Fangio defenses against rookie quarterbacks - historical review

Vic Fangio got his first defensive coordinator job in the NFL in 1995. His defenses have faced rookie (16 starts or fewer) quarterbacks 77 times. Read on to see how his defenses have fared.

I’ve included 2019 and 2020 because Fangio, even as the head coach, still has a great deal of influence on the defense.

Sorting by passer rating here are the top 20.

This is an odd mix of future hall of fame QBs (Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson) and guys who were journeymen at best, Brock Osweiler, Brock Huard, Brett Hundley, Elvis Grbac, Gardner Minshew, Drew Stanton, David Garrard and Christian Ponder. What you should notice is that Fangio’s team only won four of these games. Note that the result “W” above means that Fangio’s team lost the game.

For example in 2015, in Brock Osweiler’s first start, the Broncos beat the Bears 17-15.

Overall in these 77 games, Fangio’s team is 40-37. I was expecting a better win percentage, but some of these defenses (like the early years of the Panthers or the Texans) were not very good.

Looking at the twenty best games that his defense has had against “rookie” quarterbacks we see this.

You should note that Russell Wilson is on both lists. When he faced Fangio’s defense in his seventh career start, he played poorly. When he faced Fangio’s defense in his sixteenth he played extremely well. This bodes well since we will be facing Trevor Lawrence in his second career start. Similarly Justin Herbert did a little better as a rookie the second time he faced the Fangio’s defense last season. Herbert had a passer rating on 89.1 in the first meeting (game seven last season) and a passer rating of 97.2 in the second meeting (game fifteen).

The average among these quarterbacks (stretching back to 1995) in their meetings with a Fangio defense as rookies was:

• 57.5% completion
• 194 passing yards
• 1.0 TD
• 0.8 INT
• 78.1 passer rating
• 2.2 sacks

Nine of these quarterbacks were sacked five or more times with Danny Wuerffel leading the pack getting sacked seven times by the Panther defense in 1997. Last season the Bronco defense was able to sack Tua Tagovailoa six times. Former Broncos Osweiler and Tommy Maddox were sacked five and six times in their rookie starts against Fangio defenses. Gardner Minshew was sacked five times in one of his first starts in 2019 against the Broncos and Fangio’s defense. This game was the last time that Broncos faced the Jaguars.