Archive for the 'Quarterbacks' Category

No one knows how the Colts will look without Peyton Manning. And we're about to find out much sooner than anyone in Indianapolis ever expected. Yesterday, Manning went under his third neck surgery in 19 months, and is expected to miss most, if not all, of the season. If Manning is indeed out for the year, what should we expect?

• A few years ago, Doug noted that the average starting quarterback is worth 2.3 points, or about a win per season. A useful starting point, but no one has ever confused Manning with an 'average starting quarterback.'

• Brian Burke says that the entire Colts passing offense -- of which Manning is the central figure -- is worth about 3.8 wins per season.

• Jason Lisk looked at how other teams have fared when their HOF quarterbacks went down, and concluded that the Colts would not be nearly as bad as people think if Manning missed just a few games, and that Kerry Collins will put up near league average numbers. Still, he only projects the Colts to go 6-10.

I'm less optimistic than most. I'm not going out on a limb if I tell you that the Colts are going to implode, but I think that's what's going to happen. If Manning is gone for 16 games, I would probably take the "under" even at 6 wins.
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Sam Bradford's rookie season has been incredibly overrated by nearly every football writer and talking head. If you wanted the perfect storm of a formula that would spit out an overrated rookie quarterback, you would want to have a quarterback who:

• Finished near the top of the league in attempts, overinflating his yards and touchdown metrics. Yards and touchdowns aren't good ways to grade quarterbacks, but that doesn't stop people from doing just that;

• Played for a team with just a couple of wins in the prior year, so the quarterback would get credit for any regression to the mean in the form of a significant increase in wins;

• Played a really weak schedule that boosted the quarterback's individual stats and team wins; and

• Played for a team whose defense got a lot better without adding any big names, so people can just think "what's the difference between them this year and last year? That rookie QB and not much else."

Some rookie quarterbacks will have some of those factors working in their favor, but Bradford has all four. This isn't a post blasting Bradford as much as it is blasting the Bradford backers. One of those includes the normally outstanding Mike Tanier, who thought Bradford had one of the best rookie seasons of all time. Kurt Warner thinks Bradford is going to be a superstar. Fantasy football fans are drafting him as the 15th quarterback in standard leagues. Article have been written based on the notion that the Rams have already drafted a future Super Bowl winner. Bradford's part-Aikman, part-Montana, part-Manning and part-Matt Ryan, but calling him part-Unitas would be too much.

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ESPN came out with a new quarterback rating ("Total QBR") on Friday, and if you haven't read Chase or Jason's takes, do so immediately. The early consensus seems to be this:

Pros:

• It can't help but be better than the NFL's official passer rating
• Based in large part on the strong analytical framework found in The Hidden Game of Football and the work of Aaron Schatz, Brian Burke, etc.
• Takes into account all of a QB's actions (sacks, rushing carries, etc.)
• Doesn't penalize QBs for dropped passes
• Tries to parse credit between QB and receiver by breaking down Air Yards vs. YAC

Cons:

• No adjustment for strength of schedule
• A 'black box' -- we don't know the specifics about how it works
• WPA-style clutch adjustments might be retrodictive, but aren't predictive
• Splitting of credit between teammates appears to rely on subjective assessments

As soon as ESPN released the first batch of ratings from the 2008-10 seasons, I ran some correlations between existing stats and QBR:

                    r         R^2
    voa         0.9295      0.8639
    dvoa        0.9200      0.8464
    anypa_idx   0.8988      0.8079
    anypa       0.8960      0.8029
    rate_idx    0.8766      0.7684
    rate        0.8745      0.7647
    uAYA*       0.8647      0.7478
    aypa_idx    0.8478      0.7188
    nypa_idx    0.8445      0.7132
    aypa        0.8411      0.7075
    cmppct      0.7690      0.5913
    cmp_idx     0.7680      0.5898
    ypa_idx     0.7384      0.5453
    ypa         0.7340      0.5388
    tdpct_idx   0.7173      0.5146
    ypg         0.7146      0.5107
    tdpct       0.7027      0.4937
    intpct_idx  0.6013      0.3616
    intpct     -0.5989      0.3586
    skrate     -0.5546      0.3076
    skrate_idx  0.5516      0.3042
    (* = 2010 data only)

Basically, 86% of the variation in QBR is explained by Football Outsiders' VOA metric, and 81% is explained by our Adjusted Net YPA stat. Oddly enough, even though QBR factors in rushing plays, Ultimate Adjusted YPA correlates worse with QBR than Adjusted Net YPA -- in essence, uAYA tracks more closely with QBR if you remove its rushing components.

