2022 Failed Completions: Justin Herbert Aims for the Record

NFL Offseason - When you try to find comparisons for Justin Herbert, the mind races. Carson Wentz was the most common name pulled out during the pre-draft process; his arm strength has been compared to Aaron Rodgers; Ryan Harris called him better than Peyton Manning. Last offseason here at Football Outsiders, we ran a table of the quarterbacks with the most passing DYAR in their first two seasons, and Herbert came in just behind Manning and Dan Marino.

But for this particular article, we're going to make a significantly rarer comparison: Joe Flacco.

Under the watchful eye of since-fired Joe Lombardi, Herbert made a run at an all-time record in 2022. Flacco has been the single-season failed completions leader since 2016, with a nigh-incomprehensible 144 dump-offs to the likes of Dennis Pitta and Kyle Juszczyk. No one else in NFL history had topped 130 failed completions; Flacco's record seemed like it might stand forever. But due to a combination of injuries, a play-calling methodology that prioritized passes to running backs over rushing plays, a 17th game, and good old-fashioned offensive ineptitude, Herbert nearly managed to knock off Flacco. In the end, however, Flacco remains your all-time failed completion king.

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.

There were 3,087 failed completions last season, representing 26.7% of all completed passes. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a new NFL record, as the combination of historical trends towards shorter passes crashed into last season's noted offensive slump to produce the highest rate of dinky dump-offs and checkdowns ever recorded. It's not a new record in total number of failed completions—2021 had 44 more. But 2021 also had 556 more completions in general than 2022 did, and it wasn't the short pitches to running backs that were taken off the board.

With an agreed-upon Good Quarterback leading the table this season, and the overall total going up, it's worth asking: are failed completions actually bad? The short answer is yes. But we have a couple thousand words left to go, so maybe we can tease out a little more of a nuanced reply.

As a side note, not every failed completion is created equal. For the purposes of this article, however, we're treating it as a 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 start getting 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 2022 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.

Back to Justin Herbert. Herbert had 106 failed completions as a rookie and a failed completion percentage of 26.8%. Both of those numbers stepped down in 2021 as Herbert advanced to a Pro Bowl-caliber player. But they came back with a vengeance last season—12 more failed completions than anyone else, in large part driven by his third-lowest ALEX.

You can't absolve Herbert of all the blame; the quarterback is ultimately the one who decides where the ball is thrown, after all. But it is worth noting the challenges Herbert faced in 2022, problems which converted what might have been a disappointing season into a near-record-shattering year.

Injuries, first and foremost. Herbert was slowed for much of the first half of the season with torn rib cartilage, suffered in Week 2 against Kansas City. Herbert had 75 failed completions from Weeks 2 to 10 and 60 in Weeks 11 to 18, both eight games. It turns out that it's easier to push the ball downfield with your ribs in one piece. Herbert's weapons weren't always all there, either; DeAndre Carter was the only receiver to play all 18 games as both Mike Williams and Keenan Allen missed time, as did Rashawn Slater and Corey Linsley on the line. That's a tough environment to work in, and while Herbert gutted it out the best he could, it is perhaps not surprising that an offense that featured in an injured passer behind a makeshift line throwing behind the line of scrimmage to Austin Ekeler did not result in oodles of air yards.

There was also the issue of play selection. The Chargers passed 65% of the time, second-most in the league behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. You'll note Tom Brady near the top of the failed completions leaderboard as well; his 130 failed completions ends up tied for third-most in history as Brady's deep ball finally, finally went away at age 45. Arizona and Minnesota also finished in the top eight in both pass percentage and failed completion totals, though obviously Arizona's ended up being spread over a number of passers. If you throw more often, you're likely to have a higher number of failed completions, because you're likely to have a larger number of completions to begin with.

