Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - PFF's Kevin Cole talks about the best statistical quarterbacks of all time

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Matthew Coller gets together with Kevin Cole of Pro Football Focus to talk about the countdown on his podcast Unexpected Points where he looks at the all-time greatest quarterbacks by statistical measures. Where should Fran Tarkenton rank all time? How great was Daunte Culpepper's peak compared to other GOATs. Why Favre is just outside the top 10. The trouble with John Elway and traditional stats and how Peyton Manning and Tom Brady match up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, welcome to another episode of Purple Insider, Matthew Collar here along with pro football focused data scientists and host of the unexpected points podcast and a man kevin cole who has been doing an incredible undertaking trying to break down the top 50 statistical quarterbacks of all time and i respect your guts to do this kevin because when people see a list you know what happens they don't like list. There are players out of order on the list from what they think. These are big problems. So I respect what you're doing here. How are you? I'm good. Well, I mean, I can deflect some blame from the fact that I'm saying this is a statistical list, not necessarily my list. Although I think what the exercises has helped provide to me,

and this is one of the reasons, you know, me and the rest of the nerds out there in the world do rely upon statistics so much is that you talk about this being such a big undertaking. Well, by having some data that we can era adjust, we have efficiency numbers. We have some volume numbers, make some adjustments based upon that, throw in some peak versus longevity adjustments where we can do throw in some playoffs. And it could just spit out a list for me, not having to hem and haw and figure out who's who. And then you look over the list and you say the top 25 names that are on the list of all the eligible players for the hall of fame,

all there's only one who's in the top 25, who is not in the hall of fame. There are only 27 quarterbacks in the hall of fame right now of the modern era so you know not a bad way of doing things yeah no i like it i mean i love the project which is why you're here and i want to talk about a couple of the vikings who are on this list and also just kind of talk about the methodology here because i think when we try to compare cross eras it can be pretty tricky i mean in part the one that always gets me and you put out um you put out the numbers 50 through 11 on your twitter and you just in your most recent episode counted down 10 through number six so we won't ruin uh and spoil your top five we can ruin it if you want i'm gonna do it today

so i don't think anyone's going to get to this before, before that comes out. So, yeah. All right, good. Well, I'm not running this until tomorrow. So we can talk about the top five. I just, I just don't know. Yeah.

So we'll have to break them down. Okay, good. But I wanted to talk about like how you went about this because the one that always pops out to me is Troy Aikman because I grew up in Buffalo and I grew up watching Troy Aikman because I grew up in Buffalo and I grew up watching Troy Aikman beat the ever-loving heck out of the Buffalo Bills in Super Bowls and play great and be considered a top three quarterback in his era but one of the issues with statistics in him is that Emmitt Smith ran in all the touchdowns and I wonder like I know you use adjusted yards

per attempt and our statistics from back in the day it's not like you guys at PFF have gone back and graded the 1993 season so how did you kind of you know put all that into a pot and deal with some of those issues with you know touchdowns interceptions and things like that yeah yeah so the main stat that I used for this is because we're going to have it going back the furthest. I know, you know, expected points added is a big thing, but we don't have those calculations going back longer than about the last 20 years. So the stat that I used was adjusted net yards per attempt. And then prior to sacks being tracked, just adjusted yards per attempt. So the adjusted in the adjustment is for touchdowns and for interceptions, but really the foundation. I think this is important when talking about quarterback play. And it's just funny how infrequently we talk about it versus so-and-so has had X number of 300 yard games, even today versus other times, or talking about defense and offense on the means

of the number one defense in the NFL is giving up the fewest yards or, or, or the number one offense has the most yards like per attempt is what matters rate stats or what matters. So yards per attempt is the foundation. So for someone like Aikman, even if he's not throwing it a lot, he can be high in that particular stat. And then the adjustments off of that, according to this calculation, based upon looking at the worth of different types of plays, is adding 20 yards for every touchdown and subtracting 45 yards for every interception. So those are the adjustments there. And then the sack part of it comes into it in a pretty simple way where you just subtract the sack yards out of there. And then you add the sacks to the denominator for like drop back.

So Aikman actually, stats wise, and that's something that comes out, I think in my analysis versus where some other people may have them. I mean, he's in the low thirties here for me. So it's not like he's out of the picture. If you think about again, 27 players in the hall of fame, there are additional, I don't know, six, maybe who are not eligible, who are like locks to go in the hall of Fame. So he's in that category of someone who I believe belongs there. But some people don't because you mentioned touchdowns in particular. He only has 15 more touchdowns and interceptions during his career, where you have other players who are up, you know, over 100 for someone like Steve Young and down even further.

And his touchdown rate has been so low, but it's exactly what you talk about. They ran the ball in at the end and those touchdowns can make a big difference. I mean, 40% of Aaron Rodgers touchdowns over the last two seasons have been from five yards or in. When you don't have those, you're just not going to have a lot of touchdowns. Yeah, right.