You can also explain 85% of the variation in QBR using the following formula composed of nothing but our Advanced Passing Indices:

QBR ~ -60.5 + 1.2 * Cmp%_Idx - 2.1 * YPA_Idx + 0.5 * TD%_Idx - 3.5 * Rate_Idx + 4 * AY/A_Idx + 0.9 * NY/A_Idx

This produces the following list of the best estimated post-merger "QBR" seasons (min 225 att):

Finally, here are the predicted 2010 QBR leaders alongside the actual QBR leaders (min 225 att):

On November 13, 1994, New England's Drew Bledsoe set an NFL record with 70 pass attempts in a single game:

And for some reason, somebody uploaded a video of all 70 attempts at YouTube:

By the end of the 2010 regular season, Matt Ryan had become a media and fan favorite. A fellow blogger of mine at the Fifth Down argued for Ryan as MVP. When the Falcons beat the visiting Packers late in the season, Atlanta ran its home record to 19-1 with Ryan as the starter. Pro Football Focus named Ryan the most valuable player in football at the end of the season. Ryan's clutch play gave him more Win Probability Added than any other player in the league, according to Brian Burke. The Falcons ended the season with the best record in the NFC, and Ryan seemed on the verge of being anointed the game's next great quarterback.

But Ryan's Falcons were one-and-done in the playoffs, eliminated in no small part thanks to Ryan's ugly play in Atlanta's home loss to the Packers. Ryan's errant throw -- caught by Green Bay's Tramon Williams -- was one of the worst interceptions of the season. Was Ryan's season as magical as some would have you believe, or was his playoff performance more than just a bad game at the wrong time?

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PFR reader Bill asked a great question yesterday:

"I can't find evidence of this, but is Aaron Rodgers the only quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl without ever having a playoff game in his home stadium? Other wild card teams have won Super Bowls, but the quarterback will have had at least one playoff game at home during his career prior to winning a super bowl."

Question answered -- here are the fewest previous playoff home games (games where he recorded any stats at all, not just starts) by a Super Bowl-winning QB:

Rodgers became the second Super Bowl winning quarterback ever to enter the game with zero career playoff home starts, and zero career games where he actually recorded any stats, following Dawson (whose only career playoff home game was also his last playoff game).

Of course, alert reader Tom Steen pointed out in the comments that Rodgers did technically play in Green Bay's 2007 home game vs. Seattle, recording no stats but taking the field at one point. So if you're a stickler, the answer is still Dawson.

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File this under Chase's "Insane Ideas/Rants/Almost deleted before hitting Publish" category...

In light of the research Chase & JKL have done about the consistency of passing stats between seasons, I was wondering which quarterbacks were likely to be best in 2011 -- assuming there is a 2011 season -- if we take their 2010 numbers and strip away the factors that were heavily influenced by luck or other elements beyond a player's control.

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Eighty-seven yards away from the end zone. 119 seconds on the clock. One timeout remaining. Down by six. The Super Bowl is on the line. This is the stuff football fans dream of watching, and players dream of performing on the biggest stage. This is the stuff legends are made of.

This is what the Steelers had staring them down at the end of Super Bowl XLV against the Packers. If they were successful, there would be only one way of describing it. The Steelers may not have known it when they took the field, but they were looking at the greatest drive in NFL history.

What is currently the greatest drive in NFL history? There are many great moments that stand out in NFL lore, but this is not a question that has had a definitive answer to it. I will go back now and review the candidates.

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Robert Duvall once said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" in Apocalypse Now. I have never smelled napalm before, but there is something I enjoy. I love the smell of freshly produced spreadsheets on quarterbacks that will provide the data to expose myths and spit in the face of conventional wisdoms. I want to know why certain teams succeed and others fail, especially in the postseason. Well after my latest research efforts, I feel much more knowledgeable about certain quarterbacks and why their playoff record is what it is.

