Tom Brady was among league's worst in 'bad passes' last season

[PatsWSB47]

I was kind of surprised about this.

It turns out that Brady makes a high percentage of bad passes.
I had trouble digesting it myself, so I suspect that many of you will as well. But it’s true. Brady completely missed his mark – short, long or wide – on more than 17 percent of his passes last season, according to numbers compiled by Stats, Inc.

Tuesday’s New England Patriots Links 7/31 :Ian's New England Patriots Blog

 

[Jackson 2]

I was kind of surprised about this.

Considering his # of TD passes, total yards and QBR, I'd say his percentage of good ones was a lot higher.

 

[Uncle Rico]

Unacceptable. Wonder if the Browns will cough up fourth-ranked Colt McCoy for him. ...

 

[MoLewisrocks]

I'm calling BS first... Brady's bread and butter is accuracy and good decision making. Knowing how this offense is predicated on post snap reads and precision route running and timing, 90% of what whomever compiled those stats thinks they saw was on the receiver. Otherwise Bill wouldn't be paying him $18M per - he'd be trading his ass. Brady regularly puts the ball where it has to be and it's on the receiver to be there or close enough to make a play (which when it works may look like a great play on his part when in fact it was one he had to make of necessity - see Brady's critique of one of Lloyd's early diving camp catches where he needed to flatten his route so a circus catch wasn't required...).

 

[Kontradiction]

Of course, I'm no medical expert. But I think a lot of those throws (he did have some stinkers) were due to the elbow issues that would seemingly bother the Franchise the most early on in games and ultimately led to quite a few slow starts for this offense throughout the 2011 season.

 

[Kontradiction]

I'm calling BS first... Brady's bread and butter is accuracy and good decision making. Knowing how this offense is predicated on post snap reads and precision route running and timing, 90% of what whomever compiled those stats thinks they saw was on the receiver. Otherwise Bill wouldn't be paying him $18M per - he'd be trading his ass. Brady regularly puts the ball where it has to be and it's on the receiver to be there or close enough to make a play (which when it works may look like a great play on his part when in fact it was one he had to make of necessity - see Brady's critique of one of Lloyd's early diving camp catches where he needed to flatten his route so a circus catch wasn't required...).

I think it's overblown, but I don't think it's BS. Brady had a lot of throws sail on him particularly early on in games. Most of it probably had to do with the elbow issues he was going through. Of course, some of it probably included good defenses flooding the middle of the field against our offense because they had no deep or intermediate threat to respect outside of Branch, who was injured himself. If you want odds-on proof of this, see the regular season game against the Giants.

 

[TyronePoole]

I had trouble digesting it myself, so I suspect that many of you will as well. But it’s true. Brady completely missed his mark – short, long or wide – on more than 17 percent of his passes last season, according to numbers compiled by Stats, Inc.
Here’s a breakdown of how it all played out:
Overthrown passes: 36 of 611
Underthrown passes: 26
Wide passes: 45
Total bad passes: 107, or 17.5 percent
(It's worth noting here that Brady completed 65.6 percent of his passes for 5,235 yards and 39 touchdowns. Keep that in perspective while reading.)

No mention of methodology or how to reconcile that with his overall numbers. I'm going to pass (pun intended) on taking this seriously.

 

[Rob0729]

A lot of those passes weren't his fault. How many of those passes were to Ochocinco where Ocho should have been where Brady threw it to and wasn't?That skews the data a bit. Anyone know how many times Ocho was targeted last year? I bet 90% of the targets that weren't completions are considered towards Stats, Inc.'s bad pass total and most, if not all were not Brady's fault.

 

[Sicilian]

I'm calling BS first... Brady's bread and butter is accuracy and good decision making. Knowing how this offense is predicated on post snap reads and precision route running and timing, 90% of what whomever compiled those stats thinks they saw was on the receiver. Otherwise Bill wouldn't be paying him $18M per - he'd be trading his ass. Brady regularly puts the ball where it has to be and it's on the receiver to be there or close enough to make a play (which when it works may look like a great play on his part when in fact it was one he had to make of necessity - see Brady's critique of one of Lloyd's early diving camp catches where he needed to flatten his route so a circus catch wasn't required...).

Bingo. Even if you don't assume that it's usually the receiver's mistake, the idea of a "bad throw" is so subjective and based on factors within the play that we're not privy to.

Also, if Brady is throwing to someone on the sideline who's mostly covered, and the ball sails wide so the WR can't keep his feet in, are they calling that a "bad throw"? Because that's a situation where a "good throw" probably gets broken up or picked, so you put the ball where your guy is the only one with a chance to catch it (even if the chance is lower than you'd like).

Same thing on goal line throws. In his recent interview, Brady talked about the philosophy that, when throwing to the end zone, you throw it low near the goal line and high near the back end line. Same idea, you want the ball in a safe location where only your guy has a chance at making the catch.

 

[PatsSox363804]

Not terribly surprising given the lack of a deep threat last year and there was that stretch in the middle of the season where it looked like he was really off coinciding with the elbow injury. Think that will improve this season, barring injury, with Lloyd in the fold and if they really do show more commitment to the screen game.

 

[TyronePoole]

Yeah, I predict Brady will be among the league's best when it comes to this "stat" this year. Just a hunch.