And so I looked once just going back, like where did offenses rank? And I think that John Elway actually runs into this issue as well, where he just, there were some years where he'd throw 17 touchdowns. And yet they're the number three offense in the NFL. Like, wait, something isn't matching up here because Elway was their whole offense. And then you look at, you know, some of their running backs and they have, you know, a bunch of, you know, fullback has five touchdowns or something from the one yard line uh and i think that that does like make it a little bit tricky to kind of figure out uh where their offense ranked versus because he was clearly like moving the ball um effectively

and i think that for most quarterbacks that doesn't throw it off but just those two specifically it probably does because when you have a list that has Rich Gannon ahead of Troy Aikman, you can immediately imagine and Tony Romo. You can immediately imagine Dallas Cowboys fans just having their entire skull explode. But in like there's no statistical measure that's going to capture everybody's circumstance perfectly. And I think when you have Emmitt Smith, who is a top three running back in the league, of course, behind Barry Sanders and Thurman Thomas. But when you have a top three running back in the league who is getting as many carries at the goal line as he is, that specific situation throws it off. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. But the touchdown adjustment isn't maybe as big of a factor as you might be thinking. I think there's a volume issue with Aikman because I also make an adjustment

where I weight it more heavily if they're throwing at an above average league rate versus lower than that. I mean, the one thing that's just not part of it at all, and this is something when it comes to someone like Troy Aikman probably has a lot more benefit than it does to others, is the surroundings, the teammate. And Aikman gets a huge boost in this calculation by the playoffs and I think that is some an area where people who have made the anti-Aikman case are going to rely upon a lot of these regular season stats and I think you do have to look into the playoffs where during that three Super Bowl stretch where they also made the conference championship in between there he was incredible in those games, not at the highest volume, but even in those, even in

that little stretch there, he was plus 12 touchdown to interception. Remember, he's plus 15 his entire career in the regular season. He was plus 12 during those four playoff runs. So he really carried the team at that particular time. I try to wait that fairly heavily. Maybe a lot of people probably wait that even further because, you know, QB rings matter more than anything else. But I think I've got to compromise here. And to be honest, I don't know about Rich Gannon, but for someone like Tony Romo, I think he is a little bit under rated maybe

by a lot of people out there. So I'm happy with the rankings where they are in that sort of range. Yeah. And I think, well, you know, Troy Aikman and John Elway would be two that like, are you 23 years old and you just looked at pro football reference? Like maybe you did because it's kind of one of those. And this makes us sound like the olds, but it's true. It's like at the at that time, though, there were a few quarterbacks who were considered to be better. But I also get it. It's funny, though, because it's like he had the great supporting cast and you can name the, you know, the offensive line and people could still memorize the offensive lineman and

the receivers and everything else. And I don't mean to spend too much time on Aikman. He's just a really interesting statistical case, but also go against the 49ers defense, like pre free agency or something where they are just completely stacked. So you had, you know, the, I think that balanced out, especially in those huge games, you're playing against the San Francisco 49ers who are equal competition for you and still having 300 yard

games where you drive the success like I like that you factored in playoffs here because a lot of times we just don't even look at those playoff stats and act like they barely exist yeah yeah I mean the playoffs are a big thing here I mean I think also for Aikman he didn't play that long he does longevity he doesn't quite have and I guess I push back a little bit for the ap all pro i mean he never was a first team or second team selection for the all pro so he was never voted as being the best or the second best quarterback for any year of his career so i think peak was a little bit of an issue with him having that sort of peak now let me just go to elway for a second i specifically talk about elway in when i'm talking about his ranking because he comes out you have to remind

me i don't remember who's 18 or something like that 17 or 18 19 and 19 philip rivers is ahead of him which of course is getting worse for me so he comes out at 19 despite the fact that he is one of the nine quarterbacks who made of the modern era who made the nfl 100 team so he's the lowest of any of the quarterbacks who made who made modern era who made the NFL 100 team. So he's the lowest of any of the quarterbacks who made, who made that team. And I do specifically mention in there that he did not play with a lot of talent and the system that he was using with Dan Reeves, I don't think was conducive to,

to his play. I mean, his first nine years of his career, he had six different pro bowl selections outside of Elway. Four of them were running backs that you could you just throw those away like they're not great running backs or anything and two were for his left guard and that was it during his whole entire whole entire first nine years of his career so i think that it is very very important context and you see him though up

there consistently winning an mvp high in the mvp. So I think he is definitely someone perception wise that you can get hints from how, how the voting and the accolades happened at the time that can lead you to investigate further to say, you know what, this guy probably does belong higher than what his pure stats based case says for him. Right. He was the entire offense and he would take them to the Superbowl and then get absolutely bludgeoned in the the super bowl, you know, way back in the day, because you're playing the 49ers or you're playing Washington teams that are way, way better than you overall. Uh, and you're kind of just the quarterback. And then when he does have a great supporting cast, he's old, but wins back-to-back super bowls and has unbelievable season. And he had great efficiency during those times. I mean,

that feeds in and gets them, you know, it gets them into the top 20 here again he's not like he's he's outside the hall of fame range or something like that he's solidly and that's what does get him there is that he had those great years and you know shannon sharp comes in and uh rod smith comes in and ed mccaffrey comes in and they have this new offense that they, that they're using with Shanahan, all those things happen at once. And that's what takes this level where he's, he's played at a new level at that point,

as far as on a per attempt per drop back type of basis, what sort of numbers he was putting up. Now, somebody asked me not too long ago, if I would rank Fran Tarkenton as a top eight quarterback of all time, he is 11th on your list, so right in that ballpark. And he's one where you go back and look at the numbers and you go, like, well, he had a 90 quarterback rating, huh?

