6.2	61.4	7.3	5.3	1.3
Ryan	61.1	7.9	3.7	2.5	58.3	6.5	4.9	3.1
Flacco	60.0	6.9	3.3	2.8	63.1	7.2	4.2	2.4
Edwards	56.1	6.1	2.6	3.0	65.5	7.2	2.9	2.7
Young	51.5	6.2	3.4	3.6	62.3	6.7	2.4	4.5
Smith	50.9	5.3	0.6	6.7	58.1	6.5	3.6	3.6
E. Manning	48.2	5.3	3.0	4.6	52.8	6.8	4.3	3.1
Roethlisberger	66.4	8.9	5.8	3.7	62.7	8.9	6.3	3.4
Boller	51.8	5.6	3.1	4.0	55.6	5.5	2.8	2.4
Leftwich	57.2	6.7	3.3	3.8	60.5	6.7	3.4	2.3
Palmer	60.9	6.7	4.2	4.2	67.8	7.5	6.3	2.4
Carr	52.5	5.8	2.0	3.4	56.6	6.8	3.1	4.4
Harrington	50.1	5.3	2.8	3.7	55.8	5.2	3.1	4.0
McNabb	49.1	4.4	3.7	3.2	58.0	5.9	3.7	2.3
McNown	54.0	6.2	3.4	4.3	55.0	5.9	2.9	3.2
Batch	57.1	7.2	3.6	2.0	55.9	7.2	4.8	2.6
Leaf	45.3	5.3	0.8	6.1	50.0	5.8	3.4	5.6
P. Manning	56.7	6.5	4.5	4.9	62.1	7.8	4.9	2.8

Ponder	54.3	6.4	4.5	4.5

The quarterbacks are in chronological order. To give you an idea of how Ponder's rookie season compared to the others, this is where he places in each category:

10th out of 21 in Comp% (between Freeman and McNown)

10th out of 21 in YPA (between Freeman and McNown again)

2nd out of 21 in TD% (between Roethlisberger and P. Manning)

8th out of 21 in INT% (between E. Manning and McNown)

Next, I calculated an average Percent Change from 1st year to 2nd year. I took the average of each stat from 1st year numbers, and the average of each stat from 2nd year numbers, and calculated the Percent Change from 1st to 2nd. Also, I removed 4 outliers from each average. I removed the top 2 Percent Changes of YPA, and the bottom 2 Percent Changes of YPA, etc. Some stats were skewing the overall averages, such as Alex Smith's TD% increasing 500% (0.6 in 1st year, 3.6 in 2nd year).

Average Change from 1st Year to 2nd Year
Comp %	YPA	TD %	INT %
8.7%	8.6%	24.6%	-24.3%

Next I applied these average changes to Ponder's rookie stats.

Ponder 2012 Projected Stats
Comp %	YPA	TD %	INT %
59.0	6.9	5.6	3.4

To expand these to raw totals, we need to make an assumption about how many pass attempts we will have. The Vikings as a team had 510 attempts this year. With 510 sttempts, his numbers would look like this:

Comp %	Yards	TD	INT
59.0	3526	28	17

We can probably assume that if Ponder plays the whole year, he will have more attempts than this. He will be trusted more in his 2nd year, and with AP potentially missing a few games, the offense may rely slightly more on the passing game. This past season, Freeman, Sanchez, and Flacco all had around 550 attempts. This seems like a reasonable number. With 550 pass attempts:

Comp %		Yards	TD	INT
59.0	3802		31	19

Comparing to all 2011 quarterbacks, this is where he would have ranked with these numbers:

21st in Completion Percentage (between Cassel and Dalton)

12th in Yards (between Fitzpatrick and Flacco)

5th in Touchdowns (between Brady and Romo)

5th in Interceptions (between Rivers and Sanchez)

***Please be reminded that this is a projection, not a prediction. This is assuming Ponder progresses from Year 1 to Year 2 in an average amount. Some quarterbacks significantly outgain the average, and some significantly undergain.the average. His 2012 stats could and probably will be quite different from this projection. This is mostly just a study of how much a quarterback can be expected to progress from Year 1 to Year 2.***

This FanPost was created by a registered user of The Daily Norseman, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the staff of the site. However, since this is a community, that view is no less important.