 

[ay-yo]

Multiple times Brady would throw an incomplete pass that wasn't really close to Ocho and then yell at him afterwards. Pretty much his way of saying "that's where you were supposed to be". I bet those were counted as "bad passes" on this report.

 

[PatsWSB47]

No mention of methodology or how to reconcile that with his overall numbers. I'm going to pass (pun intended) on taking this seriously.

The stats were compiled for all the starting quarterbacks using the same methodology I'm sure. There's definitely a margin of error in there somewhere but the author wasn't trying to disrespect Brady. He admitted he hasn't figured out what the numbers mean. They mean something though and I think this is exactly the kind of thing Brady looks at when he works on improving every year.

 

[Kontradiction]

Multiple times Brady would throw an incomplete pass that wasn't really close to Ocho and then yell at him afterwards. Pretty much his way of saying "that's where you were supposed to be". I bet those were counted as "bad passes" on this report.

Perhaps we can get a statistics junkie with absolutely no life to come on in here and include the times Ocho was targeted last year then compare it with the current statistics provided in the article.

 

[TyronePoole]

The stats were compiled for all the starting quarterbacks using the same methodology I'm sure. There's definitely a margin of error in there somewhere but the author wasn't trying to disrespect Brady. He admitted he hasn't figured out what the numbers mean. They mean something though and I think this is exactly the kind of thing Brady looks at when he works on improving every year.

Oh I'm not criticizing the author, I'm criticizing Scouts Inc. for not disclosing the methodology. I'm sure it's consistent, but it also seems consistently wrong. The list has Colt Mccoy at 4th and Alex Smith at 11th.

I suspect that as others have mentioned the problem lies in the failure to determine the difference between a bad route and a bad pass, and also the degree of difficulty of certain passes.

 

[PatsFan2]

I was kind of surprised about this.

If we had WR's on the outsides worth covering Brady wouldn't even be mentioned in that category.

 

[JR4]

How were the stats compiled?
Was a wide throw determined because of where the receiver was and where
the ball went? Most of the time Tom throws where the receiver is suppose
to be. So if the receiver didn't get there why call it an errant throw on Tom?

These stats are FLAWED, when it comes to TOM, because they have no idea of what was suppose to happen.

Here is a good snip from Tom's Interview on Sirius radio that indicates why
it is not possible to know if Tom made an error unless you know what
was suppose to happen. Even if Tom is 20 yds off, you don't know if
he just threw it away at the last milliseconds of his throw because he
didn't see what was suppose be.

We have to be able to anticipate what each other are doing. You can’t wait for things to happen, and then react. You have to be proactive in everything you do – at quarterback and receiver … When we go out to practice, we’re talking and saying, ‘If we get this coverage, this is what I’m thinking. This is when I expect you to break. When I see this hint of your head and your shoulders, this is what I’m thinking.’ A lot of it is anticipation. For example, when I see Brandon break and I throw it to a spot, and then he’s 4 yards away from that spot and he has to make a great catch. For him, I’m saying, ‘This is not where we talked about you being.’ Sometimes I make a bad throw and he says, ‘Tom, no, this is what I saw.’ That’s part of the communication.....

Brady goes deep on Sirius - New England Patriots Blog - ESPN Boston

 

[NEGoldenAge]

I think a big part of the "bad" passes were a result of the Pats havnig no legitimate outside threat last year. Teams were really loading up the middle of the field, and linemen were really focussing on getting hands into the inside passing lanes. This resulted in more passes being tipped, tighter windows and often having to put the ball in less than ideal places. Brady w also had the third most attempts last year. All that said, Brady's performance probably was not as bad as the article indicates given he had better than a 3:1 TD/INT ratio.

Regarless, a healthy Brady with an offense that can threaten the entire field should yield far less bad throws than last year.

 

[BSR]

I think people are being a little defensive about this stat. Reading the article, that tries to dig deeper, they guess that the main cause of his high number of bad passes was the inability to connect down field the past couple of years. This isn't some big secret. His completion percentage of passes thrown downfield have been dreadful the past few years. We tend to think its because of the lack of downfield weapons but hopefully that is corrected with the additions of Lloyd, Gaffney and Stallworth.

 

[MoLewisrocks]

I'd have to go back and watch the Giants game, but just reading through the play by play I'm not seeing it. He and Gronk seemed to have a disconnect deep early on. And Branch and Ocho were MIA. But we also couldn't run the damn ball and drives kept stalling out often a yard short even as Brady was completing a high percentage of passes at varying depths. I do recall he was often accused of over or under throwing Ocho early in the season when nothing could be farther from the truth...

In that game he made 50% of his deep throws, about average for deep throws. 2 misses were to Gronk, 3 were to Ocho who was 0-5 in targets on the day. He and Welker had no issues deep or short... I believe they tried some screens to Woodhead and Edleman that were ugly, but again the screen game in general was ugly last season perhaps because we just didn't have the personnel to set it up or execute it well.

Brady had 5 sub 60% completion games. He also had 11 above his season average 65.6% including 4 over 70%. They were scattered throughout so likely had a lot to do with situations (including with his receivers) and matchups...as opposed to his elbow.

New York Giants at New England Patriots - November 6th, 2011 - Pro-Football-Reference.com