Just in time for a big quarterback match-up in Super Bowl XLV between Ben Roethlisberger and Aaron Rodgers, I compiled playoff drive stats for two dozen quarterbacks that have played in the last thirty years. It was my goal to get every quarterback with at least 8 playoff starts since 1980, and I almost succeeded. Only Phil Simms, Joe Theismann, Jim Plunkett and Danny White were left out due to lack of complete career data. I also included a few active quarterbacks with 4-7 playoff starts to their credit. I used official NFL gamebooks to get this data. While many of these gamebooks offer drive summaries, I actually went through the play-by-play for each drive (over 3400 of them) to get a better understanding of how the game progressed and for more accurate statistics.

Here is a table of stats that you may be familiar with for the quarterbacks involved:

Those are your conventional passing stats. Drive stats are something I have taken much interest in the last few years. I guess it started with my work on fourth quarter drives, and has since carried over to the full game. They offer more measures of efficiency and give better insight into how productive a team's offense or defense is and what style or tempo they may play at. Think about basketball and how the stats for a run and gun/fast break offense are going to be different than the numbers of a half-court offense.

The number of possessions a team gets in a game or season is one of the most overlooked parts of football. Every offense and defense is held to the same standard of points and yards scored/allowed, but did the defense that allows 20 points on 8 drives really play better than the defense that allowed 24 points on 13 drives? Some teams get the ball less than others year after year, meaning their offense has to play at a higher level on fewer opportunities. This would make the offense's stats look better, and the defense's look worse since they are not on the field as much as other teams. The Colts have often been a team in recent seasons that are at the bottom or close to it in offensive possessions every season. Jon Gruden, on a Monday Night Football telecast in Miami in 2009, is probably the only analyst I have heard reference this fact in the media.

If you are not familiar with drive stats, I would highly recommend a visit to that section on the FootballOutsiders site, where Jim Armstrong does a great job of putting out the drive stats on a weekly basis each season. They are listed for 1997-2010. You can familiarize yourself with the kind of numbers you can expect from an offense that is ranked at the top of the league, the average, and at the bottom, to use as a reference when you look over these playoff drive stats.

Disclaimer: the stats presented here are in the quarterback's name, but even more than usual this is really about the team's offensive performance as a whole rather than the individual quarterback. There are certain parts, like the breakdown on interceptions, that are mostly all about the quarterback, but overall drive stats are something you have to keep the team in mind first for. There are of course drives where a quarterback does nothing but hand the ball off every play. The entry "Joe Montana" is another way of saying "1981-90 49ers, 1993-94 Chiefs". Also I will note that I tried to include every drive a QB played in during the playoffs, whether or not they started the game did not matter. I will point out several things, but I will also leave the reader to make their own observations on all the various data presented below. Kneel down drives at the end of either half are excluded.

With that cleared up, on to the data.

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I almost deleted this post before I hit "Publish." There are so many caveats I'm urged to proclaim, and so many nits at which any reader could pick, that I'm still not sure if this is worth posting. Further, on some level, I fundamentally disagree with the not-so-subtle argument this post implicitly endorses. Allow me to cut you off, by noting that yes, this post is stupid, yes I forgot about X, Y and Z, yes, this doesn't even make sense once you realize M, N and Q, yes I've never watched a football game before, and yes I'm biased against Player A and Player B. And, of course, I am Player C's mother. Note that I've categorized this post under both Rant and Insane ideas.

The comments to Neil's post on The Rivers Index raised some interesting questions. Commenter Sean played the role of Marino backer and noted how Miami was always being outrushed in those playoff losses. He pointed out, correctly, that Dan Marino is the only victor of the 52 quarterbacks to start a playoff game in the last 60 years when his team was outrushed by 150+ yards .

