Writer explains why Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes was not on NFL’s list of best deep passers
Chiefs fans who were reading a story on the NFL’s website about the top 10 deep passers of the 2020 season probably couldn’t believe their eyes as they scrolled down the rankings.
The top two on the list: the Giants’ Daniel Jones and the Raiders’ Derek Carr.
Not able to crack the rankings: Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Nick Shook of NFL.com explained Mahomes’ absence in the introduction to the story. The list was determined by comparing “deep throws (pass attempts of 20-plus air yards) from the previous season to determine the league’s best based on Next Gen Stats’ data.”
Working against Mahomes, Shook hypothesized, was the Chiefs’ talented group of pass catchers.
“We relied on a group of metrics to rank the qualifying passers,” Shook wrote. “Chief among them: completion percentage over expectation (CPOE), which represents the difference between a passer’s expected completion percentage (determined by evaluating a number of factors, including pressure, time to throw, distance of attempt and separation between targeted receiver and nearest defender) and actual completion percentage. ... Mahomes ranked last in CPOE among the QBs who met the aforementioned statistical requirements, with a mark of -0.7 percent. ...
“A key part of determining expected completion percentage is the separation of a receiver from the nearest defender at the time a pass arrives. A quarterback equipped with receivers who are excellent at creating separation figures to suffer in this regard because he’ll have more expected completions than your average QB. With targets like Tyreek Hill, Mecole Hardman and Travis Kelce, Mahomes’ situation becomes the perfect storm to produce a negative CPOE ...”
So there you have. You can read more of the story here.
This story was originally published May 26, 2021 at 11:37 AM.
