Most improved position groups during the 2023 NFL offseason
We’ve entered a point of the NFL offseason where rosters are largely finalized. Free agents are mostly signed, veterans extended or traded, the draft is nearly two months in the past and only a few big names are still on the open market. They, to some degree, are awaiting potential injuries or just looking to skip OTAs before they sign somewhere.
So at this stage, I think it’s a helpful exercise to compare what rosters and specific position groups/units look like compared to a year ago. I went through each of them and outlined the one team that improved the most in that area, along with another group or two, which deserved an honorable mention.
Please keep in mind that I tried to judge the upgrades made as a whole, rather than just pointing at a franchise that brought in only one true difference-maker. This is just based on player acquisitions from the end of this past season onwards, meaning no injuries or other factors that kept guys already under contract off the field.
Quarterbacks – Carolina Panthers
Additions: Bryce Young & Andy Dalton
Subtractions: Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold & P.J. Walker
Don’t get me wrong here – It’s not like Mayfield, Darnold and Walker can’t be legit NFL quarterbacks. However, there’s a reason that all of them are on their third team respectively in as many years and have the potential to earn a total of just over ten million dollars collectively in 2023.
To swap them out for a Heisman trophy-winning first overall pick and a veteran (who has probably been a top-20 QB for eight of his twelve NFL seasons at least, with over 100 million in career earnings, including three seasons as a backup, where he played very well when called upon), to me represents a legitimate move up.
Let’s start with what this quarterback situation has looked like these past two seasons. Among quarterbacks with 200+ combined pass and rush attempts over the last two years combined, this is where the three guys mentioned rank in terms of EPA per play – Baker 39th, Sam 43rd and P.J. 48th.
For the first among those, if you just look at the first eight weeks of last season, when Mayfield was still in Carolina, his number (-0.235) would have actually been in a completely different stratosphere to the rest of the league, in a negative sense.
Now, we can argue if Baker’s shoulder injury was managed the right way in Cleveland and what his support system looked like in Carolina. But how erratic he was as a decision-maker, some of the ways he would test tight windows late and the fact he misjudges his athleticism out of the pocket are encompassed in the fact his QBR through week eight (18.2) was the second-worst in the NFL since 2006.
Darnold actually looked a lot better over the final month-and-a-half, when the Panthers had transitioned to an offense that ran the ball on 60.6% of plays (which would’ve easily been number one in the league), where he was just asked to make simple alert and RPO reads (along with keeping the ball on zone-reads and defeat the isolated deep middle safety on vertical concepts).
However, we’ve seen that when the game is put in his hands, he lacks some situational and pressure awareness, which was on display when he took a strip-sack down by a field goal at the end of their week 17 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that could’ve won them the division.
Finally, Walker had some nice moments after coming over as an XFL star, but as an every-down passer, he lacks the mental fortitude to pick apart defenses.
In terms of the proven asset the Panthers brought in – Looking at the EPA + CPOE (completion percentage over expected) mark for Dalton, he was tied for 20th league-wide (applying the 200+ play qualifier). In terms of guys with 100+ dropbacks, he finished ninth in passer rating (95.2) and if you were to look at PFF’s metrics, he was actually sixth among all quarterbacks in terms of passing grade.
He had 16 big-time throws vs. 10 turnover-worthy plays across 415 total dropbacks, for a career-best TWP rate of just 2.3%. What really stood out about his tape, (after being sort of a lame duck in Cincinnati, when they were going for Joe Burrow the following draft, the true backup in Dallas and a place-holder for Justin Fields in Chicago), is that he worked on his release, in order to make it more compact and be able to create velocity with a more efficient motion.
Plus, he turned himself into a much more effective deep passer, letting it rip to a collection of receivers that was below-average by NFL standards, if they were isolated down the field. That reflected itself in just his second elite PFF grade (91.2) on passes of 20+ air yards.
Meanwhile, Bryce Young was the highest-graded quarterback in the country by PFF in each of those seasons (92.0 and 91.3), with a big-time throw rate (6.0%) basically three times as high as his turnover-worthy play rate (2.1%). His average depth of target went up by a full yard in 2022 (9.0 to 10.0).
While he did plenty of damage by spreading the field out and taking advantage of leverage advantages or the way zone defenders were put into conflict, early in the play-clock, his time-to-throw rate went up by 0.23 seconds this past season, up to 3.04 seconds, which was the 20th-highest among all FBS quarterbacks. We will have to see how much of it directly translates to the next level, but Bryce’s innate feel for where all 21 other players on the field are and what secondary or tertiary routes his targets would transition to, led to plays that made defensive coordinators pull their hair out on a weekly basis.
He recorded an unheard-of 67.5 PFF passing grade under pressure in 2022 and his elusiveness was illustrated by a 12.5% pressure-to-sack conversion rate, despite the size limitations at 5’10” and ½, somewhere in the 190-pound range. I called him a special play-making point guard and even though there were more physically gifted options available, he was atop most teams’ boards because of it.
Honorable mention: Indianapolis Colts