Joe Montana and Records Against The Spread

by Chase Stuart on July 7, 2018

Joe Montana’s teams were really good at winning football games, going 117-47 and 16-7 in games started by the Hall of Fame quarterback. Montana’s teams had a 0.711 overall winning percentage, which is great; but what’s even more remarkable is how well his teams did against the points spread.

On average, Montana’s teams were favored by 4.5 points. And given the nature of how points spreads work, you would expect most teams to win about half of their games against the spread. But Montana’s teams went 114-73 against the spread, a remarkable winning percentage of 0.610. Much of the success was due to the 49ers of 1981 (15-4 ATS), 1984 (13-5), and 1989 (13-3). The ’81 team was one of the most surprising Super Bowl champions of all time; San Francisco was favored in just 9 of 19 games that year, with three of those spreads being just 1-point lines. And the ’84 and ’89 teams were two of the greatest teams of all time, so it’s not surprising that they had great ATS records, too. The table below show’s the record against the spread for each of Montana’s teams in each season of his career:

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Also really good against the spread, of course, is Tom Brady and the Patriots. The ’01, ’03, and ’04 Patriots were all Super Bowl champions that were remarkable against the spread, combining to go 41-11-3 relative to the Vegas odds. The Patriots remained solid but unspectacular against the spread since then, although the ’16 team went 13-2 with Brady under center.

What makes the Brady stuff all the more remarkable: the last 52 times the Patriots have taken the field with Brady under center, the Patriots have been favored. And you have to go back 60 games, November 2014 game against the Packers, where New England has been underdogs with Brady under center. More on that tomorrow.

As it turns out, I didn’t pick Montana and Brady at random. Among all quarterbacks since 1978 (which is as far back as the PFR points spread data goes), they have the top two winning percentages against the spread (minimum 40 starts). Although that perhaps isn’t as impressive as it might sound at first glance: the rest of the top 5 are David Woodley, Jim McMahon, and Bubby Brister. The table below shows each quarterback’s winning percentage against the spread since 1978; for quarterbacks who started games prior to 1978, they are included, but have ** next to their name as a reminder that this data does not show their full career.

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Rk	Quarterback	FYr	LYr	Starts	Win ATS	Loss ATS	Tie ATS	Win %	Avg Spread
1	Joe Montana	1979	1994	187	114	73	0	0.61	-4.5
2	Tom Brady	2001	2017	288	169	112	7	0.599	-5.4
3	David Woodley	1980	1985	58	34	23	1	0.595	-1.7
4	Jim McMahon	1982	1994	103	58	39	6	0.592	-2
5	Bubby Brister	1986	1998	77	44	30	3	0.591	0.7
6	Aaron Rodgers	2008	2017	158	91	63	4	0.589	-4.2
7	Andrew Luck	2012	2016	76	43	30	3	0.586	-0.1
8	Doug Flutie	1986	2004	68	38	27	3	0.581	0
9	Danny White	1978	1987	102	58	42	2	0.578	-4.3
10	Gary Danielson**	1978	1988	59	33	24	2	0.576	0.7
11	Stan Humphries	1990	1997	87	49	36	2	0.575	-0.7
12	Joe Theismann**	1978	1985	121	68	50	3	0.574	-1.9
13	Donovan McNabb	1999	2011	177	99	73	5	0.573	-2.6
14	Rodney Peete	1989	2003	89	49	36	4	0.573	1.2
15	Charlie Batch	1998	2012	55	31	23	1	0.573	1.8
16	Jay Fiedler	1999	2004	63	35	26	2	0.571	-1.4
17	Vince Young	2006	2011	51	29	22	0	0.569	0.8
18	Jim Plunkett**	1980	1986	67	37	28	2	0.567	-3
19	Andy Dalton	2011	2017	113	61	46	6	0.566	-1
20	Cam Newton	2011	2017	115	63	48	4	0.565	-0.6

Showing 1 to 20 of 154 entries

A couple other notes:

Jay Cutler was 31 games under .500 ATS as a starter, which is a record. The Broncos were particularly bad in games started by Cutler (10-26-1 ATS), and the Bears also went 2-8-1 with Cutler under center in 2013.

You can sort the table by any metric you like. You probably won’t be too surprised — but will still find it interesting — to see that Young and Gabbert played with the largest points spreads, on average, of any quarterback in the study.

Tagged as: Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Vegas

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