Yesterday, we looked at playoff performance in individual playoff games, as measured by Total Adjusted Yards per Play (and its copious derivatives). Today, I’m taking the next logical step and looking at performance over a full postseason in any given year. In other words, instead of examining who produced the most in the Super Bowl last year, I am determining who produced the most over the entire 2020 playoffs. By that, I mean who produced the most as measured by this particular set of numbers. They happen to be my preferred numbers for comparing across eras, but your mileage may vary.

For the uninitiated, here is a brief rundown of the metrics used:

Total Adjusted Yards per Play is like ANY/A with rushing included. It is (pass yards -sack yards + rush yards + 20*pass TDs + 20*rush TDs – 45*interceptions – 25*fumbles) / (passes + sacks + rushes). This version of TAY/P doesn’t include first downs, since I only have reliable first down data back to 1991 and want to make the playing field as level as possible when comparing back to 1936.

VAL/P is a player’s TAY/P – a 3-year moving average of leaguewide TAY/P. VAL is VAL/P multiplied by action plays. PV, or positive value, is just all instances when a player’s VAL is greater than zero. It is an attempt to avoid demeriting a player for poor postseason performance, with the rationale being that the playoffs are just a bonus and should only help and never hurt a player’s seasonal value score.

Championship Leverage is thoroughly defined here and refined here. It is a mathematical way of determining the value of a playoff game, relative to a regular season game in the same season, as it pertains to winning a championship. Retroactive Leverage is an attempt to take it easy on the older guys, as it were. Because the leverage for a title game in 1959 was, by rule, less valuable relative to a regular season game, a player’s leverage value for playing in the 1959 NFL Championship Game would be worth less than that of a player who produced the same VAL in 2020 (about one fifth as valuable, in fact). To look at things a little differently, I just took the Championship Leverage from the modern Super Bowl and retrofitted it to every title game in history. So, instead of Johnny Unitas having his VAL multiplied by 43.2, he will see it multiplied by 204.8. That’s quite the difference. As I said yesterday, there is no mathematical rationale for this method to exist, and I only included it as a nod to the philosophy of fairness.

TAYP+ is just a method to adjust TAY/P across eras, where 100 is an average score in any given season. The formula is simply a player’s z-score in TAY/P, multiplied by 15 and added to 100. Thus, every 15 points in TAYP+ is equal to one standard deviation, for the better or the worse.

The Table

The table below contains every quarterback in NFL history with more than five action plays in a single postseason, and it is initially sorted by VAL. Read it thus: In 1989, Joe Montana produced 1039 Total Adjusted Yards on 89 plays at 11.67 TAY/P. That was 6.92 better than league average, giving him a VAL of 616. Because his VAL was already positive, his PV is left alone and remains 616. His positive leverage-adjusted VAL was 74633, and his retro-adjusted VAL was 79609. His had a TAYP+ of 173.8.

By VAL, the top ten features six players who failed to win a title. It also displays two quarterbacks who ended up facing each other in the Super Bowl.

Montana (1989) and Steve Young (1994) fittingly rank one and two by Championship Leverage. Young’s foil in Dallas takes fourth for his 1992 postseason run.

Jim Plunkett‘s 1980 playoff run was a thing of beauty, even if it is a major reason why people won’t stop clamoring for his induction into the Hall of Fame forty years later.

And, hey, there’s Montana again.

For all the flack he gets from detractors about luck and defense, Tom Brady produced the third highest ranked postseason in history and failed to hoist a Lombardi. Average quarterbacks from the NFC East must be his Kryptonite. ^[1]In all three Super Bowl losses, his opposing QB seemed to be in a state of mind reminiscent of Peter Sellers’s Chance from Being There.

By retro-adjusted VAL, Sid Luckman skyrockets for his virtuoso performance in a 41-21 drubbing of Washington in the 1943 NFL Championship Game. Tobin Rote also rates highly for his stellar play in relief of Bobby Layne in 1957.

The top TAYP+ figure belongs to Norm Van Brocklin, who only threw six passes in the 1951 title game. The Dutchman made those passes count, averaging over 21 yards per attempt and finding the endzone once. I wouldn’t argue it was as impressive as what Jeff Hostetler did in 1993 or Montana did in 1989, given the sheer volume of plays over which they maintained their efficiency, but NVB was devastating in limited action. ^[2]I still maintain that a full game from him, rather than 24 passes from Waterfield, would have resulted in a Rams blowout, rather than their one-score victory.

Peyton Manning (2015) and George Blanda (1961) have the lowest VAL among quarterbacks whose teams won a title.