I started wondering how to break down each playoff game based on the level of support each quarterback received, from both the running game and the defense. Game-ending stats are deceiving -- just one of the many caveats in my head as I wrote paragraph 1 -- but I figured there was little harm in doing some back of the envelope calculations. If nothing else, this post can just add some layers to the typical discussion of post-season records. Here's what I did:
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Mike Tanier, a regular contributor at Football Outsiders and the New York Times' Fifth Down blog, recently penned an article for MSNBC discussing Aaron Rodgers' ridiculous quarterback rating. Believe it or not, he's number one all-time in that metric:

                                                                                        
                                        Game    Pass                                    
Rk                Player From   To  Tm     G     Cmp   Att  Cmp%   Yds  TD Int Rate  Y/A
1          Aaron  Rodgers 2005 2010 GNB    54    1038  1611 64.4% 12723  87  32 98.4 7.90
2          Philip  Rivers 2004 2010 SDG    84    1564  2455 63.7% 19661 136  58 97.2 8.01
3           Steve  Young* 1985 1999 TOT   169    2667  4149 64.3% 33124 232 107 96.8 7.98
4              Tony  Romo 2004 2010 DAL    89    1326  2070 64.1% 16650 118  62 95.5 8.04
5              Tom  Brady 2000 2010 NWE   145    2996  4710 63.6% 34744 261 103 95.2 7.38
6         Peyton  Manning 1998 2010 CLT   208    4682  7210 64.9% 54828 399 198 94.9 7.60
7            Kurt  Warner 1998 2009 TOT   125    2666  4070 65.5% 32344 208 128 93.7 7.95
8     Ben  Roethlisberger 2004 2010 PIT    99    1766  2800 63.1% 22502 144  86 92.5 8.04
9           Joe  Montana* 1979 1994 TOT   192    3409  5391 63.2% 40551 273 139 92.3 7.52
10            Drew  Brees 2001 2010 TOT   138    3145  4822 65.2% 35266 235 132 91.7 7.31
11           Matt  Schaub 2004 2010 TOT    92    1288  1987 64.8% 15457  83  52 91.5 7.78
12       Chad  Pennington 2000 2010 TOT    89    1632  2471 66.0% 17823 102  64 90.1 7.21
13      Daunte  Culpepper 1999 2009 TOT   105    2016  3199 63.0% 24153 149 106 87.8 7.55
14           Jeff  Garcia 1999 2009 TOT   125    2264  3676 61.6% 25537 161  83 87.5 6.95
15         Carson  Palmer 2004 2010 CIN    97    2024  3217 62.9% 22694 154 100 86.9 7.05

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While the Conference Championships put a damper on any hot streaks Aaron Rodgers and Ben Roethlisberger may have had going into the Super Bowl, where does their recent play stand relative to all SB signal-callers prior to the game? And does a string of successful games before the Super Bowl actually correlate with playing well on Super Sunday?

To answer these questions, let's bust out the single-game opponent- & era-adjusted QB performance metric I introduced here. To make a long explanation short, eYAR is an estimate of the QB's Yards Above Replacement against an average opponent in the modern era. We can use it to rank games, seasons, careers, etc., and we can also use it to gauge how well a QB was playing in the games leading up to a Super Bowl start.

For instance, here are the hottest QBs over the 2 games prior to the Super Bowl:

Prior to Super Bowl X, Staubach ripped the Vikings and Rams for a combined unadjusted 33-55-466-5-1 line (plus 78 rushing yds) that is pretty impressive when seen in the light of the era and opposition. Likewise, Kelly torched Miami and L.A. for 320 YPG in the 1990 playoffs, and Manning was nearly flawless against one of the best pass defenses ever in last year's AFC Championship Game. (All three of those QBs went on to lose the Super Bowl, though.)

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Obviously the number of road playoff wins a quarterback has earned is as meaningless a piece of trivia as one could drum up, but that hasn't stopped people from discussing the point this week. With a win tomorrow night, Mark Sanchez will become the all-time leader in road playoff wins. Below is a list of all quarterback with two or more road playoff wins since 1950. Note that Super Bowl games are considered neutral site games, but championship games in the pre-Super Bowl era were not.

road wins	
4	Jake  Delhomme
4	Roger  Staubach
4	Len  Dawson
4	Joe  Flacco
4	Mark  Sanchez
3	Donovan  McNabb
3	Eli  Manning
3	Tom  Brady
3	Ben  Roethlisberger
3	Mark  Brunell
3	Steve  McNair
3	John  Elway
3	Brett  Favre
3	Tony  Eason
3	Vince  Ferragamo
2	Peyton  Manning
2	Trent  Dilfer
2	Randall  Cunningham
2	Jim  Harbaugh
2	Joe  Montana
2	Mark  Rypien
2	Jim  Everett
2	Richard  Todd
2	Dan  Fouts
2	Jim  Plunkett
2	Dan  Pastorini
2	Terry  Bradshaw
2	Craig  Morton
2	Earl  Morrall
2	Johnny  Unitas
2	Bart  Starr
2	Bobby  Layne
2	Aaron  Rodgers

