This was taken from an article posted on the NFL app and it talks about the best deep ball passers in 2019
“Everybody loves the deep ball.
Nothing else in sport is quite as beautiful as a quarterback dropping back, stepping up into the pocket and launching a high-arcing gift of a pass to an intended target well down the field. The completion is a work of art -- the product of 11 players working together, with two of those 11 so in sync that they make an unlikely event a reality.
The NFL game itself has evolved from one that depended on the run as its primary means of achievement, to one that used the run to set up the pass, to one that uses short passes (and some runs) to set up the deep strike. Quarterbacks in today's league are quite prolific when it comes to connecting with downfield targets. Who's the best? We dove into the Next Gen Stats searching for an answer to that question.
Much like the first piece in this series, the main metric we'll use for this exercise is completion percentage above expectation, which is the difference between a quarterback's actual completion percentage and expected completion percentage. A positive difference indicates performance above expectation, while a negative difference indicates performance below expectation. We added a wrinkle to narrow the window down to deep passes, eliminating all attempts below 20 air yards.
As a result, the total attempts for each passer are below 100. It's a smaller sample size, but if quarterbacks attempted deep passes 300 times a season, their teams wouldn't move the ball with any consistency. They'd be boom-or-bust to a staggering degree.
Let's get to the numbers to fill out the top 10:
Ranked #1
Dak Prescott
Dak Prescott
Dallas Cowboys · QB
Comp pct: 44.4. Expected comp pct: 31. Difference: +13.4 percentage points.
TD-to-INT ratio: 6:2. Passer rating: 109.7.
Surprised? Cowboys fans might not be, but I'm sure plenty of you are. This will be an interesting exercise because plenty of those reading will be upset by Dak's No. 1 ranking. But look: This is what the numbers say. No one was better at exceeding passing expectations on deep balls in 2019 than Prescott.
The fine folks embedded in the Next Gen Stats bunker took the time to poke their heads above the blinking lights and buttons to tell me this metric was designed to best capture how well a quarterback is playing when also considering the surrounding circumstances. Even with their amount of talent, the Cowboys weren't a great team in 2019. Prescott's receiving corps relied mostly on Amari Cooper -- who was very efficient on deep targets, catching 12 passes for 386 yards and two touchdowns -- Michael Gallup and Randall Cobb, with a very rare contribution from Tavon Austin. First-round pick CeeDee Lamb should make life better for Prescott in 2020, and if he can continue to complete unlikely deep passes better than most, this Dallas offense might become really explosive. But again, this is also about making the most of surrounding circumstances, and Prescott excelled in that department in 2019.
Ranked #2
Russell Wilson
Russell Wilson
Seattle Seahawks · QB
Comp pct: 42.7. Expected comp pct: 29.9. Difference: +12.8 percentage points.
TD-to-INT ratio: 11:2. Passer rating: 119.2.