2021 Failed Completions: The Bell Tolls for Roethlisberger

NFL Offseason - Ben Roethlisberger has finally joined Drew Brees and Philip Rivers on the quarterback farm upstate. And not a moment too soon: Big Ben just couldn't hunt anymore. Once one of the NFL's most dangerous deep passers, Roethlisberger led the NFL in failed completions in 2021. It was his second straight year as the failed completion king.

Unlike two years ago, when he barely clawed his way to the title, Big Ben ran victory laps against his fellow dink-and-dunk stars in 2021. With 130 failed receptions to his name, Roethlisberger takes the crown by 20, the biggest gap since Joe Flacco's legendary 2016 season. It was clearly past time for Roethlisberger to hang 'em up, and we have been getting here for some time—Roethlisberger had over 100 failed completions in each of his last three healthy seasons.

A failed completion is any completed pass that fails to gain 45% of needed yards on first down, 60% on second down, or 100% on third or fourth down. You can see last year's study on the subject here.

As somewhat expected, 2020's relatively low number of failed completions was fluky, sparked by the lack of an offseason, empty stadiums around the league, and a strange drop in holding and interference calls. The league's 23.9% failed completion rate in 2020 was the lowest we had seen since 2012, and entirely out of character with the regular rise of failed completions we have seen over the past 40 years.

2021 was a significant return to form. The 3,131 failed completions of 2021 were an all-time record, although that's partially due to the addition of a 17th game last season. The 25.8% failed completion rate still sticks in the top five all-time, joining 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2019. Normal service has resumed; even COVID couldn't keep the dumpoff down for long.

Of course, not every failed completion is created equal, but for this article we make things binary, simply summing up successes and failures. A 7-yard completion on third-and-10 is better than a 2-yard completion, especially when you get into field goal range. That's reflected in DVOA, but not here—for the purposes of this article, a failure is a failure.

Quarterbacks

In the following table, the 34 qualified quarterbacks of 2021 are ranked by ascending failed completion rate (FC%). We also included failed completions as a percentage of attempts (very little change in the rankings), as well as the average ALEX (all downs) for the season. "Passes" here refers to all passing plays, including sacks.

In 2018 and 2020, Ben Roethlisberger's failed completion rate hovered around 25%. That's not ideal, of course, and it was trending in the wrong direction, but you can work with that. The bottom just fell out for Roethlisberger last season; a full third of his completions were failures as a combination of no faith in his offensive line and no strength in his arm meant that Roethlisberger's average depth of target fell to a career low of 6.5 yards and his time to throw was a league-fastest 2.38 seconds. Roethlisberger threw escape routes and dumpoffs like his life depended on it. Najee Harris had 94 targets with an aDOT of -0.14 yards, 30 more targets than the next-most targeted player with a negative aDOT. A younger Big Ben would have stood in the pocket despite the poor pass protection, shrugged off a few hits, and found targets deep downfield. That Big Ben retired about five years ago, and last year's model just didn't have anything left in the tank.

Add a quarterback with no arm strength to a porous offensive line, a highly drafted running back, and a 17th regular-season game, and you have the recipe for a run at the single-season failed completions record. Big Ben put his all into it, but he couldn't quite seal the deal.

Joe Flacco remains the failed completion king. He'd still have the top two slots if it wasn't for the 17th game; while Roethlisberger put up his 130 failed completions in just 16 games, he wouldn't have had the opportunity to play that final game if it weren't for Week 18. Flacco, of course, turned the failed completion into an artform all its own. He and Drew Brees have long been the two tentpoles of this stat with Flacco showing how hollow a quarterback's completion percentage can be if every pass is a checkdown, and Brees showing that a bunch of ineffective checkdowns doesn't hurt too much if you mix in plenty of successful passes alongside them. Pre-arm injury, Roethlisberger was more of a Brees-type failed completionist, firmly in the middle of the pack in failed completion rate but with a high enough volume to appear near the top of the table anyway. But over the last couple of seasons, Roethlisberger went full Flacco. And when you go full Flacco, it's time to hang up your boots.

This is normally where we turn to talk about the quarterback with the worst failed completion rate last season … but that's Ben Roethlisberger too. That has never happened in what has now been a decade of writing these stats up, and I couldn't find a case of it before that either. Typically, the quarterback with the worst failed completion rate is a player so bad he gets benched before the season is over, or who is only playing as an out-of-their-depths injury replacement. Your last three leaders were Dwayne Haskins, Mason Rudolph, and Nick Foles, none of whom had more than 305 pass attempts—borderline qualifiers. But Roethlisberger managed to hold off Tyler Huntley, Daniel Jones, and Davis Mills, all of whom fit the profile of the failed completion rate leader far more than Roethlisberger and his 652 dropbacks. Roethlisberger's 33.3% failed completion rate is the second-highest ever for a player with at least 100 failed completions. Seasons like these don't grow on trees and deserve to be immortalized.

