How much is Jay Cutler, the commodity, worth?

[Delano]

Brees, Ryan, Rivers, Cutler and Manning (and maybe Brady, too)

Posted by Chase Stuart on Monday, March 23, 2009

The biggest story in the NFL these days not involving the NFL draft has to do with the bizarre circus involving Jay Cutler. Many have written about everything from Cutler’s production and his psyche to macro thoughts on Bill Belichick disciples; I have nothing to add there. I’d rather take on an impossible task and take a statistical look at how Jay Cutler ranks among other QBs.

And when I say how Jay Cutler ranks, I mean how Jay Cutler 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and so on, ranks. And that’s why it’s an impossible task. I can’t predict what will happen in three years. You can’t predict what will happen in four years. We won’t know how good Cutler is over the next five years until five years from now. It’s all a guessing game, but that doesn’t mean we can’t refine our guessing. There are obvious and not so obvious flaws in the approach I’m about to outline, and I’ll do my best to explain them.

What I’m trying to figure out is how valuable is Jay Cutler, the commodty, in March 2009? For example, we know we’d rather have Cutler than Tarvaris Jackson and we’d rather have a 26 year old Peyton Manning than a 26 year old Jay Cutler. But to determine his value — his trade value, if you’re a Broncos fan — you need to know what he’ll do in the future. And as Yogi Berra once said, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. Consider:

• At the end of the 1970 season, Billy Kilmer was 31 years old and had just 11 career wins to his name. In 1970, he threw 6 TDs and 17 INTs. Who would have guessed he would have been one of the best QBs in the NFL over the next half-decade?

• At the end of the 1995 season, Rich Gannon was 30 years old and had started just four games over the past three years. Who would have guessed that he would make four Pro Bowls over the next seven seasons?

• Stop me if you’ve heard this one. QB is drafted 330th overall. He throws 1 TD and 7 INT his rookie season. He throws 1 TD and 3 INT and has an 0-2 record his sophomore season. You probably wouldn’t think he’d still be in the league five years after that, but in his seventh season Brian Sipe was named a first team All Pro.

• Kurt Warner. Tom Brady.

This goes the other way, too, of course.

• Archie Manning struggled early in his career, but the #1 pick was very good at ages 29, 30 and 31. Who would project him to throw 15 TD and 30 INT the rest of his career?

• Daunte Culpepper, at age 27, had the most total yards in NFL history. Then he became Daunte Culpepper. And yes, I know he lost Randy Moss and battled injuries.

• Mark Rypien won a Super Bowl and had one of the better seasons in passing history in 1991. He was just 29 years old. He never came close to duplicating that success.

• Greg Landry was a first round pick who had big years as a runner and passer in 1971 and 1972. He was 26 years old in March 1973, and he may have been the single best QB prospect in the NFL at that time. When you consider his rushing, he’d been more productive than Manning or Bradshaw or Griese, he was younger than Tarkenton and Namath, and he had a better pedigree than Ken Anderson. Landry stuck around for awhile but there were about 15 QBs who outperformed him from that moment on.

• Steve Bartkowski was a former number 1 pick who made the Pro Bowl in ‘80 and ‘81 and had an incredible 22 TD/5 INT ratio in 1983. He was 31 years old, but he threw for fewer than 4,000 yards the rest of his career.

None of this is breaking news; we all know it’s difficult to predict one year down the road, let alone five or ten. But it’s important to set the stage before we answer the key question: if you could have any QB in the NFL right now, for your favorite team, who would you pick? Can statistics and past history guide us?

There are a ton of factors that you would want to use to predict future QB success, but there are three that seem most prominent: age, past production and draft value. Unfortunately, each of these are complicated variables and require a full description, but first, let me describe how we measure future QB success. If you hate reading the details, skip to the end for the QB list. [author's methods in next post]

Here are the top 25 projected QBs going forward in the NFL as of March 2009, but using only QBs who had 200+ attempts in 2008. The age is how old the player was during the 2008 season.

08Val Age AgeV DraftV 3YrVal Proj Rk Name
2157 29 537 11.8 1861 5049 1 Drew Brees
1245 23 552 59.4 1245 5009 2 Matt Ryan
1919 27 581 33.5 1429 4829 3 Philip Rivers
1495 25 591 34.4 1169 4277 4 Jay Cutler
1501 32 430 7.3 1702 4096 5 Peyton Manning
1217 28 563 1.5 1372 3699 6 Tony Romo
875 27 581 43.9 648 3270 7 Eli Manning
484 23 552 73.2 288 3127 8 JaMarcus Russell
492 26 591 30.1 727 3106 9 Ben Roethlisberger
1422 25 591 26.6 733 3016 10 Aaron Rodgers
1234 32 430 6.4 1205 2889 11 Donovan McNabb
477 23 552 36.8 477 2538 12 Joe Flacco
731 27 581 19.6 614 2495 13 Jason Campbell
1030 27 581 9.9 728 2489 14 Matt Schaub
1721 37 254 0.3 1305 2207 15 Kurt Warner
645 30 505 4.3 801 2179 16 David Garrard
1477 32 430 3.7 925 2143 17 Chad Pennington
663 25 591 13.0 490 2050 18 Trent Edwards
1013 26 591 3.4 495 1789 19 Matt Cassel
74 25 591 4.6 429 1665 20 Derek Anderson
539 26 591 10.2 302 1523 21 Kyle Orton
1072 33 391 0.3 752 1468 22 Jake Delhomme
553 24 578 4.9 354 1444 23 Tyler Thigpen
528 28 563 1.5 410 1413 24 Shaun Hill
462 28 563 7.0 277 1254 25 Seneca Wallace

