XFL Season Recap - Quarterbacks Report

Antonio Losada evaluates the final performance of XFL quarterbacks at the end of the 2020 season in the first part of his season recap.

Just when everything was feeling absolutely right. When we had already reached the halfway point of the season and the worst-case scenario had been cleared from the potential endings. When we all had agreed that the XFL was indeed fun, Coronavirus struck and wiped out every single sport from the face of Earth. There's nothing to like about it, but it was a necessary measure to take.

Perhaps when the XFL comes back next year--and it will, be sure of it--the fact that we were left wondering what could have happened would find us anxious for the 2021 season to start. Until that moment arrives, though, we can only look back at what the first season of this new XFL iteration has been. While it hasn't lasted a lot, a month-and-change of games are more than enough to take a look at the best and worst players of the league and try to reach some fantasy takeaways from the inaugural 2020 XFL season.

This column is a continuation of the weekly Risers/Fallers series, only with a twist to cover the full season instead of just a new batch of weekend games. First, I'll be taking a look at quarterbacks and how they have performed on the season in terms of their stats.

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XFL Season Recap: Attempts

Five weeks, eight teams, 18 quarterbacks. Those are the numbers of the first season of XFL football when it comes to the most important position in the world of sports. Not that the 18 have mattered a lot, though. Of those 18, only 14 have played two or more games while attempting at least 30 passes. Aaron Murray, a Tampa Bay Viper, only played one game but he threw 34 passes at that time, all the way back in Week 1.

This is how individual quarterbacks have done in terms of passing attempts.

In a league featuring eight teams, only one (the Houston Roughnecks) stayed true to a single quarterback all season long making him the no. 1 and only quarterback used through five weeks. That probably helped him reach the highest number of passing attempts on pure usage, but the truth is that P.J. Walker played excellent football all season and even if he had missed the last week he would have still finished with the most attempts of any quarterback.

Three teams (Los Angeles, New York, and Tampa Bay) used three quarterbacks each, be it because of injuries or just pure incompetence from their players, and cutting the season short definitely hurt the progression of Luis Perez (NY) and Josh Johnson (LA). On the other hand, that could make them very appealing come 2021 as they'll carry a huge momentum.

XFL Season Recap: Completion Rate

Throwing the largest amount of passes doesn't mean being the best at it... unless you're P.J. Walker, I guess. While Walker didn't finish with the highest completion percentage of quarterbacks with at least 20 pass attempts, he had the third-best percentage of completions but he threw 50 more passes than the second quarterback in the attempts leaderboard (Josh Johnson) and 51 and 66 more than the second-best (Jordan Ta'amu) and best (Landry Jones) passers in completion rate.

Even while using two quarterbacks and after making them attempt more than 90 passes each, the Dallas Renegades were highly efficient in that aspect of the game with both Jones and Philip Nelson having completion rates over 56%. New York also had two quarterbacks over 55%, although both Luis Perez and Matt McGloin fell short of 65 attempts each, more than 30 fewer than Nelson.

XFL Season Recap: Touchdowns & Interceptions

Although we only had five weeks of play and 20 games to enjoy, those were enough to name a clear winner in the touchdown category and a couple of losers when it came to interceptions. Can you imagine who finished the year as the no. 1 TD-thrower? Probably. Would have you imagined back before Week 1 kicked off who would be at the top of the interceptions leaderboard? Hardly.

Before the XFL kicked off most of us--myself included--saw Cardale Jones as one of the faces of the league. He came from the NFL, and before that, he had been magnificent in his college-days as a Buckeye. He also played to his early-days levels to start the year, but when all was said and done Jones found himself in the bench and leading the league in interceptions--tied with Landry Jones--after throwing seven of them. He did so in fewer attempts (113) than Jones (119) and also completing much fewer passes (61) than the Dallas Renegade (83).

At the other end of the spectrum, P.J. Walker was a touchdown machine and one of only two quarterbacks to score more than 15 touchdowns through the air--Josh Johnson threw 11 himself, and he did so in just four games and 50 fewer pass attempts.

In fact, looking at the actual TD:INT ratio for every quarterback with at least 30 attempts on the season, Johnson led the pack with a huge 5.5 ratio in his four games to Walker's also-high 3.75 one. Luis Perez, as mentioned earlier in the column, was pretty good in his three games posting a 3.0 ratio although he just threw 61 passes and completed 38 of them and only 3:1 TD:INT so it's not clear if he'd be able to keep those marks up in a larger set of games.

Matt McGloin was absolutely disastrous, throwing three interceptions to just one touchdown, and among those with 100+ pass attempts, it was all nightmares for Cardale Jones and his 0.57 TD:INT ratio after throwing only four TDs against a league-leading seven picks.

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