JW Walsh has been historically good

Photo Attribution: USATSI

I thought I would see J.W. Walsh stacks up against recent Big 12 quarterbacks. Using the College Football Reference Play Index, I found the stats for every QB in the Big 12 from 2009 to 2012 that attempted at least 150 passes. This ended up being a group of 50 QBs after I threw in Johnny Manziel’s Heisman-winning season as a benchmark.

Walsh’s 2012 season qualifies with 163 attempts, but I went ahead and tossed in his 2013 stats as well for this post.

Let’s look at the four components of QB Rating:

Yards / Attempt

RG3’s 10.7 is the highest number in college football in the past decade.

Completion Percentage

Typically, your higher-percentage passers are “dink and dunk” guys who throw a ton of easy-to-complete short passes. The elite QBs are the ones who can manage a high completion percentage while still throwing the ball down the field. Walsh rates highly in both categories. So do RG3, Geno Smith, Weeden, Manziel, and David Ash. Wait, what?

TDs / Attempts

Last season, Dayne Crist threw 4 TDs on 216 attempts. Walsh has 17 TDs on 217 attempts in his career.

INT / Attempt

I love this one. So far, Walsh has been very careful with the football. Let’s give Zac a break for his 2009 season. He lost Dez, Kendall, and his health for big chunks of that season.

QB Rating

Top 5 in every category: RG3

Top 10 in every category: RG3, Walsh, Geno Smith

By the way, Walsh is No. 2 in this group of 50 in yards/rush at 6.4, trailing only Johnny Manziel at 7.0. I also calculated yards/touch: (passing yards + rushing yards) / (pass attempts + rush attempts). Walsh leads this category at 8.7.

It’s still a relatively small sample size — Walsh’s 217 career passing attempts are the 43rd most on this list — but so far in his career, Walsh is doing very well against his peers in every important QB statistical category.