2017 First String Quarterback Usage by Coach

by Derek Carty (DerekCarty) Part of the product NFL Pre-Season Package by Derek Carty

The best players in the NFL are, obviously, the first-stringers. The starters. In the pre-season, though, these guys tend to play sparingly so as to avoid injury before the games start to matter. There are varying degrees of “sparingly”, though, and my hope is that this chart proves helpful in determining which starters may be more likely to take more snaps than others and give us an advantage over those settling for playing backups. I’m using each team’s first string quarterback as a proxy for all first-stringers. This is obviously an imperfect method (Joe Flacco didn’t play at all last pre-season due to injury, for example), but full playing time for all players is available elsewhere in this package for those who want to dive deep. This is more of a quick-and-dirty glance at potentially helpful trends.

The things that stick out the most to me are that players that were in position battles (denoted by asterisks) predictably played more, as did players who had been named starters but had younger or better players breathing down their necks (Tom Savage, Mike Glennon, etc.) But then there are interesting cases like Jameis Winston and Russell Wilson and Kirk Cousins getting significant play, and that could prove valuable or, at the very least, worth looking into further.