Leftwich Is Who We Thought He Was *Microphone Slap*

Pat Yasinskas posted a little piece today about Byron Leftwich’s accuracy. Am I allowed to use those words together in the same sentence? Spell check didn’t correct it, so I assume I can. Anyway, he makes the revelation that — BAM! — Leftwich is more accurate with shorter passes. Well, no shit. Isn’t every quarterback more accurate with shorter passes than with long ones? “I’m much more accurate shooting people at point blank range than from half a mile away.” There really is too much sports coverage.

But the piece isn’t a total waste. One semi-surprising part is that the yards per attempt on short passes is actually bigger than the yards per attempt on the long ones. This is a testament to just how inaccurate Leftwich is on the long bombs. All those zeros start to add up. On the positive side, it also means that the running backs are doing a good job catching the ball out of the backfield and making something happen after the catch. Cadillac Williams has caught 7 of the 9 balls thrown his way. It’s one of the many remarkable things about Williams this season. Not only is it amazing that he is playing at all, he’s actually catching the ball better than he did when he was Rookie of the Year.

Leftwich has been anything but a surprise since he came to Tampa. So far this season he has a passer rating of 80.5. His career rating is 80.3. He’s connecting on a little more than half his passes, most of them short. Sometimes he throws a deep one and makes a great play, other times he spectacularly overthrows receivers by several dozen feet. He is consistently inconsistent, and he’s the best we have to root for right now.

On a totally different note, here is the entirety of Yasinskas’s text for the article:

Matt Lyon of ESPN Stats & Information just passed along some numbers that suggest Leftwich might be better suited for Jon Gruden’s horizontal offense than he is for the offense that allegedly was going to be vertical when Jeff Jagodzinski came to town and was supposed to remain that way when Jagodzinski was fired and Greg Olson is supposed to be carrying on a slightly more sophisticated model of the play pamphlet Jagodzinski designed (in 15 minutes)

Forget the content, that doesn’t matter. That’s a single sentence right there. Yasinskas is the anti-Fennelly.