Manning didn’t have much help during his career

Yesterday, I looked at quarterbacks from 2016 who started at least 8 games and threw at least 150 passes. For those passers, I calculated how many standard deviations above average they were in Relative ANY/A (i.e., how much better they were, statistically, than average) and in winning percentage. I sorted the list by the difference between the two, to find the quarterbacks whose stats and winning percentages diverged by the largest amounts.

What about historically? I performed the same study going back to 1970. And the season that stands out the most is Archie Manning’s 1980 season. That year the Saints were the worst team in the league: New Orleans went 1-15, and every other team won at least 4 games. ^[1]The Saints’ troubles continued into the draft; New Orleans selected George Rogers first overall, when two of the top four, and three of the top eight players went on to be Hall of Famers. Manning started every game for the team because he actually had a strong season, at least statistically: he ranked 9th out of 30 qualifying passers in ANY/A, and had a Relative ANY/A of +0.53. That, of course, is pretty unusual given his team’s 1-15 record.

That stands out as the biggest example of a divergence of stats being more impressive than team record. The best 100 seasons (although by default, the table only lists the top 20) are below:

Number 2 on the list is Steve Young’s 1991 season, which might surprise you because he had a .500 record.  But that year, Mark Rypien had an ANY/A of 8.34, Young was at 8.28, and no other passer was above 7.00.  Rypien, of course, went 14-2 (really, 14-1, as the final game was a meaningless one for Washington and Rypien rested for some of the game), while Young went .500.  That’s one Young stands out, in an interesting contract to Manning, as the second biggest divergence between stats and record.