Best individual season by a Bengals QB - Analysis

[KillerGoose]

As fans, one of the things we love to discuss is which players have been the best throughout our franchise's history. You can find numerous discussions in this boards history debating the accolades and stats of players like Chad Johnson, Cris Collinsworth, Ken Anderson, and numerous others. The conversation usually ends with something like "well, football was so different back then, so we just can't compare". This is true - the game has evolved substantially since the Bengals 1969 inception within the AFL. However, I believe there are a few things we can do here. When we talk about how good or bad a player is, it is relative to their peers. Being good or bad is always relative. What was good in 1969 would likely be awful today, but it wasn't then. So, I set out and started gathering data on every Bengals QB to start in an effort to identify the single best season by a QB in Bengals franchise history. One important note is I set a threshold of only using players who started at least 75% of available games for that season. Due to this, you won't see infamous names such as Akili Smith in here. For those who care about the rest of the methodology, I am going to post how I did this at the bottom of the post. For those who don't care, enjoy and happy discussions!



The 1981 Ken Anderson and 1988 Boomer Esiason season stand out as the two best individual seasons by a QB in Bengals history. Their passer rating relative to their peers was exceptional that season and they both helped lead their teams to great overall success, including a Super Bowl berth. Really, there is an interesting pantheon of QBs in that top right quadrant. We have 1981 Anderson, 1988 Boomer, 1975 and 1982 Anderson....and 2015 Andy Dalton. To have a laugh, we can see the duality of Dalton as he also boasts the single WORST season in Bengals QB history by way of his 2019 campaign. I also found it fascinating how good Cook's 1969 season was. We always hear about how good he was before he tore his rotator cuff and this backs it up. He was phenomenal individually, though the team didn't have much success that year. By Z-Score alone, he posted the 4th best individual performance in Bengals history, below '81 Anderson and '85-'88 Boomer. Speaking of Z-Score, I am now going to go into methodology for those interested...

Like I mentioned earlier, how good or bad someone plays is always relative. In order to answer the question "who is the best?" I have to find a way to define everyone. I settled on Z-Score and win percentage of games started. For those interested in a more exact definition, here is a link that explains z-score but the short of it is that it is a value that describes how far a value is from the mean of an overall population. For this, I grabbed the individual QB's passer rating for that season and then gathered the average passer rating for that season. From there, I then calculated the standard deviation in passer rating for that season and performed my final calculation to obtain the z-score which was (Passer Rating - Mean) / Standard Deviation. Really, this is telling us how that QB's passer rating compared to his peers during that season. The higher the number, the better he was relatively and the lower the number, the worse he was relatively. The win percentage data is straight forward - take the wins divided by the total games started to get their winning percentage for that season. With this data combined, I believe this graph gives us the following four quadrants...

Bottom Left - Played poorly and the team wasn't successful (Bad all around)
Top Left - Played well but team still performed poorly (Good QB on a bad team)
Bottom Right - Played poorly but team was still successful  (Underperforming QB on a good team)
Top Right - Played well and team was successful (Good QB on a good team) 

That should cover the basics here, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. 

[Stewy]

This is fantastic.

I have been a fairly heavy Dalton supporter (not defender), but this really says he was MOSTLY holding the team back. Sad.

If you have the gumption, it would be interesting to see this same metric for like the Browns. I predict that even though we'll still say Dalton held the team back, I think it would also make us feel pretty damn lucky to have had what we had over the decades.

Also it might be interesting to plot this with a 3rd metric - league wide OLINE rating. Per haps make is a bubble, with size being rating. If OLine rating go back that far. i say this because in 81, 88 and 2005 I know we had one of the Top OLines in the league and Dalton benefited from a quality OLine until Zeitler and Whit left in the same year, and Dalton wasn't the same after that. With that said, Burrow ended up where he did on the chart with one of the worst OLines in the league, so I think it would be interesting to add that in. Or 3 different colors for OLine rank. Upper 3rd, middle 3rd, lower 3rd, etc. Just throwing something out there. I know it's more work, and i don't know if OLINE were ranked as far back as 1969.

Anyway. Cool stuff.

[KillerGoose]

(05-27-2022, 01:20 PM)Stewy Wrote: This is fantastic.

I have been a fairly heavy Dalton supporter (not defender), but this really says he was MOSTLY holding the team back.  Sad.

If you have the gumption, it would be interesting to see this same metric for like the Browns.  I predict that even though we'll still say Dalton held the team back, I think it would also make us feel pretty damn lucky to have had what we had over the decades.