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Comments

Nice Post Yank

Good read and good stats, the projection you came up with is similar to what I think Ponder will do in 2012. I was a little more gracious on his completion percentage and a nice in depth post. Hoping that the Vikings staff, Spielman and Co. are smart about the draft and some decent free agent moves will help Ponder progress. Musgrave, watch the tapes and play to your young QB’s strengths, well I feel better getting that off my chest.

by BleedPurple60 on Jan 10, 2012 12:13 PM CST reply actions

I like the post and would really like to add (and this is probably wishful thinking) but...

With Ponder’s intelligence and work ethic I would like to think he would get better regardless from year 1 to year 2. You put on top of that, that this will be his FIRST full season (counting training camps and such) with the team to learn and gel with players and again on top of that, that the Vikes are in a position to get him some much needed help. Sky is the limit in my book but then again I am a die hard and am almost always optimistic for next season lol.

\m/

by Edgecrusher71 on Jan 10, 2012 3:43 PM CST up reply actions

Great post.

I always enjoy when people actually use good, statistical data to back up what they’re trying to say. I think Ponder will be a good quarterback in this league. The only complaint about him this year was too many INT’s, which almost every rookie struggles with. Couple that with the fact that he had no OTAs, Mini-camps, training camp, etc, and I think he performed quite well this past season.

by 7Twins7 on Jan 10, 2012 12:14 PM CST reply actions

Bring up a Good Point

No OTA’s, Mini-camps, not working with the 1st team offense to help him grow. His INT’s came a lot from throwing to the outside and not reading the defensive coverage adjustment, usually while he is running for his life. With a little help he will be alright.

by BleedPurple60 on Jan 10, 2012 12:32 PM CST up reply actions

Nice work

It looks promising. We can only hope it turns out this way.

"At this point, what we got to lose, right? So we might as well throw caution to the wind and hit people in the face."
--Vikings DE Jared Allen

by NMVike on Jan 10, 2012 12:44 PM CST reply actions

Concering Ponder's INT Rate

I’ll note one other thing. As I stated in the fanpost, on average a quarterback’s INT Rate decreases by 24.3% from Year 1 to Year 2. However, looking at each individual’s case, everyone (except for Ryan Leaf) who had a Year 1 INT Rate close to or above Ponder’s had a much more signifcant decline in Year 2. And most players who had a low INT Rate in Year 1 saw an increase in INT Rate.

1st Year 2nd Year % Change
Player INT % INT % INT %
Smith 6.7 3.6 -46.3%
Freeman 6.2 1.3 -79.0%
Leaf 6.1 5.6 -8.2%
Sanchez 5.5 2.6 -52.7%
Stafford 5.3 2.3 -56.6%
P. Manning 4.9 2.8 -42.9%
E. Manning 4.6 3.1 -32.6%
Ponder 4.5
McNown 4.3 3.2 -25.6%
Palmer 4.2 2.4 -42.9%
Boller 4.0 2.4 -40.0%
Leftwich 3.8 2.3 -39.5%
Roethlis. 3.7 3.4 -8.1%
Harrington 3.7 4.0 +8.1%
Young 3.6 4.5 +25.0%
Carr 3.4 4.4 +29.4%
McNabb 3.2 2.3 -28.1%
Edwards 3.0 2.7 -10.0%
Flacco 2.8 2.4 -14.3%
Ryan 2.5 3.1 +24.0%
Batch 2.0 2.6 +30.0%

Without doing further analysiis (I could run a regression on Year 1 INT% and Year 2 INT% and see how correlated they actually are), it looks to me from this data that how many interceptions thrown in Year 1 isn’t actually too predictive of how many interceptions thrown in Year 2.

Just doing some armchair analysis, the average Percent Change in INT Rate for quarterbacks who had a 3.8 Year 1 INT% or more, is -42.4%. Using this number to project Ponder’s 2012 stats results in a 2.6 INT Rate, which is 14 INTs over 550 pass attempts.

So there is definitely precedent here for a quarterback with a high INT Rate in Year 1 to signifcantly decrease their INT Rate in Year 2. Not only precedent, but that is seemigly the norm.

by yanksrule08 on Jan 10, 2012 1:17 PM CST reply actions

sorry for the numbers being jumbled. The formatting looked a lot better in the window I was typing in.

by yanksrule08 on Jan 10, 2012 1:20 PM CST up reply actions

Preview is your friend : )

If we can't laugh at ourselves, Packer fans will call us crybabies and we will be forced to kick their tooth in. I really don't want to go to jail (again).

by Alittlemore_cowbell on Jan 10, 2012 1:21 PM CST up reply actions

I’ll just sum up by saying, based on these numbers, a quarterback’s actually does not have too much control over their INT Rate. There has been a lot of regressing to the mean in INT Rates for quarterbacks in their first 2 years.