How does that list look to you? This is my best attempt to, using just objective data, figure out which QBs would have the most value either on the open market or through a trade. All three input variables were highly significant, which means they are all certainly correlated to future production. The R^2 was just 0.35, which isn’t very high, but I’m not sure if you can come up with a formula to make it any higher. There’s a ton of randomness in future production, and if 35% of it can be predicted through this formula, that’s pretty good. Before we conclude, let me throw some general thoughts out there on this list:

1) If we ignore Rodgers’ 2006 and 2007, and just use last year for his 3YrVal, that would give him a projected score of 4654, and he’d move into 3rd place on the list. Very interesting. Doing the same analysis with Cassel bumps him just north of 3000, where Rodgers currently is.

2) Joe Flacco’s ahead of Kurt Warner. That makes some sense to me. We’re basically projecting one or two big years out of Warner versus eight good years out of Flacco.

3) Matt Ryan (along with Rodgers if we tweak his score) comes in too high, I think. Why? My buddy Maurile would recommend using some sort of Bayes’ theorem analysis, because being great over a small number of attempts is not as convincing as being great over a large number of attempts. As I’ve currently structured it, three great years will have the same score as one great year, if you only play one year. Usually, that’s not a problem, but when you have the greatest rookie season ever (or you edit Rodgers’ career), things get dicey. Suffice it to say, while I love Ryan, I’m not convinced just yet that he’s mega elite. I love Ryan as much as anyone, but putting him at #2 scares me a little bit.

4) Look over there at JaMarcus Russell. He’s up there over Big Ben! Two of the three factors point Ben’s way — being older actually helps him, since he is entering his prime, and obviously he’s already better. The only thing pointing Russell’s way is that #1 draft pick status. Is that right or wrong? Here’s how every QB drafted #1 overall since the merger (along with Steve Young, a supplemental #1) ranked among QBs in their first two seasons.

RookYr Yr1 Yr2
JaMarcus Russell 2007 82 24
Alex Smith 2005 81 26
Eli Manning 2004 79 10
Carson Palmer 2003 -- 24
David Carr 2002 84 25
Michael Vick 2001 29 5
Tim Couch 1999 35 27
Peyton Manning 1998 20 3
Drew Bledsoe 1993 25 12
Jeff George 1990 36 59
Troy Aikman 1989 81 63
Vinny Testaverde 1987 49 81
John Elway 1983 74 16
Steve Bartkowski 1975 23 70
Jim Plunkett 1971 12 68
Terry Bradshaw 1970 65 21
Steve Young 1984 -- 67

Sure, Russell looks bad. But so did Troy Aikman. And Vinny Testaverde. And Terry Bradshaw. So did Steve Young. John Elway wasn’t much better. I have to say, it’s very counterintuitive to me to suggest that Russell is going to be better than Roethlisberger, going forward. On the other hand, you could probably have made the same argument about Jim Everett and Troy Aikman in March 1991, too. As for Ben and Russell, I think it’s at least arguable that Ben’s statistics understate how good he really is. If his 3YrVal was a bit higher, he’d easily be ahead of Russell and Manning.

5) Notice anyone missing? I don’t really know what to do with Brady, but his score after 2007 was 5179. Giving him an extra year of age would drop him to 5008, but we can’t ignore that he suffered a serious injury. Who knows how he’ll come back, and I don’t really know where’s a good place to put him. If he’s healthy, though, he’s right there up with Brees. Carson Palmer was right behind Brady in 2007, so if he’s healthy, he’s got to be in the mix, too. If we age him a year based on his ‘07 numbers, he’d project at 4471.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by milkman

Those first three teams that Elway guided to the SB had no business getting there.

Yet Elway got them there not once, not twice, but three times. How does that, in any way, resemble what Cutler has accomplished?

[milkman]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Yet Elway got them there not once, not twice, but three times. How does that, in any way, resemble what Cutler has accomplished?

I am not comparing the two.

I cited Elway to illustrate my point that QB rating is overrated.

As I said, I am not researching it, but I'm pretty sure that Elway was around 79-80 QB rating before Shanahan.

[Mile High Mania]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

Yet Elway got them there not once, not twice, but three times. How does that, in any way, resemble what Cutler has accomplished?

There's no comparing the two...

But, I'm on the side of the argument that says you can't blame a QB for all the losses, esp with the DEF they've had. But, don't let that distract you.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by milkman

I am not comparing the two.

