FanPost

A.J. Green and Marvin Jones Overcoming Errant Andy Dalton Passes

Rob Carr

There are really 4 schools of thought on Dalton. Two of them are extreme and nonsensical to me- that he is a top-10 QB, and that he is not even a starting-caliber QB. Excluding those, then there are two more moderate opposing views. I'll bring up a handful of points from both sides:

Dalton Believer

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Even Chili Dog would have to call this a "wow" pass by Dalton, near the end of the first half against the Jets

  • He is a top 11-15 QB in the league
  • Only QB in NFL history other than Peyton Manning to pass for 3000+ yards and 20+ TD's in each of his first 3 seasons (soon to be joined by Luck and Wilson as well)
  • Just one of 5 QB in NFL history to quarterback his team to the playoffs in each of his first 3 seasons, and is only QB to quarterback the Cincinnati Bengals to the playoffs in any 3 consecutive seasons
  • Bengals franchise record holder for yards and TD's in a season
  • Yards, yards per attempt, TD's, passer rating, win total have all increased in each of his first 3 seasons; in 2013 he was third in the league in TD passes with 33
  • Has made the Pro Bowl and has also won AFC Offensive Player of the Month
  • An offensive team captain; has the respect and support of his teammates
  • Durable, starting all of the Bengals' 51 games over the past 3 seasons, plenty of experience
  • Risky to replace Dalton with someone else; look at Gabbert/Locker/Ponder taken ahead of him in 2011
  • He is our quarterback of the future and we should be confident he can make some noise in the playoffs this year, so signing him now would be the right move financially and it would also take pressure off him and provide stability

Dalton Skeptic
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Third consecutive embarrassing turnover by Dalton, when it counted most in the second half of the playoff game

  • He is a top 16-20 QB in the league, some in this group might say 21-25
  • Has the best overall roster in the AFC around him: PFF's #1-rated pass-blocking O-line in 2013, a top-2 WR and several other high-quality WR/TE/RB options, all in an offensive scheme tailored to his strengths, and on top of it all the AFC's #1-ranked defense in 2013
  • Not that he should apologize for having this roster, but to a degree it is propping him up and masking his weaknesses; every quarterback in the league except those of Sea and SF would love to have this team; Dalton is probably more replaceable than some think, especially considering how expensive he is going to become
  • Productive games are almost always against poor secondaries
  • Increased turnovers every year; in 2013 he was fifth in the league in INT's with 20
  • Playoffs: 1 TD, 7 turnovers
  • Has a career passer rating of below 70 in 23 career primetime, divisional, and playoff games; has regressed down to a rating of below 64 in eight 2013 games (his playoff performance actually improved this), with poor YPA, completion percentage, and TD:INT ratio to boot; the supporting cast was not its usual self in about half of those games but that doesn't change that Dalton himself was turning the ball over and throwing wounded ducks at will
  • Questionable body of work; minor concerns about mechanics and arm strength pale to major concerns about pocket presence and anticipation
  • Riskier to extend present-day Dalton to a lucrative contract than waiting to see if he can show improvements in a prove-it contract year; the price tag won't go up unless he takes the team on a playoff run, and even then it will not go up by too much
  • Inflated positive counting stats, with dink-and-dunks oftentimes turned into long gains (the team is near the top of the league in YAC)
  • Inflated positive counting stats (and completion%), with body-contorting receptions on errant passes


Football Outsiders just did an analysis of that last point, relating to passes caught that aren't thrown to the receiver's upper chest area, middle chest area, nor lower chest area. This would be an example of a chest reception, "the throw where Dalton looks his best with Green":
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And this would be an example of a reception on a pass thrown wide:

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FO has studied 19 individual seasons of various receivers over the past 3 seasons:

