Chicago Bears Quarterback Battles: Mitch Trubisky versus Josh Allen

Trubisky vs. Allen: Accuracy

Completion Percentage

Mitchell Trubisky has been decent from an accuracy standpoint despite people’s opinions of him. He finds himself with a career completion percentage of 63.4 percent and over the last two seasons he completed 64.7 percent of his 950 attempts. Josh Allen has a horrible 56.3 percent completion percentage. Clearly this is what keeps bringing his QBR down.

Some hold out hope because Allen improved upon his 52.8 percent completion percentage in his rookie season by completing 58.8 percent last season. Over those two seasons, Allen has averaged 56.3 percent. Like the other comparisons, context matters. We need to look at depth of target and also the talent around the quarterback.

Let us look at the talent first. Well, many might find this hard to believe but the Bears talent is leaps and bounds better on offense in both 2018 and 2019. The top target Allen had his rookie season was Kelvin Benjamin. The team also relied on an aging Lesean McCoy. Tight end Charles Clay was probably the third-best player on the offense. Beyond that it was trash. 2019 receivers were better with John Brown and an improved Zay Jones, but the rest of the positions were meh.

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The Chicago Bears had Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel and Anthony Miller. All three would have likely been the top target in 2018 and Robinson is by far better than anything Allen has had to throw to in both years. Beyond that, Jordan Howard and David Montgomery have been solid while Tarik Cohen and Cordarelle Patterson have provided some solid flex play. Only the tight end position has been worse for the Bears.

The difference in talent at the skill positions shows when you look at the drop rates. In Allen’s rookie season, the team had a 5.9 percent drop rate. This actually got worse in 2019 as it jumped to 7.2 percent. The Chicago Bears had an unbelievable drop rate of 2.6 percent in 2018 but came back to earth in 2019 with a 5.5 percent rate.

Looking at some more advanced stats we see that Trubisky wins with 74.5 percent of his passes being on-target per pass attempt compared to Allen who found his throws on-target only 73.2 percent of the time. This excludes any throwaways or spikes.

What really stands out is the bad throw percentage. Allen found himself throwing 25.7 percent of his throws poorly in 2018 and 20.3 percent of his throws were bad in 2019. Trubisky’s bad throw percentage was 18.4 both years.

Now for the depth of targets and completions. In 2018, Trubisky averaged 8.8 air yards per intended pass attempt (IAY/PA) but only 6.3 air yards per completion (CAY/Cmp). Allen, on the other hand, averaged 11.0 air yards per intended pass attempt and averaged 6.7 air yards per completion. Both quarterback’s air yards dropped in 2019. Trubisky finished with 8.0 IAY/PA and 5.3 CAY/Cmp while Allen’s dropped to 9.3 and 6.5 respectfully.

Allen clearly likes to throw the ball deep and this is why his completion percentage is lower. The completed air yards are close in 2018, but Trubisky’s dropped drastically in 2019. Trubisky still wins this one though based on the more accurate passes, but the depth of target brings it closer to a tie.