But that was like the best in the league. I mean, quarterback play was so incredibly difficult back in the day. And I think part of it was that the Vikings threw a lot of short passes, so he had higher completion percentages, throwing the Chuck Foreman and things like that. But for France Arkington to put up the numbers that he did, I believe when he retired, he was like the leader in all sorts of categories,

yards, touchdowns, all types of things. And I think that for whatever reason, as history went along, because he didn't get the Superbowl, even though he took the team there multiple times because he didn't get the Super Bowl, even though he took the team there multiple times because he didn't get the Super Bowl. He isn't talked about like this, but I think

that your numbers bear out that he belongs in that conversation for one of the best quarterbacks of all time. Oh yeah, no, no, he definitely does. I mean, I even believe that he should be higher than the 11th ranking there. And this is when I would come into conflict with some of the media or the analysts or the others, because again, he did not make the NFL 100 team. So Roger Staubach did. Staubach is directly above him, 11th, according to my rankings,

huge playoff numbers there for him. But I think I would put him above Staubach because if you look at a lot of these contextual things that are not part of the rankings i mean he started with basically an expansion vikings franchise that stunk um and it got them within four seasons to a winning record and then he was traded to the giants and the giants team was 1 12 and 1 the season before he got there and he took them to 7 to seven immediately and then to four straight playoffs finishes there and then comes back to to minnesota playing you know outdoors also in minnesota here which not part of my calculation but the estimates are that you can

raise you close to almost half a yard per attempt uh playing in a dome versus playing outdoors so all those sorts of things feeding into it you You mentioned the records. I mean, top 10 in passing 17 years in a row during his career, led the NFL in touchdowns and passing yards and rewrote the record books by the time that he was done. And, you know, he started the entire way and he played at least nine games in every single season. So we had the longevity, the availability there too. All those things together for me should put him into the top 10. And I think that he is definitely an underrated guy in history. And that plays out, like I said, with these lists like NFL 100, where he doesn't make it. Yeah. I mean, that's absurd to me for him to not make it to the top

100. And I think a part of it too, is that their defense was so prolific during that time. But it's funny that Tarkington was in New York when they actually had some of their absolute best defenses and went to a Super Bowl with Joe Capp in 1969. Tarkington comes back, guys are getting a little bit older and they are more driven by the offense. I'm sure you've played around with this before, but the Hall of Fame monitor, if you've ever looked at that on Pro Football Reference, it gives Tarkington is due. It puts him right there with Dan Marino and Steve Young as one of the best Hall of Fame cases for anybody. So I think that he does get a little bit lost in this, and I was glad to see him on your list. Now, one guy that cracked your list that I thought was interesting and gets a fair amount of discussion almost every summer on this show,

as we kind of go back in Vikings historyings history and stuff is dante call pepper dante call pepper cracks the top 50 at 47th on this list and i am always captivated by dante call pepper conversations because it was so short and the team was a disaster from an ownership perspective like they didn't want to spend money they lost an offensive coordinator because they couldn't pay the man like imagine that happening today that they just could not pay a guy they were in the conversation way back then of like is this the team that's going to move to los angeles it's unfathomable now with this organization uh for what it is and he had seasons that were right there neck and neck with Peyton Manning during that time also had a couple of down years but he's he's one that I mean just

isn't talked about a lot because the longevity wasn't there because of his injury yeah I mean I also put rushing into this I mentioned the passing efficiency but I also look at rushing and figure out just in a rough way like how many rushing yards or rushing touchdowns they have as a percentage of like your average passing offense and then giving them a boost for that. So that's another area where he excelled. The tough part for him, and I don't think you can rank him much higher than this probably,

no matter what, he gets a boost with his peak performance too because of that huge season he had with Moss and that stretch that he had there um he gets a quite a big book i think a big uh boost i think he's 25th as far as his peak is concerned for for anyone that i had on the list so i think the contextual stuff there probably plays against him a bit i mean this same vikings team that we're talking about, Randall Cunningham came in at 37 years old and played like an MVP with everything else around in the same way that they had for Culpepper. So I think for that reason, contextually, I'd put him out of the top 50, but he's definitely

someone where those eye-popping numbers for there have to be respected in addition to the rushing numbers. baseball gear and if you are prepping for training camp get your purple people eaters shirt your can't stop the thelin hat and all sorts of other great football designs go there soda stick.com s-o-t-a-s-t-i-c-k.com promo code purple insider for 15 off yeah i think that it wasn't i mean having randy moss is great his uh oh four season moss did not play as well and was hurt for a lot of that season which kind of balances that out a little bit also that you know when cunningham was there they had robert smith and as culpepper has his best year it's like i don't you know who like what who's the running backs? The offensive line was probably pretty good at that point,