You're replacing part of your running game with a quick passing game, which makes sense if you have someone like Ekeler or Leonard Fournette to throw to. If you believe a completion to a running back has a higher percentage chance to convert than a running play with that same running back, then the decision to throw short passes makes sense even when it doesn't work—your failed completions will replace stuffs at the line. Herbert and Brady led the league on pass attempts to running backs with 173 and 144, respectively. Both players had positive passing DVOA on those targets, with Brady at 16.2% and Herbert at 3.5%. And both Tampa Bay and Los Angeles were in the negatives in rush DVOA in general, with the Buccaneers at -18.1% and the Chargers at -8.9%. So, yeah, I think you could make the argument that a significant factor in Herbert and Brady topping the tables in failed completions is the failure of their teams' respective running games, though the argument holds stronger for Brady than Herbert.

And then, yes, Joe Lombardi was fired. Lombardi copy-pasted the late-career Drew Brees game plan on a quarterback with an actual live arm. Brees was consistently near the top of the leaderboards in failed completions, in both good seasons and bad, as he made up for fading arm strength with exceptional precision in short yardage in a Sean Payton offense designed to squeeze every last drop out of short routes over the middle. Lombardi is no Payton, and limiting Herbert to one or two deep shots per game handcuffed Los Angeles' offense for no adequately explained reason. Chargers fans should expect Herbert's numbers to drop down significantly with Kellen Moore calling the shots in 2023.

Enough about Herbert. We don't have to leave the division to find the passer with the worst failed completion rate in 2022—that's Russell Wilson, with over a third of his completions failing to gain significant yardage. We have been over and over Wilson's struggles in his first year in Denver, a combination of Nathaniel Hackett's stale offense and Wilson's sudden struggles with accuracy and precision, all coated over with a bizarre paste of enthusiasm which grated as the year went along. Wilson only had a 27.4% failed completion rate in Seattle in 2021, and it's not like Aaron Rodgers ever had high numbers of failed completions in Hackett's offense; this was a bit of a case of square pegs in round holes, only with questions about the quality of both the peg and the hole. Wilson sharing the bottom of the list with Mac "benched for Bailey Zappe" Jones and Baker "too bad for Carolina" Mayfield is not precisely what Denver was hoping for when they sent an absolute truckload of picks and players for their quarterback of the future.

Wilson was one of five passers who saw their failed completion percentage jump at least five points from 2021. The biggest increase went to Mayfield, going from 20.6% in his last year in Cleveland to 33.3% in time split between Carolina and Los Angeles; that's mostly his terrible Panthers tenure sticking out there. Jones and Herbert are on that list as well, as is Kyler Murray, who regressed significantly in his last year in Kliff Kingsbury's offense. With Murray unlikely to see the field at the beginning of the year after suffering a torn ACL late in the season, head coach Jonathan Gannon and coordinator Drew Petzing are going to have their work cut out for them trying to fix Arizona's offense.

Only two quarterbacks saw their failed completion rate drop by at least five percentage points. Josh Allen ended up leading the league with a 15.3% failed completion rate, which is what happens when you never throw short. Allen saw his average depth of target jump nearly a full yard in 2022, and you don't throw many dump-offs 9 or more yards downfield. The other is Jared Goff, who benefitted from Detroit's late-season switch to a more aerially aggressive offense, likely playing the Lions out of even remote first-round quarterback consideration.

Six passers topped the 100-fail threshold last year. We have already talked briefly about Herbert, Brady, and Wilson and mentioned Mac Jones in passing—it turns out, Matt Patricia may not be the offensive genius needed to unlock him. Another is Kirk Cousins, and we mentioned Minnesota's pass-happy offense before. That just leaves Geno Smith, who requires a little unpacking.

Smith led the league in completion rate at 70.4%, and it's not surprising that some of those completions were empty calories. Smith also saw a slight increase in his failed completions after the Germany game, which sent Seattle's offense in general into a tailspin. But for the most part, Smith had a lot of failed completions because he had a lot of completions overall; the more you throw accurate passes, the more times you're going to have receivers catch the ball and immediately get tackled. A high failed completion number could just be part and parcel of a solid overall season of high-volume throws. 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 in a successful completion. This is where we count all failed completions as incomplete passes, removing some of the empty passing calories from completion percentage around the league:

See? Geno's just fine. He drops from first in overall completion percentage to sixth in successful completion percentage, but that's still more than acceptable numbers for a player written off as an afterthought before the year began. Still, he's no Patrick Mahomes.

