YAC is a very important factor for a successful offense, and a facet of the passing game that must improve this season. Today I wanted to look at and provide date on quarterback Kenny Pickett’s rookie year for the Pittsburgh Steelers in this regard, using data from Sports Info Solutions (SIS) to calculate YAC Percentages (YAC/total yards), and see which NFL quarterbacks benefited from playmaking from their receivers once the ball was in their hands.
This will include players with a minimum of 200 regular season dropbacks in 2022, and I’ll also look at the first and last half of the year to see how things trended.
Here are the 2022 regular season results:
This visual provides a lot of valuable information, starting with the quarterbacks at the top of the results. 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo had the highest YAC percentage of the 2022 season by far, with the data giving specific context to their scheme and playmaking from their receivers (namely YAC monster Deebo Samuel) making the quarterbacks life much easier.
Comparatively, we see Pickett on the other end of the spectrum, with a 44.26% YAC rate that ranked 27th. This came on 444 dropbacks (18th), 389 attempts (21st), 2,404 total yards (24th), and 1,064 YAC (27th). The data emphasizes the hope that offensive coordinator Matt Canada and the 2023 Steelers offense can create and provide more playmaking to aid their signal caller moving forward.
Next, let’s look at the first half of the 2022 season:
Here we see Pickett had a stronger YAC rate of 48.23% in the first half of 2022 that ranked 19th, on 191 dropbacks (29th), 165 attempts (30th), 962 yards (32nd), and 464 YAC (32nd). So, when looking at the total numbers, Pickett was towards the bottom of the league, but it’s important to factor this came on just five games played, with the percentages shedding light to a higher YAC rate in the first half of the year. This makes some sense considering the short passing game we saw Pittsburgh lean on in 2022 overall, particularly to start the year, but was still in the bottom half of the league.
To close, here are how things progressed the last half of 2022:
In the latter half of 2022, we see Pickett had an even lower 41.61 YAC percentage that ranked 26th, on 253 dropbacks (15th), 224 attempts (16th), 1,442 total yards (20th), and 600 YAC (21st). So, Pickett improved in the total numbers ranks with more opportunities (eight games) as one would expect, but the percentages emphasize the below average yardage that came after the catch to end 2022.
A big hope is to see more route variety in 2023 to give receivers more opportunities to provide this, and while I’m a generally optimistic person, I need to see it to believe it (knocks on wood). One encouraging factor to this regression is Pittsburgh’s improvement in air yards to end the 2022 season, which limits YAC opportunities on average. This of course doesn’t trump the overall point for today, and we can clearly see the need for improvement in 2023 if Pittsburgh hopes to return to it’s winning ways this season.
What are your thoughts on the data from 2022? Do you think Pickett and the 2023 offense will improve in this regard? Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