Back in November, I developed what I called "The Rivers Index" (so named for Philip Rivers), a metric that measured how many games a QB should have won based on nothing more than his own passing performance. Today, I'm going to apply that same concept to the last 10 years of playoff competition, this time using 10 years of data and adjusting for opposing defenses + weather.

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Curious after Peyton Manning & the Colts scored 16 points at home against the Jets on Saturday, I wanted to calculate how many points we should have expected them to put on the board, knowing the opponent and game location.

According to the Simple Rating System (SRS), the Jets' defense was +4.2 this season -- meaning they allowed 4.2 fewer PPG than an average team after accounting for strength of schedule. The average NFL team scored 22.0 PPG during the regular-season, so at a neutral site we'd expect an average team to score 17.8 PPG against the New York defense. And since the Colts were at home, 0.95 PPG (half the overall home-field advantage in 2010) should be added in as well, giving a final expectation of 18.8 PPG for a league-average team against the Jets at home. Since the Colts actually scored 16, we can score this performance as -2.8 points relative to average.

Additionally, we wouldn't have expected the Colts' offense to be average based on the regular season. Their offensive SRS was +3.7, which means Indianapolis "should have" scored 22.0 + 0.95 + 3.7 - 4.2 = 22.5 pts against the Jets at home. This yields a score of -6.5 pts relative to regular-season expectations.

Here's Peyton Manning's entire playoff career according to this methodology:

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Which player has intercepted which quarterback the most? Who has picked off Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Dan Marino or Joe Montana more than anyone else? Against which quarterbacks did Rod Woodson, Deion Sanders and Mel Blount pad their numbers? Those answers and more, below.

I used the same methodology I used in the most pick-sixes in NFL history post to determine which quarterback threw which interception to each defender. For the purposes of this study, I included all interceptions in any post-season game in league history and interceptions in any regular season games since 1960. For each interception thrown in any of those games, the defensive player was given X/Y interceptions against the quarterback, where X represents the number of interceptions thrown by that quarterback in that game and Y stands for the number of team interceptions thrown by the quarterback's team in that game. As a result, this post is more of an approximation than an exact science.

The leader in quarterback-defensive player pairing interceptions? Over a six-year period, Broncos cornerback Steve Foley terrorized Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts. Foley had two interceptions in a 17-0 shutout against the Chargers in November 1976; Fouts threw two picks while Clint Longley had three more, which means Fouts is blamed for 40% of the two interceptions Foley had that day, or 0.8 INTs. In December '77, with the Orange Crush at full bore, Foley picked off Fouts in a 17-9 Broncos victory. Their next matchup came in September 1978, and Foley intercepted Fouts again in a Denver win. On Monday Night Football in the 1979 season finale, Foley caught two passes from Fouts, only one fewer than Charlie Joiner. Fouts and Air Corywell was running at top speed in 1980, but Foley picked him off in both matchups, first in Denver and then in a road victory in San Diego. Their next meeting came in September '81, and Foley intercepted three Fouts passes. Maybe after that, Fouts learned not to throw the ball in Foley's direction. All told, including the "0.8 interceptions' in that '76 game, and Foley recorded 9.8 interceptions against the Hall of Fame quarterback.
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The San Diego Chargers are on a four game winning streak, lead the league in yards gained, yards allowed, net yards per pass and net yards per pass allowed. So don't feel bad if you haven't done a good job of following the Kansas City passing game the past three weeks -- I hadn't either.

