Friend of the program Bryan Frye is back for another guest post. As regular readers know, Bryan operates his own fantastic site, http://www.thegridfe.com. You can view all of Bryan’s guest posts here, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

The 2015 regular season is in the books, and all the relevant stats are at our disposal to poke and prod as our hearts desire. Chase already discussed the fact that, statistically, this has been the best passing season in NFL history. League and team passing records fell on a seemingly regular basis, and a few receiving records were in serious jeopardy by season’s end. ^[1]We probably all know by now that Julio Jones and Antonio Brown became just the third and fourth receivers ever to break the 1,800 yards mark in a single season. It’s also pretty common knowledge … Continue reading [continue reading…]

Friend of the program Bryan Frye is back for another guest post. As regular readers know, Bryan operates his own fantastic site, http://www.thegridfe.com. You can view all of Bryan’s guest posts here, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

Five weeks of regular season football have come and gone. Those five weeks have seen quarterbacks attempt 5,470 passes and take 5,817 dropbacks. Throw in rushes, and quarterbacks have been involved in 6,184 action plays thus far. ^[1]Keep in mind this was written before the Thursday night game featuring Matt Ryan and Drew Brees. That seems like a large number, but it is only a fraction of the average 20,764 action plays quarterbacks have been involved in over the last two seasons. ^[2]Quarterbacks are currently on pace for just over 21,000 plays, which would be the highest total in history by a small margin. There are still 358 games left in the regular season (69.9% of the schedule), and we cannot know with epistemic certainty what is going to happen between now and January 3.

However, it is still fun to take the plays we have seen (and the stats those plays have produced) and use them to assess the quarterback landscape of this young season. The following tables present raw, rate, and adjusted stats for the 35 quarterbacks who have attempted at least 70 passes this season. ^[3]The NFL official requirement for rate stat qualification. I’ll provide some brief commentary, but I’d like to let Chase’s educated audience come up with their own points. Without further ado, here are the raw stats… [continue reading…]

Today we have a guest post from James Deyerle, a longtime reader of this blog and the PFR blog, and who lives in Richmond, VA. As always, we thank our guests for contributing to the site.

If there’s one thing NFL fans can’t resist, it’s ranking quarterbacks, but while those conversations are often framed with stats, playoff success, awards, and more, it misses a big part of how fans and front offices treat quarterbacks. For example, despite similar stat lines in 2014 Vikings fans are justified in feeling very differently about Teddy Bridgewater than Bears fans feel about Jay Cutler.

One of the biggest reasons is age: Cutler was 31 and in his 9^th season last year, while Bridgewater was only a 22 year old rookie, making him one of the youngest rookies in the past 15 years to see significant playing time. A collection of studies on quarterback aging from Chase, Neil Paine, and Brian Burke show that as a group, quarterbacks rapidly improve into their late 20s, peak for a few years, and then begin an accelerating decline throughout their 30s. This expected improvement lends promise to Bridgewater’s young career while the projected decline condemns Cutler’s, which informs our opinions and feelings on these quarterbacks. As such, I decided to create a system that more accurately reflects a team’s quarterback situation. [continue reading…]

Longtime commenter Jason Winter has chimed in with today’s guest post. Jason is a part-time video game journalist and full-time sports fan. You can read more of him at his blog: https://jasonwinter.wordpress.com/, and follow him on twitter at @winterinformal.

As always, we thank Jason for contributing. He submitted this article a couple of weeks before the season began, but I was a bit tardy in posting. But hey, it’s still relevant.

A couple of months ago, I happened upon Peter King’s NFL power rankings, where he listed Baltimore as his #1 team. “Really?” I thought. I mean, they were pretty good last year, going 10-6, but they were the #6 seed in the AFC and hadn’t done anything really notable in the offseason. Surely you wouldn’t rank them above obvious powerhouses like Seattle, New England, Green Bay, Indianapolis, or Denver, right?

We know that the best teams in any given year rarely are the best the next year. And sometimes teams can have complete turnarounds – for better (like the 1998-1999 Rams) or worse (like the 1993-1994 Oilers). But how uncommon would it be for a team like the 2014 Ravens to actually be the best team – or at least the Super Bowl winner – the next year?