Four other passers crossed the 100-failed completion threshold this year. Tom Brady only got there because of the 17th game, and no one cares about 105 failed completions when you're also leading the league in successful completions. Derek Carr scoring high is nothing new as he has never been super-comfortable going deep, but he has seen his failed completion rate drop from his early years. Matt Ryan is rapidly approaching the end; he's not in Big Ben territory yet, but you can here it tolling from here.

And then there's Kirk Cousins. In 2020, Cousins had the eighth-best failed completion rate, sitting at 19.2%. But last year, the bottom fell out, down to the fifth-worst rate of 29.6%. His raw totals rose from 67 to 110. It was, by far, the biggest drop-off between 2020 and 2021. Cousins had the worst game of the year with 15 failed completions in the season opener against Cincinnati, and things never really turned around. His ALEX dropped from -0.7 to -1.2, but it's not like he pulled a Roethlisberger and started throwing running back dumpoffs every other play. A large chunk of this comes from conservative first-down play calling. Cousins jumped from 15 failed completions on first downs in 2020 to 42 last year, and his first-down DVOA dropped from 23.7% to 1.5%. In 2020, about 40% of Cousins' first-down passes were below 5 air yards—in other words, so short that some receiver YAC was needed to turn them into successes. Last season, that jumped to 52%. That doesn't explain it all away, but Klint Kubiak's tendency to call dumpoff pass plays on first down, as well as Cousins' eagerness to find those dumpoffs, is a huge part of this increase. Vikings fans hope new head coach Kevin O'Connell will be a pleasant breath of fresh air strategically, though it should make Vikings fans a little nervous about Cousins' latest big-money extension.

Cousins and Roethlisberger were two of the five quarterbacks to see their failed completion percentage jump five points between 2020 and 2021. Josh Allen is another; his 2020 season went about as well as it possibly could have, so some slight regression was to be expected. Ryan Tannehill stumbled some, in part because everyone in Tennessee was hurt at one point or another. And Russell Wilson rounds out your group of five. Even Healthy Russell Wilson (Weeks 1-5 and 16-18) had a failed completion rate of 26.2%, so this isn't all due to the finger injury, either.

The only quarterback to see his failed completion rate improve by five percentage points was Justin Herbert, who went from 26.8% as a rookie to 21.0% last season—from 28th to third! Herbert had finished last among the three 2020 rookies, and we figured having Joe Lombardi calling the shots would keep him high on the failed completion leaderboards with lots of dumpoffs to Austin Ekeler. Herbert had plenty of those, sure, but his arm talent has allowed him to throw the ball deeper more effectively than Lombardi's last charge, the Aging Remains of Drew Brees. It doesn't matter how many failed completions you have if you're mixing them in with plenty of successful completions.

And, on that note, we can run our table of successful completion percentage—the percentage of all pass attempts that end as successful completions. This is where we count all failed completions as incomplete passes, removing some of the empty passing calories from completion percentage around the league:

Patrick Mahomes takes his first of what is likely to be many successful completion crowns. No one blinks twice when good players appear at the top of good stats. You may, however, be surprised to see Jimmy Garoppolo in second place, such is his reputation. When Garoppolo dropped back to pass, it was more often than not a good thing, no matter what the highlight reel may tell you. His 169.9% DVOA on successful completions was fifth highest in the league. You may think, "oh, these are all going to be little dumpoffs to Deebo Samuel that gained 97 yards of YAC and look good on the stat sheet," and well, you're not wrong. They're not really dumpoffs; Garoppolo's 7.6-yard aDOT on successful completions ranked 16th in the league, pretty much bang-on average. But then he benefitted from 7.5 YAC, the most in the league by nearly a half yard. Combine a high successful completion percentage, a solid depth of target, and insane YAC, and you see why Garoppolo ranked fifth in passing DVOA this year. A lot of that is the Shanahan system, of course, but there's skill in being able to hit George Kittle or Deebo Samuel in stride and allow them to earn that YAC. I suppose we'll get more clarity as to how much was the quarterback and how much was the coach next year, presuming literally anyone trades for Garoppolo. Anybody? Anybody? Tepper?

Ben Roethlisberger does finally get off the bottom of a table when we switch to successful completions, making way for the rookies. Zach Wilson has a solid lead over Justin Fields for the lowest successful completion rate among the first-year passers, hovering down at 40.7%. Trevor Lawrence falls into the bottom 10, beaten out by Davis Mills. Not a good year in general for the first-round passers … except for Mac Jones, ranked 12th at 50.5%. That's a very impressive debut for the rookie, and he improved as the season went along—he was at 46.5% after his first month and 47.7% halfway through the season, so despite some December rough patches, there's a positive trend going on there. I wouldn't push the panic button yet if I were the Jets or Bears, but Round 1 clearly goes to Mac Jones.