Summary of Wide Receiver Catch Radii Study
Receiver Year Team Rec. CHEST% EYE% ATH% DIVE% OTS% WIDE%
Mike Wallace 2012 PIT 64 79.7% 6.3% 3.1% 6.3% 3.1% 1.6%
Mike Wallace 2011 PIT 75 76.0% 4.0% 2.7% 4.0% 8.0% 4.0%
Keenan Allen 2013 SD 71 74.6% 12.7% 2.8% 5.6% 1.4% 2.8%
Mike Wallace 2013 MIA 73 74.0% 6.8% 2.7% 4.1% 5.5% 5.5%
Wes Welker 2013 DEN 73 71.2% 12.3% 5.5% 5.5% 4.1% 1.4%
Demaryius Thomas 2013 DEN 92 69.6% 12.0% 3.3% 0.0% 10.9% 4.3%
Brian Hartline 2012 MIA 74 67.6% 16.2% 10.8% 0.0% 4.1% 1.4%
Antonio Brown 2013 PIT 110 67.3% 14.5% 4.5% 3.6% 3.6% 5.5%
Rishard Matthews 2013 MIA 41 65.9% 12.2% 9.8% 2.4% 2.4% 7.3%
Antonio Brown 2012 PIT 66 65.2% 10.6% 10.6% 4.5% 1.5% 4.5%
Emmanuel Sanders 2013 PIT 67 62.7% 10.4% 10.4% 9.0% 4.5% 1.5%
Kenny Stills 2013 NO 32 62.5% 15.6% 3.1% 9.4% 9.4% 0.0%
Antonio Brown 2011 PIT 74 62.2% 10.8% 12.2% 5.4% 1.4% 8.1%
Brian Hartline 2013 MIA 76 60.5% 25.0% 5.3% 3.9% 3.9% 1.3%
Doug Baldwin 2013 SEA 50 60.0% 16.0% 2.0% 2.0% 12.0% 8.0%
Brandon Gibson 2013 MIA 30 60.0% 23.3% 3.3% 3.3% 3.3% 6.7%
Eric Decker 2013 DEN 87 59.8% 14.9% 4.6% 3.4% 11.5% 5.7%
Marvin Jones 2013 CIN 51 56.9% 19.6% 9.8% 3.9% 0.0% 9.8%
A.J. Green 2013 CIN 98 44.9% 28.6% 9.2% 1.0% 9.2% 7.1%
AVERAGE 68.6 65.3% 14.3% 6.1% 4.1% 5.3% 4.6%


CHEST%- caught in the chest area, whether low, high, or level (those are categorized separately in another analysis, but not for the purposes of this one)
EYE%- caught at eye-level
ATH%- caught above the head
DIVE%- caught diving to the ground
OTS%- caught over the shoulder (pass often underthrown)
WIDE%- caught on a pass thrown wide

Jones and Green finished at the very bottom of the study in percent of passes thrown to one's breadbasket. Certainly, a handful of the non-chest receptions were thrown intentionally by Dalton with the knowledge that Green or Jones could potentially beat the defender for the ball, but that notion applies to every single one of these receivers and their quarterbacks too, not just Green/Jones and Dalton. It is probably not a coincidence that the two receivers with by far the two lowest rates happen to have the same quarterback.

Here's Coley Harvey's take:

Perhaps some of the more acrobatic receptions were the result of Dalton finding his receivers the best way he knew how simply because the down, distance and quarter dictated he throw into the spots he did [this notion applies to every QB and receiver in this study as well]. Then again, the fairly high rate of those slightly wide throws indicates that maybe the situations didn't really matter. Perhaps Dalton's accuracy was simply something the likes of Green and Jones helped mask.

Again, not every throw is designed to hit a receiver in the chest, open or not. But it is interesting to note that Kacsmar's findings show that just 56.9 percent of the passes Jones caught last season were caught around his chest. Of Green's 98 catches last year, 44.9 percent were caught in his chest area, Kacsmar said.

Compare those numbers to the 2011 and 2012 versions of Mike Wallace who, when he was in Pittsburgh with Ben Roethlisberger, caught 76.0 and 79.6 percent of his passes in chest, respectively.

Here's a montage of a few Jones ones (the first one, the screen pass is well behind him):

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And a montage of a handful of Green ones:

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Here are a few remarks by the post's author, Scott Kacsmar:

Andy Dalton's agent may want to kill this piece with fire...

In the eternal hunt for finding an appropriate answer to "does the quarterback make the receiver, or does the receiver make the quarterback" we may have stumbled into receiver-friendly territory with the Bengals.

Game after game, the inaccurate throws kept coming, and Green still ran his season total to 98 receptions in spite of Dalton. Even on plays where Green was wide open over the middle, Dalton was too high with the ball and limited YAC for his offense. Green's the tallest receiver I've studied at approximately 6-foot-4, so why in the world is he catching 37.8 percent of his passes above his neck when my research average is 19.4 percent? I have never preached my methods for this to be a perfect science, but I'll admit some of Dalton's "chest-level"passes were aimed closer to Green's throat, and he might have got the chest just out of my pity for him.

Some of Andy Dalton's deep balls to Green were so underthrown that Green had to stop and wait for the ball, making it a chest-level catch when it really should have been over the shoulder.

Through the process, I gained a lot more respect for Green, who just finished ninth on the NFL Network's Top 100 list, which may or may not be voted on by his peers. Ninth may make you scoff at first, but if his first two seasons with Dalton were anything like 2013 in terms of the degree of difficulty, then it's not that crazy.

As this study has shown so far, highlight-reel catches are rare. When an offense starts relying on them, the quarterback's not making enough good reads and accurate throws.

This exercise has brought great news for those interested in Green's ability, but there's a reason they call the NFL a passing league, and not a catching league.

Caught or not, Dalton has to throw better passes in 2014.

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan, which is as important as the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors.