Drew Brees Almost Never Throws Deep Anymore. Is That A Problem For The Saints?

AsylumGuido · 10-29-2020, 02:00 PM

Drew Brees Almost Never Throws Deep Anymore. Is That A Problem For The Saints?

It hasn’t been so far.

Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints is having one of the most interesting quarterback seasons in recent memory. Criticized harshly for a weak arm, the 41-year-old almost never throws the ball deep anymore, instead tossing short passes to running back Alvin Kamara and various receivers not named Michael Thomas. (The All-Pro has been injured since Week 1.)

Because they pose minimal danger over the top to keep defenses honest, you might think that Brees and the Saints would be struggling. And yet, New Orleans has started the season with at least four wins in its first six games for a fourth consecutive year, and Brees is seventh in the NFL in Total QBR.1 Brees has been trending in this direction for a while, but he is now pushing the absolute limits of how much a quarterback can accomplish without having the arm to back it up.

Going back to 2006, the earliest season for which ESPN has data on air yards, only one QB threw a shorter average pass than Brees’s 5.80 mark this year: Alex Smith of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014, whose average pass traveled just 5.58 yards through the air. And no QB in the entire sample had a season in which he threw a smaller share of passes 20 or more yards downfield than Brees’s 3.3 percent rate so far in 2020. (Even for Smith in 2014, 5.4 percent of his passes traveled at least 20 yards.)

Read the rest here ... it's an interesting read.

10-29-2020, 02:00 PM	#1
AsylumGuido 10000 POST CLUB Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Bossier City, LA Posts: 26,220	Drew Brees Almost Never Throws Deep Anymore. Is That A Problem For The Saints? Drew Brees Almost Never Throws Deep Anymore. Is That A Problem For The Saints? It hasn’t been so far. Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints is having one of the most interesting quarterback seasons in recent memory. Criticized harshly for a weak arm, the 41-year-old almost never throws the ball deep anymore, instead tossing short passes to running back Alvin Kamara and various receivers not named Michael Thomas. (The All-Pro has been injured since Week 1.) Because they pose minimal danger over the top to keep defenses honest, you might think that Brees and the Saints would be struggling. And yet, New Orleans has started the season with at least four wins in its first six games for a fourth consecutive year, and Brees is seventh in the NFL in Total QBR.1 Brees has been trending in this direction for a while, but he is now pushing the absolute limits of how much a quarterback can accomplish without having the arm to back it up. Going back to 2006, the earliest season for which ESPN has data on air yards, only one QB threw a shorter average pass than Brees’s 5.80 mark this year: Alex Smith of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2014, whose average pass traveled just 5.58 yards through the air. And no QB in the entire sample had a season in which he threw a smaller share of passes 20 or more yards downfield than Brees’s 3.3 percent rate so far in 2020. (Even for Smith in 2014, 5.4 percent of his passes traveled at least 20 yards.) Read the rest here ... it's an interesting read.
	“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill