Why Don't You Respect Jacoby Brissett?

Backup QBs don't often rank in the top half of the league, but Jacoby Brissett did. Why is everybody acting like he didn't?

Throughout this 2023 offseason, I've seen people looking for their teams to sign an 'established backup' like Jacoby Brissett. This both infuriated and got me wondering: what does it mean to be an established backup?

I wonder about this because I found myself thinking how well does this man have to play to shake off that backup title? Evidently being the 16th best QB in the NFL in my 2022 ranking (which you can see in full here) is not good enough, although if you're Lamar Jackson you can be 18th and get 180 million guaranteed dollars.

Jacoby Brissett is going to the Commies for 2023, but I've seen in projected starter lists that he may have to compete with Sam Howell. Are you kidding me?

As you may have guessed by the tone of those first few paragraphs, I do not view Jacoby Brissett as an 'established backup', whatever that term may happen to mean. As of this point, and until I'm proven wrong, I view Jacoby Brissett as a late bloomer who got his chance to start and proved himself starting calibre in 2022.

People seem to have missed that Brissett had a great season while nobody was watching. Let me tell you about it.

In the 2022 offseason, after Cleveland traded a war chest full of draft picks to the Houston Texans for Deshaun Watson, but before the NFL world knew how long Deshaun's suspension will be, Cleveland signed Jacoby on a one year contract to be the temporary guy. I assume (I know us fans all did) that the Browns thought this would be for the whole year.

As it turned out, Deshaun's suspension would only be eleven games long, so Jacoby, and Deshaun, and the whole Browns organization had to go through the very awkward task of preparing two brand new starting QBs at once during training camp. Jacoby was put into the awkward position of being the number one priority, yet knowing the Browns' future was staked on somebody else.

Luckily for Jacoby, he was beloved by everybody in Cleveland. If not, this transition period would've been a lot harder. I suspect this is part of the reason everybody seems to want Jacoby Brissett as their backup. It gives me Josh McCown vibes (not the last time I'll bring him up in this piece). Being the best teammate in the world is enough to get you most of the way there, but people tend not to like the 'great teammate' types as their starting QBs. I don't know why this is. Perhaps people are still caught up on this 'alpha' fallacy, but regardless. Jacoby Brissett fits firmly into the 'great teammate' mold.

With all that said, it's time to play the games. Jacoby has eleven games to prove himself. With all I've said about how well this season ends up going, you'd think he'd come out like a fireball in week one, but he just didn't. The Browns, due to multiple drives inside the 40 which resulted in no points, and field goals from inside the ten, allowed the Carolina Panthers to stick around in a game that shouldn't have been close. As a result, the Browns are down one point with one minute left and no timeouts. Here is where Jacoby's 2022 starts.

Jacoby leads the Browns all the way to the Carolina 40 to kick a game winning field goal and steal a 26-24 win from the Carolina Panthers. This is a Panthers' defence that would go on to be about league average in most stats, so it's not like Brissett did this against cupcake opposition. This was an okay start. If he could do this all season, the Browns would likely be slightly disappointed, but not wholly unsatisfied.

Brissett had no plans to play that badly for the rest of the year.

In week two, the Browns are hosting the New York Jets, and their defence that will eventually rank a healthy sixth in the league. We're not in Carolina anymore Jacoby. This is a real challenge. If he can put up a good performance against this defence, the NFL world will have no choice but to be impressed.

This week two game against the New York Jets is a harbinger of things to come for the 2022 Cleveland Browns, as despite touchdowns on two of their three first half drives (one of which took eight minutes), the Browns go into half with a 14-14 tie. The defence has given up two touchdowns on four tries to an offence led by Joe Flacco. In the second half, this trend stops, and with two minutes left the Browns score a touchdown to go up 31-17.

Wait a minute. A missed extra point means it's actually 30-17, but regardless. The Browns still have a 100% chance to win according to NFLFastR's Win Probability model. Nobody has ever lost before with a 13 point lead at the two minute warning.

Have any of you ever wondered what it feels like to watch a miracle happening when you're on the bad side?

Jacoby has to just stand and watch as his team surrenders one touchdown, and an onside kick recovery, and another touchdown, all to an offence led by Joe Flacco (a QB so bad he was benched for both Zach Wilson and Mike White in the same season), all in 1:38 of game time. To put this further in perspective, for the whole rest of this season, Joe Flacco will lead the Jets on a total of zero touchdown drives. He'll make two more starts, and the Jets won't score a touchdown in either game.

This comeback was a miracle, and it buried a great performance by Jacoby Brissett that could've put him on the map.

A New York Jets defence that gave some of the best QBs in the league a lot of trouble was torn to shreds by Jacoby Brissett to the tune of an 81.5 percent true completion percentage (which excludes spikes and throwaways, as always) and 0.49 EPA/Play. I'll repeat. This is not just a good performance. Adjusting for quality of opposition, it was one of the best games by any QB all season. If you don't believe me, here's an exhaustive list of QBs who did as good or better than Jacoby Brissett against these 2022 New York Jets.

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Wow. Listen to those crickets.

Okay, fine. Maybe the standards are too high. How about all the QBs who were in the same ballpark as Jacoby against these 2022 Jets. Here's an exhaustive list of QBs who came within 0.1 EPA/Play (a big buffer) of this performance.

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Seriously? Where is everybody?

Fine, I'm tired of these empty lists. How about every QB that generated a positive EPA/Play against these 2022 New York Jets.

Lamar Jackson, Jacoby Brissett, Joe Burrow, Jared Goff

We've finally found Jacoby some company, and it's good company to be in. Lamar had a down year, but Burrow and Goff both end the season as top five QBs in the NFL in 2022, and there's our man Jacoby Brissett head and shoulders above everybody in this competition.

Why did nobody notice this?

Easy. Lamar and Burrow had their good days against the Jets in very easy wins. Goff did it in a crucial game for playoff position. Jacoby played better than all of them, yet did it in a week two loss as the Jets' offence decided to have one of only three games all season generating positive EPA. He got brutally unlucky here, but that's life in the NFL. The Browns are 1-1, and moving on with their season.

After a not great stretch in weeks three and four where Jacoby generated 0.084 EPA/Play (15th in that span) in a win over Pittsburgh and a gut wrenching loss in Atlanta, Cleveland is 2-2. With a seven team playoff format, their season is alive, but their week five game is already looking to be extremely important for playoff positioning.

In week five, the Browns are hosting the Los Angeles Chargers. Also 2-2, and already looking to be an opponent in the Browns' Wild Card pursuits, the Chargers are also coming to Cleveland with something to prove. This head to head matchup can be key once playoff time rolls around, so both sides will be bringing their A-game. It's Jacoby Brissett vs Justin Herbert. Here we go.

The Browns are the team that come out in a manner befitting of the importance of this game. After two touches, they're up 14-0. In all, Jacoby leads the Browns on four scoring drives on their six first half touches. Unfortunately, one of them is a missed field goal, so the Browns score 21 points in the first half. This should be fairly comfortable.

Not at all.

Cleveland's defence couldn't touch Joe Flacco. Did you really think they were going to handle Justin Herbert? The league average Chargers' offence gets into Cleveland territory every time of asking in the first half, and are only held to 17 points via a turnover on downs at the Cleveland 28 and a field goal from inside the five. Despite Jacoby's splendid first half, Cleveland is up only 21-17.

The second half starts like more of the same for the Cleveland defence. After two Chargers drives to start the half, the Browns are down 27-21, but Jacoby responds, leading the Browns on a touchdown drive of their own to take a 28-27 lead to start the fourth.

After a field goal that gives the Chargers a 30-28 lead to start the fourth, Jacoby takes the Browns on a long, methodical drive all the way to the Charger nine yard line that eats up over six minutes. The Browns are in position to kick a field goal for the lead or perhaps pull ahead with a touchdown. This could be the breakout performance Jacoby is looking for.

He caps it off with an interception in the end zone.

This one hurts. Cleveland goes from a 56 to a 24 percent chance of winning on this interception. Cleveland does get another chance with one minute left, and Jacoby gets the Browns to the 35, but the game winning field goal try is missed. Everybody knows their real chance was lost on that interception, and again a great Jacoby performance is overshadowed by the fact that it came in a loss.

In a crucial regular season game, Jacoby Brissett has outplayed Justin Herbert. He hasn't outplayed him by a ton (both were quite good in this game), but he has done it against much tougher competition. The Browns' defence is no match for the Chargers', and that's ultimately what lost the Browns this game. I understand people didn't like the end zone interception, but if your QB generates 0.3 EPA/Play and you blame him for the loss, that says more about you than it does about him. Jacoby was impeccable in this game aside from that one mistake, and he has a second great performance under his 2022 belt.

The Browns are now 2-3, and while this isn't great I have to think they're encouraged by the play of their offence. This kind of play out of a QB brought in on a one year deal to be a temp starter is much more than they could've bargained for. I say all this because in week six, something happens that I'd rather not mention.

Jacoby plays quite badly.

I'd love to just skip this game and not mention it, but to provide an honest look at 2022 Jacoby Brissett I must mention the -14.3 EPA and 23 point loss as home favourites to the New England Patriots. In all fairness, I'm not sure it mattered how well Jacoby played as the Cleveland rush game was held to -0.42 EPA/Play and the defence was torn apart to the tune of 38 points allowed to a Patriots offence led by Bailey Zappe. I've never even heard of Bailey Zappe, and even he was killing the Browns.

There. I've mentioned it. Jacoby tried too hard to carry an underachieving Browns offence past an elite (3rd ranked) Patriots defence and got burned really hard for it. Moving along.

The Browns are now 2-4 and all of a sudden things are looking really bleak. This is how quickly things can turn in the NFL. Two weeks ago the Browns were playing a crucial game for potential playoff position. Now they're quite far behind and in need of a turnaround. There will be no rest for the weary though. Their next two games are division games. First against the Ravens, and then against the Bengals.

Over this stretch, Jacoby will prove whether he can be a NFL starting QB or not. This is a really unlucky time in the season for these two games to come up. We're only six games in, but Jacoby's eleven game contract is more than half of the way to its expiration date. In now or never matchups against Lamar Jackson and then against Joe Burrow, Jacoby will prove his mettle as an NFL starter.

Coming into Baltimore as touchdown underdogs, the Browns would be overmatched by the Ravens for most of this game. Despite spending the whole game behind, Jacoby kept the Browns within one possession to the last second. In the end, it comes down to a Browns drive with the score 23-20 in favour of the Ravens. Overcoming a key third down to get into field goal range, Jacoby throws a 34 yard touchdown pass to Amari Cooper to give the Browns a 27-23 lead.

Oh wait. Offensive pass interference on Cooper. If you listen hard enough you can still hear Browns fans complaining about this one, and it is a bit of a tick tack foul. The Browns are forced into a 55 yard field goal try. Oh wait. False start on the Browns. Now it's a 60 yard try.

The Cooper foul I could see a little bit, but this false start was nonsense. The referees called it on the wrong person and nobody really jumped anyway and it was a big mess that I think should've been called Baltimore offside, but I digress. The 60 yard attempt is missed, and Baltimore runs out the clock. Browns lose.

Just like against Los Angeles, Jacoby went into a game where it seemed impossible to not prove something and left it having not proven anything. Just like against Los Angeles, Jacoby had run step for step with a pretty good QB. This time it's Lamar Jackson, who Jacoby outdid in terms of yards, true completion percentage, and EPA/Play. For all intents and purposes, Jacoby had played just as good if not slightly better than Lamar, but is left with another loss and a 2-5 record.

Over the last three weeks, the Browns have gone from in the playoff hunt to nearly finished. 2-5 is not a death sentence (just ask the Steelers) but a sixth loss would be devastating to the Browns' playoff hopes. Six losses before three wins is really where your season is starting to be over in the NFL (same with seven losses before four wins). If you go to 2-6, even the most optimistic fan is going to see that it's over for the year.

Jacoby does not want that. He's still playing for his NFL career. Week eight at home against the Bengals is a key game for the Browns' season. If they win it, they can keep going. If they lose it, their season is basically done. I know it's already been make or break twice for Jacoby this year and he's somehow been able to make it out of both games being neither made nor broken, but this time it's for real. There will be no strong losses anymore. This is a playoff game for the Browns, and for one day, Jacoby Brissett will show everybody how great he can be.

Coming in as three point home underdogs, Cleveland beats Cincinnati in a total rout, at one point going up 25-0 before the Bengals can finally score some points. Jacoby throws for 278 yards and throws only two true (again, not counting spikes or throwaways) incomplete passes and generates 0.58 EPA/Play in a 32-13 blowout of the Cincinnati Bengals. He does all this despite taking a strip sack. This game is already in the 96th percentile of all QB performances of all time (meaning 96% of all QB games ever are worse than this one) but if not for that strip sack Jacoby could've been in the 0.7 EPA/Play range, which would make this one of the best games of all time.

I don't care to repeat the empty list gimmick, but I'll give you one guess how many QBs had a performance this great against these 2022 Cincinnati Bengals. I'll give you another guess as to how many even came close.

Jacoby doesn't go small does he? When he plays well he goes scorched earth on his opponents. These 2022 Bengals played Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen twice each. Nobody touches Jacoby Brissett.

After another okay performance against Miami the Browns are 3-6, and have just played five games in a row against the Chargers, Patriots, Ravens, Bengals, and Dolphins. Can we please lighten up on the schedule a little bit?

Please.

It's clear to me that whoever designed this schedule wanted no part of the Browns in the playoffs. A sensible schedule tries to put teams against good and bad opponents in each month of the season, so no team goes a whole month without facing a bad team. Take for example the San Francisco 49ers, who more or less alternated the whole season, playing a good opponent one week and a bad one the next.

This is not true with the Cleveland Browns. They've played five weeks of playoff calibre opposition in a row, and now, on the end of that brutal stretch, they're about to face the final boss.

After everything I've just told you about this stretch the Browns have just gone through, how evil does it seem that their week eleven matchup is on the road against the Bills? How transparent can the league be about setting up the Browns for failure? Nevertheless, there's football to be played. Jacoby has to go into Buffalo to play Josh Allen and the Bills.

Before we start, a little anecdote from me.

I've been known to be quite the bettor in my days, and before this game a friend of mine was driving me crazy all week telling me to bet the Browns first quarter moneyline. I do not know what he saw, but there was something that made him absolutely sure that we ought to take that bet.

If I had known as much about Jacoby then as I do now, I would've beaten him to it.

After the first drive of the game, we both felt like geniuses. Jacoby overcomes two long third downs to score an emphatic opening drive touchdown that had us jumping up and down. After the first quarter ends with successive three and outs and Cleveland with the ball, we both cash out and enjoy the rest of this game, and allowed Jacoby Brissett to thoroughly impress us.

For once not having the Cleveland rush game to aid him, Jacoby was forced to touch the ball 55 times in this game (by far his most all season). In those 55 touches, he played very well, consistently moving the ball into Buffalo territory only to come up dry without any points. One fumble, one turnover on downs, and one blocked field goal all in Buffalo territory all in the second half decided that the Browns were not going to win this game, but against a quality Buffalo defence, without his prominent rush attack to aid him, Jacoby Brissett managed to generate 12.6 EPA. That translates to 0.23 EPA/Play, and he was even better purely as a passer (0.44 EPA/Dropback).

Would you like to know who else was able to generate 0.44 EPA/Dropback against this 2022 Bills defence?

At last we've found a list that actually has a name on it, but there's only one. Aside from Jacoby, only Tua Tagovailoa was able to generate 0.44 EPA/Dropback against the Buffalo Bills.

Yet again, Jacoby finds himself in some pretty elite company. Are we so sure this guy is a bona fide backup? I sure hope you'd say the same thing about such horrible QBs as Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow, or Aaron Rodgers (to name a few) who were not able to do as good against this Bills defence as Jacoby Brissett did.

