Seahawks vs. Panthers: How do opposing quarterbacks fare their first time at The CLink?

This Saturday, Cam Newton will be playing the Seahawks at Century Link Field for the first time in his career.

"So how," you ask, "have quarterbacks performed in their first start at the Clink?" I mean, like, totally literally, you posed the question on one of our Town Hall-style threads this past week. I won't reveal precisely who 'you' are, in case you don't want to be smeared by association, but there it is.

The query requires a bit more research than answering the existence-causality paradox, but nothing we can't knock out in a few hours. So I dug up all the first-time starters in the Pete Carroll era (2010 - present). This excludes some quarterbacks (e.g. Manning & Manning) who played at the Clink in that time frame but who had also played at Seattle earlier in their careers. Also, note that the distinction was made by manually checking each quarterback's career game logs, so the minuscule probability of error exists and any wagers you make based on the following data are at your own risk. And I still expect a cut if you win something.

Field Gull readers by now should be familiar with ANY/A (adjusted net yards per attempt), which is the average yards gained on each pass play, with sacks (and yards lost) included, and a 20-yard bonus for TD's with a 45-yard penalty for interceptions. It's a good single-value statistic, and works nicely when you want to compare or average a lot of quarterback games. Because the "first time" conditional naturally includes a lot of young quarterbacks and even backup quarterbacks, I included each QB's ANY/A for the relevant season in order to compare how much better/worse he played at the Clink.

Quarterback Performance in first career game at Seattle, 2010-2014:

Notes and Caveats

Matt Ryan's 2010 game (5.08 any/a) and Philip Rivers' 2010 game (6.65 any/a) were played against a starting secondary that included Earl Thomas, Marcus Trufant, Lawyer Milloy, and Kelly Jennings. But the point here was to look at the effect (if any) of playing against Seattle's hostile home crowd, not the Legion of Boom, so those games are included.

Just 2 out of 21 visiting teams won: Matt Ryan's Falcons in 2010, and Andy Dalton's Bengals in 2011. Dalton did play against an early incarnation of the LoB (Browner, Sherman, Chancellor and Thomas), and his 3.67 any/a suggests he struggled. The Bengals victory came from their defense and special teams: Seattle's offense committed 4 turnovers (2 lost fumbles, 1 interception, 1 turnover on downs) and the Bengals racked up 324 return yards.

Colin Kaepernick's 2012 performance looks respectable on first glance (5.57 any/a), but a good chunk of his production came in a clock-killing 4th quarter garbage-time drive against Seattle's backups. Removing that final touchdown drive, Kaepernick had a much-less impressive 4.07 any/a.

Three other quarterbacks posted an any/a of at least 5.0, including Tony Romo 2012 (5.41 any/a) and Tom Brady 2012 (5.73 any/a). But both are very good, veteran quarterbacks, both were off their regular-season average, and both games were won by Seattle.

The biggest anomaly is Mike Glennon and the Buccaneers in 2013. While Glennon certainly deserves praise for keeping a level head (on a dubiously thin neck), it should be noted that he had just 21 drop-backs for 145 net passing yards. The high any/a (at 7.04, the only quarterback to exceed his own season average) was made possible by Tampa Bay's 38 rushes for 205 yards.

Most of the other quarterbacks were abysmal. Max Hall, Christian Ponder, and John Skelton were downright hadal. Yeah, that's right. Our defense is so suffocating we have to create neologisms out of geological terms to describe their negative adjusted net yards.

Conclusions

If you want to know my opinion-- and surely you do, if you are still reading-- I don't think this has a lot of predictive power. Drew Brees, Colin Kaepernick, and Carson Palmer all performed worse in their second game at Seattle than they did in their first. No doubt the environment plays a role, and we as fans better not slack off on the noise lest we see Earl Thomas sprinting through the stands questioning our dedication (don't think he won't).

But the quality of the defense matters more. And that quality has been pretty good. So while a past record of performance won't actually help, it's a nice record that we can hopefully supplement with another brutal inauguration into the Century Link experience.