Stats Insight of the Day: The Decline of Mark Sanchez

With their playoff chances finally crushed in a loss to the Titans on the big stage of Monday Night Football, the New York Jets have decided to turn to a third-string quarterback to lead their team through the last two games of the season. All season it seemed that the benching of Mark Sanchez was not a question of “if” but more of a question of “when.” Sanchez is tied for second-most interceptions in the league with 17, has the fourth-worst completion percentage with 54.8%, and is ranked 30th in yards per attempt this season at 6.41.

While these numbers are reason to be disappointed in his performance this year, one other figure shows why he absolutely needed to be benched. We looked into how many touchdowns and turnovers Sanchez has been responsible for over the past four years and came up with the TD-TO Differential.

 

By this statistic, Mark Sanchez is having the worst year of his career and is more responsible for giving the ball to the other team than getting into the endzone. It is even more troubling to see how he has done compared to the competition. We took the quarterbacks who ranked in the top 30 for passing attempts this season and looked at their TD-TO Differential to see where Sanchez ranks amongst the competition.

With Sanchez at the bottom of this list, it’s clear that the Jets are making the right decision in finally benching the man that has led them to two AFC championship games during his tenure. Between his TD-TO Differential plummeting to the worst of his career and hitting the low for quarterbacks this season, the end of the Mark Sanchez era in New York looks to have finally arrived.