Excluding the years following the two strike-shortened years, I took every Super Bowl-winning team in the NFL in the 16-game-season era and looked at how good they were the year before winning it all. I charted each team’s wins and SRS the previous year, as well as their league-wide rank in wins and SRS in those years. In case of ties, I averaged out the ordinal rankings, which is why you’ll see several fractional rankings in the table below. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post/contest comes from Thomas McDermott, a licensed land surveyor in the State of California, a music theory instructor at Loyola Marymount University, and an NFL history enthusiast. As always, we thank him for his hard work.

In a previous post, I provided SRS-style ratings for all offenses since 1970, using only points scored by the actual offense (including field goals). Today, I’ll do the same thing for defenses – meaning, of course, our “metric” will be points allowed only by the actual defense. ^[1]To quickly recap: SRS ratings for offense (OSRS) and defense (DSRS) on PFR’s website include points scored by the defense and special teams. To get a more accurate points-based evaluation of … Continue reading

Here’s how to read the table below: in 1970, the Vikings allowed 10.2 points per game, 8.2 of which came from touchdowns and field goals allowed by the defense. This leaves 2.0 PPG scored by their opponent’s defense or special teams (i.e., due to Minnesota’s offense or special teams). ^[2]In this case, it was the result of three touchdowns off of offensive turnovers and one on special teams, as highlighted by Chase in this post on estimated points allowed per drive. Their 8.2 Def PA/G was 9.5 points better than league average; after adjusting for strength of opponent, their rating remains at 9.5. Their overall points allowed SRS rating (DSRS) is 9.2, meaning PFR’s defensive SRS rating undersells them by 0.3 points. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

On Monday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. On Tuesday, I looked at the quarterbacks who gained the most or fewest yards through the air per attempt or dropback, and on Wednesday, we looked at completions relative to league average. Yesterday, the metric of the day was touchdown pass rate.

As promised, this article, “Dr. Safelove or: How I Learned to Start Worrying and Fear the Bomb,” centers on interceptions. The methodology here is no different from before: Figure out each player’s rate stats relative to the average of the rest of the league minus that player (LMP) that year and multiply it by his attempts to find the marginal total.

The caveat for this article is a big one: it is mathematically impossible for modern players to rank highly on a per play basis. In 1945, Sammy Baugh threw interceptions at a rate 7.4% lower than his peers. Because the league average today is so low (about 2.5%), a current quarterback would have to throw negative interceptions to match a -7.4% relative pick rate. Even if a quarterback threw 700 passes without an interception, the best he could possibly do is about -2.5%. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

On Monday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. On Tuesday, I looked at the quarterbacks who gained the most or fewest yards through the air per attempt or dropback. And yesterday, we looked at completions relative to league average.

Today’s article, “Mile High Club or: Scoring through the Air,” is an examination of how often quarterbacks threw touchdowns. ^[1]Note that I didn’t say “how well quarterbacks threw touchdowns.” A screen with 80 YAC, a bomb to a wide open speedster, and a missile into tight coverage all count for six on the stat sheets.

I have used the same methodology as before (similar to Chase’s model for Relative Adjusted Net Yards), and I have maintained the same minimum attempt cutoffs. That means we’ll only look at seasons with 224 or more attempts and careers with 1,000 or more attempts. Like before, I didn’t prorate for shorter seasons. ^[2]Feel free to copy the table and make your own spreadsheet if you’d like. Or don’t. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

On Monday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. Yesterday, I looked at the quarterbacks who gained the most or fewest yards through the air per attempt or dropback. As you may have guessed, I’m keeping the theme going today. This article, “Sharpshooters or: Quarterbacks who were Good at Completing Passes,” is an examination of how passers stacked up statistically against their peers in the not-super-important category of completion rate. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

Yesterday, I looked at which quarterbacks since 1960 helped or hurt their teams the most by taking or avoiding sacks. In this post, “Frequent Flyers or: Quarterbacks who Gained Yards through the Air,” I’ll do something similar but with passing yards instead of sacks.

Because we have the necessary passing stats dating back to 1932, I can take this study back nearly three decades further than the previous one. However, I will use Chase’s estimated sack statistics to examine net yards for all post-1960 quarterbacks.

The math is simple: for each player, subtract his individual raw totals from those of every other quarterback in the league to find the league minus player (LMP) Y/A or NY/A. Next, subtract the LMP rates from the individual player rates to find each player’s marginal rate stats. Last, multiply each quarterback’s marginal Y/A by his attempts (or marginal NY/A by his dropbacks) to find marginal yards (or marginal net yards). ^[1]It took as much time to explain as it did to set up in Excel.

