In the NFL it’s often not about just having any quarterback, but rather, the right quarterback. Certain signal callers are different in skills and styles, and it’s up to head coaches and offensive coordinators to pick the ones who work well for their specific team.

Pro Football Focus does a lot of snap-by-snap work throughout the season and they don’t just chart completion or incompletion; they often try to bring even more context to decision making and execution. By their marks, they labeled Bucs starting quarterback Jameis Winston as big time thrower but volatile in nature, where backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick came out more as a safe quarterback who didn’t push the ball as much.

The authors of the piece noted on Twitter that Fitzpatrick’s sample size from 2017 was small, and from this week’s Cover 3 we can infer that a longer season would likely put him close to where Winston was on both axes. So, even though they’re in opposite quadrants on this chart, it’s more logical to infer that these two quarterbacks are more similar than the raw data assumes.

But, data is data. Sometimes it’s useful to keep in the back of our minds, even if it’s not perfectly clear or correct at the time.