but it was pretty much the Dante go throw it around and Hey, run over a linebacker. If you see one type of offense. And I think, I mean, for me, it's more of like that era is when I'm playing a ton of Madden and, you know, things like that. And Dante was just the most fun player to play with. And I know that this doesn't factor into the statistical rankings,

but I wonder what you think if he had repeated this even for another couple of years, as opposed to the injury. And then there's the dolphins, Raiders, lions. It just the Sacramento mountain lions come up on the show sometimes of the U of the very forgotten UFL. But, but like, what would his potential have been had he kind of maybe repeated that first section of his career oh i mean if he repeated the first section of his career then and then he's getting very very high up there because once you start to stack those high level seasons at least in my calculation i'm giving most of the benefit to above average type of play and then a lot of benefit to elite type of play and not really any benefit to being below league average type of quarterback in this type of discussion.

So he had those elite, elite numbers. Like I mentioned, the peak was 25th. So if he could have repeated that again, he would probably be somewhere in the 20s, which seems, you know, but that's a tough thing to do though. So to repeat that high level play again, but he had the talents. I guess the question would just be the type of play that you're mentioning running around and running over linebackers and making these big plays down the field. There's probably something inherently unstable, unstable about it or difficult to repeat. And that would be the thing that I would question whether it's possible or not, even that would be the thing that I would question,

whether it's possible or not, even if he had stayed healthy. Yeah, no, there's no question about that. And, you know, even the Moss factor, you wonder if they would have also kind of run into a part of just their franchise trajectory where they would have had to kind of rebuild some things and all that. But it's one that Vikings fans think about a lot is just what could they have done as you know they peaked as a roster again in 2009 with Brett Favre it's like if Dante was there instead of Brett like do you get a similar type

of season and we're talking about you know multiple incredible Dante Culpepper years that kind of thing and maybe he doesn't throw back across his body i don't know in the nfc championship hard to say uh of course of course brett is way up there that's no surprise the one thing that with brett is i think that i was surprised when i looked at his interception numbers that for the time it was kind of like more of league average or even a little below when we think of him as sort of an interception monster. But his interception percentage is not like super crazy high, even though he had several memorable interceptions. Yeah, I mean, well, he threw the ball a lot, right?

So he threw the ball a lot. He threw a lot of touchdowns and he threw a lot of interceptions. But you're right. His interception rate is not particularly high the thing is in that era when we talk about steve young and some other guys who played at least overlapped for for the early parts of farf's career they just had fairly low interception rates there so yeah it's really just a function of throwing the ball a lot i mean he led the league in past attempts three times was right in the top five for most years of his career so when you do that you're going to throw a lot of interceptions but i mentioned on the pod that

you know he's probably the way that things have gone with interceptions and with quarterbacks taking sacks and fumbles i mean maybe we get to like a 20 game seasons and guys play until they're 50 years old maybe they'll catch him but he's probably going to have locked in that interception and fumble all-time record for quite a while. Well, it's kind of like Babe Ruth had the most strikeouts or something, right? Like if you swing for the fences, then you're going to swing and miss sometimes.

I do think it hurts him a little bit, though, in this calculation, because if you're saying an interception is worth X, there is an element of Favre and a lot of these gunslinger types where they don't care if they're losing a game and throwing five interceptions or if they're throwing one interception. Now their quarterback efficiency stat is going to look worse in that circumstance, even when you could say they're playing in a way to maximize their chances of winning the game. So again, where he comes out here, where, where was he? 13th? I should have my

list up here. So he goes out 13th. I mean, I could boost him a little bit higher. He was an NFL 100 guy. So he was someone who made that team of the nine top quarterbacks. As far as whether I put him in the top 10 or not, I mean, I guess so. It's hard when you have a player who won three MVPs and was so ingrained in everyone's mind as being the guy of that era not to put him on something like a top 10 list. Yeah, 13th is where you have him. I think that's fair, though. I mean, there's just a handful of quarterbacks in NFL history

that are the untouchables of almost any list, but especially statistically. And I don't think Favre is that because of the interceptions, because of the fumbles. If he had been a little more safe with the football, even a bit than probably, but those interceptions in the playoffs, even though they don't factor massively different in your analysis, they do when you're analyzing like who the best quarterbacks of all time are

maybe you should have just checked it down to Bernard Berry and I don't know yeah yeah that there's another that I think also too when people think about the numbers of like oh I can't believe someone's not on the top 10 I mean there's a lot there's a lot of competition there and then for mine you know I'm going far back to what is defined as the modern era which we're talking about the mid 40s here all the way back there. And I have players like Otto Graham and Johnny Unitas in the top 10. So once you figure a couple of those really, really old players are taking up slots,

it gets harder and harder, especially as this last era of quarterback play, you know, we're going to have three different quarterbacks who are in the top 10, two of them who are still playing in one of them. Actually, sorry, four different quarterbacks in the top 10, two of them are still playing and two of them have recently retired. When it comes to Favre's 09, you talked about peak seasons.

