The mobility issue
Bledsoe’s inability to move in the pocket has frustrated fans in New England, Buffalo and now Dallas. It has also cut down on his productivity and his ability to win games.

We find just how bad it’s been for Bledsoe when we look at his sack numbers and his Real Yards per Passing Attempt (Real YPA).

Real YPA adds the number of sacks to a player’s passing attempts. It subtracts the yardage lost on these sacks from a player’s passing yards. What it gives us is a more accurate look at how effective a player was at moving the ball each time he dropped back in the pocket.

For example, a quarterback may complete 5 of 10 passes for 100 yards. This would equal a 10.0 YPA. But if he actually stepped back to pass an additional three times, only to get sacked those three times for losses of 20 yards, his YPA figure suddenly does not look so good. In this instance, his Real YPA is 6.15 (100 passing yards — 20 sacks yards = 80 yards/13 attempts).

Bledsoe has been sacked 467 times in his career, for losses of 3,135 yards. It has dropped his Real YPA to 5.77. Again, he finishes well behind his Hall of Fame-worthy contemporaries. Here's a look at all 11 of our quarterbacks in Real Yards Per Attempt:

• Manning — 7.18
• Young — 6.89
• Marino — 6.89
• Montana — 6.74
• Kelly — 6.48
• Favre — 6.34
• Moon — 6.30
• Brady — 6.28
• Aikman — 6.24
• Elway — 6.14
• Bledsoe — 5.77

The last word on Bledsoe
Bledsoe is not a bad quarterback. But he's certainly not a great one. Which means he's not a Hall of Fame quarterback.

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The best thing you can say about Bledsoe is that he's thrown the ball a lot. Certainly, he deserves credit for staying healthy long enough to play 14 NFL seasons and to throw the ball nearly 7,000 times in his career. But that's all he is: a guy who threw the ball often, but not particularly well.

Even the highlights of his career are related solely to volume. Back in 1994, as a second-year player in New England, Bledsoe set NFL single-game records with 45 completions and 70 attempts in a 26-20 overtime win against Minnesota. Seventy attempts to achieve 26 points in nearly five quarters of play is hardly indicative of a player lighting up his opponents with a pinpoint passing attack. Bledsoe also set a single-season record that year, with 691 attempts. What did it mean? New England went 10-6 and lost in the first round of the playoffs.

The other way to measure Bledsoe is by his ability to win football games. Bledsoe's career record as a starter is 98-96. It's not great. It's not bad.

It's just slightly above average.

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