Enough explanation – Let’s look at some stats. The first table displays the 1,563 qualifying QB seasons, sorted by marginal yards. Read it thus: In 2001, Kurt Warner threw 546 passes for 4,830 yards, giving him 8.85 Y/A. The average of the rest of the league was 6.69, so Warner had a marginal Y/A of 2.15. This means his 2001 season is worth 1,176 yards above expectation. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

Last Wednesday, Chase unveiled his estimated sack numbers for 1960-1968. ^[1]I can neither confirm nor deny that he did this, at least in part, to give Joe Namath some love. I already had this post planned, but I wanted to wait for the estimated stats before running the numbers, as doing so would allow me to go back to 1960 instead of 1969.

This article, “Upright Citizens (Quarterbacks who Avoided Sacks)” is a brief examination of those quarterbacks who saved their teams valuable field position by avoiding sacks. By extension, it is also an examination of those quarterbacks who did the opposite. When Chase presented his 1960-1968 data, he included everyone who threw a pass during that timeframe. Because I am only concerned with quarterbacks, I have removed all non-quarterback plays and recalculated the metrics. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post/contest comes from Thomas McDermott, a licensed land surveyor in the State of California, a music theory instructor at Loyola Marymount University, and an NFL history enthusiast. As always, we thank him for his hard work.

When looking at teams’ offensive SRS ratings (OSRS) on PFR, we know that those number also include points scored by the defense and special teams – punt and kick return touchdowns, interception and fumble return touchdowns, return scores on blocked punts and field goals, and safeties. This makes OSRS not as accurate a point-based rating of the offense “proper” as it could be. But, considering those “non-offense” types of scores make up a small fraction of a team’s overall points scored in a season (the average is around 8% since 1970), we can generally ignore this “hiccup” in the system.

Well, most of us can ignore it; for some reason, I cannot! My curiosity has gotten the better of me, so I decided to run offensive and defensive SRS ratings for each team since the merger, using only points that we would normally credit the offense for scoring (or the defense for allowing) – passing and rushing touchdowns, and field goals. ^[1]I have to assume that at some point Chase or one of the guys at PFR has run the numbers for “SRS without special teams/defense scores”, but I have yet to find it.

As the title states, this is a data dump; I’m hoping that readers of this site will find the info useful for their own research or general interest. Today, we’ll just look at the offense, I’ll post the numbers for defense in a follow-up post. [continue reading…]

Today’s guest post/contest comes from Adam Harstad, a co-writer of mine at Footballguys.com. You can follow Adam on twitter at @AdamHarstad.

Like most of you, ^[1]I assume. I like to spend my weekends building custom databases of NFL statistics. This past weekend, while doing just that, I happened to notice that Marshall Faulk topped 2,000 yards from scrimmage in both 2000 and 2001 despite playing just 14 games each year. Which sent me scrambling to the Pro-Football-Reference.com player season finder ^[2]Obviously. so I could share on Twitter the novel observation that Marshall Faulk was, indeed, good at football.

As luck would have it, the humble proprietor of Football Perspective just happened to be sitting at home, trolling around on Twitter, and likewise playing with various historical databases. ^[3]On second thought, I doubt luck played any role. He saw my tweet and responded in kind, with a list of all NFL players sorted by average yards per game from age 25 to 28.

All of this inspired a fun back-and-forth between various other users on Twitter which culminated in me providing a list of all running back seasons with 250+ carries and 50+ yards per game receiving. It’s a rather short list featuring just 8 total seasons. Marshall Faulk accounted for four of those eight seasons, consecutively, from 1998 to 2001.

I quickly noticed an interesting thing about that last list, though. Not only did Marshall Faulk account for half of those seasons in NFL history, but he actually had the top four by receiving yards per game. In fact, if we adjust our “receiving yards per game” baseline from 50 to 54, we wind up with this list, instead.

Now that is a rather more impressive list. Using just two simple cutoffs, we had managed to create a list that was just four names long, and every single one of those names was “Marshall Faulk.”

Seguing away for a second… in the early days of the internet, before there were continents composed solely of cat pictures (or handy NFL season finders to query, for that matter), people would resort to pretty much anything to keep themselves entertained. One game that sprung from these dark times was known as “Googlewhacking”. A Googlewhack was two words that, when entered together into the search bar of the eponymous Google, matched just a single result on the entire internet.