I was looking at this not that long ago because I ranked all the greatest Vikings quarterback seasons ever. And it was a debate over Cunningham, Culpe call pepper Oh four or Oh nine for Brett Favre for the best one ever. And what amazed me about that was it was Favre statistical best year in a lot of ways at his age, at that point in his career. And he was like the safest, ironically safest with the football lowest interception percentage of his career was 2009. Do you have off the top of your head just where that ranked as far as peak seasons go? Let me see. Let me rank it here. So 2009 for Favre.

Let me just look this up real quick. So that one I have. I mean, it's not extremely high. It's 156 overall. But then versus which season are we talking about for Culpepper? let's see it was 04 for Culpepper was his best so yeah for Culpepper for 04 but again this is against you know oh wow his this is all the way up at 11th in his value ranking so yeah that doesn't shock again the huge rushing value and as far as his passing efficiency was just a lot better. So that Culpepper season, at least according to this number, yeah,

we're talking about one of the best seasons ever. He actually comes right between a Steve Young and Drew Brees season. So he's, he's way up there and plus 548 pass attempts. So he had it on, on big volume too. I believe he was number one as far as passing efficiency that season. And just while you have it up cunningham 98 was the other one okay yeah cunningham gets killed a little bit by his sacks oh sure so that becomes a little bit of an issue let me see you mean the time he had 70 of them with philadelphia was bad

yeah yeah no this one doesn't rank very high at all this ranks somewhere in the 200s oh wow and it looks like oh oh, sorry. You know what? This is very bad. Oh, did you type in the wrong season? Broadcasting here. I was looking at the 1988 season. Oh, okay, okay.

I was very surprised by that. Sorry about that. So 34th for the 1998 season. Sorry. So much, much, much better. Are you talking about, I should have realized, Del, you're talking about the Viking season. You're not talking about one of these early seasons with the Eagles.

Okay, okay, great. Yeah 30 34th makes way more sense because my brain was kind of malfunctioning there i was like wait did he get sad yeah march in 98 like they had a great office you just cut all that cut all that nonsense out yeah okay so uh blame it on the box blame it on the the machine bot yeah that's right um but yeah okay that makes a lot more sense but i think my order was right then that it was um number one call pepper and then number two cunningham and then number three i i think that was my order again bad podcasting i now i don't even remember if that was my order yeah yeah according to these numbers that farf season would be much much lower

okay gotcha glad we worked through that together uh but let's talk about the top 10 so when i was growing up uh announcers dick enberg would be on there and he would say dan marino the best statistical quarterback of all time but he does not make the best statistical quarterback of all time he does crack your top 10 marino uh you have ste Young there as well. Is there anyone that is surprising, though, at the very, very top of this list? Because otherwise, it's a lot of the usual suspects. Well, I mean, Drew Brees being five is probably too high in most people's minds. I think they're probably right. Again, Brees is not an NFL 100 guy. He's someone where over his career, never won an MVP, was second in MVP voting three different times, has a one first team all pro selection. That's it. Along with three second team all pro selections. I mean, it's tough playing in that era, of course, but he would be the guy where if you look at that the combination of the lack of high highs in his play a little bit of an accumulator type of aspect to him and he didn't play with like high-end

talent necessarily especially early in his career he had Marcus Colston you know Jimmy Graham played well there didn't play that well later on later in his career he's kind of able to piece together a lot of things there but I think the combination of the fact that he played in a dome he played in a very weak division got to face a lot of teams that they they chow down on he threw the ball a ton he led the league in passing yards seven different times so he has a ton of volume there that's as many as peyton manning and tom brady combined and the fact that sean peyton is probably an issue now, because especially because these last few years when Teddy Bridgewater came in and was five and oh, and I think Taysom Hill was three and one. That doesn't help your your your standing to show that these also rands.

Well, not Teddy. Sorry, Teddy. I'd be the third of the bus there. But it takes them being an also rand and a clear kind of backup ish sort of quarterback at this point in his career. Teddy Bridgewater can come in with that sort of success. I think all of that kind of taints a bit some of the statistical stuff that Breeze did. And Breeze is another one of these guys where I talked about Favre maybe being someone who doesn't play to the equation. I'm not saying Breeze plays to the equation, but his playing style of a short depth of target, high completion percentage, not taking sacks, but not necessarily also giving you the best chance to win in certain circumstances that that all plays into it where there's a disconnect there, I think. No. Yeah. And I think that with Breeze though,

you look at the accumulation of how he performed and I'm sure Sean Payton was helpful, but he's not like, I mean i mean no it's the same thing with joe montana i've heard this before like oh he just dialed it up and you're like okay we'll go watch a highlight reel man like joe montana was a playmaker um and you know at the end of the day the quarterback has to execute all these throws and even if you're a little bit better than everybody else it's kind of like the um theay thing. Like he can only take Jared Goff so far before he needed a more talented quarterback. And I think as far as an executor of the offense, I mean,

