Potential New York Jets QB: David Garrard-Inside the Numbers

As we know, our beloved New York Jets have been going backup quarterback hunting this week. You know the names. It sounds like the Jets had a good meeting with Brady Quinn this week, the rumor is he will sign when the free agent period opens. Adam Schefter told us that the Jets will be a team in the running for Matt Cassel.

However, the best of the names we heard may have come towards the end of the week. The reports seem to indicate that David Garrard’s end of the week workout went well, and that the Jets and Garrard have mutual interest in each other. Nothing official can happen before March 12th, but it appears likely that David Garrard will be in a Jets uniform come next month.

With that, I thought we would go inside the numbers to take a look at the type of career that David Garrard has posted to date. Let’s first look at his career stats:

The first thing that jumps off the stats page is his completion percentage.  61.6% over his career is a terrific number.  OK it’s a good number, but it is an astronomical number compared to the incumbent starter.  From 2006-2010, Garrard never posted a completion percentage lower than 60%.  Would we not kill for numbers like that here in NY?  I think we would.  I don’t want to bring Mark’s numbers up here, because my readers do not need to get sick at their computer.s

Garrard’s most recent season, 2010, he posted his best TD number with 23, and his best full year completion percentage with 64.5%.  He is accurate, and completes the intermediate passes, which will be key in a Marty Mornhinweg system.

Let’s go into some more detailed numbers, courtesy of our friends at Pro Football Focus.

To try and put this in the best favor for Mark, we are going to look at his best year (2011), vs David Garrard’s last year (2010).

For my friend Frankie Vittorini, let’s look at their QBRs:

David Garrard 2010: 87.76

Mark Sanchez 2011: 76.18

If my friend Frankie was writing this article, he would stop right there and say case closed.  But I am going to give you a bit more.

Instead of completion percentage, PFF goes a bit more detailed with an accuracy percentage.  Let’s compare:

David Garrard 2010: 74.6

Mark Sanchez 2011: 66.8

Not that Mark being inaccurate is news to anyone, but still, it is worth noting.  Finally, we will look at the overall grades:

David Garrard 2010: 7.4

Mark Sanchez 2011: -27.4

Garrard was set to be the starter going ahead in 2011 for the