Yesterday Florida Danny introduced (or re-introduced) folks to some of Football Outsiders advanced statistical metrics. He'll have some more later today as well. However, I wanted to address an issue we've all discussed, but I'll be using some basic statistics.
I'm here to maybe get some insight into Shaun Hill's notorious 3rd quarter struggles. I don't know if the advanced metrics would show this, but just looking at basic stuff, here are some of Shaun Hill's career statistics by quarter:
| Qtr | QB Rating | Comp. % | Yards | Yards/Att | TD/Int |
| 1st | 100.7 | 71.4 | 642 | 8.3 | 1/0 |
| 2nd | 85.5 | 57.4 | 703 | 7.0 | 7/4 |
| 3rd | 67.2 | 59.6 | 471 | 5.3 | 2/3 |
| 4th | 100.9 | 67.5 | 1084 | 6.9 | 9/2 |
So what is up with this? If you look by season the numbers aren't exactly the same, but the general pattern is consistent across last year and this year. This post is more meant to discuss his 3rd quarter struggles, but I suppose we could also contrast that with his success in other quarters. I could understand the boost in 4th quarter yards if the team is constantly trying to come back. However, as this shows, he's also more accurate in the 4th quarter.
This is probably something we could break down in much more detail, but let's work with what we've got for now. Any thoughts as to the disparity in performance? After all, it's great to see the 49ers playing well overall, but it's kind of depressing to go into a given quarter almost assured of a relatively poor performance from your QB.