A Statistical Analysis of the Top-Ten Quarterbacks: 1996–2010
Check out previous editions of this series:
As we continue in deciphering the best quarterbacks of all time, we — as intelligent deliberators — must consider what the makeup of professional football was in that player’s era. For example; we can’t sensibly compare a 1950’s signal caller to one from the early 2000’s. They were different times, where vastly different coaching strategies were in place — among other factors — which directly affected play balance.
Throughout this series, I will group these quarterbacks accordingly. Not by any specific decade, but by eras in which the execution of the game was most uniform for each group of greats. When the consistent average rushes, or — more importantly — pass attempts per game throughout a year make a significant jump, that ‘era’ ends and another begins.
Each quarterback is placed into their respective eras by which they were active the majority of their careers. In our quest to find the best of each era, we’ll consider the following:
Seasons — Using total games started throughout their career, with a season’s consideration being that era’s respective amount of games (16) in a season.
RSC% + POC% — Combination of regular, and postseason career completion percentage with appropriate weighting measures.
RSW% + POW% — Combination of regular, and postseason career win percentage weighted appropriately. The best of their eras are judged based on carrying their teams to victory whether you like it or not. We may as well account for it.
RSTID + POTID — Combination of regular, and postseason career touchdown/interception differential with appropriate weighting measures.
RSYPA + POYPA — Combination of regular, and postseason career yards per attempt with appropriate weighting measures.
Super Bowl/Championships — Career Super Bowl wins, or league championships depending upon relative time frame.
Super Bowl/Championship Appearances — Self-explanatory, however, weighted leaner than championships to reflect appropriate credit.
RSCY + POCY — Combination of regular, and postseason career yards weighted appropriately.
CLUTCH# — Combination of first down, touchdown/interception and turnover percentages from third/fourth down opportunities of 6 yards or more dating back to 1994.
*Note: Playoff metrics are weighted heavier than that of the regular season.
In this edition of the series, we’ve moved forward to the quarterbacks between the years of 1996–2010. Throughout this era the average pass attempts per game were between 31.9–33.8 league-wide — remaining very uniform throughout — with 1.6 attempts per game being the largest single-season variance.
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15. Steve McNair | Score: 89.46
14. Rich Gannon | Score: 93.125
13. Carson Palmer | Score: 99.968
Not surprisingly, none of the three above had compiled 10 seasons worth of play (Palmer still active), combined for two Super Bowl appearances, were all in the bottom half of the list in yards per attempt and career yards formulations. Additionally, and also expected, none of them ever led the league in any pertinent category more than once throughout their respective careers. This list, significantly more than previous editions, has a greater amount of competition for even the middle-of-the-road positions of the rankings and naturally that has something to with it.
Palmer is a good quarterback who has played on some very crappy teams, has only played in four playoff games and hasn’t truly had the opportunity to shine previous to these last three seasons in Arizona. He’s accurate, but only has 26 — or more — touchdowns in five of his 12 seasons in the league. So many ups and downs throughout a career make it very difficult to poke into the top five of an era.
Being just over 8 points outside of the top ten, Palmer will certainly end up inside of the “dime” due to still being active, and appearing to have at least a couple good seasons left in him.
Gannon, too, is a very different case from most of the quarterbacks above him. He only started four complete seasons (in 17 years), and never started more than 12 games in any other season outside of those four. He threw for over 4,000 yards only once, and tallied 20+ touchdowns only four times as well. In that four-year span — between 1999–2002 — he was excellent putting up a 63.4% completion rate, tossed 105 touchdowns to 43 interceptions (4.8%/1.9%) and amassed 15,787 yards (7.33 YPA).
The sad part is that those tallies were 55% of his career passing yardage, 58.3% of his touchdowns and over 51% of his career attempts. The efficiency wasn’t nearly as impressive the rest of his career either with differences of -1.2/+1 (3.6%/2.9%) touchdown to interception percentages, and nearly a yard less per attempt at 6.43 YPA as well. Gannon also was very limited in playoff opportunities and success.
McNair had nearly as many playoff games under his belt as Palmer and Gannon combined. However, simply put, few other of his statistical totals — regular season or playoff — rivaled the other two. McNair’s career yardage formulation was similar to that of Gannon’s despite having a full season plus longer of a tenure. Much the same, McNair and Palmer had nearly identical tenures, McNair had more playoff experience yet his career yardage formulation was -6.8 to that of Palmer.