Also it might be interesting to plot this with a 3rd metric - league wide OLINE rating.  Per haps make is a bubble, with size being rating.  If OLine rating go back that far.  i say this because in 81, 88 and 2005 I know we had one of the Top OLines in the league and Dalton benefited from a quality OLine until Zeitler and Whit left in the same year, and Dalton wasn't the same after that.  With that said, Burrow ended up where he did on the chart with one of the worst OLines in the league, so I think it would be interesting to add that in.  Or 3 different colors for OLine rank.  Upper 3rd, middle 3rd, lower 3rd, etc.  Just throwing something out there.  I know it's more work, and i don't know if OLINE were ranked as far back as 1969.

Anyway.  Cool stuff.

One thing that could be done for rating offensive lines is to use sack percentage and yards per carry to calculate z-scores there and assign that as their rating. It is readily available for all seasons so I think it would be the best candidate. Using bubble size is actually a fantastic idea. I'm using R here, so I have control over how big each bubble is based on a variety of metrics. If I can add offensive line z-score in, I can update the graph to include that data. I was planning on doing an offensive line study as well, so this would tie in nicely. 

Glad you enjoy it.

[*bengalfan74*]

So Kenny Anderson was the man.

[*bengalfan74*]

(05-27-2022, 01:41 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: One thing that could be done for rating offensive lines is to use sack percentage and yards per carry to calculate z-scores there and assign that as their rating. It is readily available for all seasons so I think it would be the best candidate. Using bubble size is actually a fantastic idea. I'm using R here, so I have control over how big each bubble is based on a variety of metrics. If I can add offensive line z-score in, I can update the graph to include that data. I was planning on doing an offensive line study as well, so this would tie in nicely. 

Glad you enjoy it.

Yes that would be sweet, thanks

[KillerGoose]

(05-27-2022, 01:41 PM)bengalfan74 Wrote: So Kenny Anderson was the man.

Yes, Anderson was the DUDE. He and Boomer. Here is a screenshot of the top 10 isolated z-score rankings. Kenny dominates.

[ezekiel23]

Not surprising concerning Dalton.2015 Bengals should have won the SB easily.

[Stewy]

(05-27-2022, 01:41 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: One thing that could be done for rating offensive lines is to use sack percentage and yards per carry to calculate z-scores there and assign that as their rating. It is readily available for all seasons so I think it would be the best candidate. Using bubble size is actually a fantastic idea. I'm using R here, so I have control over how big each bubble is based on a variety of metrics. If I can add offensive line z-score in, I can update the graph to include that data. I was planning on doing an offensive line study as well, so this would tie in nicely. 

Glad you enjoy it.

Awesome.  Can't wait to see it.  Thanks!

[XenoMorph]

(05-27-2022, 01:48 PM)ezekiel23 Wrote: Not surprising concerning Dalton.2015 Bengals should have won the SB easily.

That team was good and Dalton was rolling...  Lossing both coordinators and a bunch of talent after that season we took us till last year to recover from

[fredtoast]

(05-27-2022, 01:20 PM)Stewy Wrote: I have been a fairly heavy Dalton supporter (not defender), but this really says he was MOSTLY holding the team back.  Sad.

Actually it is deceptive because of the way Killer has defined his quadrants.  In both '12 and '13 Dalton's passer rating was above league average but according to Killer that means he played "poorly" and was a "bad QB".

But on the other hand with Palmer in '06 and Kitna in '03 they did not have winning records, but in Killer's definition those teams were "successful" and "good".

So with passer rating league average is "poor" but in winning percentage league average is "good".

[*rfaulk34*]

(05-27-2022, 12:42 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: As fans, one of the things we love to discuss is which players have been the best throughout our franchise's history. You can find numerous discussions in this boards history debating the accolades and stats of players like Chad Johnson, Cris Collinsworth, Ken Anderson, and numerous others. The conversation usually ends with something like "well, football was so different back then, so we just can't compare". This is true - the game has evolved substantially since the Bengals 1969 inception within the AFL. However, I believe there are a few things we can do here. When we talk about how good or bad a player is, it is relative to their peers. Being good or bad is always relative. What was good in 1969 would likely be awful today, but it wasn't then. So, I set out and started gathering data on every Bengals QB to start in an effort to identify the single best season by a QB in Bengals franchise history. One important note is I set a threshold of only using players who started at least 75% of available games for that season. Due to this, you won't see infamous names such as Akili Smith in here. For those who care about the rest of the methodology, I am going to post how I did this at the bottom of the post. For those who don't care, enjoy and happy discussions!