In my opinion, despite the 3-7 record, Jacoby has proven everything he needed to prove. It's not his fault the Browns gave up 24 points to Baker Mayfield, 31 to Joe Flacco, or 38 to Bailey Zappe. It's not his fault that the referees decided the Browns weren't going to win against Baltimore. It's not his fault that a game winning field goal was missed against Los Angeles.

What is Jacoby's responsibility is all the empty lists we've talked about. All the things that great QBs around the league could not do that Jacoby Brissett did do. What's also his responsibility is all of the love he got from his teammates and the Cleveland fans. I'll tell you what Browns fans, if Jacoby Brissett was your starter for the whole year things wouldn't have seemed so bad would they?

Nevertheless, we've reached the end of the line. This is game number eleven. The very last game Jacoby will have the privilege of starting before the Browns inevitably replace him with the $230M dollar man.

Admittedly thinking "big picture" throughout the prep for the game, Jacoby Brissett did not play very well against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (generating negative EPA for only the second time all season). For once though, his teammates carried him to a 23-17 overtime win. After the game, it was reported there were tears in the locker room.

Nobody was shedding any tears for the Browns for putting themselves in this situation, but people were genuinely appreciative of Jacoby Brissett and the job he had done in leading a moribund Cleveland team as good as it could've been led. His coaches were quoted as being 'effusive in their praise'. Despite his 4-7 record as the Browns' QB, Jacoby had won the hearts and minds of everybody in the room.

This is eerily similar to the Josh McCown-Jay Cutler situation in 2013 (which I've already written about here if you'd like to know more), where most Bears wanted the team to keep McCown instead of Cutler, but the Bears thought otherwise. NFL players are fickle people. None came out in support of keeping Jacoby since Deshaun is going to be on the roster for at least five years, but if nothing comes out in ten years or so explaining how there was a contingent of players wanting to keep Brissett and hold Deshaun off for the rest of the year, I will be shocked.

In his eleven starts with the Browns, Jacoby Brissett generated 0.115 EPA/Play (12th among players with at least 180 plays), with a 2.9 CPOE (4th) and 6.15 ANY/A (15th). Do ranks of 12, 4th, and 15th seem like backup numbers to you? There's no way that Jacoby should still be being spoken of as a backup after the year he just had, and yet here we are.

I know what you're going to say. The Cleveland Browns had an offensive line that ranked third in pass block win rate. They had three of the top 40 receivers in the game, and they had a top five rush attack. Jacoby had a lot of backup.

None of that is false, but I do think the level of help is overblown. My response to the above argument is this. There's another QB with a top five offensive line, top five rushing attack and great receiving corps in 2022. His name is Deshaun Watson, and he played awful. Compare his numbers to Jacoby's (-0.061 to 0.115 EPA/Play; -3.3 to 2.9 CPOE; 4.79 to 6.15 ANY/A) and you'll see that this Cleveland offence cannot pull along just any schmuck at quarterback.

Need more proof? There's another team I'm thinking of with a top ten offensive line, two receivers in the top fifteen, and an even better rush attack than Cleveland's. Compare Jacoby's numbers (0.115; 2.9; 6.15 in 464 plays) to the numbers of their primary starter (0.028; 0.7; 4.7 in 497 plays) and you'll see it's no contest. Who is this mystery comparison?

It's to the Pittsburgh Steelers, and their starter Kenny Pickett. If we're going to talk about Jacoby being carried by the Cleveland offence, we have to talk that way about Kenny Pickett too. Yet, I look around the football world, and I don't see anybody slandering Kenny Pickett this way. Until they do, call off the dogs on Jacoby. He shouldn't be the primary target here. There's a much better one in his same division.

This is all well and good. He had a great year. What does that have to do with the future?

There's a reason this article is not titled His Year. I'm not convinced Jacoby can't be a starter for years in the league. This is hard to prove, but I went back through the whole play tracking era (since 1999) to find the career backup types that had seasons as good as this one from Jacoby. I used three criteria (with one exception): the QB had to have been primarily a backup for at least four years OR be older than 30 (to exclude rookies waiting for chances), and then have a season of at least 350 plays (roughly half a season) and 0.08 EPA/Play. These to me seem like good barometers of a backup coming in on a semi full time basis and proving themselves. Here are the results.