For instance, there was once a time when searching the words “ambidextrous scallywags” (but without the quotation marks) would return just a single match. This was then a successful Googlewhack. Googlewhacks were, by their very nature, ephemeral constructs, since the very act of publishing a Googlewhack would cause the published result to show up on Google and would therefore cause the words to lose their Googlewhack status. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows are Brad’s thoughts on a stat-based quarterback ranking system.

I recently concluded an eight-part series on the greatest quarterbacks in the history of professional football. Those rankings were subjective, based on everything I know about the players: stats, awards and honors, coaching and teammates, team success and postseason performance, reputation, the eye test, and so forth.

But I also have a method for classifying quarterbacks statistically. I actually published the results of this formula three months ago, but without revealing the process that produced those results. A number of readers were curious about my methodology, and in this post, I’ll finally explain how the sausage gets made. The math is not complicated — you don’t need a stats background to understand this — but there’s a lot of it: you could calculate most of this with a pencil and paper, but by the end, you’re going to want a spreadsheet. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

I’ve been studying NFL history my whole life, but until this year, I never published my list of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. This is the final installment in an eight-part series, so let’s review the list thus far.

The best pre-Modern Era quarterbacks: Sammy Baugh, Dutch Clark, Ed Danowski, Paddy Driscoll, Benny Friedman, Arnie Herber, Cecil Isbell, Sid Luckman, Bernie Masterson, Ace Parker, and Bob Waterfield. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

This week, I’m profiling the players who rank 6-10 on my list, counting down toward number one. Please note: at this point, we’re talking about the best of the best QBs. When I mention a player’s weaknesses, I’m not trying to insult him, just explaining why he doesn’t rate even higher.

10. Roger Staubach
Dallas Cowboys, 1969-79
22,700 yards, 153 TD, 109 INT, 83.4 rating

Roger Staubach was the best quarterback of the 1970s. He led all passers in rating and in TD/INT differential (+45), the latter nearly doubling a second-place tie between Fran Tarkenton and Kenny Anderson (+24). Despite playing only eight full seasons, Staubach also ranked among the top three QBs of the ’70s in both passing yards and rushing yards. He was the first-team QB on the NFL’s All-1970s Team.

Staubach’s statistics are exceptional. He led the league in passer rating four times, and retired with the highest rating in NFL history. Staubach was distinguished by his combination of short-range and downfield accuracy. Throwing underneath, he hit the receiver in stride, but he was also a great downfield passer. A dangerous dual-threat, Staubach was also known for his running, an ability that earned him the nickname “Roger the Dodger.” Staubach rushed for 2,204 yards and 19 TDs, ranking among the top 10 rushing QBs every full season of his career. [continue reading…]

Adam Steele is back for another guest post. And, as always, we thank him for that. You can view all of Adam’s posts here.

Within the analytics community, we seem to have reached a consensus that ANY/A is the best box score metric for measuring passing efficiency. Over at the Intentional Rounding blog, Danny Tuccitto tested the validity of ANY/A using a technique called Confirmatory Factor Analysis. You can read his three part analysis here, here, and here. Essentially, he discovers that Y/A and TD % are valid statistics for measuring QB quality, while sack % and INT % are not. At first I was skeptical, but after some pondering I came up with a half-baked theory of why this might be true:

As we evaluate the potential for an athlete to succeed in professional sports, there are two kinds of statistics: Qualifying and Disqualifying. In the case of quarterbacks, I define a qualifying statistic as a minimum threshold the player must meet to even be considered NFL worthy. If we deconstruct ANY/A into its four components, Y/A and TD % emerge as qualifying statistics. In today’s NFL, I estimate that a QB must possess a true talent level of at least 6.0 Y/A and 2.5 TD % to deserve a roster spot. There are very few people in the world who can reach those thresholds against NFL caliber defenses (my best guess is around 100). With these two simple statistics, we’ve already weeded out the vast majority of quarterbacks from ever playing in the NFL.

Next, we turn to sack % and INT %, which are disqualifying statistics. By themselves, neither of these skills qualify a QB to play in the NFL. Anybody can avoid sacks or interceptions if they’re not worried about gaining yards. However, the inability to avoid sacks or interceptions will disqualify a QB from the NFL, regardless of how high his Y/A and TD % might be. I estimate these limits as roughly a true talent 12% sack rate and 4.5% INT rate. The population of quarterbacks who can stay under these limits AND perform above the minimum Y/A and TD % is very small. In most years, there aren’t enough of these QB’s to fill the 32 NFL starting spots. Among quarterbacks who receive significant NFL playing time, there is a strong survivorship bias for the disqualifying statistics of sack % and INT %, as the quarterbacks who make too many negative plays have already been weeded out of the sample. Given that Y/A and TD % are far rarer skills with no upper limits, these two statistics are the true measuring stick at the NFL level.

