The NFL's best deep-ball quarterbacks of 2019, by the numbers
Which NFL quarterback has been the best at throwing deep? We looked at the numbers to answer that question.
In today’s NFL, passing is king. And what is the goal of a good passing game? Generating big plays downfield. The teams that are best at generating those big plays tend to win more games.
With that in mind, we wanted to look at the best deep-ball passers early on during the 2019 NFL season. In order to do so, we used Sports Info Solutions numbers on throws that traveled at least 20 yards downfield to come up with a composite ranking.
We’ll be looking at three metrics from SIS…
On-target percentage
The number of on-target/catchable throws a quarterback makes divided by the total number of pass attempts
Expected Points Added
The total change in the offense’s Expected Points that came on passes thrown by the player
Positive EPA Percentage
The percentage of passes thrown by the player that resulted in a positive EPA (i.e. a successful play for the offense)
We ranked every qualified quarterback (those with at least 10 deep-ball attempts) in each of those metrics then averaged their ranking to come up with an overall ranking.
Here are the top-16 deep-ball passers through six weeks of the NFL season, according to the numbers…