Is Week One a Bellwether for the Rest of the Season? Part I

Welcome to a multi-part discussion that will take place this week on the importance of Week 1 in projecting a player's performance for the entire year. Today's topic: Quarterbacks.

First off, how much of an indicator is a quarterback's Week 1 performance with how he'll do the rest of the year? Well, actually, it says quite a lot. Over the past 3 seasons, a quarterback's opening day QB Rating has a very robust 0.71 correlation with his season rating. Therefore, a quarterback's opening day performance will generally go a long way in telling you what kind of year he'll have. This rule is not written in stone- Donovan McNabb and Brett Favre each had QB ratings over 89.0 last year after having opening day performances below 61.0. These exceptions aside, however, the numbers are compelling.

How about if a quarterback has an unbelievable opening day? Should you expect those unbelievable numbers to keep up? Simply put, no. More quarterback ratings of 100.00 or over are achieved in Week 1 of a season than in any other week. Overall, Week 1 is the best quarterbacking week of the year. Thus, outstanding opening numbers will almost assuredly not keep up their pace. In the past 3 years, quarterbacks who had a 100+ QB rating on Opening Week finished the year with a QB rating of over 90.0 only 50% of the time. However, while those quarterbacks' numbers did go down, they didn't usually drop too far. A quarterback who starts the year with a 100+ QB rating has a 79% probability of finishing the year with a top 10 QB rating.

As for bad opening day performances, the news is not good. Last year alone, seven quarterbacks had opening day performances with a QB rating under 60.0. A grand total of one of them finished the season with a QB rating above 80.0, and the average QB rating amongst them was 75.2. Hardly the stuff of legends. The names of those luminaries, Favre excluded? Matt Leinart, JP Losman, Rex Grossman, Damon Huard, Vince Young, Jason Campbell.

Now, quarterbacks do improve over their careers. They learn the systems and develop as players. However, the noticeable change in a quarterback's performance comes during the next season, not over the course of a season. Analysts may say otherwise, but the numbers don't lie.

So, whose opening day may be a signal of things to come?

First, the 100+ club for Week 1:
Ben Roethlisberger= 147.0
Jay Cutler= 137.3
Donovan McNabb= 131.0
Brett Favre= 125.9
Phillip Rivers= 125.1
Drew Brees= 124.9
Matt Cassel= 116.0
Aaron Rodgers= 115.5
JaMarcus Russell= 111.1
Tony Romo= 103.6
Jon Kitna= 103.1

Keep in mind the defenses that each quarterback played against, but the numbers still tell us something.

And those unfortunate souls that had less than 60.0 QB rating this week...

Tarvaris Jackson= 59.0
Matt Hasselbeck= 53.9
Vince Young= 45.6
Carson Palmer= 35.3

That number is actually a bit too typical of Jackson. He is the primary reason that I didn't pick Minnesota as a true contender this year. You simply cannot have that much uncertainty at quarterback.

Well, let's see how the rest of the season plays out. Next post, we'll cover running backs...