His YPA and touchdown/interception formulas were second-worst, on this list, only to that of Drew Bledsoe and his yardage was also second-worst to only Gannon. Quite honestly, McNair simply didn’t make enough of an impact throughout the rest of the study to warrant him climbing the list.
Honorable Mentions:
12. Drew Bledsoe | Score: 100.241
11. Donovan McNabb | Score: 103.33
Mostly when I think of Bledsoe — oh who am I kidding, I don’t ever think of Bledsoe being competitive in this group. Maybe it’s because his best few seasons were his second year (he never again matched that season’s yards, attempts or completions), as well as a couple others that produced his best touchdown/interception numbers while his playoff numbers were absolute garbage. Sometimes you just can’t help what you remember about a player.
Bledsoe did manage to rack up, what appears to be, a sustained career though. He stayed largely durable with 12.06 formulated seasons and amassed over 44,000 regular season yards throughout his days, however, his comparisons to the rest of the field left him near the bottom in each category.
As good as Donovan McNabb was for the Eagles throughout his career, individually matched up against his peers in a direct comparison, he was no better than average in any formulation. He was dead last in the clutch formula, in the bottom five in, both, completion rate and yards per attempt and was exactly average through the remainder of the comparisons (7.7).
2004 was far and away his best season as a pro, as he notched a 64% completion rate, threw 31 touchdowns (6.6 TD%) and put up 8.8 adjusted yards per attempt, which were all career highs. McNabb was a six-time Pro Bowl selection and led the Eagles to the ’04 Super Bowl while being paired up with Terrell Owens — who caught nearly a third of his passing yards and 44% of his touchdown passes — while they outscored opponents by 7.9 points per game.
Small windows of greatness for sure, but nothing sustained that would legitimately keep him in the conversation with this era’s elite.
Top Ten:
10. Tony Romo | Score: 107.786
While most have a predisposed vision of what type of quarterback Tony Romo is, they’re mostly wrong. In fact, other than win percentage, the only other categories that Romo is outside of the top five — on this list — is tenure, career yardage and of course Super Bowl success and appearances. The tenure and yardage formulations are major factors in this study, as are championships, however, those have somewhat of a ceiling attached.
I mean he’s already surpassed Gannon and McNair in formulated career yards and is knocking on the door of Kurt Warner, Bledsoe and McNabb. What’s more, is that those five have an average of +1.5 years of formulated tenure. There are others that he is also catching up to, however, those quarterbacks are still active and should maintain some sort of a cushion pending any regression in the future. Romo is also tied for fourth in his clutch formulation, which is fun to point out being as most assume he’s anything but clutch.
Romo doesn’t have the best results in the playoffs, however, he has a 4/1 touchdown to interception ratio (4.3 TD%/1.1 INT%) which bucks any notion of his being the core issue for the Cowboys thus far. He has four seasons of 31 touchdown passes or more, and three more with at least 26 while never accruing 20 interceptions to date. Romo is good, very good, and simply needs better health and more time in order to climb this list, which he is certain to do.
9. Vinny Testaverde | Score: 110.893
Testaverde was right on the wire between being added to this list, or the previous list (1981–95). When it came down to it, he fell into this era due to a more significant amount of his playing time in production coming after 1995. Due to adding his clutch score his final tally is slightly larger, as with any additional metric, and he was quite a bit more effective as well during this time frame as well. He was twice a Pro Bowl selection and led the AFC in touchdowns twice as well.
Testaverde was mostly a product of duration. In his 21 years in the league he only began the season, and completed a full sixteen-game season three times. He finished his career with a 4.1 TD%/4.0 Int% comparison, only started in five playoff games and only led the league in attempts once with the rest of his league-leading coming in interceptions four times. Testaverde surpassed the 30 touchdown mark once (33), but only managed to bypass 20 four times. Again, duration was a good friend of his career statistics.
After beginning his career as the first overall draft pick by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he ended it being a part of eight organizations and never being the best in the league at any given time. He’ll soon be pushed out of this spot due to active quarterbacks who are close behind him, and gaining ground quickly.
8. Kurt Warner | Score: 114.278
For a guy who didn’t even get into the NFL until he was 27 years old — and looked over 30 — I hate that he didn’t get the opportunity earlier in life. Warner was special, and is as responsible for the NFL becoming a passing league as anybody. In 2000, Warner was like an old man shooting at clay pigeons down field as he averaged 9.9 yards per attempt which was good for fifth all-time, and 9.03 net yards per attempt which is a league record.