just breezes the all time you give him the offense and he is going to master every bit of it. The anticipation throws. I find this super interesting though, because you think about like someone like Dan Marino, the ultimate physical talent, just this monster never took sacks quickest release, strongest arm. There's that highlight of him throwing it behind his back, like 50 yards. And then drew breeze, the undersized guy at the end, he's got almost no arm strength

left. And yet statistically they're putting up very similar career numbers oh yeah yeah very very similar career numbers i mean i think marino had a pretty poor situation as far as his supporting cast too um in the the running game was almost always awful there not just in the number of yards they put up, but again, in it from an efficiency standpoint. So I think that drags against him a bit more than it does versus others, but you're right. There are different ways to produce. And I think that's kind of the key at looking at some of this and even breeze. I feel, and this comes to breeze, this comes to Ben Roethlisberger, not as much Peyton Manning anymore, but it would have been maybe right after when he retired, when these guys fall off at the end of their careers, I think that hurts them somewhat.

And especially in the playoffs, if you look at Breeze, he did not perform well in the playoffs. Really did not perform well the last couple of seasons of his career. But there's I think that feeds into some sort of notion that he didn't play well at the end of seasons or he wasn't a good playoff competitor. He had some really good playoff runs and obviously they only won that one Super Bowl. But if you think about early in his career, well, number one, all the playoff games he lost, his defense gave up an average about 32 points a game. And in the first three playoff games that he lost, they were giving up about 38 points per game. There was nothing really he could do. He was averaging 400 yards passing and, you know, two and a half touchdowns during those games. Those would be the type of games people would be screaming about how he's, he's the greatest ever,

as opposed to this, you know, uh, this check down artists later on in his career. And that really just skews people's perceptions of who someone is, I think, coming right off of the down part of their career. Yeah, but I also think the amount that you ask someone to throw is really telling, like for the all-time great quarterbacks. It's like Marino, you mentioned, although I will have no Bernie Parmelee disrespect on the show. The other thing is you said some banned words on the show. Only one Super Bowl is banned on the show. I mean, it's a well we're talking about the top 10 here when we get into the top 10 then that that starts to become

a thing i know you just can't say on a viking show only one super bowl um but no i know i i get you i just think is for breeze that's where i do want to give him a lot of credit because if you're throwing for 5 000 yards year after year after year, that's your coaching staff saying, yep, that's your offense. You do absolutely everything. And when we talk about that all-time great Culpepper season, same kind of deal. Like, just do everything. This is how much we believe in you and trust you.

They don't do that with Jared Goff. And the Vikings tried not to do that with Kirk Cousins to have him throwing 600 or 700 passes. So the top five, I don't know the top five because you're unveiling it on your show before I can listen to it. Or you've done it on your show before I could listen to it. So who is it? Who do you got ahead of Breeze? So, yeah, so Breeze is five.

Marino is four. Three is Otto Graham. Now, that's one where a lot of people may not think about it but initially going into this I thought you know one could number one could only be really between two people between Peyton Manning and Tom Brady but then I guess I didn't know a lot about Otto Graham I a lot of people probably don't know a lot about Otto Graham someone who played in the 40s and 50s um but I think he actually has legitimate case And I know it sounds ridiculous to say that someone who was playing, you know, back when they were like smoking cigarettes in the locker room and, you know, working on the shipyard in

the off season could be on that sort of level. But he really is amazing in a short career there. Number two is Manning and number one is Tom Brady. I really wanted it in some ways to troll everyone by putting Manning at number one. But according to the numbers that I put together here, it's not really the playoffs that much that put Brady ahead, because I'm only giving guys credit for playing above average. And believe it or not, Tom Brady hasn't been that great in the playoffs versus the wins that they've had on the Patriots, but it's really just the accumulation. And if he would have retired after being on the Patriots, if this Tampa Bay part of his career didn't exist, then Payne Manning would have had enough points to be number one, but this really put them over, over the top, having a couple of like MVP

adjacent seasons now here with the Bucs. Yeah. And also, I think when you talk about peak seasons, I mean, I don't know if you still have that spreadsheet up, but the Randy Moss and Tom Brady season, if that's not one of the five best seasons ever played by a quarterback, I'd be pretty surprised. I mean. Yeah. Yeah. You definitely have to cancel me if that if that wasn't the case. Yeah.

So, yeah, the top five seasons I have, and this is including playoffs that are part of this, and it's also giving a little bit more credit, again, for if you have a lot of past volumes. So Dan Marino, 1984, is the number one season on here. Number two is Peyton Manning in 2004, and then number three is Tom Brady's 2007. Yeah. I mean, what was it, 50 touchdowns or something? I mean, just absolutely. Yeah, yeah, broke the record, 50 touchdowns.