To test this theory, I created a very simple metric called Positive Yards Per Attempt (PY/A). It’s just passing yards plus a 20 yard bonus for touchdowns, divided by pass attempts (which does not sacks). I then converted PY/A into a value metric by measuring it relative to league average (RPY/A) ^[1]Note that in calculating league average, I excluded the player in question from the league average totals. So each player is compared to a slightly different definition of league average. and VALUE above average by multiplying RPY/A by attempts. We already have these variations of ANY/A (that is, RANY/A and VALUE), so comparing the two metrics is very straightforward. Since the merger, there have been 1,423 QB seasons of with least 200 dropbacks. This table lists the top 100 seasons of PY/A VALUE, as well as the ANY/A VALUE and rankings for these players. The “Diff” column signifies the gap in ranking between the the two metrics, with a positive number indicating a QB who is favored by PY/A and negative number favoring ANY/A.

This list makes a strong case for the validity of PY/A. It’s populated by the greatest QB seasons of all time at the top, and filled out by a number of other notably great and very good seasons. There are a few head scratchers (most notably Lynn Dickey at #9), but for the most part it’s a very credible list that closely mirrors the ANY/A rankings. That’s the point, really. When we remove sacks and interceptions from ANY/A, it doesn’t lose much accuracy, if any. At first glance, I was concerned that PY/A systematically overrates certain quarterbacks and underrates others. That’s probably true to a certain degree. However, I would argue that ANY/A has the same issue, except it’s a different set of quarterbacks who are over- and underrated by it. The true balance almost certainly lies somewhere in between the two metrics. FWIW, the correlation between RPY/A and RANY/A is a robust 0.877, with an r-squared of 0.769.

Now lets look at the other end of the spectrum – the 100 worst PY/A VALUE seasons since 1970.

I actually find the Worst list even more validating of PY/A than the Best list. When we think of bad quarterbacks, most us reflexively focus on quarterbacks who make a lot of mistakes and sink their teams in obvious and memorable ways. And this list is filled with conventionally terrible quarterbacks. But remember, nearly all of their negative plays have been removed, so it’s not their mistakes putting them on the list. It’s their impotence. These guys couldn’t make plays or move the ball down the field, killing their teams slowly and agonizingly. At the very top (err, bottom), we find Derek Carr’s rookie year. A lot of fans and pundits classify Carr as a budding franchise QB who showed “flashes of potential”. Actually no, he showed the exact opposite. While the younger Carr avoided sacks and interceptions at a reasonable rate, his Y/A was absolutely pathetic. Even accounting for his lousy supporting cast, that is a major red flag. It’s much easier for a young QB to reign in his mistakes than it is for him to suddenly learn how to make positive plays down the field. Blake Bortles fits precisely the same troubling profile, so I don’t have much hope for the class of 2014.

Does this change your feelings about ANY/A? Do you think Danny and I are wasting our time? If anyone else has created their own passing metric using basic stats, I’d love to hear about it.

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

This week, I’m profiling the players who rank 11-20 on my list, counting down toward number one. Please note: at this point, we’re talking about the best of the best QBs. When I mention a player’s weaknesses, I’m not trying to insult him, just explaining why he doesn’t rate even higher.

20. Y.A. Tittle
Baltimore Colts, 1948-50; San Francisco 49ers, 1951-60; New York Giants, 1961-64
33,070 yards, 242 TD, 248 INT, 74.3 rating

Y.A. Tittle retired as the all-time leader in passing yards and passing TDs. Those are holy marks, passed from Tittle to Johnny Unitas, then to Fran Tarkenton and Dan Marino, on to Brett Favre and now on their way to Peyton Manning. Tittle led the NFL in passing touchdowns three times — including 36 in 1963, a record that lasted more than 20 years. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. He’s contributed today’s guest post, and we thank him for that. This one is certainly thought-provoking.

