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Does Jason Campbell throw deep passes?

By Skin Patrol

Some fellow in the comments section of an FO piece by Doug Farrar (on why we should be excited about Jim Zorn) argued that Jason Campbell doesn't throw the ball deep, rather he just had good receivers who got him YACs. My response used statistics taken from CNNSI's stats page looking at QB splits and team stats. Here's what I found, though encourage all to check my numbers:

The Redskins had 1570 YACs on 525 attempts or just ~ 3 YAC per Attempt. By comparison -- and I choose the Cowboys because [follows a discussion of why I chose the Cowboys, in any event, good team in the same division with a competent offense and quarterback] -- had 1761 YACs on 531 or ~3.2 YAC per Attempt. It would stand to reason that perhaps Tony Romo benefited more from YACs than did Jason Campbell.

Re: Distance of JC's passes...

JC completed 250 passes last year. Their distribution ON DISTANCE TRAVELED IN THE AIR (not distance gained by receivers after the catch) was:

53 completed traveling behind LOS (21.2%)
148 completed traveling between 1-10 yards (59.2%)
37 completed traveling 11-20 yards (14.8%)
7 completed traveling 21-30 yards (2.8%)
2 completed traveling 31-40 yards (.8%)
3 completed traveling 41+ yards (1.2%)

Tony Romo, by comparison 335 total completions:

42 behind LOS (12.5%)
210 1-10 yards (62.6%)
58 11-20 yards (17.3%)
18 21-30 yards (5.3%)
7 31-40 yards (2%)
0 41+ yards (0%)

So, to sum up, 80% of the passes Jason Campbell threw did not travel past the 10 yard line. 75% of Tony Romo's completions did not travel beyond the 10 yard line. [For some other quarterbacks of note, including all starting foes in the East] that number was 75% for Eli Manning, 79% for Donovan McNabb, 78% for Tom Brady, 80% for Brett Favre, and 76% for Peyton Manning.

I am of the opinion that Jason Campbell throws the deep ball just fine and utilizes it well within the normal limits of the league. He was not unusually inclined to throw the ball short, in my opinion. Though he threw a higher percentage of his passes within 10 yards down the field than most of those guys (besides Favre) it wasn't by much, and some of that could be attributed to the fact that the line was banged up, which led to more qb pressures, which led to a greater need for short passes. In support of that theory, I'd point out that Tony Romo was sacked on 4.6% of his passes whereas JC was sacked on 5% of his passes, and Romo threw 71 of his 520 passes while under pressure (13.6% of the time) whereas Jason threw 59 of his 417 passes while under pressure (14.1%). These slight discrepancies might explain the slight discrepancies from above. Or maybe they don't, you be the judge.

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