Washington Football Team: Here’s one way to evaluate the quarterbacks

How these systems rank Washington Football Team QBs

Here’s the fun part, as it relates to the Washington Football Team. Based on QBR, Ryan Fitzpatrick was a top 10 quarterback in 2020. (A top 10 quarterback who was benched for an unproven rookie).

Based on my TD-INT method, he was bottom 10, though on a per-game basis, he would barely creep out of the very bottom. Based on Passer Rating he would be 17th – or the exact middle of the league.

So if you don’t know what to expect from Fitzpatrick in 2021, I’m right there with you.

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But even if he performs at the low end of the spectrum, he will be an improvement over the Washington Football Team QB performance in 2020.

I haven’t mentioned the way the various methods mentioned above would rate the worst quarterbacks last year. But suffice to say that all three have Washington’s two primary QBs, Alex Smith and Dwayne Haskins, at or near the very bottom of the league. QBR has them battling it out for dead last. So does my TD-INT method. Passer rating has them third and fifth from the bottom.

Actually, Smith and Haskins fell behind both Heinicke and Allen in 2020, regardless of the method you use. Allen only played in four games and Heinicke one regular-season game, so you can’t rely on the sample sizes very much.

But if you are a fan of the forgotten man Kyle Allen, you can take some comfort in realizing that his 74.5 QBR over four games would have placed him seventh in the league had he played a full year at that level. No other Washington Football Team QB had a QBR over 50.

If you include Heinicke’s playoff game to get a little more data, both Heinicke and Allen’s Passer Rating would be in the top half of the league.

I don’t want a game manager. I will live with the occasional painful interception if the offense is generating big plays and touchdowns.

I am not one of those who thinks Dwayne Haskins was benched early in 2020 because he threw interceptions. He was benched because he missed opportunities for big plays and failed to score touchdowns.

So who will be the Washington Football Team quarterback in 2021? I don’t know. But I am prepared to go this far: the race has three horses and not just two – and whichever one of them can throw more touchdown passes should be the one who wins the jobs.

Screw game management.