During the 2013 college season, Teddy Bridgewater was widely considered by draft pundits to be the best QB available in the 2014 draft. However, his stock dropped during the pre-draft process, and the Vikings took him #32 overall after trading up. Bridgewater played well in the preseason, leading all QBs in TD passes. However, he was still the backup at the beginning of the season, at least until Matt Cassel went down for the season with an injury against the Saints. Then Teddy took over. He had the most success record-wise of any rookie QB, going 6-6 in his 12 starts.
Over my next few articles, I’m going to be covering the biggest positives (touchdowns) and negatives (turnovers) from the young QBs in 2014. Derek Carr lead off with his 21 passing TDs in 2014. This article will cover Teddy Bridgewater’s 14 passing TDs, plus his rushing TD and a bonus play. First, I’m going to cover some charting data I came up with while watching his passing. Then, on page 2 and beyond, there are my thoughts on the individual plays themselves.
Here’s data on the yardage from Bridgewater’s TDs:
Yardage Breakdown
| Yards | 320 | Average | 22.9 |
| Yards after catch | 151 | Average | 10.8 |
| Yards in Air | 169 | Average | 12.1 |
| Yards in Air+ | 196 | Average | 14 |
The difference between “Yards in Air” and “Yards in Air+” is that I give credit for yards in the endzone in “Yards in Air+.” So, if the line of scrimmage is the 2 and he throws a TD pass that’s caught 7 yards into the endzone, the YIA for that play is 2 while the YIA+ is 9.
Bridgewater averaged 11.3 yards/completion in 2014, but you would expect that to be increased when looking at just TD passes. I would not, however, expect that number to be more than double his average. What this tells me is that Bridgewater threw quite a number of long TDs, which you will see is true soon enough. You can see that the average YAC and the average YIA are split pretty evenly. 10.8 is an abnormally high average for yards after the catch, but over half of those yards came on a single play where Jarius Wright took a screen pass 87 yards for a TD. From comparing YIA+ to YIA, you can see that Bridgewater really didn’t throw into the endzone all that much on his passes (or at least not very deep in the endzone). This is true, as only six of his TDs were into the endzone and most were about 5 yards deep.
This brings me to the next tables, which break his TD passes down by distance and location:
Distance Breakdown
| Fewer than 6 Yards | 3 |
| Between 6 and 15 yards | 3 |
| More than 15 yards | 8 |
Location Breakdown
| Deep Left | Deep Middle | Deep Right |
| 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Intermediate Left | Intermediate Middle | Intermediate Right |
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Short Left | Short Middle | Short Right |
| 2 | 0 | 3 |
You might notice a discrepancy between the two tables. This is because I went by total play yardage for the first table, while I went by where the ball was actually thrown for the second. Therefore, the 87 yard TD for Wright fits in the 16 yards+ category but is also counted in the “Short Right” category.
The first thing that jumps out at you is that the majority of Bridgewater’s TDs were from over 15 yards away from the endzone. Bridgewater struggled mightily at times with deep passes, but he also excelled with them at times. Particularly, he did well on passes to the deep right, where he threw five TD passes. You also see a pattern where he threw short passes to either the left or right, these are either screens or flat routes. There were not very many TD passes for Bridgewater in goal-to-go situations. The Vikings preferred to run the ball with Matt Asiata in these situations, and he scored 9 TDs on the season, with 7 yards being his longest.
Now let’s take a look at the route types he threw to:
Route Breakdown
| Flat/Screen | 4 |
| Vertical | 4 |
| Corner | 3 |
| Crossing | 1 |
| Post | 1 |
| Out | 1 |
I’d be willing to bet that if you totaled up all of the TD passes from 2014, the most popular routes would be either flat/screen routes or vertical (go/fade) routes. Hitting a TE in the back corner of the endzone on a rollout near the goal line seems to be pretty popular as well. It looks like Bridgewater follows this trend with his small sample.
Speaking of rollouts, I also tracked plays where Bridgewater was pressured or didn’t have a standard dropback:
Dropback Breakdown
| Nothing Unusual | 7 |
| Rollout | 3 |
| Pressured | 5 |
Note: Doesn’t add up to 14 because he was pressured on one of his rollouts.
Bridgewater rolled out a few times, hitting receivers in the flat or the back corner of the endzone. That’s a pretty standard levels concept that all teams employ. He also faced a fairly high rate of pressure on his TD passes. To me, this displays his ability to keep calm under fire.
Speaking of pressure, how did Bridgewater do in close moments? Here’s a look at his TD’s in “Crunch Time” (which I define as the game being within 8 points in either direction with less than 5 minutes left in the game) and “Garbage Time” (down 9 points or more with under two minutes left, 16 points or more with under 6 minutes left, or 21 points or in the 4th Quarter) TDs:
Situational Breakdown
| Crunch Time | 2 |
| Garbage Time | 0 |
Bridgewater was given credit for leading three 4th Quarter Comebacks as well as three Game-Winning Drives. Those stats include drives that end in rushing TDs, but my charting is only including the passing TDs. As such, I came up with two crunch time TD throws. His success late in close games validates the nickname he was given in college, GUMP (for Forest Gump but also stands for Great Under Major Pressure). He didn’t throw all that many TDs late in the game, so he doesn’t have any that qualify as “garbage time.”
With this talk of crunch time and garbage time TDs, let’s look at his TD breakdown by Quarter:
Quarter Breakdown
| 1st Quarter | 3 |
| 2nd Quarter | 6 |
| 3rd Quarter | 2 |
| 4th Quarter/Overtime | 3 |
Down Breakdown
| 1st Down | 7 |
| 2nd Down | 3 |
| 3rd Down | 4 |
| 4th Down | 0 |
Bridgewater threw nearly half of his TDs in the second quarter. He did well with closing out the half on a positive note, and threw 3 TDs within two minutes of the half (well, one of those was with 2:08 left on the clock). Other than that, his TDs were pretty evenly distributed across the other quarters. He threw 2 TDs in the fourth and one in overtime.
As far as downs go, he threw quite a few TDs on 1st down, and none on 4th, which isn’t a surprise.
Receiver Breakdown
| Greg Jennings | 5 |
| Charles Johnson | 2 |
| Jairus Wright | 2 |
| Chase Ford | 1 |
| Rhett Ellison | 1 |
| Kyle Rudolph | 1 |
| Cordarrelle Patterson | 1 |
| Adam Thielen | 1 |
Bridgewater will be without Jennings in his sophomore campaign, as the veteran receiver was cut after the team traded for Mike Wallace. Wallace will hopefully improve upon Jennings’ production, or else it will become a bad decision for the Vikings. 2014 was just the second year of Patterson and Johnson’s careers, so hopefully both will improve in the 2015 campaign. The Vikings also added Stefon Diggs later in the fifth round of the draft.