The 1981 Ken Anderson and 1988 Boomer Esiason season stand out as the two best individual seasons by a QB in Bengals history. Their passer rating relative to their peers was exceptional that season and they both helped lead their teams to great overall success, including a Super Bowl berth. Really, there is an interesting pantheon of QBs in that top right quadrant. We have 1981 Anderson, 1988 Boomer, 1975 and 1982 Anderson....and 2015 Andy Dalton. To have a laugh, we can see the duality of Dalton as he also boasts the single WORST season in Bengals QB history by way of his 2019 campaign. I also found it fascinating how good Cook's 1969 season was. We always hear about how good he was before he tore his rotator cuff and this backs it up. He was phenomenal individually, though the team didn't have much success that year. By Z-Score alone, he posted the 4th best individual performance in Bengals history, below '81 Anderson and '85-'88 Boomer. Speaking of Z-Score, I am now going to go into methodology for those interested...

Like I mentioned earlier, how good or bad someone plays is always relative. In order to answer the question "who is the best?" I have to find a way to define everyone. I settled on Z-Score and win percentage of games started. For those interested in a more exact definition, here is a link that explains z-score but the short of it is that it is a value that describes how far a value is from the mean of an overall population. For this, I grabbed the individual QB's passer rating for that season and then gathered the average passer rating for that season. From there, I then calculated the standard deviation in passer rating for that season and performed my final calculation to obtain the z-score which was (Passer Rating - Mean) / Standard Deviation. Really, this is telling us how that QB's passer rating compared to his peers during that season. The higher the number, the better he was relatively and the lower the number, the worse he was relatively. The win percentage data is straight forward - take the wins divided by the total games started to get their winning percentage for that season. With this data combined, I believe this graph gives us the following four quadrants...

Bottom Left - Played poorly and the team wasn't successful (Bad all around)
Top Left - Played well but team still performed poorly (Good QB on a bad team)
Bottom Right - Played poorly but team was still successful  (Bad QB on a good team)
Top Right - Played well and team was successful (Good QB on a good team) 

That should cover the basics here, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. 

Great stuff! These are my favorite types of charts because they're all relative and make the comparison over eras possible. 

[KillerGoose]

(05-27-2022, 02:19 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Actually it is deceptive because of the way Killer has defined his quadrants.  In both '12 and '13 Dalton's passer rating was above league average but according to Killer that means he played "poorly" and was a "bad QB".

But on the other hand with Palmer in '06 and Kitna in '03 they did not have winning records, but in Killer's definition those teams were "successful" and "good".

So with passer rating league average is "poor" but in winning percentage league average is "good".

Yes, there are some inconsistencies in the definitions. I was trying to be quick about it due to a meeting I had upcoming so I made some generalized definitions of the quadrants. 

[*bengalfan74*]

(05-27-2022, 01:53 PM)XenoMorph Wrote: That team was good and Dalton was rolling...  Lossing both coordinators and a bunch of talent after that season we took us till last year to recover from

Yes the 2015 draft was   took years to rebound from.

[KillerGoose]

(05-27-2022, 01:50 PM)Stewy Wrote: Awesome.  Can't wait to see it.  Thanks!

Here we go.



The offensive line ratings were calculated by finding the z-score for team YPC and sack %, then adding them. So, if a team was strong at pass protection but sucked at running the ball, it is going to be reflected here. Overall, the bigger the bubble, the better the offensive line. For those who want to see the offensive line ratings in non graph form, here are the rankings...



For those curious, the 2021 Bengals ranked 43rd out of 45. By this metric, they were the third worst offensive line in franchise history. As always, none of this is perfect as there are other factors to try to account for, but that's where they were. 

[Essex Johnson]

Anderson dominated, easy best QB ever in our franchise how is this Man not in HOF

[SladeX]

Anderson belongs in the HOF. Huge snub, IMHO.

[*bengalfan74*]

(05-27-2022, 05:12 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: Here we go.



The offensive line ratings were calculated by finding the z-score for team YPC and sack %, then adding them. So, if a team was strong at pass protection but sucked at running the ball, it is going to be reflected here. Overall, the bigger the bubble, the better the offensive line. For those who want to see the offensive line ratings in non graph form, here are the rankings...



For those curious, the 2021 Bengals ranked 43rd out of 45. By this metric, they were the third worst offensive line in franchise history. As always, none of this is perfect as there are other factors to try to account for, but that's where they were. 

It really is a bit of a miracle they did as well as they did having to play with that.

[*SHRacerX*]

(05-27-2022, 12:42 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: As fans, one of the things we love to discuss is which players have been the best throughout our franchise's history. You can find numerous discussions in this boards history debating the accolades and stats of players like Chad Johnson, Cris Collinsworth, Ken Anderson, and numerous others. The conversation usually ends with something like "well, football was so different back then, so we just can't compare". This is true - the game has evolved substantially since the Bengals 1969 inception within the AFL. However, I believe there are a few things we can do here. When we talk about how good or bad a player is, it is relative to their peers. Being good or bad is always relative. What was good in 1969 would likely be awful today, but it wasn't then. So, I set out and started gathering data on every Bengals QB to start in an effort to identify the single best season by a QB in Bengals franchise history. One important note is I set a threshold of only using players who started at least 75% of available games for that season. Due to this, you won't see infamous names such as Akili Smith in here. For those who care about the rest of the methodology, I am going to post how I did this at the bottom of the post. For those who don't care, enjoy and happy discussions!



