Off To A Hot Start
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010After Cameron Newton‘s touchdown pass on Auburn’s opening drive of the SEC Championship game, CBS showed the stat that Newton is a perfect 19-for-19 passing in Auburn’s game-opening drives this season. After shaking off my disbelief at that stat — and wishing I had discovered it first — I wondered if any other quarterback in recent years has been perfect in his team’s game-opening drives for a season.
My play-by-play data goes back to 2005, and no other quarterback has been without an incompletion on opening drives for a season during that time (minimum of 10 opening drive pass attempts). The closest players were both in 2009, when Ryan Griffin of Tulane was 18-of-19 and Kyle Padron of SMU was 16-of-17.
I also wondered how Newton’s passing efficiency rating on opening drives compares to other quarterbacks. Here are the leaders this season in passing efficiency on their team’s opening drives (minimum of 15 pass attempts).
Player Team Yr Att Comp Yds TD Int Rating +-------------------+---------------+---+----+-----+----+---+----+-------+ Cameron Newton Auburn JR 19 19 300 3 0 284.73 Tim Jefferson, Jr. Air Force JR 15 10 269 3 1 269.98 Wesley Carroll Florida Int'l JR 19 15 243 4 1 245.32 Colin Kaepernick Nevada SR 35 27 360 4 1 195.55 Jeff Godfrey UCF FR 28 21 263 3 0 189.26 Andrew Luck Stanford JR 46 35 413 5 0 187.38 Scott Tolzien Wisconsin SR 23 20 259 1 1 187.20 Andy Dalton TCU SR 37 24 347 5 1 182.84 Dan Persa Northwestern JR 30 25 273 2 0 181.77 Ryan Mallett Arkansas JR 37 23 382 4 1 179.15 Nick Fanuzzi Rice JR 25 19 224 2 0 177.66 T.J. Yates North Carolina JR 39 32 397 1 0 176.01 Brian Anderson Marshall SR 25 17 198 3 0 174.13 Kyle Parker Clemson SO 24 15 197 3 0 172.70 Taylor Martinez Nebraska FR 22 15 191 2 0 171.11 Ross Jenkins Louisiana Tech SR 25 17 187 3 0 170.43
Since 2005, the QB with the highest passing efficiency rating on opening drives with a minimum of 15 attempts is Steven Moffett of UCF in 2005. He was 19-for-22 for 406 yards and 3 TD’s, for a rating of 286.38.