Yeah, for a QB that's terrible, given that other players make turnovers too.
It's an interesting statistic. There are sometimes plays that end up in a turnover that really weren't the passers fault. Like a ball that hits the receiver in the hands and bounces up and gets picked. And obviously there are plenty of plays that were shitty enough that they easily could have been a turnover, but the team got lucky. Normalizing for all that would be good data. It's still somewhat of a team stat. I don't know but would guess that turnovers are more likely when teams are behind and also depend on line play, etc. It's still an interesting way to look at passers.
It's definitely an interesting stat. IMO, the rate stats are more interesting. Mac has 146 pass attempts this year. Desmond Ridder has 118. If Mac has 10 turnover worthy throws and Ridder has 9, which is worse in that context?
Here's what PFF wrote about the stat a while ago, this may have changed since then:
What is a turnover-worthy play?
For quarterbacks, there are two ways to achieve a turnover-worthy play: throw a pass that has a high percentage chance to be intercepted or do a poor job of taking care of the ball and fumbling.
Let’s start with the coulda/woulda/shoulda interceptions. Remember, we’re isolating the quarterback’s play in the PFF system and his grade on a given play will encapsulate his decision, timing and accuracy for the throw. With that in mind, there will be many times in which a similar throw will net a different result. Misreading coverage and firing a pass to a linebacker will result in the same grade whether he catches it for an interception or not.
There are a couple more key points to remember with turnover-worthy plays:
- There are different levels of turnover-worthy plays
Not all turnover-worthy plays are created equally, and much like with big-time throws, the PFF system is able to capture the various levels of these poor throws. There’s a difference between a pass that is late and allows a defender a clean break on the ball versus the clear misread that is thrown right to a defender to the even more egregious pass right to a defender that is the easiest of catchable interceptions. All of those examples are “turnover-worthy” but not only are they at different levels when evaluating the quarterback’s play, but they also vary in how often they occur.
- Not all INT-opportunities or fumbles are turnover-worthy
We all know that not every interception is the quarterback’s fault, but even in the case of turnover-worthy plays, there may be interceptions that are considered downgrades for the quarterback, yet not turnover-worthy. Examples of plays in which the quarterback assumes some fault, yet they are still considered “unlucky” to have been intercepted, include passes with poor ball location that get deflected up in the air or overthrows that end up as interceptions on plays where they’d normally fall incomplete. We can rely on our 2017 quarterback data to know that downgradable throws from the quarterback that are
not considered turnover-worthy were intercepted 2.4 percent of the time, so while the quarterback gets his proper deduction, it’s not in that turnover-worthy category if it happens to be picked. Of course, there are even clearer pictures that can be painted, whether it’s a dropped pass or even a positively graded throw that is tipped up and intercepted, the quarterback will receive proper credit for his part in the play.
As for fumbles, there are many degrees of blame when it comes to the quarterback. The first thing to note is the quirkiness of NFL rules where quarterbacks will receive the “fumble” stat on poor snaps by the center, missed handoffs, dropped pitch plays and other situations where there’s simply no clear-cut evidence that they are to blame for the play. All of those situations are graded properly for context in the PFF system, despite the fumble stat.
There are also strip-sacks that are unavoidable and mostly due to something in the pass protection and those are plays where the quarterback may be absolved of the turnover-worthy label. However, fumbles in which the quarterback has a clear chance to avoid the ball coming free will result in a heavy downgrade and it will go into the turnover-worthy play category, even if the ball is recovered by the offense. Recovering fumbles is more luck than skill, and the quarterback will receive the turnover-worthy downgrade for putting the ball in harm’s way.
- Not all turnover-worthy plays become turnovers
As the previous chart shows us, not all turnover-worthy plays will become turnovers. Using 2017 data, throws graded -1.0 were intercepted 34.7 percent of time, throws graded -1.5 were intercepted 58.3 percent of the time, and throws graded -2.0 were intercepted 83.3 percent of the time. They all fit into the turnover-worthy category despite different levels of interception probability, but there is a clear difference between the turnover-worthy throws and the throws graded -0.5 that result in an interception only 2.4 percent of the time. Therefore, it’s fair to put turnover-worthy throws in their own category, despite 48.2 percent of all turnover-worthy throws resulting in interceptions.
- But you’re grading “what-ifs”
No, we’re grading what happened, not what that resulted in. There’s no “what if” when a quarterback makes a clear misread, there’s simply a varied result on the other side of the play: interception or no interception. Staying consistent with the grading regardless of the result is the most important thing when isolating players for evaluation, and that will always be our goal at PFF.