This is the second consecutive successful completion percentage crown for Mahomes, who remains the best quarterback in the game. This is not a surprise; 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—at least you would if I hadn't written the exact same sentence last season. We all know Jimmy G's lowlights. We all know his injury history. But when Garoppolo drops back to pass, generally speaking, good things happen. Yes, of course, a lot of that is the Shanahan scheme that Garoppolo has been working with. He had a league high 7.8 yards after catch on his successful completions; Mahomes was in second place at 7.1. He had a league-low 5.8-yard aDOT on his successful completions; Kyler Murray was next up at 6.1. Garoppolo has certainly made his name for himself as a distributor more than a passer, someone there to get the ball into the hands of a talented player and let him succeed. It is worth noting, of course, that Garoppolo has better numbers in the 49ers' offense than the guys we have seen attempt to fill in for him—much better than the C.J. Beathards, Nick Mullens, and, so far, Trey Lances of the world. It's going to be interesting to see him go to Las Vegas, get out of that comfort zone, and perform in the Raiders' offense. Just how much of Garoppolo's success is Shanahan-based, and how much is him actually being a legitimately good passer? Maybe we'll find out this year.

For the record, Brock Purdy had 24 failed completions and a successful completion rate of 52.9%, which would have ranked fifth if he had had enough attempts to qualify. Trey Lance had four failed completions and a successful completion rate of 35.5%, which would have ranked dead last, though that comes with both "very small sample size" and "massive monsoon" qualifiers.

Russell Wilson, Baker Mayfield, and Davis Mills maintain their spots at the bottom of this table as well, but they're joined by a couple of Jets. Joe Flacco, the all-time failed completions king, showed that he still has what it takes to throw a checkdown in his brief stints as a starter. Meanwhile, Zach Wilson crashes towards the bottom of this table—he only had 35 failed completions, but then, he didn't have many completions of any kind in 2022. He avoided joining Russell Wilson in the sub-40% club by one failed attempt; considering he was at 40.7% last year as well, you can pretty much write off any hope of Zach recovering at this point.

Four passers saw their rank jump at least 10 spots jumping from completion percentage to successful completion percentage: Josh Allen, Marcus Mariota, Tua Tagovailoa, and Dak Prescott. Mariota, Tagovailoa, and Allen were also in the top four in aDOT; this is not a coincidence. Meanwhile, five passers saw their rank drop at least 10 spots—Justin Herbert, Kyler Murray, Mac Jones, Matt Ryan, and Daniel Jones. All five passers feasted on dump-offs to running backs and tight ends; there's a lot of empty calories in those numbers.

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 in checkdowns and emergency outlets. For the record, however, Austin Ekeler led all players with 49 failed receptions as Joe Lombardi's offense was really, really well-designed. Three other running backs topped 30—Rhamondre Stevenson (37), Saquon Barkley (32), and Leonard Fournette (31)

There are normally a number of repeat appearances on these tables—high-volume outlets in one-receiver shows are generally good for plenty of failed receptions, with Davante Adams being a long-time staple in Green Bay. Last year, however, there were only two returnees: Tyler Conklin and Marquise Brown. Both were in new places in 2022 as well. Conklin went from being Kirk Cousins' security blanket to Zach Wilson's, with similar results in each location. He's never going to be a serious receiving threat, but he has solid enough hands to serve as a last-ditch option offensively. Brown, meanwhile, headed from Baltimore to Arizona in a draft-day trade, but struggled through a foot injury during the middle part of the season. That makes the fact that he still managed 21 failed receptions all the more impressive; his 31.3% failed completion rate just squeezes on to the bottom of that table as well.

There are plenty of good receivers on the failed receptions leaderboard—Tyreek Hill, DeVonta Smith, Justin Jefferson, and CeeDee Lamb most prominently. "Throw the ball to them and let them make a play" is generally a good offensive strategy, and their high number of failed completions just reflects their high overall usage rate and the trust their offenses have in them. Similarly, it's far from the end of the world for a tight end outlet such as T.J. Hockenson to lead the league in failed receptions; a large part of his role is "be there to catch the ball so we get something rather than nothing." It's also worth noting that 20 of Hockensen's 25 failed completions came in Minnesota but just five in Detroit. Minnesota used Hockenson much more as a short-range receiver, with his aDOT dropping from 7.2 yards with the Lions to 5.3 with the Vikings.