Yeah, you mentioned Randy Moss was there. Wes Welker and Dante Stallworth also came in that offseason. So, yeah, that I think is one of the greatest ever. The thing is, though, playoffs were not that great for Brady that season. I mean, it's one of many postseasons where he won the championship. There's almost no correlation between how well he played in the playoffs and the championships. That's what's so weird about this, this rings discussion. A lot of times for these different players in that particular postseason was definitely

not one of his best, his best postseasons may have been 2011. And again, losing to the giants. And then his best postseason, I think, was 2017, losing to the Eagles. Right. It's amazing that they did not win that championship in having Randy Moss there. And the way that the Giants played, I mean, this is where it's like, look, I give Eli credit for his gutsiness and the way he played in those games. But to shut down that offense,

the way that the New York giants defense did in that game is still like one of the great, I think one of the great like football accomplishments ever by a team in an individual game because of how unbelievable that offense was Manning. Um, does it hurt him a lot to have weirdly like the super bowl year where he was so putrid? Like I remember he played the Vikings that year and it was like you or me out there throwing passes, just these horrendous ducks. And yet in the playoffs,

he kind of found a way though, like to get them ahead and they can hang on to the game. He made some throws, but even in the Superbowl, he was pretty awful. That's kind of one of the weirdest Superbowl wins. I think, by any quarterback to have this legend who was horrible,

but we got to give him credit for it. It's a weird place to be, but I wonder if that kind of tips it a little bit. Yeah, I mean, that season for Manning ranks, out of the 1,580 seasons that I have in this database, it ranks 1,563. So not great. Not great, Bob, for that season. And it even hurts him with a lot of his playoff metrics and numbers,

the fact that they kept winning. He's compiling awful playoff games also as part of that thing that are now going into his playoff calculation and hurting his numbers there what i actually have done here is i have another calculation where i look at like how efficient the quarterback was in each game and it's pretty well correlated with your team winning or not and then kind of like having an expected win number on a game by game basis versus actual wins compile them all there i almost have to throw even 2014 out the window for,

for Manning too, because Manning played, he was the most efficient quarterback in football through week eight in 2014. And then he was about the 20th most efficient the rest of the season. And he stunk in the playoffs in 2014 too. So you almost have to throw those out of the equation or else Manning looks so awful in the playoffs. The reality was he was only marginally worse than maybe someone like Tom Brady in the playoffs. It's just his teams, you know, did not have the buys, did not have the home field advantage when they were at home, they would beat the Patriots. And when they would go to new England, they would get stopped by the Patriots. Didn't have the other teams practice tape.

Maybe I'm just saying, yeah, I didn't have equipment guys, uh, squeezing balls or I probably can't say that. Is this a kid-friendly podcast? Well, footballs. Yeah. And they've been accused of bugging locker rooms and all sorts of things. So maybe there's like a statistical adjustment for your cheater, Tom Brady, that gets thrown in there. Maybe, maybe.

But what's interesting about this, I've been kind of doing a little bit of an okie-dokie by putting a lot of positive peyton manning stuff and i do love peyton manning so on twitter recently and everyone is starting to think that like oh god you're gonna rank him number one and you know so many people really focus on the teammate angle of it for brady and i do think it's interesting at the same time for manning i mean reggie wayne's great he's a good receiver but i think sometimes this whole teammate differential is overplayed. Pre-2007, I will say, yeah, that's definitely a thing. But then when you have through 2007 for Brady through, I guess it was 2012, he had some combination of Moss, Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez,

you know, the guy could play for a few years there. And then trailing on now going to Tampa Bay, he probably has one of the best one of the best collections of talent there, too. So I think maybe that's a little bit of a of the one thing that annoys me about this discussion is one is the rings, the rings part of it, too, is the like teammates. It's just an overplay in one direction or another as far as how good these different supporting cast were. Right. I think that Brady on the defensive side got help a lot from Belichick's defense. That's probably where I would say maybe he had the edge over Indianapolis. But I'm sorry, is this again? Are you slandering Brandon Stokely here? Are you saying that Brandon stokely was not driving

peyton manning success is that what yeah yeah i'm not well it is funny how these guys will like pop out of nowhere and have great careers like julius thomas is going to the pro bowl multiple seasons when he's playing with with peyton manning and others that are going through there and you know marvin harrison again we do not have like a marvin harrison without peyton manning also not to say that he isn't great i mean he's great he's a great player we do not have like a Marvin Harrison without Peyton Manning also. Not to say that he isn't great. I mean, he's great. He's a great player. We do not have much like Dallas Clark, who's a fine player without Peyton Manning.

But if he can get other guys to play at that sort of level, then I think it's just like there's no evidence that anyone's worse. And then there's also been this thing with Peyton Manning. For whatever it's worth, it's a very low sample sort of thing. But the Colts were 3-13. They draft Peyton Manning. Two years worth it's very low sample sort of thing but the Colts were 3 and 13 they draft Peyton Manning two years later they're 13 and 3 they're you know they're winning all the time I think they were 10 and 6 or 9 and 7 he misses the season they bottom out their last place they draft Andrew Luck the the Denver Broncos are 8 and 8 Manning joins them and now they're 13 and three immediately.