From 1999 through 2001 Warner was hitting at a clip of over 67% completion rate, averaged 4,204 yards per season (missed 5 games in 2000) and put up over 9 yards per attempt and a touchdown percentage of 7%. Regardless of era that you could possibly delve into, those are amazing numbers and production. The biggest issue with Warner’s career, however, is that he only had three more notable seasons in the league which happened to be his final three years while in Arizona.
In the five seasons between those chunks of three-year greatness he only started 31 games, threw for 7,940 yards and 27 touchdowns. As far as the study goes Warner had the least amount of formulated seasons, but was tops in, both, the completion and yards per attempt metrics, third in win percentage, tied for second in the touchdown/interception formula and was eighth in the clutch ranking. Man, what if he had had more than just six quality seasons…?
7. Philip Rivers | Score: 114.367
Not that this matters, but I have had a serious love/hate relationship with Rivers. Well, 80% hate and 20% not hate is more like it. He was a thorn in my side against the Colts, especially in the playoffs, for years. However, as time went on, I began to feel sorry for Rivers. He has always been a cocky, mouthy dude, but simultaneously the epitome of a fearless leader who would will his team to give the most of what they had every single game.
He was never down, always only one play from sparking his team to a comeback, and yet he has had to put up with so many crappy teams and front office mishaps. Regardless, throughout all of this, I’ve come to greatly appreciate his stick-to-itiveness. He’s thrown for 4,000+ yards in seven — and 26 touchdowns in eight — of his ten seasons as a starter, not to mention he’s never missed a game since being named the starter in 2006.
Naturally his win percentage rank wasn’t anything to write home about, but his completion and touchdown/interception — while technically average amongst the group — are only tenths of points from being well into the top five just the same. His yardage, also average at this point, will only go up as he continues his consistent 4,000+ yard seasons. And just like his gritty attitude would suggest, his clutch number is second amongst the group.
I don’t think it could be suggested otherwise that Rivers hates Eli Manning with an unbridled passion due to the fact that despite being as, or more talented than him, Manning has received the postseason success that he feels his career deserves. And I agree with him.
6. Eli Manning | Score: 118.323
As I mentioned above, take away Manning’s credit for his Super Bowl victories and appearances, and Rivers is sitting at No. 6, not Eli. Nevertheless, Manning earned those wins and was PHENOMENAL in the playoffs those two years with a 63.1% completion rate, combining for 15 touchdowns and only 2 interceptions (5.3 TD%/0.7 INT%). In the remainder of his playoff appearances he is 0–3, holding a 55.4% completion rate and a 1/3 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Jekyll and Hyde indeed.
Manning has also been extremely durable, starting all 16 games in each season while he has been the starter in New York. To have two quarterbacks regularly throwing over 500 times a year, from the same draft class and never miss a game is unheard of. Eli eclipsed the ever-impressive 30+ touchdown mark three times, has topped 4,000 yards five times but has never led the league in anything other than interceptions.
Manning has been named to the Pro Bowl four times, twice named the Super Bowl MVP and has a running total of 27 fourth quarter comebacks and 33 game winning drives. Within this study, Manning’s numbers hold up enough to make his career competitive, and hopeful to climb in the future. Obviously — if healthy — his tenure and career formulated yards will increase quickly, he was second on the list in formulated win percentage and fifth in compilation of the touchdown/interception data.
Everything else was either very near average or near the back half of the group including completion rate and yards per attempt. Manning’s new shiny weapons that he’s acquired over the past couple of years should help in most every category going forward, however, I truly don’t expect any significant improvements in his game as a whole.
Top Five:
5. Ben Roethlisberger | Score: 125.989
Is it possible that the 2004 draft class was the best in NFL history for quarterbacks? The class has been favorably compared to the Elway, Marino and Kelly class of ’84 more than a couple of times and it’s more than possible, in fact, it seems to be a dead heat. Roethlisberger was the 11th overall pick, yet has had the most playoff success (2 Super Bowl wins and more playoff games than Manning and Rivers combined), is sandwiched between Rivers and Manning in games played and has more formulated passing yards than both of them.
He is a four-time Pro Bowl selection, is the Steelers all-time leader in most pertinent passing categories and is the youngest quarterback to win a Super Bowl. Surprisingly enough, Roethlisberger only has two seasons where he’s thrown 30+ touchdowns and four years with 4,000+ yards. It’s kind of remarkable that Big Ben is right in the middle when considering tenure with all of the injury concerns that have popped up throughout the years.
Despite taking all of the hits that he has, Roethlisberger has missed more than three games only three times thus far in his career. Unreal, knowing that we’ve all seen him play through more pain than nearly any quarterback in recent memory as well.
