Encouragingly, QB Mason Rudolph and the Pittsburgh Steelers gave us a reason to be even more thankful this holiday season with a much-needed victory. The passing game looked much better and today I wanted to see how Rudolph’s impressive performance stacked up to the rest of the league.
A great stat to examine this is one of our favorites at Steelers Depot, Adjusted Net Yards Per Pass Attempt (ANY/A): (Passing Yards – Sack Yards + (20 * Passing TD) – (45 * Interceptions)) / (Passes Attempted + Times Sacked). As you can see, it factors in many crucial elements to winning, scoring points, taking care of the ball, and limiting negative plays from the all-important quarterback position.
Here are the weekly ANY/A results for quarterbacks with a minimum of 20 attempts a game in 2023:
Lots of valuable information. First, Pittsburgh’s eight best ANY/A results all led to wins, while the six worst were losses. Rudolph’s game against Cincinnati was easily the best Steelers ANY/A performance of 2023, and across the NFL in Week 16, at a whopping 11.57 which ranks impressively at 17th this season (464 qualifiers).
Prior to Rudolph’s first start, it was Mitch Trubisky coming on in relief of Pickett, and each qualifying performance resulted in losses and below average ANY/A games. Week Eight was Pittsburgh’s lowest ANY/A number of 2023 (1.83), along with 4.24 against the Patriots, and 3.08 the following Week 15 loss to Indianapolis.
Considering the league average (blue line) is 6.05, Trubisky simply wasn’t good enough, and emphasizes how welcomed and needed Rudolph’s strong outing was following a painful three game losing streak.
We also see Pickett had three poor performances in this range, Weeks One (2.51), Four (1.85), and Eleven most recently against the Browns (2.48). Pickett has been below league average in six of his ten qualifying games. The three yet to be mentioned were Weeks Nine (6.0), Two (5.47), Ten (4.96). The Steelers won all three, each close one score victories that could have gone either way.
Pickett’s above the line performances came in Weeks Three (9.24), Seven (7.93), Twelve (7.66), and Five (6.34), all wins. In the former, Pickett’s best ANY/A game earlier this season included 28 attempts, two touchdowns, no interceptions, one sack, and 235 yards. In comparison, here’s Rudolph’s Week 16 stats: 27 attempts, two touchdowns, no interceptions, one sack, and 290 yards.
Eerily similar at a glance, but Rudolph contributing a season best 290 passing yards, along with only the second multi-passing TD game for Pittsburgh were extremely important in the highest point total (34) of 2023.
Here is a table breaking down NFL’s top 20 ANY/A in 2023 to date, to get more context on Rudolph’s encouraging Week 16 game:
Good list of quarterbacks to appear with, reemphasizing Rudolph’s efficient game that played a key role in Pittsburgh’s best overall win to date as well. Coming at the right time of the season, Rudolph has certainly earned another opportunity this week against the Seattle Seahawks.
If so, it will be interesting to see if he can stack another strong game. Several of the above names appear more than once on the table above (49ers Brock Purdy a whopping seven times – wow). Purdy leads one of the most well-rounded NFL teams, recipe Pittsburgh finally enjoyed last week in their best team win of 2023. Can’t wait to see how Week 17 plays out.
