QB Wins Added (with Rushing)

In recent posts, I've calculated a QB's contribution to his team's wins based on his passing ability. In this post, I'll include his running ability as well.

The components of my passer rating are Air Yards, interception rate, sack yardage rate, and now rushing yards and fumbles. These components are weighted exactly as much as their relative importance to winning games. The weights are derived from a regression model using data from all teams since the 2002 expansion.

Although passing yards are more critical to winning than running yards, rushing yards by a QB tend to be from scrambles during pass plays. Only in the most extreme situations do coaches call for planned QB runs in running situations. For that reason, and for simplicity's sake, I'll use the weight for passing yards when calculating the effect of QB running yards.

I used fumbles instead of fumbles lost because fumble recovery is almost purely random. By putting the ball on the ground, a QB is really offering it up to anyone. Over the past five years, the rate of fumbles lost per fumble is 52%. I therefore used fumbles per possession divided by 2 for quarterbacks. Possessions are defined as pass attempts, sacks, and rushes.

The resulting table of QB Wins Added (per 16 games) is listed below. I also included the wins added from passing performance alone for comparison.

Rank	Player	+Wins	Pass Rank	+Pass Wins
1	Manning P	3.90	1	3.88
2	Romo	2.09	2	2.61
3	Huard	1.78	3	2.46
4	McNabb	1.76	9	1.21
5	Brees	1.75	5	2.10
6	Vick	1.72	20	-0.10
7	Palmer	1.61	4	2.14
8	Garcia	1.50	6	1.88
9	Rivers	1.41	7	1.84
10	Bulger	1.26	8	1.21
11	McNair	0.91	10	1.03
12	Hasselbeck	0.69	15	0.38
13	Leinart	0.58	11	0.89
14	Pennington	0.46	14	0.49
15	Young	0.43	24	-0.29
16	Garrard	0.36	23	-0.18
17	Brady	0.21	13	0.53
18	Grossman	0.01	16	0.33
19	Delhomme	-0.01	17	0.13
20	Kitna	-0.10	22	-0.13
21	Brunell	-0.17	19	-0.05
22	Manning E	-0.18	18	0.06
23	Roethlisberger	-0.26	25	-0.32
24	Losman	-0.36	21	-0.13
25	Leftwich	-0.47	26	-0.39
26	Warner	-0.51	12	0.80
27	Favre	-0.53	27	-0.45
28	Harrington	-0.60	28	-0.54
29	Plummer	-0.76	31	-0.64
30	Green	-0.77	29	-0.58
31	Smith	-0.91	32	-0.87
32	Johnson	-1.05	33	-0.94
33	Campbell	-1.16	36	-1.86
34	Frye	-1.31	35	-1.55
35	Carr	-1.45	34	-1.26
36	Cutler	-1.69	30	-0.62

The first thing I noticed was how high the running QBs climbed. Vick went from the 20th best QB to 6th best. Young went from 24th to 15th. Garrard climbed from 23rd to 16th. McNabb also climbed above Garcia.

I was frankly surprised by how high Vick ranks, even knowing how well he runs. We won't see him back in the league for a while, though.

When crunching the numbers, I noted how important fumbles are. Look at how Warner fell from 12th to 26th. His fumble rate was 5.1%, which means he fumbled almost 1 out of 20 times he held the ball. Right behind him was Jay Cutler. He fumbled 4.9% of the time, which caused a fall from 30th to dead last in the ranking. Warner and Cutler were in a class by themselves. The next slipperiest hands belonged to Huard with a 3.3% fumble rate, but he remains at 3rd overall.

Part of what helps Manning stand apart from the rest of the field is not his running ability, but the fact he only fumbled twice in 16 games. Remember, that's fumbles, not fumbles lost. Manning is special in a lot of ways that won't even show up in most conventional statistical analyses. As a Baltimore guy, I can't even say how much I dislike Manning and the Colts, but it's hard to deny how good he is.