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Another Reason To Be Excited About Teddy Bridgewater

By Christopher Gates
Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

I know we talk a lot about Teddy Bridgewater around here, but you know what? There's a damn good reason for us to do that. It's because he's given fans of the Minnesota Vikings more to be excited about at the quarterback position in a very, very long time, and now we have more figures to show you exactly why that is.

Cian Fahey of Football Outsiders (among other places) charted all of Bridgewater's 402 pass attempts from this past season to see how many of them he would classify as "interceptable." He did this for several prominent NFL quarterbacks, and the results he came up with look very favorably upon the Vikings' young signal caller.

Bridgewater threw a pass that Fahey classed as "interceptable" once every 33.5 pass attempts. That's better than the guy that was just named the Most Valuable Player of the Super Bowl for the third time in his career (Tom Brady), better than Cam Newton, and significantly better than two of his fellow rookies in Blake Bortles and Derek Carr.

There's also a graphic that Fahey put together that shows all of the passes that he classed as "interceptable" that Bridgewater threw over the course of the season. I'm going to expand that a bit further to include the result of each of those passes. The actual interceptions are italicized.

Week Opponent Play Reason Result
4 Atlanta 3Q, 5:09 Accuracy Throwing deep right for Chase Ford, overthrown, pass falls just in front of Desmond Trufant, incomplete
6 Detroit 1Q, 7:42 Decision Throwing deep right for Cordarrelle Patterson, ball intercepted in end zone by Glover Quin
7 @ Buffalo 2Q, 12:24 Accuracy Rolling right, throwing for Ford, pass deflected by Brandon Spikes to Leodis McKelvin for interception
7 @ Buffalo 2Q, 9:34 Accuracy Play-action, throwing for Adam Thielen, thrown short, route undercut by McKelvin for interception
8 @ Tampa Bay 4Q, 0:46 Accuracy Throwing left for Patterson, short, pass nearly intercepted by Johnthan Banks, falls incomplete
9 Washington 2Q, 2:18 Decision Throwing deep left for Patterson, pass overthrown, nearly intercepted by David Amerson, ruled out of bounds, incomplete
11 @ Chicago 4Q, Last Play Decision Forced "Hail Mary" towards Charles Johnson, intercepted in end zone by Ryan Mundy. (Clock malfunction, Bridgewater possibly unaware of time.)
12 Green Bay 2Q, 8:16 Accuracy Throwing deep middle for Johnson, hit as thrown, pass short hops Sam Shields, incomplete
12 Green Bay 2Q, 7:30 Decision Throwing deep left for Greg Jennings, ball badly underthrown, intercepted by Micah Hyde
12 Green Bay 2Q, 0:26 Accuracy Throwing short right for Johnson, ball thrown high, bounces off Johnson's hands, incomplete
15 @ Detroit 2Q, 4:40 Accuracy Throwing short right for Johnson, ball thrown high and wide, goes right to Glover Quin, interception
15 @ Detroit 2Q, 3:06 Accuracy Throwing short right for Jennings, pass thrown well behind, intercepted by Darius Slay

So, of Bridgewater's 12 "interceptable" passes, seven of them actually wound up being intercepted, with five of them ending up as incompletions.

It was also determined that five of the 12 interceptions that were credited to Bridgewater were actually not his fault, as determined by Fahey's charting.

Week Opponent Play Reason for Interception
4 Detroit 2Q, 0:49 Ball off of running back's hands
4 Detroit 3Q, 11:59 Ball tipped at line of scrimmage
14 New York 2Q, 0:05 Hail Mary
16 @ Miami 3Q, 3:48 Ball off of running back's hands
17 Chicago 3Q, 14:53 Ball off of wide receiver's hands

You could potentially make an argument that the pass at the end of the Chicago game could go into this category, too, but I won't quibble too much with it. Clock issues not withstanding, Bridgewater had other places he could have gone with the ball on that play.

Again, just look at the initial picture that compares Bridgewater to some of the NFL's other quarterbacks. I don't know how many different QBs Fahey ranked in this process, but the fact that Bridgewater trails only Aaron Rodgers in passes per interceptable throw. . .and doesn't trail him by that much (Rodgers throws one "interceptable" ball every 34.7 attempts, compared to one every 33.5 for Bridgewater). . .is pretty remarkable. Particularly considering that one of those two guys is a ten-season vet and the other has 12 NFL starts under his belt.

Just wait until the guy gets a full offseason to really get his feet under him.

I'd be remiss if I didn't give some credit to one of our commenters, Franchise2k, who went through the Teddy Bridgewater pass attempts video and catalogued all of Bridgewater's attempts. You can see the results of his lengthy compilation in three Word documents, which you can find here, here, and here. (You'll need all three of them to get the gist of how everything's labeled.)

I know we keep saying this, but with Teddy Bridgewater running things, the future looks awfully bright here in Minnesota.

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