The 1981 Ken Anderson and 1988 Boomer Esiason season stand out as the two best individual seasons by a QB in Bengals history. Their passer rating relative to their peers was exceptional that season and they both helped lead their teams to great overall success, including a Super Bowl berth. Really, there is an interesting pantheon of QBs in that top right quadrant. We have 1981 Anderson, 1988 Boomer, 1975 and 1982 Anderson....and 2015 Andy Dalton. To have a laugh, we can see the duality of Dalton as he also boasts the single WORST season in Bengals QB history by way of his 2019 campaign. I also found it fascinating how good Cook's 1969 season was. We always hear about how good he was before he tore his rotator cuff and this backs it up. He was phenomenal individually, though the team didn't have much success that year. By Z-Score alone, he posted the 4th best individual performance in Bengals history, below '81 Anderson and '85-'88 Boomer. Speaking of Z-Score, I am now going to go into methodology for those interested...

Like I mentioned earlier, how good or bad someone plays is always relative. In order to answer the question "who is the best?" I have to find a way to define everyone. I settled on Z-Score and win percentage of games started. For those interested in a more exact definition, here is a link that explains z-score but the short of it is that it is a value that describes how far a value is from the mean of an overall population. For this, I grabbed the individual QB's passer rating for that season and then gathered the average passer rating for that season. From there, I then calculated the standard deviation in passer rating for that season and performed my final calculation to obtain the z-score which was (Passer Rating - Mean) / Standard Deviation. Really, this is telling us how that QB's passer rating compared to his peers during that season. The higher the number, the better he was relatively and the lower the number, the worse he was relatively. The win percentage data is straight forward - take the wins divided by the total games started to get their winning percentage for that season. With this data combined, I believe this graph gives us the following four quadrants...

Bottom Left - Played poorly and the team wasn't successful (Bad all around)
Top Left - Played well but team still performed poorly (Good QB on a bad team)
Bottom Right - Played poorly but team was still successful  (Underperforming QB on a good team)
Top Right - Played well and team was successful (Good QB on a good team) 

That should cover the basics here, but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. 

Cool stuff.  Thanks for sharing.  Man, while Dalton was all over the place, Anderson was a model of consistency.  I think Burrow will be like that.  

I will go to the grave saying the 2005 and 2015 Bengals teams were Super Bowl teams if not for the injuries at QB.  

[*SHRacerX*]

(05-27-2022, 01:45 PM)KillerGoose Wrote: Yes, Anderson was the DUDE. He and Boomer. Here is a screenshot of the top 10 isolated z-score rankings. Kenny dominates.

Yep, shows Kenny's consistency (how the F is he not in the HOF) and Boomer's greatness at times.  FWIW, Joe's season last year would have been 11th...in his first full season coming off a massive injury.  

[KillerGoose]

Out of this list, 2021 Joe Burrow ranks 11th in individual z-score. A fun way to look at this through the perspective of the NFL today is to do a little math and see how would Burrow would have to play in order to be as good as those players above him. So, I calculated out theoretical stat lines that Burrow would have to match in 2022 in order to be considered their equals.

1981 Ken Anderson - 72% completion percentage, 4469 yards, 7.98 yards per attempt,  39 TDs and 6 INTs (114 rating)

1988 Boomer Esiason - 68% completion percentage, 4569 yards, 9.2 yards per attempt, 40 TDs and 10 INTs (118 rating)

1985 Boomer Esiasion - 69% completion percentage, 4171 yards, 8.38 yards per attempt, 38 TDs, 7 INTs (113.85 rating)

1969 Greg Cook - 69% completion percentage, 3776 yards, 9.1 yards per attempt, 27 TDs, 9 INTs (110.34 rating)

The rating I provided in parentheses isn't calculated out from their z-score because I wanted to provide a full statline and the projected rating vs. the rating provided from the projected statline don't tie out, so I just used a third party calculator. If I ONLY do a calculation for the passer rating z-score, which is what is used in the graph, Burrow would have to post the following ratings to compare...

1981 Ken Anderson - 115.4

1988 Boomer Esiason - 114.42

1985 Boomer Esiasion - 111.78

1969 Greg Cook - 111.63

EDITED - Correcting the projected statline for Burrow in regard to 1969 Greg Cook.