Analytics rarely tell the full story, but they can be useful for identifying certain aspects of a player’s game. In this case, a few charts paint a very favorable picture of Pittsburgh Steelers QB Russell Wilson. He’s explosive, he avoids mistakes, and he is tracking pretty well against the rest of the league in expected points added (EPA) per play.
Prior to the season, you would have been hard pressed to find anybody rank Wilson among the NFL’s top 20 quarterbacks, let alone the top 10. Even our own Dave Bryan and Alex Kozora did an exercise on The Terrible Podcast where they ranked Wilson against the rest of the league.
Kozora had him at No. 22 while Bryan had him at No. 20. This isn’t to pick on them — some had Wilson ranked much lower. It’s just to show how far Wilson has turned things around in just seven games.
First, here is a chart from Steven Patton on X.
On this chart, the upper-right quadrant is the one where quarterbacks want to be. That marks the most explosive while also the best at avoiding negative plays. In that matrix, no quarterback even comes close to Wilson.
If you want to look at the specifics of the negative-play rate, click on his tweet and view the thread. It is based on total drop backs against interceptions, sacks and fumbles.
Wilson has had 34 completions of 20 yards or more. Those total out at 989 yards and six touchdowns. Given his number of total drop backs in just seven games, that is head and shoulders above the rest of the field. You can see his rate on the chart is roughly 13.5 percent while the next highest is Jordan love at just below 11 percent.
The gap between Wilson (No. 1) and Love (No. 2) is roughly the same as the gap between Love (No. 2) and Matthew Stafford (No. 15).
Wilson is also the very best at avoiding negative plays with just under a 4-percent rate.
Both of those stats are important, but they don’t tell the whole story. That brings us to a second chart, this one from Ben Baldwin on X.
EPA per play (Expected Points Added per play) measures a quarterback’s efficiency by quantifying how much each play contributes to the team’s expected points. It accounts for the situation (down, distance, field position) and rewards quarterbacks for making plays that increase scoring chances while penalizing them for mistakes.
Baldwin went a step further and ran EPA through an adjustment that took into account their pass protection, receiver drops, dropped interceptions, fumble recoveries, and other factors.
Wilson is the eight-best quarterback in this metric. So he is pretty efficient on a per-play basis in EPA, which is great news for the Steelers.
Wilson has an adjusted net yards per passing attempt (ANY/A) of 7.68 this season. That is just barely below his career high in what many consider to be a Hall of Fame career. That has been even better in the second halves of games.
He has a passer rating of 121.5 and an ANY/A of 10.83 in the second half this year.
All of these analytics paint a very favorable picture of Wilson and show that his production is for real. It’s time to start talking about him like a top-10 quarterback again.
