As a follow-up to my recent post “Hurts May Be What He Is… What Historical Data Shows on QB Development” where I compared Hurts’ accuracy numbers to past QB averages, I wanted to also look at Hurts vs. specific QBs.
Accuracy development of average and top 10 QBs
First, here is Hurts’ career Completion Percentage Over Expectation (CPOE) vs. the average of all QBs drafted over the past decade-plus and the average of the top 10 QBs in the same period. Hurts is clearly trending like an average QB.
Hurts vs. top QBs
Next, here is Hurts vs. six of the top ten QBs in this period (Wilson, Watson, Dak, Stafford, Herbert, and Kyler Murray). Again, Hurts looks like more of an average QB as each of these six had accuracy numbers that stabilized higher much quicker than Hurts.
Some late developing QBs
Now on the bright side, there are top QBs whose early career looked similar to or worse than Hurts, including Lamar, Cousins, Tannehill, and the classic “figured out accuracy in the pros” Josh Allen. Some may question me including Cousins or even Tannehill in a “top QBs” list but they are 8th and 10th respectively in CPOE over the past 5 years and 5th and 6th over the past 3 years. Both developed later than typical, stabilizing around their career CPOE between 1,500-2,000 career passing attempts. Developing on a trend like one of these QBs would be the bull case for Hurts.
And QB purgatory…
And lastly as I mentioned in the previous post, Hurts’ pace of development is beginning to look like a middle-of-the-league QB. Here are some “purgatory QBs” that Hurts looks like from an accuracy perspective.
Hurts should near 750 career passing attempts by the end of the season. If Hurts suddenly starts looking better and improves his career CPOE from it’s current -3.6 to something close to 0 by the end of the year, there is room for optimism. And if he doesn’t, then Hurts’ supporters will be banking on him doing what only a handful have done.