And then we have Greg Dortch. Dortch kept getting opportunities to start in Arizona due to injuries and suspensions, but he only racked up 64 targets. The other players close to him on the top of the failed receptions leaderboard were well beyond that—Hockenson had 129, Hill had 170, Pittman had 141, Smith had 136 and Jefferson had 184. Dortch served Kliff Kingsbury's role of "doomed screen target." His aDOT was 4.9 yards, second-lowest in the league behind only Deebo Samuel, and Dortch is no Deebo Samuel. On failed completions, that fell to just 0.5, as Dortch was targeted on go-nowhere screen after go-nowhere screen. He averaged 3.8 yards after the catch on his failed receptions, which isn't terrible, but as his average failed reception came on second-and-11, it just wasn't good enough. And so, Dortch led all receivers with a 46.2% failed completion rate, the worst we have seen since Steven Sims in 2019. Here's hoping Arizona actually lets him run a regular route or three in 2023.

Dortch is joined high atop the list by Rondale Moore, returning from the 2021 leaderboards. We said last year that it felt like Moore could be salvaged with better play design. The fact that Kingsbury was given a one-way ticket to Thailand after the season tells you how that went. Other returnees include Conklin and Noah Fant as safety valve tight ends, plus Quez Watkins, the only Eagles receiver not to benefit from Philadelphia's greater passing focus in 2022.

The lowest failed completion rate list is generally a list of near-exclusive deep threats. Credit to DeVante Parker and Allen Lazard for showing up on the list two years in a row, and credit to Stefon Diggs, who managed to appear near the top of a rate leaderboard despite 108 receptions.

Defense

Finally, let's look at defenses' ability to created failed completions, with a comparison to how those units fared in 2021.

Defensive numbers are far less sticky year-to-year than quarterback stats, at least when it comes to failed completions. A lot of this will depend on the type and quality of offenses on your schedule, so the year-to-year correlation is typically down in the 0.25 range. That held true last year as well, with a lot of shuffling in the ranks.

The 49ers, however, remained near the top of the leaderboards. Since 2018, they have finished 12th, first, seventh, second, and now first once again in failed completion rate. Why go back to 2018, instead of just four years in a row in the top 10? Because 2018 was when Fred Warner was drafted and began cementing himself as the best cover linebacker in all of football. With Warner and Dre Greenlaw patrolling the middle of the field, it's hard for opposing offenses to turn short receptions into successful completions via YAC. You're not picking up many 4-yard completions over the middle on first-and-10 against the San Francisco defense. If you can reduce an opponent's passing game to deep shots and checkdowns by taking away the middle of the field, you're going to have fantastic failed completion numbers.

There also tends to be a correlation between strong pass rushes and failed completions as opposing offenses dump the ball out quickly in order to avoid their quarterbacks being crushed into a fine paste. Strangely, that was not the case last year—Philadelphia, who ranked first in ESPN's pass rush win rate, was just 16th in failed completion percentage, while Arizona, who ranked fourth in win rate, is all the way down at 29th. For Arizona, I think we can blame their complete and utter lack of cornerbacks; they allowed 320 successful completions, so there's only so much you can do in terms of a ratio. The Eagles are more interesting. I posit that they were so effective at converting pressure into sacks that there wasn't enough time for most opposing passers to even get checkdowns out. They were first in the league with an 11.2% sack rate—they really should have considered missing some of those quarterback hits if they wanted to boost their failed completion numbers. Gotta be thinking analytically, Philly!

Cleveland falls from first in 2021 to 18th in 2022 in large part from not getting to play Broken Down Ben Roethlisberger twice a year anymore. Chicago and Atlanta also saw their numbers drop dramatically, ending up in the bottom two spots on the table. They were also the bottom two teams in pressure rate per Pro Football Reference. Without pressure, opposing offenses could take their time and pick the Bears and Falcons apart, and both were very pick-apartable.