I made an edit to these tables on Thursday 7/17 after finding a filtering error in my code. The new EPA/DB numbers are now more accurate. Sorry for the original flub, my mistake. I think it’s important to be transparent with my football analytics visualizations and my creation process so that’s why I’m including this spiel right here. I forgot to include safety plays in my EPA/DB calculation but now it’s in there. I apologize again and remember that everything’s always a work in progress.
Hello everyone,
We’re focusing back on college football for this week’s visualization instead of the NFL. Does it have anything to do with EA Sports College Football 26 releasing last Friday and my quest to turn the UTEP Miners into a college football powerhouse? I guess we’ll never know.
I promise I haven’t forgotten about publishing another tutorial for last week’s Sankey diagram. I promise to have that in my premium reader’s hands this week.
A few weeks ago I published a write-up about how I was scraping data directly from the ESPN API to create a play-by-play database for old college football seasons. I used the example of comparing Colt Brennan’s 2006 EPA/Dropback to quarterbacks from the 2024 college football season. Well, Bill Radjewski of College Football Data just saved me a ton of time. He published a data starter back that contains play-by-play data as well as advanced stats for every college football season from 2003-2024. Check it out here. I’m very excited about the amount of time saved here with one purchase. The data is now cleaned and processed and I’m free to create some visualizations. EPA per dropback refers to a quarterback’s expected points added on passes only. Without further adieu, here are those tables.
Here’s a table of the top 10 quarterbacks ranked by EPA/Dropback from every college football season since 2003:
Filtering for a minimum of 200 dropbacks and FBS schools only as well. Look at this list! Talk about a blast from the past.
Here’s the 2004 table:
Stefan LeFors also topped the charts of the 2003 table when I was filtering based on a minimum of 100 dropbacks instead of 200.
Here’s the table for 2005:
Those Bobby Petrino offenses really were special. Here’s the table for 2006:
There’s the aforementioned Colt Brennan, and another Louisville quarterback. What a run they had back then.
Here’s the 2007 table:
The 2008 table:
And the 2009 table:
I was surprised to see Tim Tebow featured twice on this list since he wasn’t the world’s most polished passer. Also Kellen Moore was my guess for the 2008 leader before running this script, that season he had at Boise State was nuts.
Moving into the 2010s now, here’s the 2010 season table:
2011:
2012:
2013:
2014:
2015:
2016:
2017:
2018:
And 2019:
If you were the quarterback of the Lincoln Riley Oklahoma offense, you were probably going to lead the nation in EPA/Dropback. All of those guys were talented within their own right, but what a perfect combination of Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray, then Jalen Hurts for Riley. Although they never won the big game, I’ll always remember those Sooners.
Let’s move into the 2020s now, here’s the 2020 table:
2021:
2022:
2023:
Jayden Daniels topped the list if you only count the regular season, but Jason Bean threw for 6 touchdown passes in his bowl game so that propelled him into the top spot.
And last season’s ranks:
Man, Grayson McCall was supposed to lead the NC State Wolfpack to the promised land last season. I was so devastated for him when he got hurt then eventually medically retired from football. If I have one request for you after reading this, you should go watch his highlights. Those Coastal teams were electric.
Observations
The seasons where the first QB taken in the NFL Draft did not make the cut for top 10 in EPA/Dropback from their last college football season are:
2006-07 Jamarcus Russell
2007-08 Matt Ryan
09-10 Sam Bradford* (with an asterisk because he was injured all season. He was on there the previous two seasons before, and the second drafted quarterback (Tebow) ranked in the top 10 in 2009.
2010-11 Cam Newton
2013-14 Blake Bortles
2014-15 Jameis Winston
2016-17 Jared Goff
2021-22 Kenny Pickett
2022-23 Bryce Young
2023-24 Caleb Williams
What does this tell us? Pretty much nothing, watch football with your eyes. I found no strong indicators one way or another. Just thought it was an interesting nugget. The most glaring omissions from the top 10 to me were Patrick Mahomes and USC Caleb Williams.
Watch out for Darian Mensah next season who’s now Duke’s starting quarterback. Wazzu’s John Mateer is now with Oklahoma and Josh Hoover is back with the TCU Horned Frogs. What about Missouri State QB Jacob Clark who ranked third in EPA per dropback last year?
I had to take a deeper dive into the Missouri State Bears since their quarterbacks showed up highly ranked in 2023 and 2024. Their head coach, Nick Beard, is a defensive guy. But you’ll never guess who their offensive coordinator is:
This is so cool.