If you squint a little bit, there isn’t that big of a difference between former New Orleans Saints backup Teddy Bridgewater and now current Saints backup Jameis Winston. On the 1147 straight dropbacks in Bridgewater’s career, he’s posted a 74.6 passing grade. On the 2654 straight dropbacks, Winston is at a 73.7 mark. They’ve carved out about the same value to their teams — they’ve just gotten there in impossibly different ways. After trying to get Teddy to open up and express himself more, Sean Payton will need to find a way to have Jameis keep some things to himself.
Winston is such a high variance quarterback, the Saints are hoping that — at least for Year 1 — if Jameis has to come off the bench a few times in the season, those games will fall on the positive side of variance.
Since 2010, there have been only 9 instances in which a QB has ranked in the top 20% in both positively and negatively-graded throws in a given season.
Jameis Winston has four of them (2015, 2017, 2018, 2019)
— Steve Palazzolo (@PFF_Steve) December 17, 2019
Whatever Winston giveth, Winston taketh away. And not just on a game-by-game basis, but on a drive-by-drive basis. If Sean Payton and Pete Carmichael can scheme up or even flat out coach the negatives out of Jameis, they have themselves a quarterback capable of keeping the Saints on track for a couple of games a season or even as the long-term starter.
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