The QB GOAT Series: No. 2

The recognized GOAT comes up slightly short in this analysis, with plenty of paths for context to put him over the top

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

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.

Links to past posts:

• 50-48, 47-45, 44-42, 41-39,

• 38-36, 35-33, 32-30, 29-27,

• 26-24, 23-21, 20-18, 17-15,

• 14-12, 11-9, 8-6, 5-4,

• Third

No. 2: TOM BRADY

Regular: 2nd, Peak: 4th, Playoffs: 5th

I’m not going to spend a lot of time upfront talking about who Tom Brady was as a player. First, we all know the story pretty well. Second, I’m not sure anyone will listen to that story before hearing the answer to the most pressing question: How could the nearly universally recognized GOAT not, in fact, be No. 1 in this series? There are a lot of tiny answers to that question, but the bigger one is that the designation is more up for grabs than some think.

By the process of elimination, (spoiler alert) you can surmise that Peyton Manning will be No. 1 in the series. This is not a ranking I backed into. In fact, when I did this series via podcast last summer, it was Brady who was No. 1. Two things happened to change the rankings: 1) I changed the methodology slightly to raise the baseline efficiency level for value created, meaning average and slightly above average accumulation now receives less credit relative to extraordinary seasons. Manning simply had more crushingly efficient regular seasons in his career, which I’ll detail in his writeup. 2) Brady’s final season, by this harsher standard, was slightly negative. Brady’s had passing efficiency of 6.1 ANY/A in 2022, which was a little better than the NFL average of 5.9 ANY/A, but worse than the 3-year rolling average used in the calculation (6.25).

The most important context of the relative rankings of Brady and Manning is that it was almost too close to call. The difference in total value added by my calculation was roughly 3x bigger between Brady and Joe Montana (QB GOAT No. 3) than between Brady and Manning. An almost infinite number of small tweaks to the methodology could flip the two. More obvious adjustments, like weather, could flip the results in Brady’s favor. Whether the final rankings had Manning No. 1 and Brady No. 2, or the reverse, the big conclusion is that either set of rankings can’t be dismissed, if you have a comprehensive view of value added, and don’t only look at team playoff success, Super Bowl wins and accumulated counting stats. I didn’t have an agenda with these rankings, but decided to run with the results and not change them and back into Brady at No. 1.