Example:

Alex Smith
Year 1 6.7
Year 2 3.6

Josh Freeman
Year 1 6.2
Year 2 1.3

Mark Sanchez
Year 1 5.5
Year 2 2.6

Matt Stafford
Year 1 5.3
Year 2 2.3

Payton Manning
Year 1 4.9
Year 2 2.8

Eli Manning
Year 1 4.6
Year 2 3.1

On the flip side, consider:

Matt Ryan
Year 1 2.5
Year 2 3.1

Vince Young
Year 1 3.6
Year 2 4.5

David Carr
Year 1 3.4
Year 2 4.4

I’m willing to bet that of those first set of guys I listed with high INT% in Year 1, there were a number of people bemoaning their interceptions total. And conversely, Matt Ryan was considered to have one of the best rookie years of any qaurterback ever. But the guys with a high INT% all improved in Year 2, and a lot of them ended up having a lower INT% than Matt Ryab in Year 2.

So based on this, it doesn’t seem warranted to be too concerned over Ponder’s INT% in his rookie year.

by yanksrule08 on Jan 10, 2012 1:31 PM CST up reply actions 1 recs

Very Cool!

I like what you’ve done with this one, and I think it makes a great companion piece. If he performs near this 2012 projection, I’ll call that a win.

Ponder. Peterson. Percy. Purple Perfection.

by CCNorsemen on Jan 10, 2012 1:49 PM CST reply actions

I agree

I definately believe he has it in him, but he’s gonna need some help from the recievers and line if he’s going to reach these milestones.

If we can't laugh at ourselves, Packer fans will call us crybabies and we will be forced to kick their tooth in. I really don't want to go to jail (again).

by Alittlemore_cowbell on Jan 10, 2012 2:40 PM CST via mobile up reply actions

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

by Bjorno on Jan 10, 2012 4:23 PM CST up reply actions

Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to point? : )

If we can't laugh at ourselves, Packer fans will call us crybabies and we will be forced to kick their tooth in. I really don't want to go to jail (again).

by Alittlemore_cowbell on Jan 10, 2012 5:17 PM CST via mobile up reply actions

Alabama Receivers

caught everything thrown their way last night…..draft one of them

by RickyBrune on Jan 10, 2012 7:04 PM CST reply actions

And anyone on their defense too, right?

reverse sarcasm

If we can't laugh at ourselves, Packer fans will call us crybabies and we will be forced to kick their tooth in. I really don't want to go to jail (again).

by Alittlemore_cowbell on Jan 10, 2012 8:14 PM CST via mobile up reply actions

Nicely done

Really nice work, started reading this and thought the Big Bang Theory had come to the Norseman :)

@}-----You've been Touched-----{@

by Velvetouch on Jan 11, 2012 2:21 AM CST reply actions

haha. i actually work with numbers and statistics as my job, and i had some downtime the other day so it was a nice little break to mix in some football analysis, and my bosses were none the wiser! I tried to keep from nerding out too much with analysis that would be hard to follow.

by yanksrule08 on Jan 11, 2012 9:48 PM CST up reply actions

Another caveat

I believe that all of the QBs whose first and second year numbers you used had a full off-season before their first year with their team. Ponder didn’t have that, so it is definitely possible that he would progress more between years one and two than the “average” quarterback.

by UGAVike on Jan 11, 2012 3:06 PM CST reply actions

This has already been pointed out in the comments.

Maybe I should learn to read better, haha.

Still, good piece and I’m more excited about this offseason than I should be. (That optimism will quickly evaporate when the Vikings fail to sign a solid WR during free agency, however)

by UGAVike on Jan 11, 2012 3:07 PM CST up reply actions

I Think Ponder Will Exceed Those Stats.....

….because he should also get help from an improving team around him in areas that really matter for his performance. Ultimately he will be measured by whether he wins football games. Too early to tell that.

by hoyaparanoia on Jan 16, 2012 7:57 PM CST reply actions