Source: Pro Football Reference
Tools: Excel

That's just net yards per attempt though... that's one of MANY factors in performance.

I've seen a few posts on this, for some reason, and it seems they were done by those who aren't really into football and aren't aware of meaningful quarterback statistics to actually use for such. Here we are using Adjusted Net Yards / Attempt - a fairly simple but incredibly useful and accurate measure of quarterback play on a per play basis (which is more important than counting stats).

No, it's ADJUSTED Net Yards / Attempt. It takes into account sacks, sack yards, touchdowns, and interceptions. You could include rushing numbers (attempts, yds, TD's, and fumbled) too but it would not alter this. ANYA is a fantastic little metric that highly correlates to winning.

ANY/A - adjusted net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown) - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks)

There's still SO much more to QB performance imo.

I am aware of how it's calculated. As mentioned, there's a very high correlation between winning and ANYA. Even higher when you look at it by game.

I'm not saying it's the end all be all, there's not one, but it's REALLY good. The point is though, I could use any number of very good advanced metrics and come up with the same results. Height does not impact performance at this level.

Ehh, your showing the range of heights of current QBs. There's a reason that range is so narrow. I don't see any 5'6" guys or 7 footers. I would say this is proof that height is extremely impactful.

Please read my title. I did not insinuate that height could NEVER have an influence on NFL QB's. But this all stems from Bryce Young being a bit on the short side and every single time a top end QB prospect is 6'0" or a touch under this gets brought up ad nauseam. Yeah of course this data has worked itself out b/c at a certain point height would have some sort of impact but once you hit a certain height it really doesn't matter.

It’s not really correlation. It actually weighted that way in the formula.

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Seems this is mostly relevant if you're asking, "What's important for QB success?", in which case you want a series of measures, like what are their times in the 40? Weight? QB rating? Etc.

When you understand the context, you'll understand why this is beautiful. I was wishing someone would make this graph.

Two previous posts (https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/122avg2/taller_american_football_players_tend_to_throw/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/122c5b2/american_football_starting_quarterback_pass/) put out weak evidence that QB height was correlated with passing performance. No R2 values, polynomial regressions where they are not needed, uninformative bubble sizes.

OP just put up the real analysts graph - a measure of passing performance that is acceptably unbiased for time on the field plotted against QB height, modeled linearly showing that height explains 0.3% of the variance in this metric. This graph is the hero we need, but not the one we deserve.

A coefficient of less than one half of one percent of variance...

And the two charts you link to were an effort to respond to my chart which started this parade of QB height scatter plots. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/121pvx7/oc_nfl_quarterbacks_of_passes_batted_down/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

In my chart, which was not an attempt to evaluate QB effectiveness against height, but an attempt to evaluate one aspect of quarterbacking...batted balls.

There is widely assumed belief that shorter QBs will have their passes batted down more frequently which is proven to be false in my analysis. People point to players such as Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray who are short and have passes batted down often, but these two commonly used examples are not the rule which is evident in my chart. That’s was the point of my analysis, to either prove or disprove that narrative wasn’t sure which way it would go when I started, but it was clear when I finished.

The person who created the other two weird and flawed charts was aggressively critical of my analysis and thought they would create something more meaningful. It’s clear that they don’t understand football or analytics. So here we are. Then this OP responded to them, and this OP gets it.

Just stop. First you were dismissive of their yards per attempt metric because it didn’t measure enough things. OP addressed that and explained that it’s fairly comprehensive and any other metric would be directionally similar, so now you’ve moved on to criticizing something else because your first attempt was addressed. You just want to hear yourself talk and be critical for the sake of being critical.

Yup, and both of the main short guys had poor years for their standards. You go back a touch further and Wilson was one of the best QB's in the league and Brees was still around it would likely show a slight negative correlation.

Yup, I appreciated your post. It was very interesting and I recognized that you were not trying to prove performance but rather something that I thought would have been more positively correlated (as you explained already haha). I definitely would have guessed that shorter QB's would have had a higher percentage of balls batted down (and very glad you used percentages). I then saw the two that were linked above and was like wow, these are pointless.

If I added a bit more context or lengthened the time period a bit it would have likely had a negative correlation b/c Russ and Kyler had poor seasons by their standards (the two main short guys) AND I could have gone back far enough to add Brees which would have really given the short guys a boost. But it didn't matter, pretty clear that of all NFL QB's, which is a selected and managed group, there's no correlation between performance and height.

Thank you sir / madam, seeing these previous posts was precisely why I created this one. Russ and Kyler, 2 of the short guys, had poor seasons by their standards so it could have actually had a negative correlation if I had chosen a longer time period (especially if I had Brees in it) or chosen a different season. Didn't think I needed to and was correct.

Admittedly this is a specifically selected and managed group, so there is a bit of selection bias as guys who are short might simply need to be quite a bit better to even be considered good enough to be in this group but it still shows that anyone who is good enough to be a QB in the NFL is not impacted by height, i.e. if Bryce Young does in fact fail based on his high draft profile it won't be b/c he's shorter than others.

None of those (well, QB Rating but that doesn't exist amongst the others on the list) would have any meaningful correlation to QB success. In fact, nothing at the combine that gets measured would matter.

But this has been chosen specifically b/c there's a particular prospect who is on the short side and it could be a reason he is not selected with the top overall pick (though it's guaranteed he will be one of the 1st 2 picks no matter what). It's a very silly reason to dislike an otherwise great prospect as heigh has never been linked to performance for guys who are good enough to be in the NFL. I'm not interested in trying to find a specific measured attribute that correlates highly with NFL success b/c it doesn't exist. There are certain intangible aspects that aren't currently measured, if there weren't then the NFL draft would be a waste of time in itself as everyone would just pick correctly the first time.

Not only are they pointless. The OP just doubles down when you try to explain why they aren’t looking at things the right way. And they clearly don’t understand the game of football. I’ve had some frustrating conversations with them on my post.

And I agree, both of our analyses are impacted by survivorship bias. If you get to this point, you’re the best in the world. But within that context it’s still worth proving that height doesn’t make much (or any) difference. A slight build might make a difference in injury risk, but that’s a story for another day.

What are you talking about, this data shows that the sweet spot is between 6'2" and 6'6" so it seems like height is VERY correlated...