Final 2009 Passing Yards Per Attempt

Cold, Hard Football Facts for Jan 03, 2010

(Passing yards per attempt is a "Quality Stat" because it has a direct correlation to winning football games. Click here to read more about this "Stat That Matters." Passing YPA also cuts through the complex clutter of the passer rating formula and gives you a number that actually means something.

NOTE: Most stat-keepers do not calculate passing YPA properly! They ignore sacks, as if these game-changing plays don't matter! If you want to know why our passing yards per attempt figures are more accurate than any others you'll find anywhere, see the information below the chart.)

PASSING YARDS PER ATTEMPT UPDATE

Success in the passing game almost always leads to success on the football field. The 2009 season was no exception. The Saints won the first Super Bowl in franchise history, after a season in which they finished No. 2 in Passing YPA. Perhaps more importantly, New Orleans finished the year No. 1 in Passer Rating Differential. In other words, they dominated the passing game on both sides of the ball more than any team in the NFL.

San Diego and its quarterback Philip Rivers were slightly more effective than Drew Brees and the Saints passing the ball in 2009. The Chargers failed to make an impact in the postseason. But their league-best passing attack did result in a 13-3 record, the second best mark in franchise history.

Meanwhile, look out for Houston. An expansion franchise in 2002, the organization has struggled to find its way in the NFL. But the Texans enjoyed the first winning season (9-7) in their brief history in 2009. Naturally, you find the reasons for success in the passing game: Matt Schaub and the Texans boasted a Super Bowl caliber passing attack with an impressive 7.51 YPA. That kind of effectiveness gives Houston a Super Bowl-caliber passing attack ... provided the team's young defensive stars can finally live up to expectations.

Final 2009 Passing Yards Per Attempt

	Team	Att.	Yards	Sacks	Yards Lost	YPA
1	San Diego	519	4,506	26	168	7.96
2	New Orleans	544	4,490	21	144	7.69
3	Houston	593	4,803	26	153	7.51
4	Indianapolis	601	4,605	13	90	7.35
5	Dallas	550	4,483	34	196	7.34
6	New England	592	4,540	18	104	7.27
7	Pittsburgh	536	4,496	50	348	7.08
8	Minnesota	554	4,403	34	247	7.07
9	N.Y. Giants	542	4,246	32	227	7.00
10	Green Bay	553	4,492	50	300	6.95
11	Philadelphia	553	4,380	40	298	6.88
12	Arizona	595	4,205	26	184	6.48
13	Baltimore	510	3,637	37	224	6.24
14	Tennessee	476	3,118	14	73	6.21
15	Denver	558	3,825	34	198	6.13
16	Washington	533	3,797	45	297	6.06
17	Atlanta	570	3,697	27	126	5.98
18	Jacksonville	519	3,599	44	238	5.97
19	Chicago	563	3,677	34	203	5.82
20	Cincinnati	477	3,134	29	244	5.71
21	N.Y. Jets	392	2,596	30	216	5.64
22	Carolina	465	3,070	33	271	5.62
23	Miami	545	3,396	34	226	5.47
24	Seattle	609	3,771	41	268	5.39
25	San Francisco	528	3,293	40	241	5.37
26	Tampa Bay	525	3,136	32	161	5.34
27	Buffalo	441	2,789	46	274	5.16
28	Detroit	585	3,471	42	303	5.05
29	Kansas City	537	3,183	45	268	5.01
30	Oakland	485	2,875	48	318	4.80
31	St. Louis	542	2,962	44	284	4.57
32	Cleveland	443	2,255	30	179	4.39

***

Here's a little look at our passing yards per attempt formula and why it's superior to others.

Only our YPA is correct

Most every team yards per attempt figure you see out there is wrong! Or, at the very least, it's not calculated properly. Go to ESPN.com, Yahoo Sports, wherever. Basically, a lot of places like that will publish a net yards figure and then, in the next column, the yards per attempt figure will be based upon gross passing yards. The math just doesn't add up, at least not when you use the published figures.

So here's what you'll find from the Cold, Hard Football Facts. We use only NET passing figures to determine yards per attempt. This is gross passing yards, minus yards lost via sacks, divided by passsing attempts. If we were merely looking at individual quarterbacks and their yards per attempt, we might (might!) be inclined to use gross passing yards, so as not to penalize the quarterback if he has a sieve of an offensive line.

Sacks count as pass attempts

Our yards per pass attempt is a "Quality Stat" – a stat that has a direct correlation to victory. So we're looking at team data. After all, it's teams that win and lose football games.

There's more to our calculations, though. Instead of just dividing the net passing yardage by pass attempts, we add in the number of sacks to the attempts column. We believe this gives a far more accurate gauge of a team's ability to pass the ball. After all, when a QB is sacked, it's because he was attempting to pass. Why shouldn't this attempt to pass count as an attempt?

For example, if a quarterback attempts 10 passes for 100 yards, his yards per attempt is 10.0 YPA. Easy enough, right? But what if that QB was sacked three times and lost 22 yards? Suddenly, the team's passing YPA is a mere 6.0 (78/13).

Hey, the team only gained 78 net yards when attempting to pass. And those 3 sacks came on attempts to pass. So, to accurately measure a team's ability to pass, that's our formula:

Net passing yards/(pass attempts + sacks allowed)

By Kerry Byrne

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