Yesterday, we looked at the best (and worst) regular season performances, as measured by Total Adjusted Yards per Play and its many derivatives. Today, it’s time to look into total career values. Keep in mind, these figures don’t include the postseason, where many legends cemented or defined their legacies. We will get to that later, I promise.
Because I apparently hate driving traffic to the site, I will not title this anything to do with the greatest or best quarterback. Instead, I want to be honest about the fact that the results below are simply one measurement of career performance and are not meant to be definitive. I do believe it is the best approach I have seen when it comes to using numbers to compare quarterbacks across eras, but it isn’t perfect. When you see “Johnny Unitas,” what you are really seeing is Unitas, throwing to Raymond Berry, John Mackey, Lenny Moore, Jim Mutscheller, and Jimmy Orr, handing off to Alan Ameche, and standing behind Jim Parker and Bob Vogel, while glancing over at Weeb Ewbank and Don Shula standing on the sidelines. When you see “John Elway,” what you are really seeing is Elway throwing to a ragtag group of receivers, playing behind a ho hum offensive line, and under the tutelage of an unimaginative head coach during his prime, before getting basically the opposite of that late in his career. The average reader at Football Perspective has a good grip on both history and stat and should have little trouble contextualizing the numbers presented today.
Methodology
Rather than rehash the same information from yesterday, I will point you to the methodology section from the single season post for most of the basics. There are a few new concepts to discuss:
- To find career value per play, I sum every season of a player’s VAL and divide by his total plays.
- To find a player’s career value only in positive seasons, I simply count all seasons with negative VAL as zero before summing.
- I am revisiting a concept I introduced in 2016 in which I look at career value in terms of standard deviations above or below average. Whereas VAL is defined as a players TAY/P relative to average multiplied by his number of plays, what I am calling Z Value is a player’s TAY/P z-score multiplies by his number of plays. This one may merit an example:
In 2007, the three-year rolling league average TAY/P was 4.99, and the weighted standard deviation was 1.44. Tom Brady posted a TAY/P of 8.34, which was 3.35 above average. Thus, his z-score that season was 2.33 (3.35/1.44). Brady was involved in 636 action plays, so his Z Value is the product of that and his z-score, or 1482. We can do this for every season of his career to find his cumulative Z Value. In Brady’s case, that total is 10427. [1]I didn’t include it in the chart, but you can divide his career Z Value by his career plays, you will see his career z-score, which goes into his TAY/P+ metric. If you take the z-score and … Continue reading
I whittled the list down to every player who reach 1500 career action plays, be they actual or inflation-adjusted. That leaves us with 242 players and a much more manageable list than the single season version. [2]Johnny Lujack is the odd man out here. He had 948 action plays, and his inflation adjustment bumps him to 1358—still shy of the 1500 play threshold. In his brief career, he had a VAL/P of 2.36, a … Continue reading
The Table
The table below contains every qualifying quarterback since 1932. It is initially sorted by inflation-adjusted VAL, but you can sort and search as is your wont. Read the table thus: Peyton Manning played 266 games and was involved in 10114 action plays. Adjusted for inflation, that’s roughly 9684 plays. He produced 68574 Total Adjusted Yards, giving him 6.78 TAY/P. Over the course of his career, his TAY/P was 1.71 better than average, and his TAY/P index score is 117.8. His Z-Value is 12030, his unadjusted VAL is 17283, and his inflation-adjusted VAL is 16608. When only including positive seasons of VAL, his career total comes to 17798, and when considering only positive seasons of inflation-adjusted VAL, his total is 17089.
A few thoughts:
Peyton leads in every career value metric, and by a decent distance. Drew Brees and Brady finish on the medal podium in each version of the career total value. I think this has to do with the three of them being very good, statistically, for a very long time, and over a high volume of plays. Brett Favre and Fran Tarkenton were high volume players as well, but their statistical heights never really reached those of the big three.
Patrick Mahomes ranks 28th in VAL after just three seasons as a starter. His TAY/P+ is easily the highest ever, and he is doing it in the most competitive passing environment. Appreciate this while it is happening, folks.
Joe Montana outstrips Steve Young in career value when accounting for all seasons, but Young usurps the king when getting rid of those pesky Tampa Bay years.
Philip Rivers finds himself in Hall of Fame company, but I doubt he will ever get the call. Ken Anderson at least had an MVP and a Super Bowl appearance, though I think Rivers was the more talented passer.
Jeff Garcia had a weird career.
I will leave further discussion to the FP faithful.
References
| ↑1 | I didn’t include it in the chart, but you can divide his career Z Value by his career plays, you will see his career z-score, which goes into his TAY/P+ metric. If you take the z-score and multiply by 15, then add it to 100, you will arrive at his TAY/P+. |
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| ↑2 | Johnny Lujack is the odd man out here. He had 948 action plays, and his inflation adjustment bumps him to 1358—still shy of the 1500 play threshold. In his brief career, he had a VAL/P of 2.36, a TAY/P+ of 115.6, a VAL of 2224, and an AdjVAL of 3224. On a per-season basis, he is among the most dominant producers in the game. In fact, he trails only Otto Graham, Patrick Mahomes, Peyton Manning, and Cecil Isbell. |