Then I noticed that Dwayne Bowe had 14 touchdowns, the third most through 11 games in the last 50 years. And Matt Cassel -- who ranked 25th in ANY/A last season -- ranks 5th in that metric in 2010. He's thrown 22 touchdowns and against just 4 interceptions. Here's a list of all players in the past 50 years with 20+ touchdowns and no more than 5 interceptions through 11 team games:

                                                                                          
                                               Pass                                       
Rk           Player Age Year  Lg  Tm  G  W L T  Cmp Att  Cmp%  Yds TD Int  Rate  Y/A  AY/A
1         Tom Brady  33 2010 NFL NWE 11  9 2 0  236 356 66.3% 2703 23   4 105.8 7.59  8.38
2       Matt Cassel  28 2010 NFL KAN 11  7 4 0  195 323 60.4% 2307 22   4  99.7 7.14  7.95
3       Brett Favre  40 2009 NFL MIN 11 10 1 0  248 358 69.3% 2874 24   3 112.1 8.03  8.99
4     Aaron Rodgers  25 2009 NFL GNB 11  7 4 0  249 380 65.5% 3136 22   5 104.9 8.25  8.82
5         Tom Brady  30 2007 NFL NWE 11 11 0 0  284 392 72.4% 3439 39   4 127.9 8.77 10.30
6        Drew Brees  25 2004 NFL SDG 11  8 3 0  206 313 65.8% 2458 21   3 108.0 7.85  8.76
7    Donovan McNabb  27 2004 NFL PHI 11 10 1 0  224 350 64.0% 2892 23   5 105.8 8.26  8.93
8       Rich Gannon  35 2001 NFL RAI 11  8 3 0  236 360 65.6% 2626 21   4 101.9 7.29  7.96
9     Roman Gabriel  29 1969 NFL RAM 11 11 0 0  176 325 54.2% 2212 22   3  94.3 6.81  7.74

Um, yeah. Last year, Jason wrote an article about how Cassel was so conservative that he'd be better off throwing more incomplete passes and interceptions. This year? Well, according to the raw numbers, he looks like a viable MVP candidate. Which, of course, shocked me as a sign that something was up.
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Last week, I showed you how to set up an "expected W-L" method for a quarterback using the Play Index Team Game Finder, the QB's gamelogs, and a logistic regression formula. I found that our test case, Philip Rivers, should have been expected to win 27.7 games over the last 3 seasons (prior to the Chargers' win over Houston) based on his passing performance, but in actuality only won 24 games, a difference of -3.7 wins. Without context, though, that number doesn't really mean anything -- is that a lot, or a little? Today, I'm going to answer that question by comparing every QB's actual and expected W-L records, something I like to call "The Rivers Index" (in an homage to Doug's Manning and Dungy Indices).

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Using the PFR Play Index's Player Season Finder, you can run custom individual leaderboards across multiple seasons. For instance, here are the NFL leaders in Adjusted Yards per Attempt over the past three years:

As you can see, the leader (by far) is San Diego's Philip Rivers. In fact, 10th-ranked McNabb is closer to #2 Brees than Brees is to Rivers!

Statistically, it's tough to find a QB since 2008 who can touch Rivers. However, his team hasn't enjoyed the same lofty success: the Chargers are 24-16 over the past 3 years -- a respectable record, but one seemingly out of place next to Rivers' gaudy passing numbers. This disconnect between individual accomplishments and team performance has haunted many a quarterback in the past, and is now is the main reason Rivers isn't held up in the same group as Brady, Manning, Roethlisberger, and Brees as a quarterback. QBs are supposed to win, we're told, not amass seemingly empty stats.

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On Monday Night Football this week, one of the announcers noted that there are six Super Bowl quarterbacks currently playing in the league. Is that a lot or a little?

A couple of years ago, I noted all the quarterbacks to ever win a Super Bowl in this post. No surprises there, although I split up Super Bowl V between Unitas and Morrall, assigning them each half a win. [Note: Teams win games, not quarterbacks. This goes double for Super Bowls. Disclaimer out of the way.] Once you add in Brees' championship from last season, it's easy enough to see how many quarterbacks in any given season have won the Super Bowl. As it turns out, 2007 and 2008 represents the high-water mark for active bling in the NFL:

The least impressive year was probably 1981. After Griese retired, you had just three QBs that had won a Super Bowl playing that year: a 32-year-old Terry Bradshaw, one year away from retirement; a 36-year-old Ken Stabler playing for the Oilers; and Jim Plunkett, and career underachieving Jim Plunkett, owner of a 43-55 record at that time. Although 1991 is pretty close: only three active quarterbacks with rings, and two played for the same team.