I cited Elway to illustrate my point that QB rating is overrated.

As I said, I am not researching it, but I'm pretty sure that Elway was around 79-80 QB rating before Shanahan.

You also said that team wins and losses are overrated. You didn't mention that he retired as the winningest QB in history.

Cutler has a very mediocre career record. He has a very mediocre QB rating. His team gives up a lot of points, but he doesn't exactly help the cause by tossing out INTs like beads at Mardi Gras.

[RNR]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

There's no comparing the two...

But, I'm on the side of the argument that says you can't blame a QB for all the losses, esp with the DEF they've had. But, don't let that distract you.

True but that defense allowed him a lot of junk time against the dime to pad stats.

[Delano]

Originally Posted by milkman

I am not comparing the two.

I cited Elway to illustrate my point that QB rating is overrated.

As I said, I am not researching it, but I'm pretty sure that Elway was around 79-80 QB rating before Shanahan.

Elway's QB Rating with Shanny as QB Coach

1984 - 380 attempts - 76.8
1985 - 605 attempts - 70.2

1989 - 416 attempts - 73.7
1990 - 502 attempts - 78.5
1991 - 451 attempts - 75.4

Elway's QB Rating with Shanny as OC

1986 - 504 attempts - 79.0
1987 - 410 attempts - 83.4

Elway's QB Rating with Shanny as HC

1995 - 542 attempts - 86.4
1996 - 466 attempts - 89.2
1997 - 502 attempts - 87.5
1998 - 356 attempts - 93.0

Elway without Shanny

1983 - 259 attempts - 54.9

1988 - 496 attempts - 71.4

1992 - 316 attempts - 65.7
1993 - 551 attempts - 92.8
1994 - 494 attempts - 85.7

[Mile High Mania]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

You also said that team wins and losses are overrated. You didn't mention that he retired as the winningest QB in history.

Cutler has a very mediocre career record. He has a very mediocre QB rating. His team gives up a lot of points, but he doesn't exactly help the cause by tossing out INTs like beads at Mardi Gras.

Actually, if you're going to focus on his INTs... look at the INT ratio ... it's actually pretty good, IIRC. I believe only 3 QBs threw made more than 600 attempts last year, he was one of them.

The team went through 8 RBs and had a defense that couldn't stop anyone... I'm not going to blame any QB for having a lot of INTs in that scenario.

[Mile High Mania]

Originally Posted by RedNeckRaider

True but that defense allowed him a lot of junk time against the dime to pad stats.

Weird.

[RNR]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

Actually, if you're going to focus on his INTs... look at the INT ratio ... it's actually pretty good, IIRC. I believe only 3 QBs threw made more than 600 attempts last year, he was one of them.

The team went through 8 RBs and had a defense that couldn't stop anyone... I'm not going to blame any QB for having a lot of INTs in that scenario.

Would you concede that playing against the prevent often may have assisted his stats some?

[RNR]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

Weird.

I find no reply weird, the first time I guessed you did not understand the lingo the second time...................

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by Mile High Mania

Actually, if you're going to focus on his INTs... look at the INT ratio ... it's actually pretty good, IIRC. I believe only 3 QBs threw made more than 600 attempts last year, he was one of them.

The team went through 8 RBs and had a defense that couldn't stop anyone... I'm not going to blame any QB for having a lot of INTs in that scenario.

Then try comparing his TD to INT ratio. It's about 4:3. Not very good at all.

[milkman]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

You also said that team wins and losses are overrated. You didn't mention that he retired as the winningest QB in history.

Cutler has a very mediocre career record. He has a very mediocre QB rating. His team gives up a lot of points, but he doesn't exactly help the cause by tossing out INTs like beads at Mardi Gras.

I used Steve Bono as an example to illustrate how wins can be overrrated in evaluating a QB.

[Saul Good]

Originally Posted by milkman

I used Steve Bono as an example to illustrate how wins can be overrrated in evaluating a QB.

Where does Bono rank on the all time wins list? I know Elway's record was broken, but I don't think Bono was the one who broke it. I'm not going to look it up, though.

It's fair to say that a great QB may not always have a great record. It's fair to say that a great QB may not always have a great QB rating. If a QB doesn't have either, he probably isn't great. If both are mediocre, it's because the QB is mediocre more often than not.

[DTLB58]

Actually, it's just like anything for sale. It's only worth what someone is willing to give you.

You can think up all of these formulas you want, but who would have thunk we would have got Cassel (and another player) for a 2nd round pick?

I hope he gets traded to a team that hires Herm as H.C. and he finishes his career a loser just as he has started it.

The guy needs to shut his pie hole,grow up and get with the program. He has a young Offensive minded H.C. and good young offensive talent surrounding him not to mention a good owner.

I'm sure there are QB's in the NFL that would trade places with him in a heartbeat.

[bdeg]

I'd love to see a regression calculating the impact of "opposing QB's passes hurried/total passes against team" on a team's overall defensive ranking.

I bet that r-squared is over .6