On Wednesday, I explained the methodology for grading each quarterback in each season. Yesterday, I came up with an all-time career list of the best quarterbacks based on their regular season play. Today, a look at playoff performances.

Using the same formula, we can grade each quarterback in each game and adjust for era ^[1]Note that I do not have individual playoff sack data prior to 2008, so I am using pro-rated sack numbers based on team sack data.. However, it should be obvious that the sample sizes here are incredibly small, and the stats are even less likely to tell the true story when looking at just one game. Strength of schedule becomes a significant factor here, as well. But, caveats aside, there’s a lot we can do with playoff data. For example, we can rank every quarterback performance in Super Bowl history:

If you type Montana’s name into the search box, you can see that he has the 1st, 4th, 11th and 27th best performance in Super Bowl history. The best performance in a losing effort goes to Jake Delhomme, who shredded the Patriots secondary in the second half of Super Bowl XXXVIII (he began the game 1 for 9 for 1 yard). The worst performance in a winning effort, unsurprisingly, goes to Ben Roethlisberger in Super Bowl XL, although Joe Theismann against the Dolphins gets an honorable mention. Worst performance overall goes to Kerry Collins, although Craig Morton’s 4 interceptions and 39 yards on 15 attempts against his former team in Super Bowl XII could give Collins a run for his money.

What about best championship game performances in the pre-Super Bowl era?

But we can look at more than just individual game performances. After grading each quarterback in each post-season game, we can then come up with a career post-season rating. There’s an argument to be made for placing more weight on the most important games; what I’ve done in the table below is created an unweighted post-season value added grade and a weighted grade, with the conference championship game counting twice as much as an early-round playoff game, and the Super Bowl (or the championship game in the pre-SB era) counting for three times as much. Here are the career post-season ratings for each quarterback with at least 175 career playoff attempts ^[2]Attempts includes passing attempts, sacks, and rushing touchdowns, sorted by their weighted value. I’ve also listed their number of playoff games, their playoff record (in starts), and their converted yards per play during the playoffs (unweighted):

Not a lot of surprises here. Joe Montana’s Super Bowl performances were legendary, and Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, and Bart Starr became legends based on their playoff performances. Fran Tarkenton, Jim Kelly and Donovan McNabb had their playoff struggles, and come up towards the bottom of the list. Joe Flacco, for all his bravado, has been a miserable quarterback in the postseason.

One thing that might jump out at you is seeing Peyton Manning ahead of Tom Brady as a playoff quarterback. But as Brady has become a more dominant regular season quarterback, his playoff success has faded. Whereas at one time in his career Manning had the choker label — and to some, whenever he makes a mistake in the playoffs, he re-earns such label — he’s had a number of dominant playoff performances. Take a look at the career numbers for both Manning and Brady in the post-season:

It’s still early, but Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers have been outstanding in the postseason. Kurt Warner was an excellent post-season quarterback, which is what will likely push him over the edge as a Hall of Fame candidate.

What sticks out to you when looking at the postseason data?