I recently ranked Doug Flutie 31st among the greatest quarterbacks of all time, ahead of accomplished players like Kurt Warner, Boomer Esiason, and Ben Roethlisberger. Perhaps predictably, the unconventional ranking for Flutie generated questions, comments, and plain disagreement. I hope this follow-up will clear some of the confusion and help readers understand my reasoning.

I was attempting to rank the greatest quarterbacks ever — not just the best NFL quarterbacks — and this was not a stat-based evaluation. Statistics play a large role in the assessment of players, but they do not form an exclusive basis for it. When I rated Flutie ahead of Warner and company, I wasn’t suggesting that he had a better NFL career than those players, just that he was a better quarterback.

Here’s a breakdown of Flutie’s career:

* New Jersey Generals, 1985 (USFL)
* Chicago Bears, 1986-87
* New England Patriots, 1987-89
* BC Lions, 1990-91 (CFL)
* Calgary Stampeders, 1992-95 (CFL)
* Toronto Argonauts, 1996-97 (CFL)
* Buffalo Bills, 1998-2000
* San Diego Chargers, 2001-04
* New England Patriots, 2005 [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

This week, I’m profiling the players who rank 21-30 on my list. The players are ranked in order, but please don’t read too much into that: I consider this a group of quarterbacks, all roughly the same level. If you’re outraged that #26 is higher than #29, you have my blessing to flip them.

30. John Brodie
San Francisco 49ers, 1957-73
31,548 yards, 214 TD, 224 INT, 72.3 rating [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

This week, I’m profiling the players who rank about 30-40 on my list. The players are ranked in order, but please don’t read too much into that: I consider this a group of quarterbacks, all roughly the same level. If you’re furious that #34 is higher than #37, you have my blessing to flip them.

39. Steve McNair
Houston/Tennessee Oilers/Titans, 1995-2005; Baltimore Ravens, 2006-07
31,304 yards, 174 TD, 119 INT, 82.8 rating

Mark Brunell, Rich Gannon, Jeff Garcia, and Steve McNair all played in the late ’90s and early ’00s, with low INT rates and excellent running. They’re easy to compare. The stats below include sacks:

McNair has the lowest passer rating, but the most net yards (33,327) and the most total touchdowns (211). He and Brunell had the most good seasons, he and Gannon were named NFL MVP, and McNair stands alone as a playmaking scrambler. Only five players in NFL history have 30,000 passing yards and 3,000 rushing yards: John Elway, Donovan McNabb, Fran Tarkenton, Steve Young, and Steve McNair. As a dual-threat QB, McNair was one of the finest ever to play. His 64 rushing yards in Super Bowl XXXIV is the record for quarterbacks. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

This week, I’m profiling the players who rank about 40-48 on my list, in alphabetical order:

Charlie Conerly
New York Giants, 1948-61
19,488 yards, 173 TD, 167 INT, 68.2 rating

The hype was always there for Chuck Conerly. He was a star at Ole Miss, and he was the Giants’ quarterback when they were the only team in New York. Playing for a coaching staff that included Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi, alongside Hall of Fame players like Rosey Brown, Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, and Emlen Tunnell, Conerly was set up for success. The Giants were competitive every season, and they won an NFL championship in 1956. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. What follows is Brad’s latest work on the greatest quarterbacks of all time.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

I’ve been studying NFL history throughout my life. It’s a journey that began the first time I watched my dad’s copy of NFL’s Greatest Hits on VHS, accelerating when I read Total Football II, and continuing when I began sportswriting over a decade ago.

Something I’ve never done is publish my list of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. I’m finally stepping into the ring. But because I’ve done so much research over the years, this is not a simple list. Instead, I’ll present my choices as a series of articles, highlighting about 10 players per list, and counting down to number one. We began last week, with quarterbacks who preceded the Modern Era, like Sammy Baugh and Sid Luckman. [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. You may recall that in April, he gave us a sneak peak at some quarterback rankings. Today, we begin seeing the words behind those numbers, starting with the pre-modern era quarterbacks.

Part I: Pre-Modern Era
Part II: 49-101
Part III: 40-48
Part IV: 31-39
Part V: 21-30
Part VI: 11-20
Part VII: 6-10
Part VIII: 1-5

I’ve been studying NFL history throughout my adult life. It’s a journey that began the first time I watched my dad’s copy of NFL’s Greatest Hits on VHS, accelerating when I read Total Football II, and continuing when I began sportswriting over a decade ago.

