Cincinnati Bengals: Should Andy Dalton be part of future?
By Kenn Korb
Dalton’s Stats
When you think of Dalton, I’m sure most people aren’t exactly blown away by him. He isn’t the most physically gifted quarterback, he seems to have at least one disturbingly bad performance every year, and he’s never won a playoff game despite a handful of opportunities. Don’t sell him short, however. In reality, Dalton has often been a much better quarterback than people tend to give him credit for being.
Since becoming Cincinnati’s starting quarterback in 2011, he’s been able to garner some pretty impressive statistical totals. He’s one of just 19 players to accumulate at least 19,000 passing yards and 100+ touchdown passes in that time-frame. His totals of 28,100 yards and 188 touchdowns leave him right in the middle of the group. He trails the likes of Aaron Rodgers and the other elites of the era, but does stand closely above guys like Cam Newton and Russell Wilson.
He’s statistically been in the better half of the league’s quarterback hierarchy during most seasons. He’s 68-50-2 as a starter, with five-straight playoff berths to begin his career. He has led 24 game-winning drives in his career (tied for 27th all-time) and has 20 career fourth-quarter comebacks (also tied for 27th all-time). In all but one year he’s had three-or-more game-winning drives by the end, and five times he has garnered three or more fourth-quarter comebacks.
He was a dark-horse candidate for MVP in 2015 prior to an injury stole the end of his season and, in terms of Pro Football Focus (subscription required) grading metrics this year has arguably been about as good (81.7 grade in 2015; 81.9 in 2018).
It isn’t all good, of course. Only four of the group have more than his 104 interceptions, and only five have a worse interception rate. He’s also in the lower half of the group in terms of completion percentage (62.31; 12th), passer rating (88.8; 13th), and adjusted net yards per attempt (6.17; 14th).
He’s thrown at least one interception in 49 of his 120 career games; 22 times he’s thrown multiple interceptions in a contest, including six outings with three-or-more picks and two separate times with four of them. While he’s had multiple 80+ graded seasons by PFF, he’s also been no higher than 72.7 in the other six.
He’s not been great in the spotlight, either. He’s 6-20 as a starter in night games in his career (1-1 this year), and 0-4 in the playoffs with nothing close to a good game to show among those postseason efforts (one touchdown, six interceptions, 55.7 completion percentage, 218.3 yards per game, 57.8 average passer rating).
Overall, he’s a mixed bag, but there appear to be plenty of positives to combat the negatives when it comes to Dalton.
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