Throughout the rest of the study, Ben’s average ranking was right about where he ended up (5.85), including top five in win percentage, yards per attempt, clutch number and formulated career yards as well. While there are a handful of guys on this list that are still active and can improve their scores, it’s hard to see Roethlisberger making any significant strides in his — due to his injury concerns — or moving up on this list as there’s a pretty good distance between himself and No. 4 on this list.
4. Drew Brees | Score: 151.651
This second-round draft pick may be the most consistently overlooked quarterback in the league year in and year out. In spite of that, he just keeps on churning out 5,000 yard seasons (4 in his career/all in last 8 years), and is averaging 4,855 yards per year over the last 10 seasons. Since 2008, Brees has thrown at least 32 touchdowns in each season, has thrown 40+ twice and he has averaged over 300 yards a game throughout the duration of the season six times.
He is literally a phenomena when you consider that his career was legitimately considered to be threatened before coming to New Orleans after a suffering torn labrum. The Miami Dolphins’ doctors were notoriously very skeptical that Brees could even return to form, let alone destroy the league for the next decade. Brees did exactly that.
Brees is a nine-time Pro Bowl selection, Super Bowl XLIV champion, Super Bowl XLIV MVP, holds literally every Saints passing record and sits inside the top five in completions, attempts, passing yards, touchdowns, passing yards per game, completion percentage and total offense. It should then come as no surprise at all that Brees — aside from win percentage and the Super Bowl compilations — is inside the top five in every category, and leads the group in clutch and touchdown/interception formulations.
Common knowledge tells us that Brees has two, to three seasons left in the league, but that’s more than enough time to possibly climb this list another spot.
3. Brett Favre | Score: 161.588
To nobody’s surprise, Favre far and away holds the top spot in tenure among this group with 2.07 years more accumulated seasons than the next closest quarterback, and 4.69 years more than any active quarterback. The fact that he only missed six games in his entire career may have a little something to do with that too. It truly is remarkable when you put it into perspective.
Favre threw for over 4,000 yards six times, he tossed 30+ touchdowns nine times and actually led the league in touchdown percentage four times as well in his time in the league. He was an eleven-time Pro Bowl selection, won Super Bowl XXXI with the Packers, led the NFL in touchdown passes four times and earned league MVP honors three times. Like Brees, Favre was also a second-round draft pick who — after being drafted by the Falcons, and simultaneously loathed by Jerry Glanville — was traded after only throwing four passes in Atlanta.
Interestingly enough, during the physical for the trade, Packers’ doctors discouraged the transaction as they diagnosed him with a degenerative hip condition and — in retrospect — very well could have ended Favre’s career. Ron Wolfe, the Packers’ GM at the time, overruled the doctors and went forth. As such, both, the Packers’ and the NFL’s history at the position was written by Favre over the next 19 years. Favre went on to rack up over 550 attempts eight times, 30 fourth quarter comebacks and 45 game-winning drives.
Favre is currently the historical benchmark in career attempts, completions and games started, while holding down the second all-time marks in yards, total offense and touchdowns. For the study’s sake, Favre was average in most categories. His tenure, and career yards formulation, did quite a bit for climbing up the list. For the time being it makes sense that he would be in this No. 3 spot on the chart. It also makes sense, however, to assume that at least Brees will be taking over his position in the next couple seasons.
Brady and Manning:
For more than a couple reasons, you can’t bring up the history of the game without mentioning Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. You also can’t mention either Brady or Manning without bringing up the other one — and for good reason. These two have literally led the charge in the NFL at the quarterback position since they took their respective first snaps as starters.
Throughout the study they took turns beating out the other — head to head — with Brady taking five, and Manning sitting atop the other four. Additionally, as you can see from their total scores, this couldn’t have gotten any closer in the end. As we often have throughout their careers, let’s delve into these two “top five all-timers”.
2. Tom Brady | Score: 168.872
For starters, Brady is a four-time Super Bowl champion, three-time Super Bowl MVP, twice the league MVP and an eleven-time Pro Bowl selection. He’s also taken the Patriots to six Super Bowls, and is already in the top five in most statistical categories including attempts (5th), completions (5th), passing yards (5th), touchdowns (3rd) and is second all-time in career interception percentage (1.9%).
