FanPost

Case Keenum is Hot Garbage Until Garbage Time Pads His Stats



This is a review of Case Keenum's passing stats through the first 6 games of the season. In sum, Keenum is horrific through the first three quarters, putting up Tebow-like stats. But then, in the fourth quarter, he is padding his numbers with short throws up the middle the opponent has no problem giving away while the clock runs down.

Original data for this analysis is from pro-football-reference.com which lists, play by play, the results and whether passes were short or deep, and whether they were to the left, right, or middle of the field. I put every play, throw and result into a spreadsheet and began calculating away.

Here are Case Keenum's overall stats:

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Now lets break this down further by quarter. For the first three quarters of games:

keenum2.0.jpg

Now let us see what is happening in the all important 4th quarter, and comparing the numbers to what is happening in the first three quarters:

keenum3.0.jpg

The contrast is incredible.

For the first three quarters Keenum has a 59% completion rate and only averaging 6.8 yards per pass. But in the fourth quarter the numbers jump to an over 70% completion rate and more than 8 yards per pass.

I wish this was due to impressive quarterbacking bringing the team to wins, but that is not what has happened.

In the first game against Seattle Keenum did drive the Broncos to a game winning touchdown in the 4th quarter - but with over 11 minutes left. For the remainder of the game he completed only 2 passes for 11 yards and let the defense save the win.

Against Oakland Keenum did bring the team back from a 19-7 deficit and absolutely deserves credit for a job well done with long drives in the final quarter to win the game.

The four losses in a row, however, against Baltimore, the Jets, Kansas City and the Rams have been bad.

In the above graphs I noted a couple stats.

First, the 8.95 yards per pass down the middle of the field in the 4th quarter with an 80 percent completion rate. Awesome, until you realize these are end of game, garbage time passes where the opponent gives up the middle of field to dink and dunk while the clock runs out.

These garbage time passes are significantly increasing Keenum's overall completion rate and yards per attempt. But they really shouldn't count for much due to the context.

Another interesting stat are the throws to the deep right of the field. Keenum has 4 interceptions in this area and a high interception rate.

One question is, would Chad Kelly be able to do better than a 59% completion rate, 6.8 yards per attempt, and 1.3 interceptions per game? Hard to say until he plays. But these numbers are bottom of the barrel and one would reasonably expect any quarterback on any team to get these numbers - especially in today's pass happy NFL with inflated QB stats. That is what is expected of a QB, even backups.

This is a Fan-Created Comment on MileHighReport.com. The opinion here is not necessarily shared by the editorial staff of MHR.