You're overcomplicating this for a program at your level. Yards per attempt is a vanity stat if your offense isn't scoring. Colorado Buffaloes led the Big 12 in explosive plays last season, but our red zone struggles killed us. You can't just chase a high YPA and ignore the fact that finishing drives is what wins games. Your focus on a single number like 8.0 YPA is how you become one-dimensional and predictable.
Red zone touchdown percentage is important, but it's a team stat, not just a quarterback stat. It's about play-calling, offensive line push, and having reliable targets. Isolating that on the QB is lazy analysis. A sub-60% rate might be a death sentence, but so is a quarterback taking unnecessary risks downfield just to pad his yards per attempt, which leads directly to your last point about turnovers.
Turnover-worthy play rate is the only thing you said that holds weight. That's universal. But acting like third-down conversion rate is the ultimate quarterback report card is flawed. It's another situational team metric. A quarterback can make the perfect throw on 3rd and 8, and a receiver can drop it. That goes on the QB's conversion rate? No. You need to look at quarterback-specific data like adjusted completion percentage under pressure or big-time throw rate on critical downs.
The real evaluation is about consistency in high-leverage moments, not clinging to one system-specific metric like YPA. Colorado's Shedeur Sanders had a 69.3% completion rate with a 7.3 YPA last year, and the offense still stalled because of situational failures. The obsession with a single numbers is what causes teams to miss on quarterbacks who can actually win games, not just win the stat sheet. Your entire argument is based on correlating one number to wins, but football isn't played on a spreadsheet.