Ranking the 2022 SEC QBs

A few weeks ago, Nick Knudsen took a look at what it would take for Anthony Richardson to win the Heisman Trophy.

It seems like a ridiculous question to ask. After all, Richardson wasn’t even the starting QB at Florida last year so how are we already making him a Heisman contender? You could say the same thing about NFL mock drafts as well. ESPN’s Todd McShay had Richardson going 6th overall in his way-too-early mock draft back in May.

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So what’s with all of the hype then?

I know Richardson showed some flashes last year, but doesn’t he need to improve considerably to be considered an NFL prospect, let alone a Heisman contender. Isn’t someone like Mississippi State’s Will Rogers – with over 1,000 pass attempts in his first two years at QB – better positioned to make a huge leap than Richardson?

If you’ve heard any of my analysis of Rogers on Stand Up & Holler recently, you likely know my answer to that particular situation, but the goal of this article is to point out why I’m so down on Rogers and so up on Richardson.

And why Richardson has the potential to be great because he doesn’t need to take a leap. So with that, let’s get to ranking the 2022 SEC QBs.

QB Efficiency

If you’re ever having a conversation with someone about football, you can understand their level of understanding of the game by asking them one simple question: If a quarterback throws for 400 yards and 3 TDs, did he have a good game?

Most people will answer in the affirmative. After all, the QB clearly had the trust of his coaching staff to drop back and let the ball fly. And he also put the ball in the end zone multiple times, giving his team a chance to win. Others may say that he had a good game if he had those stats but avoided turnovers.

Those answers aren’t always wrong, but they aren’t complete. For example, take this line from Mississippi State’s Will Rogers against LSU last season.

On its face, this looks like a pretty good outing. Three touchdowns and 371 yards with only one turnover (he didn’t fumble either). He also completed 76 percent of his throws. But it took 62 attempts for him to amass these stats. That equates to 5.99 yards per pass attempt, which is well below the FBS average for the season (7.91).

His counterpart in that game – LSU’s Max Johnson – “only” threw for 280 yards, but did so on 27 attempts (10.4 yards per attempt). That’s how you end up with Mississippi State outrushing LSU (115 to 63 on one less carry) and still losing the game.

Efficiency doesn’t just mean throwing the ball either.

In Florida’s 38-14 win over Tennessee last season, Hendon Hooker threw for 221 yards (9.6 yards per attempt) versus 209 (7.7 per attempt) for Emory Jones. But Hooker ran 13 times for 23 yards (1.8 yards per rush average) while Jones ran 15 times for 144 yards (9.6 yards per attempt).

The result is that Jones was way more efficient than Hooker, even if Hooker was more efficient throwing the ball, and Florida’s offense was significantly more successful.

SEC QB Play

There are a couple of ways to roll both of these efficiencies up into one number for comparison. The first is a proprietary stat that I’ve developed called Yards above Replacement (YAR). YAR is based on efficiencies from a yards per attempt basis, but then normalizes the numbers to the average for all FBS quarterbacks. The result is that a YAR of 0.0 is average, 1.0 is a solid starter, and 2.0 is approaching Heisman territory.

So where do the returning QBs in the SEC rank when it comes to YAR?

What I’ve done here is plot QB touches vs. YAR (yellow line is the average). This tells us something about how efficient a QB and how often he was used. Obviously, as a QB has more touches, his efficiency usually goes down.

The first thing that should jump out to Florida fans is that Anthony Richardson had the best YAR in 2021 of any QB who is coming back in 2022. Now, this isn’t saying that Richardson is the best returning QB, as he only had 148 touches compared to 628 for Bryce Young.

However, this does reinforce the first round mock draft talk. What this says to me is that Richardson was incredibly efficient in the opportunities that he got, and if he can maintain that efficiency over a full season’s worth of touches, he’s going to be in the running for some serious hardware.

The other thing you can see from this plot is why I’m so down on Rogers. He had the most touches of anyone in the conference and was significantly below average on those touches. Some of that is what Mike Leach wants to do on offense, but a big chunk of it is Rogers as well.

This also says that the Max Johnson for Zach Calzada swap between LSU and Texas A&M is pretty much a wash. Those hoping that Jimbo Fisher is going to knock off Darth Saban are going to have to hope for Haynes King to be the real deal, because otherwise they’re looking into a dark future with Max Johnson doing exactly what Calzada did for them last season.

But maybe you don’t like that YAR uses a per-attempt average as its basis. After all, gaining three yards on third-and-1 is way more valuable than on third-and-7. Luckily, there is a stat that takes down and distance into account, called Expected Points per Attempt (PPA).

The story using this metric is much the same. Rogers ranks a little bit closer to average. The value of Bryce Young shows up here a little bit more. Stetson Bennett against grades out well.

Richardson is a little bit closer to average on this one. Most of that is because he is penalized heavily for the turnovers against Georgia and LSU. Those turnovers did happen, and he’ll have to eliminate most of them in 2022 for the Gators, but it was surprising to me that he ranked as highly as he does on a per-play basis.

Takeaway

A lot of people are picking the Gators to finish fourth in the SEC East this season. Given this analysis, that may end up looking really, really foolish.

South Carolina’s Spencer Rattler had much better talent at Oklahoma than he will with the Gamecocks, yet was replaced after performing right around average by both metrics. Admittedly, his 2020 season was much better, but I don’t think we should sleep on the fact that there weren’t any fans in the stands that season and when he finally had to deal with some crowd noise, things headed south.

Kentucky’s Will Levis – another mock draft darling – performed just slightly above average. Maybe he was better after the Gators loss against Kentucky, but Levis wasn’t the reason the Wildcats won that game. And without WR Wan’Dale Robinson, center Luke Fortner and tackle Darian Kinnard, Levis is going to have to step up in a major way.

Tennessee’s Hooker is the guy in the SEC East that I worry about. He was good at Virginia Tech (QB rating of 159.8 over 312 attempts) and even better last year at Tennessee (181.4 on 303 attempts). He was still battling Joe Milton somewhat for the QB job when Florida popped up on the schedule early on.

But I do find it interesting that Tennessee is coming into 2022 with as much hype as they are given their 7-6 record. It’s not like the Vols switched to Hooker and never lost another game. In fact, if you ignore the win over FCS Tennesee Tech, they went 5-5 with Hooker at the helm.

Vanderbilt’s Mike Wright was way better than Ken Seals, but that isn’t saying all that much. Missouri is starting a guy with 58 attempts who was way less efficient than Richardson. Georgia is pretty set with Bennett at QB and with all the other talent in Athens is going to be difficult to dethrone.

None of these numbers are a guarantee. Richardson could get injured early-on and Florida would be screwed. But you can say the exact same thing about Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and perhaps even Georgia.

So I get picking Florida behind Georgia. Stetson Bennett was really good last year, albeit with limited usage. But to pick the Gators behind these other teams requires projections that their QBs are going to improve their efficiency, as opposed to Richardson who just needs to increase his touches. Essentially, Spencer Rattler or Will Levis are going to have to take “the leap.”

Richardson doesn’t need to leap anywhere. He is already at the high end of efficiency when it comes to SEC QBs.

All he needs is a head coach who will give him touches, which is perhaps the biggest difference in the Gators between 2021 and 2022.