The QB GOAT Series: 32-30

Romo truthers unite, an all-time great with playoff struggles, and a Hall-of-Fame lock who will always face questions

I wrote up the methodology for how I measure quarterback career value and highlighted a few honorable mentions in a post last week.

I don’t agree 100% with all the rankings, but the beauty of stats-based analysis is that we can take representative data from nearly one million quarterback dropbacks over a century of the modern NFL to rank-order quarterbacks by value. Good luck watching, grading and comparing every quarterback snap from 1947 to 2022 and then forming your own film-watcher list.

I’m going to take this list in smallish chucks, going three-at-a-time until I get to the final two, who you might be able to guess, though the ordering may remain a mystery.

Links to past posts:

• 50-48, 47-45, 44-42, 41-39, 38-36, 35-33

No. 32: TONY ROMO

Regular: 22nd, Peak: 31st, Playoffs: 71st

Tony Romo’s career is a great Rorschach test to reveal the observer’s appreciate of player contribution in light of team results. Romo added value through his passing efficiency to the Cowboys every single season he attempted at least 200 passes, nine years from 2006-2014. His regular season ANY/A rankings during that stretch were fifth, fifth, seventh, fourth, eighth, sixth, 14th, ninth and second. And Romo’s career heavily overlapped with some of the most efficient passer ever, including (spoiler alert!) top-10 QB GOAT finishers Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and, to a lesser degree, Aaron Rodgers. Romo “only” had one Second-Team All-Pro selection, but even Brees never won MVP (though five All-Pro selections) with the other all-time greats gobbling up all the top accolades. Consistently finishing in the top 2-8 in the greatest era of passing efficiency is more of an accomplishment than it superficially appears.

Romo was certainly a regular season winner with a final starting record of 78-49, but the Cowboys record was good enough to make the playoffs in four of his nine strong efficiency seasons. As much as many try and separate the player from his surroundings, it’s very likely the poor Cowboys defenses during Romo’s starting seasons and their effect on the team’s results negatively colored opinions of Romo. From 2006 to 2014, the Cowboys defense only finished in the top-10 for opponent expected points added (EPA) per play once (eighth in 2009), and their pass defense never ranked better than 14th. In five of nine season the Cowboys defensive efficiency ranked in the bottom-10.

The Cowboys offense, on the other hand, finished in the top-10 in EPA per play in six of the eight seasons that Romo started the majority of games, four of those times in top-6, three times in top-3. The Cowboys didn’t make the playoffs three times when the offense was playing with top-10 efficiency. Romo’s play was partially responsible for the team’s lack of success in the playoffs (2-4), but his 5.9 ANY/A in the postseason was better than the league average for the era, and less than half-a-yard less per dropback than Tom Brady. Romo’s 185 playoffs attempts tell us something about his ability in the most important situations, but he didn’t get the opportunity to prove himself as often as his play should have dictated.

Stylistically, Romo played in a way that also caused diverging opinions. He was the quintessential gunslinger, performing at an above average rate every season for yards per attempt and touchdown rate, while throwing a worse interception rate in five of nine seasons with 200 attempts. Romo was good at sack avoidance, but the negatives of interceptions are much more pronounced in the viewer mind than for sacks that can be pinned on the offensive line.

Because the Cowboys defenses were so poor, Romo was required to take extra risk to increase win probability, reflected in the fact that more than a third of Romo’s victories required game-winning drives (29 of 78, 37%). Yet, Romo’s risk calibration wasn’t as strong as some other greats, often playing too aggressively in favorable circumstances, throwing unnecessarily risky passes and interceptions that felt like gut-punches to fans. Benjamin Morris laid out the relationship perfectly in his Skeptical Football column, showing that all of Romo’s value-add came when trailing, versus the perfectly calibrated arc of Peyton Manning.

No. 31: Y.A. TITTLE

Regular: 21st, Peak: 12th, Playoffs: 99th