Despite quarterback questions once again swarming over the team like buzzards over a battlefield, it was a year and a half ago that the Browns vacated the fifth pick in the draft and with it, the opportunity to pick USC star Mark Sanchez. Instead, the team moved down two more times in the first round, until they used the 21st pick to select Cal’s Alex Mack at #21 overall.
At the time, I was more than a little disappointed by the choice. It’s nearly impossible to win consistently in the NFL without a legit franchise quarterback, and for the Browns to have given up the potential opportunity at one because they had two existing-but-highly-suspect options each being paid a cargo container full of money already…well, it didn’t seem to me like a smart decision. I’m as sensitive to salary concerns as anyone, but at some point, you can’t keep passing up talent because you’re scared of another digit on the contract figure.
However, with the start of the 2010 season now less than a week away, I’m beginning to feel pretty safe in saying that Mangini made the right move.
If you have ESPN Insider, stat-head KC Joyner wrote a long analytical piece about what Sanchez’s struggles mean for the Jets as a team. You can read it here. The gist of Joyner’s argument, though, is that even teams with top five defenses (in terms of points allowed) have a significantly lower chance of making the playoffs, earning a trip to the Super Bowl, and winning it once there if their quarterback is ranked 20th or lower in terms of relative QB rating. In fact, that combination of offense and defense only gets a team to the post-season 62.9% of the time.
There’s an important distinction here. Joyner uses what I’m calling relative QB rating rather than absolute QB rating. In other words, he’s rating the QB’s passer rating against the other starters in the league to see where he falls compared to his competitors that season.
The result? Last year, Sanchez finished the season with a 63.0 passer rating. In 1976, that would’ve put him at #15 in the league.
In 2009, it dropped him to #28.
The usual caveat: one season is a weak sample size. But in his first year, Sanchez also threw 20 interceptions and fumbled ten times, including three lost fumbles. His INT% was 5.5. For comparison, Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre tied for lowest INT% last season with 1.3. This means Sanchez was about 4.25x as likely to throw a pick than either of those two. Or, another way of looking at it: Sanchez threw an interception more often than once every 20 pass attempts.
Not coincidentally, Sanchez only crested 20 pass attempts in three games post-Thanksgiving last year. Yes, the Jets won 6 of their last 8, but the quarterback at the helm of those wins looks a lot more like the proverbial “game manager” than a blue-chip stud ready to put the offensive on his back.
ESPN’s fantasy football guru Matthew Berry also points out a few facts about the Jets’ run game that speak volumes about Sanchez:
1) The Jets led the league in rush attempts last season with 607.
2) Only three other teams in the league rushed more than 500 times, and second place capped out at 525. Another way of thinking about: it’s as if the Jets’ backfield played 2 to 3 run-heavy games more than every other team in the league.
3) Only three teams in the league had fewer red zone passing attempts than the Jets.
However, the exclamation point on the argument is the current season of HBO’s “Hard Knocks.”
In the event that you’re not familiar with the show, “Hard Knocks” is an annual mini-series chronicling one NFL team’s preseason, from the opening of training camp through final roster cuts. Each season has focused on a different team. This season, of course, is all about the J-E-T-S, Jets Jets Jets.
With one episode left to go in this season, I have now seen the following:
1) Mark Sanchez consistently wearing a Taco Bell hat throughout training camp
2) Mark Sanchez arguing with a Pizza Hut receptionist over the fact that extra ranch sauce costs 75 cents per container
3) Mark Sanchez forgetting his playbook for a quarterbacks meeting, then retaliating against Brian Schottenheimer (who justifiably bagged on him for the mental lapse) by making Schottenheimer’s desktop background an image of a unicorn
4) Mark Sanchez sneaking into Brian Schottenheimer’s office and drawing mustaches on all of his pictures of his kids
5) Mark Sanchez eating a cheeseburger during warm-ups before the team’s scrimmage at Hofstra
6) Rex Ryan chewing out the entire team for a complete lack of leadership from the locker room, particularly on the offensive side of the ball
This seems like an appropriate time to mention that the Jets are paying Sanchez $44.5MM, with $28.5MM guaranteed through 2013. Does it seem to you like they’re getting their money’s worth?
Alex Mack, on the other hand, has been slowly gaining buzz among football analysts as a potential Pro Bowl-caliber center. Most recently, ESPN’s Jeffri Chadiha included Mack on his top ten list of young stars who “will soon prove vital to their team’s success.” I don’t have any statistics to back this analysis up. But Chadiha does point out that Mack is facing two of the best 3-4 nose tackles in the league—Baltimore’s Haloti Ngata and Pittsburgh’s Casey Hampton—twice each per season. Holding his ground against those players means a lot more than if he was playing in, say, the AFC West.
Ironically, the Jets’ current strengths support the argument that Mack at #21 was a wiser selection than Sanchez at #5. Behind center Nick Mangold, widely regarded as the best in the league, and star left tackle D’Brickashaw Ferguson, the Jets’ offensive line is the engine that makes their running game the beast it’s become. With Mack and Joe Thomas anchoring the Browns’ line and a minor stockpile of potential talent in the backfield, the team could be set up to take a major step forward this season—at least on the offensive side of the ball—even if Jake Delhomme goes south. Which is exactly how Mangini drew it up and talked about it a year ago.
Whether or not it works out that way remains to be seen. And of course, Sanchez could turn his play around and become a juggernaut this season or next. But based on what I’ve seen from him so far, I feel considerably more comfortable knowing that the Browns haven’t sunk at least $28MM into a would-be star who may turn out to be nothing more than a game manager.
-T