Something I’ve never done is to publish my list of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history. Sparked by Adam Steele’s crowd-sourcing project here at Football Perspective, I’m finally stepping into the ring. But because I’ve done so much research over the years, this is not a simple list. Instead, I’ll present my choices as a series of articles, highlighting about 10 players per list, and counting down to number one. [continue reading…]

Andrew Healy, frequent contributor here and at Football Outsiders, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Andrew’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @AndHealy.

For a stats guy, the Wells Report is gripping reading, particularly the appendices provided by the consulting firm Exponent. The conclusion there is pretty simple. Compared to referee Walt Anderson’s pregame measurements, the Patriots’ footballs dropped significantly further in pressure than the Colts’ footballs did. Therefore, even if Tom Brady’s involvement is unclear, a Patriots’ employee probably deflated the balls.

At first glance, that evidence seems pretty convincing, maybe even strong enough to conclude more definitively that tampering occurred. And it is kind of awesome that the officials even created a control group. But there is a problem with making firm conclusions: timing. As Exponent acknowledges, the measured pressure of the balls depends on when the gauging took place. The more time that each football had to adjust to the warmer temperature of the officials’ locker room at halftime, the higher the ball pressure would rise.

And, not surprisingly given the Colts’ accusations, the officials measured the Patriots’ footballs first. This means that the New England footballs must have had less time to warm up than the Indianapolis footballs. Is that time significant? We will get to that, but it does make for a good argument that the Indianapolis footballs are not an adequate control group for the New England footballs. Given the order of events, we would expect the drop of pressure from Anderson’s initial measurements to be lower for the Colts’ balls that had more time indoors at halftime. As the Wells report notes, the likely field temperature was in the 48-50 degree range, compared to the 71-74 degree range for the room where the footballs were measured.

So, how much lower? Here it gets a little fuzzy. The report is clear that the Patriots footballs were gauged first during halftime, but it is unclear about whether the second step was to reinflate the Patriots’ balls or to measure the four Colts’ balls. In Appendix 1 (see p. 2 of the appendix), Exponent notes “although there remains some uncertainty about the exact order and timing of the other two events, it appears likely the reinflation and regauging occurred last.” If events unfolded this way, it would make the Indianapolis footballs at least a better sort of control group. [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site http://www.thegridfe.com/, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

Last week, I posted a quarterback performance metric that accounts for both passing and rushing. The base stat, Total Adjusted Yards per Play, is easy to comprehend and easy to figure out yourself with basic box score data. My original post only included performance that occurred during or after the 2002 season, because I don’t have spike and kneel data going back further than that. For the sake of consistency, I wanted to maintain the same parameters when calculating career values.

Before we get into the tables, I’d like to first briefly talk about what these numbers are and what they are not.

The formula, in case you forgot: [continue reading…]

Bryan Frye, owner and operator of the great site www.thegridfe.com/, is back for another guest post. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link, and follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle.

I spent a few weeks this offseason parsing out quarterback spike and kneel numbers from post-2002 play by play data. Chase published the findings, which I believe are a useful resource when trying to assess a QB’s stats. ^[1]For instance, 180 of Peyton Manning’s 303 rush attempts since 2002 have been kneels. He has lost 185 yard on those plays. Why in the world should we include those in his total output? … Continue reading Since I have the data available, I thought it would be good to use it.

Regular readers know Chase uses Adjusted Net Yards per pass Attempt as the primary stat for measuring quarterback performance. ^[2]It’s not perfect, but it’s at least easy to understand and calculate, and is not proprietary like DVOA, ESPN’s QBR, or PFF’s quarterback grades. I am going to do something similar, but I am going to incorporate rushing contribution as well. This is something Chase talked about doing awhile ago, but we didn’t have the kneel or spike data available. ^[3]For another thing Chase wrote on combining rushing and passing data — while (gasp) analyzing Tim Tebow — click here. I’ll call the end product Total Adjusted Yards per Play (TAY/P). The formula, for those curious: ^[4]I use 25 as the modifier for fumbles based on the idea that a QB fumble is worth roughly -50 yards, and fumble recovery is a 50/50 proposition.

[Yards + Touchdowns*20 – Interceptions*45 – Fumbles*25 + First Downs*9] / Plays, where

Yards = pass yards + rush yards – sack yards + yards lost on kneels
Touchdowns = pass touchdowns + rush touchdowns
First Downs = (pass first downs + rush first downs) – touchdowns
Plays = pass attempts + sacks + rush attempts – spikes – kneels [continue reading…]

Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. Brad is also a senior NFL writer at Sports Central. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of quarterbacks and quarterback ranking systems as Brad has over the years. Today, he’s contributed this guest post, but also is asking for your feedback. So please, help Brad and help us, in the comments, with your thoughts.

