Through two preseason games, with starting quarterback Jordan Love only throwing two balls during that period, Green Bay Packers backups Sean Clifford and Michael Pratt have combined to complete 31 balls off of 52 attempts for just 252 yards, no passing touchdowns and an interception this summer. After the Packers’ 27-2 loss to the Denver Broncos, head coach Matt LaFleur made it clear that the team needed to see better production out of that unit.
What if the Packers’ 2024 backup quarterback isn’t on the roster right now, though? We all know that each of the 32 franchises in the NFL are about to cut their 90-man (or 91-man) rosters down to 53 players, but who is on the bubble at the quarterback? Well, I decided to take a look at an answer for that question.
First of all, I figure that if Green Bay does look outside to add a passer, they’ll probably want someone with game experience, especially considering how quick the turnaround from cutdowns to an international regular-season opener is. Ourlads does a good job of tracking depth charts, so I used them to identify third- and fourth-string quarterbacks who have played a bit in the league, at least 100 pass attempts. The last filter I checked is what I’ll call the “Pratt-Clifford” line, sort of like the Mendoza Line for our conversation. Pratt has an adjusted yards per attempt (AY/A) of 4.3 right now. Clifford sits at 3.8. I’d assume that the Packers, who have already said they want to be more productive in the passing game off of the bench, would look for a number north of that.
For those who aren’t aware of AY/A, it’s more correlated to wins than passer rating. Essentially, it’s yards per attempt that treats passing touchdowns as bonus gains of 20 yards and penalizes quarterbacks for throwing interceptions to the tune of 45 yards.
So with all that being said, here are all of the third- and fourth-string quarterbacks in the league who have thrown for at least 100 regular season attempts and passed the Pratt-Clifford line that we just made up, in order of their career AY/A.
Third- and fourth-string quarterbacks who pass the Pratt-Clifford line
*Trey Lance, Dallas Cowboys (7.5 AY/A)
*Desmond Ridder, Arizona Cardinals (6.5)
*Case Keenum, Houston Texans (6.5)
*C.J. Beathard, Jacksonville Jaguars (injured) (6.5)
*Taylor Heinicke, Atlanta Falcons (6.4)
*Tommy DeVito, New York Giants (6.3)
*Kyle Allen, Pittsburgh Steelers (6.1)
*Brandon Allen, San Francisco 49ers (5.9)
*Jeff Driskel, Washington Commanders (5.8)
*Bailey Zappe, New England Patriots (5.7)
*Zach Wilson, Denver Broncos (5.7)
*Tyler Huntley, Cleveland Browns (5.3)
*Sam Ehlinger, Indianapolis Colts (4.9)
*P.J. Walker, Seattle Seahawks (4.5)
As you can see, the Packers do have some options out there. Some teams might roster three quarterbacks, like I suspected the Cowboys (Lance) and Cardinals (Ridder) will, but not every one of these quarterbacks is going to be able to survive cuts, especially with how many special teams bodies teams are going to want to carry until the kickoff coverage and kickoff return meta are solved. The X factor here is a quarterback like Ryan Tannehill (career AY/A of 7.1) being willing to take a full-time backup job in Green Bay for a half-decent price. At the moment, the Packers have around $23 million in cap space to play around with for the remainder of the 2024 season, which will include the cost of replacing players who land on injured reserve and paying the practice squad.
Some might ask, “Who cares about what Case Keenum did in 2016,” though. For that, I also ran the 2024 preseason numbers (small sample size warning) for all 14 qualifying experienced reserve quarterbacks who passed the Clifford-Pratt line. All but one, the Cleveland Browns’ Tyler Huntley, have had better preseasons than the Packers’ backups. Funny enough, Zach Wilson, who just helped Denver beat Green Bay, is one of the best recent performers on the list.
So if you wanted to make a little watch list going into the final week of the preseason, hoping to get a look at a potential future Packers QB2, this is the list you probably want to work off of. Whether or not these players have a passport, or can quickly get one, for the team’s regular season opener in Brazil is another story.
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