Oakland Raiders: Derek Carr’s 2018 season using advanced stats
By Sanjit T.
Uncatchable Percentage
This stat is fascinating as it’s something that’s entirely new for me. Pro Football Focus measures the location of the ball when it is thrown. This is something that’s really innovative as it shows when a pass is overthrown, behind, underthrown, or too far in front of the wide receiver.
Ball placement is key to proving the accuracy of a quarterback. We know that the primary method of completion percentage (completions divided by attempts) isn’t very accurate. A quarterback can check it down to his RB all day, and boost his completion percentage.
To see how accurate this measurement really is, I wanted to take a look at Drew Brees. We all agree Brees is the most accurate passer in the NFL, and according to this measurement, he is by far the most accurate passer.
He is ranked No. 1 as far as uncatchable percentage. Brees throws the ball 6.9% of the time that is not catchable. The NFL average as a whole is 13.4%, so you can see how impressive Brees is.
Moving on to our quarterback, and what’s most impressive about Derek Carr is where he is ranked. While looking at the numbers, I was shocked.
Carr was ranked No. 2 on the list. He was the second-most accurate passer with an uncatchable rate of 9.2%. Think about that. On 100 throws, only 9.2 of them are incomplete. Compared to the NFL average of 13.4%, Carr’s accuracy is something that he can utilize to help us win.
When looking at the uncatchable percentage, it’s broken down even further into four categories mentioned above: Overthrown, behind, underthrown, in-front. The NFL average for uncatchable passes thrown for the four above categories is: Overthrown(6%), behind(2.2%), underthrown(2.7%), in-front(2.5%). While Derek Carr’s numbers are 3.3%, 1.5%, 2.3%, and 2.1%.
This puts him ahead of the average in all four categories, and this is really impressive to me because it shows me that given a chance, Carr can get it done.