He’s racked up 48 game-winning drives (3rd), 37 fourth quarter comebacks (2nd) and is tops in league history in playoff games started (31), which will likely only grow and will be near impossible to match by anyone in the future. If you love Brady, you’re undoubtedly a Patriots’ fan. If you hate him, well, then you are just a fan of one of 31 other NFL teams who have — at one time or another — been embarrassed by Brady under center. Regardless of what side you stand on, if you don’t respect his greatness, you simply don’t understand the game or are willfully blind.
Brady has amassed eight seasons with 4,000+ passing yards, six 30-touchdown seasons — including a, then, record-breaking 50 in 2007. He’s never thrown more interceptions than touchdowns in any season — which nobody on this list below him can say — and has never amassed 20 interceptions in any year. Brady also has six seasons with interception percentages under 2.0%, with his worst career TD%/INT% differential being +1.5. Truly historical numbers in that respect.
Since being named the starter in 2001, Brady literally makes playoff reservations before the season even starts. Outside of his 2008 season — in which he was injured in Week 1 — Brady has led the Patriots to the postseason every single year, and has only twice played in less than two games in any postseason appearance.
Amongst the group, Brady was in the top four in five categories including holding the third spots in career formulated yards, tenure and the clutch formula. Brady also holds the top spot in career formulated win percentage, and it’s not close. Somewhat surprisingly (to me anyhow), Brady was sixth in combined completion percentage and twelfth in yards per attempt in this list.
It’ll be very interesting to see how much longer Brady plays, and with that who stands a chance at overthrowing some of his eventual career totals. Either way, Brady will never outside of anyone’s top-five, regardless of how that list is constructed.
1. Peyton Manning | Score: 168.938
Finally, we come to the preeminent quarterback of this decade-and-a-half long ‘era’. Manning, a fourteen-time Pro Bowl selection, is an NFL record holding five-time league MVP who led two different organizations (Colts, Broncos) to two Super Bowl appearances each — winning one for both teams. Manning was the Super Bowl XLI MVP, a seven-time All-Pro and owns every single statistical record for the Colts, as well as sitting atop nine NFL categories including weighted approximate value, fourth quarter comebacks (45), game-winning drives (56) and total offense (70,654).
Manning threw for over 4,000 yards fourteen times, 30+ touchdowns nine times including a then record 49 in 2004, which was broken by Brady in 2007, and was re-taken by Manning in 2013 when he tossed 55 touchdowns and still stands today. Manning’s first, and last seasons, were the only two in his career where he failed to complete over 62% of his passes, and finished with a career mark of 65.3% completion percentage. Manning twice threw more than 20 interceptions, and also never — when playing an entire 16-game season — threw fewer than 26 touchdowns.
He led every major passing statistic at least twice in his career while leading the league in completions, net yards per attempt and touchdowns four times, attempts and yards three times. Manning’s biggest knock — while being labeled the “best regular season quarterback ever” stigma — is his nine ‘one-and-done’ playoff appearances. However, if you consider that he went to the Super Bowl four of the six times he played more than one postseason game, finished his postseason career with a 63.2% completion rate, a +1.5 TD%/INT% differential, 11.3 yards per completion and passed for over 7,300 yards it’s impossible to pin the playoff failures solely on Manning.
Considering that he still nearly amassed a 2/1 touchdown-to-interception ratio (11/6), and averaged 254 yards per game throughout those nine instances, it seems a bit lazy if you’re not looking at specific individual performances.
Maybe more than anything else, Manning revolutionized the quarterback position by utilizing a very focused and deliberate form of the no-huddle offense. He consistently caught opposing defenders trying to get off of the field during substitutions, exposed mismatches and virtually turning opposing linebackers into schizophrenics attempting to read his pre-snap motions and monikers. Despite Manning inevitably getting surpassed on this list early in the 2016 season, he absolutely deserves to sit atop the totem pole for the time being.
The Manning-Brady rivalry will forever be considered one of the best in the NFL’s history simply due to the fact that there may never be two quarterbacks who go head-to-head 17 times throughout their careers, and have done more for their respective teams in the process. Of those 17 meetings, Brady holds the edge (11–6) in regular season matchups, while Manning touts the upper hand in the postseason (3–2). Interestingly enough, ten of those regular season matchups were in Foxboro, while they each won every home playoff game they squared off in.
Check out previous editions of this series:
A Statistical Analysis of the Top-Five Quarterbacks: 1945–1960
A Statistical Analysis of the Top-Ten Quarterbacks: 1961–1980
A Statistical Analysis of the Top-Ten Quarterbacks: 1981–1995
Be on the lookout for Matt Danely’s subsequent edition of this series which will next feature active quarterbacks drafted in 2005 and after.
