We have already looked at postseason performance in single games and single seasons. Today, we’re finally having a go at full playoff careers. All of the metrics I am using today have been explained, in great detail, in the previous four posts, so I am not going to belabor the point here. I will, however, remind the reader that Total Adjusted Yards per Play, and its many variants, is just one approach to measuring quarterback performance. It doesn’t account for weather, and it is not adjusted for the strength of opposing defenses (not yet, at least). Moreover, these numbers are based on box score stats and do not include more granular information, like time on the clock, field position, and yards to go on a set of downs. A four yard pass on 1st and 10 is much less valuable than a four yard pass on 3rd and 3, but TAY/P treats them equally. This is by design, because the goal of this metric is to do the best possible job of comparing quarterbacks across eras. I can’t do that with DVOA or EPA/P, because the play by play data just don’t go back far enough. However, when I looked into the correlations of TAY/P with more granular metrics, the r value tended to land between .93 and .94 (even for ESPN’s QBR, with its often wacky use of win probability). This suggests, to me, that most of these issues smooth themselves over in the long run.
The Table
The table below contains every quarterback with at least 50 postseason plays since 1936 and is initially sorted by VAL. Read it thus: Joe Montana produced 5633 Total Adjusted Yards on 843 plays for 6.68 TAY/P. That figure was 2.09 better than league average, giving him 1765 VAL. When only including games in which he produced positive VAL, his score raises to 2070. Montana’s leverage-weighted VAL was 230506, and his retro-adjusted VAL is 245538. He had a TAYP+ of 121.4 and a Z Value of 1203.
Pretty much any way you cut it, Joe Cool produced the most value over average of any quarterback in postseason history. Tom Brady, Kurt Warner, Terry Bradshaw, and John Elway are obvious high rankers, but some may be surprised to see Aaron Rodgers and Peyton Manning also fare well.
When we remove bad games, Brady takes the crown from Montana, by a considerable margin, and Manning comes close.
After accounting for leverage, Montana moves back to the top, given that he had two of the top Super Bowl performances in history, in addition to many other fine games. Troy Aikman also takes a big leap. Harnessed in the regular season, the Cowboys let him run wild in the postseason, and he rewarded them handsomely.
With 361 postseason plays, Patrick Mahomes already ranks 31st in postseason usage among all quarterbacks. Keep an eye on that guy.