Note: They WILL NOT include 1999 Jeff Garcia. He spent five years as a CFL starter, not an NFL backup.

In all, a season like Jacoby's has happened just eight times in the play tracking era. There's a reason players become career backups. It's hard to go so long without getting a chance if you have the talent, but there are eight people who managed it: 2000 Jay Fiedler, 2010 Jon Kitna, 2013 Josh McCown (who doesn't meet the play criteria but I'm including him because he was so dominant), 2015 Tyrod Taylor, 2017 Case Keenum, 2020 Teddy Bridgewater, 2022 Jacoby Brissett, 2022 Geno Smith.

There are obviously three of these instances we can't draw any conclusions from. Jon Kitna had his breakout and immediately retired, and Jacoby and Geno just happened. The other five do provide some potential insight on how well Jacoby's level of performance in Cleveland will hold up in Washington.

After having come into the league as an undrafted free agent in 1994 and having spent a year in coaching in 1997 being unable to find an NFL QB job, Jay Fiedler finally got his chance for the Dolphins in 2000, and generated 0.119 EPA/Play in 424 plays. This convinced Miami to keep him on as their starter, and he rewarded them by finishing sixth in the NFL in EPA/Play in 2001, and seventh in 2002. If the Commanders can get that level of production out of Jacoby, they will be doing cartwheels. This is a point to the good.

Prior to 2013, Josh McCown had also spent a year out of the NFL after being unable to find a job, but once he got his chance, he generated 0.374 EPA/Play for the Bears, and earned himself several starting jobs in the wake. Though he would never lead the league in EPA/Play again, Josh would do some good things with some really bad teams in 2015 for Cleveland and in 2017 with the Jets. This may be controversial, but I'm giving Josh a point to the good also.

Tyrod Taylor had never even sniffed an NFL field before his breakout in 2015, spending four years on the bench behind Joe Flacco in Baltimore. Once his chance came in Buffalo, he seized on it, generating 0.131 EPA/Play while consistently attempting extremely difficult throws. In the following years, Taylor's performance would decline each year, but he would never fall below the 20th best QB in the NFL, and he would also get Buffalo back into the playoffs after 17 years of waiting.

Not horrible after his breakout year, but not good enough to give him a point to the good. We'll call this a push.

Case Keenum had chances to start before 2017, but had never managed a positive EPA/Play or CPOE until he got hooked up with Minnesota. In that magical 2017 season, Keenum would play like a top ten QB, generating 0.172 EPA/Play on a 3.6 CPOE. This really was great stuff and I'll write the His Year on Keenum at some point, but he was never a starter calibre QB again after this. After this magical 2017, he's never again managed to generate positive EPA/Play for an NFL team. This gets a point to the bad.

Teddy Bridgewater had been a good NFL QB before when 2020 rolled around, but I'm sure 2015 felt like an eternity to him by the time he finally got the chance to be a starter again for the 2020 Panthers. He generated 0.109 EPA/Play in 598 plays in his big chance, reinvigorating faith in him as a starter around the league. After the Panthers got Sam Darnold, they traded Teddy to Denver for the 2021 season, where he'd give them the best QB play they'd seen since Peyton Manning. This gets another point to the good.

The five true comparables to 2022 Jacoby Brissett produced three instances where the backups kept up their starter level performance, one instance where the player declined but was still fringe starting calibre, and one instance where the player went right back to being a backup. What does this say about Jacoby Brissett? Nothing, but it does give a historical reference that these backup types can maintain their performance levels as they go to new teams.

Am I predicting that Jacoby Brissett will be this good again for the Commanders in 2023? I don't feel comfortable doing that. This is not a Sam Darnold situation, but if Jacoby comes out and plays like a top ten QB again next season I won't have the ability to honestly say I'm surprised either. Place your bets everybody. Washington certainly has something on their hands. It's either fools' gold or it's gold.

Good luck with your panning Commanders fans.