Mahomes, Herbert, Baker Mayfield, Matthew Stafford, and Josh Allen all jump at least 10 spots in the rankings when you go from raw completion percentage to successful completion percentage. Allen squeaks in to the list despite seeing his successful completion percentage drop 8.2% from 2020, which puts him in Cousins/Wilson territory in terms of year-over-year performance. Have we mentioned how good Allen's 2020 was?

Davis Mills and Tyler Huntley drop at least 10 spots flipping to successful completion percentage; there's a lot of empty calories in the "Houston has Found Their Guy!" narrative.

Receivers

What about the receivers on the other end of those failed completions? It's worth taking a look at that, even though appearances here generally have more to do with usage and scheme than a receiver's individual talents. We exclude running backs from these tables; they would otherwise dominate due to their roles on checkdowns and emergency outlets. For the record, however, Najee Harris led all players with 33 failed receptions, as those Big Ben wobblers had to go somewhere. Leonard Fournette was the only other running back above 25.

Being on the failed receptions table is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Cooper Kupp, Keenan Allen, and Davante Adams all make return appearances from last year's list; they rack up a lot of failed receptions because they're the guys their quarterbacks look for when they're in trouble. If you catch the ball 145 times, not every single one of them is going to be a winner, and that's OK.

Diontae Johnson also returns from 2020's list, but I think we can blame a lot of that on Roethlisberger's dead arm; it's conceivable that one day, Pittsburgh may have a quarterback who can throw the ball more than 2 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. That also partially explains Ray-Ray McCloud's appearance atop the failed reception rate leaderboard, but I'd give McCloud a larger portion of the blame than I'd give Johnson. Johnson is a solid receiver hamstrung by a quarterback who can't throw. McCloud is a punt returner and below-average slot receiver who couldn't produce with the ball in his hands; maybe he doesn't finish dead last in receiving DVOA with an average quarterback targeting him, but a 42.1% failed reception rate basically meant he was juking nobody. When you're sitting on a 4.3-yard aDOT on your receptions, averaging just 2.9 YAC is not going to cut it.

Rondale Moore at least averaged 8.1 YAC, but seeing as how he was the only qualified wide receiver in the league with a negative depth of target on his receptions, it's no surprise to see him on the failed reception list. He was at least able to do more with the ball in his hands than McCloud, Devin Duvernay, or Jalen Reagor, all of whom also were near the bottom of the league in aDOT and show up on the failed reception table. It feels like Moore is salvageable with some better play design; not so much the other three.

We should congratulate Allan Lazard for being the only player to repeat from last year's lowest failed reception rate table. He did double his failed receptions, but going from two to four is not precisely the end of the world. I suppose we should also congratulate Evan Engram for being the only player to repeat from last year's highest failed reception rate table; he did see his percentage drop from 38.1% to 34.8%, but eef. And this man was a coveted free agent! That's betting a lot on Daniel Jones just being bad … which, I suppose, is fair enough.

Defenses

Finally, let's look at the defenses' ability to create failed completions, with a comparison to how these units fared in 2020.

Defensive numbers are far less sticky year-to-year than quarterback stats. A lot of this depends on the type and quality of the quarterbacks on your schedule, and so the year-to-year correlation is typically down in the 0.25 range. 2021 was even a little below that because of the oddness of 2020.

Nearly a fifth of Cleveland's forced failed completions came courtesy of one Ben Roethlisberger. Add in matchups against Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, Tim Boyle, Tyler Huntley, and Brandon Allen and, well, you begin to understand. Those six passers account for 59 of Cleveland's 121 failed completions forced. Credit where credit is due when it comes to forcing those dumpoffs, and we should note that Cleveland forced Aaron Rodgers to 12 and Lamar Jackson to 10, so it's not all the strength of schedule here, but the Browns did not exactly face a murderer's row of deep threats this season.

There's usually a solid correlation between a pass rush and a high number of failed completions as offenses try to keep their quarterbacks upright. Cleveland, San Francisco, and Carolina were all in the top five in pass rush win rate, with Tampa Bay and Dallas finishing in the top 12—that explains the top of the table quite nicely. Washington had enough injuries and regression on their heralded defensive line to explain a large chunk of why the fell from the top slot last year down to 28th this year, and the rest of the bottom five is composed of below-average pass rush units. You have to go the Jets in 27th to find the first team ranked in the top 16 in pass rush win rate on this chart; it turns out it doesn't matter how much pressure you get if you have no cornerbacks whatsoever.

The Houston Texans round out the bottom, as they do in so many of these stats. They were able to force eight-failed completion days from Trevor Lawrence and Ryan Tannehill, but that's fairly faint praise. Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, Jacoby Brissett, Kyler Murray, Russell Wilson, and Carson Wentz (twice!) were able to have games with three or fewer failed completions. It's a good thing the Texans went through a coaching change this offseason, and didn't do anything foolish like promote their defensive coordinator to the center seat.