I mean, there's something to that. That can't just be like teammate because these teams are not changing that much outside of the quarterback when these transitions are happening. Right. You take Jameis Winston off of the Bucs and you put in Tom Brady and you just win the Super Bowl after being a below average team. Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, we kind of know this inherently anyway that like how the

quarterback plays is the most important thing for driving success in football regardless and the way i started thinking about quarterbacks tell me as a as a dude who is 50 times smarter than me when it comes to football statistics okay tell me what you think of this theory though because it's it's basic but i like it that if you have one of the all-time great quarterbacks somebody who's going to end up on your list at the top you're going to get like eight to ten shots to win a super bowl and over that guy's career if he plays like 15 years he's going to give you a chance almost on a regular basis to win a super bowl if you have someone who's really good like a philip rivers or a matt ryan it's like four or five. And if you have anybody below that, it's basically, you have to have your magical season, your Trent Dilfer, your, your season that just where your

defense is number one and you're off your Nick Foles or Carson Wentz type of season. And then anything below that, of course, you're just not like staying in the league that long, but I kind of, when I started to like chunk quarterbacks like that, a lot of things kind of made sense to me. Yeah, I know. I think that's completely fair. And it's funny to think that even Brady before these last couple of seasons in Tampa Bay, I mentioned statistically how it was important, at least for me to get them over the hump. But I think even from a narrative sort of basis, the whole Belichick versus Brady thing, they went 11 and five with matt castle what's ends up happening even as someone who's not the biggest brady supporter versus some others are

out there i always thought the idea that brady could be less important than belichick is kind of is a little ridiculous like i love i mean coaching is important it's great it's everything else but the quarterback's the most important person out there and if you have some like brady like you mentioned you're giving yourself that chance Now I will say things have gotten a little skewed in this last era because of Tom Brady and the Patriots that you don't have like your normal quarterback should have a lot more Superbowl chances, but it's, would you have someone else in there grabbing seven of them over the course of

the last 20 years? That makes it hard for everyone else. Okay. I waited 40 minutes to ask this question just on purpose just to just to hide in a bunker before i ask it uh trent green is on your list jeff garcia is on your list these are comparable quarterbacks to one kirk cousins is kirk cousins the god of all statistics that is quarterbacking uh is he approaching your top 50 lists with the way that um he's playing yeah um i don't it brings me no joy to to tell you this but uh yeah i think he is at 56 or something right now so it's it's almost it's almost a a guarantee that he's going to break into the top 50. And at that point, I will have to change it to the top 40 list.

And then if he makes it top 40, then we'll have to just say the top 30. And we'll just continue to move it down to make sure I don't have to highlight the fact that he has been made into the list. I mean, this is a, but it is funny though, as we're dealing with the headline of, you know, Mike Zimmer hated Kirk cousins or whatever, and that kind of thing. Um, like don't conflate that with Mike Zimmer's offense and the way he wanted him to play, like didn't help Kirk because he was certainly assisted by great receiving play and a system that really worked for him. So I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised by that. And sometimes it's like, you know, you deserve credit for absolutely beating the tar out of the Detroit Lions, like putting up 350 yards and five touchdowns.

Yeah. I mean, I'll just let you know here. So if you look at Cousins here, numbers as far as the no the seasons that'll qualify for having 300 pass attempts so his adjusted net yards per attempt ranking in those seasons from 2015 to 2021 so he was 7th 4th 13th 16th so he's not going to get a lot of credit there 7th 9th and 4th so i don't know he's just accumulating in the top 10 so he's he's going to be he's going to be an accumulator that'll end up sneaking in and force me to change the formula.

Oh, that's okay. That's okay. We can give him some credit on the show. Yeah, I'm generally a Cousins defender, though, quite honestly. No, you are. Especially now that we're in Derek Carr season. I'm just like, I don't want to hear Derek Carr's name too much here. Like, Kirk Cousins, boo Carr yay I'm just like I don't

I don't necessarily get that whole switcheroo that that happened over the the offseason but I got I guess we'll see yeah that's the spider-man meme honestly like saying you know exactly but there is a there is a fun exercise if you want to do it which is if you chart just like how they play over a season enjoy the roller coaster and both him and car do the same thing where it's like the first eight games of the season is derrick car the mvp of the league and then everyone just assumes that derrick car was great they don't pay that much attention they get to the end of the season they're like oh his overall numbers are pretty good like yeah he played pretty badly for like 12 straight weeks there. But, you know, that beginning of the season, they both do the same thing.

Derek Carr does have more MVP votes than Ben Roethlisberger or. Oh, wow. So there you go. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Maybe maybe the voters need to check some lists of statistics. I think they got a little that 12 and four season with the great offensive line there for,

for Derek Carr fooled some people. Yeah, no, that's for sure. Well, Kevin, it's been fun to follow it on Twitter and on your podcast, unexpected points as you count it down.

So go find that in-depth quarterback analysis and just a fun, really fun off season project. So I love that you did it. Couldn't wait to talk to you about it. And we will talk again soon, sir. All right. Thanks for having me.