In recent weeks, Football Perspective has hosted some lively discussions about the greatest quarterbacks of all time. I like to think my approach to these issues is balanced, but it begins with statistics. I am always looking for ways to improve my analysis, and Chase has graciously invited me to post the results of my statistical rating system for quarterbacks.

This is not my personal list of the best quarterbacks in history. My subjective list differs, at time significantly, and I’ll post that next month. The list below is purely statistical, with three notable limitations:

1. It measures regular-season statistics only.

2. It covers the years 1946-2014. The modern quarterback position didn’t really exist prior to the mid 1940s.

2b. QBs who played prior to 1946 are omitted, even if they continued to play after the end of World War II. I don’t want a ranking that shows Sammy Baugh 65th, since it’s missing the first decade of his career. Players like Baugh, Sid Luckman, and Bob Waterfield are deliberately excluded.

3. Only seasons in the NFL, AFL, and AAFC count toward these rankings.

My purpose in posting this list is to ask for help. There are a lot of smart readers and commenters at this site, and I want you to critique my results.

I’m not showing my work yet: I’m not looking for a critique of my process, but of my results. Who’s too high? Who’s too low? You can identify individual players, or patterns. Wherever you think I messed up, I want to hear about it. Please keep in mind, though, that this is purely a stat-based list. It doesn’t represent my opinion, and it’s not slanted toward or against individual players or teams.

But just because this system is unbiased, that doesn’t make it perfect. It is definitely not perfect. But I’m comfortable making subjective adjustments, and that may create blind spots that prevent me from improving the formula. I’m asking you to evaluate the list below and judge where you think it is counterintuitive or inaccurate.

Are players from the ’70s overrated? Are contemporary players underrated? What about players from good teams, and players from bad teams? Are running QBs overrated? Underrated? How about game managers vs. downfield bombers? Is the system fair to them? Are one-year wonders overrated? Are compilers overrated? Players who threw a lot of TDs, a lot of interceptions, players who got sacked a lot? Wherever you think the system is off, I’m eager for your feedback.

Hopefully you find this list interesting, and you can expect a fuller explanation of my rankings in the future, but in the meantime, I appreciate your input and assistance. I included each player’s numerical score, which I realize isn’t in context yet, but it can give you a more precise idea than a simple ranking. Troy Aikman, Donovan McNabb, and Joe Namath, for instance, are effectively tied. Below are the top 125 QBs of the modern era, as ranked by my stat-based system: [continue reading…]

Today is a good day. Data collecting is difficult, but Bryan Frye has made life easier for all of us. Bryan, as you may recall, owns and operates his own great site at http://www.thegridfe.com/, where he focuses on NFL stats and history — and you should really check out his work. You can also view all of Bryan’s guest posts at Football Perspective at this link. You can follow him on twitter @LaverneusDingle. [continue reading…]

Longtime commenter Jason Winter has chimed in with today’s guest post. Jason is a part-time video game journalist and full-time sports fan. You can read more of him at his blog: https://jasonwinter.wordpress.com/, and follow him on twitter at @winterinformal.

As always, we thank Jason for contributing.

A couple months ago, Ryan Lindley had a historically bad postseason game. If he’d thrown just seven more passes in the regular season, he would have made history in another way, too.

Lindley threw 93 passes last season, while recording precisely zero rushes. There was nary a scramble, quarterback sneak, or even a kneeldown on his record for the 2014 season. At 6’3”, 229 lbs., he hardly seems the scrambling type, but he was also only 25 and was, shall we say, far from the best passer in the league. You’d think he might have resorted to using his legs at least once.

Lindley’s 93 passes gives him the second-most passes in a season for a player who recorded zero rushes. The record-holder is a somewhat better-known name: the recently deceased Earl Morrall, who recorded 99 pass attempts with the Colts in 1969 without a carry. On the one hand, Morrall was 10 years older than Lindley, though he was a fairly effective and semi-regular runner throughout his career, averaging 3.7 yards on 235 rushes in 255 career games. Lindley has thus far totaled seven yards on four carries, all coming in 2012. [continue reading…]