Shortly before the Patriots massacred the finalist banner hangers in January, I wrote a fanpost about how dominant the Patriots had been during the Brady era. It broke down how the Patriots had outperformed every other division in the entire league since Brady took over. For a quick refresher, this is what the final table looks like updated:
Divisions | SB Wins | SB Appearances | CG Appearances |
Patriots | 4 | 6 | 9 |
AFC North | 3 | 4 | 8 |
NFC South | 2 | 3 | 7 |
NFC East | 2 | 3 | 7 |
NFC West | 1 | 6 | 8 |
NFC North | 1 | 2 | 6 |
AFC South | 1 | 2 | 5 |
AFC West | 0 | 2 | 4 |
The Patriots are monsters, but in the face of such insurmountable evidence there are still those that believe that they benefited from playing weak competition. I wanted to figure out if the Patriots dominance was a result of oppressing the weak teams rather than being excellent period.
I started with the quarterbacks with the most wins in NFL history, regular season and playoffs combined. There are 21 quarterbacks in league history with 100 or more wins. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the necessary information for Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr. As a result, they are omitted and the quarterback list looks like this, ranked by most combined wins.
Quarterback | Games | Overall Record | Win % |
Brett Favre | 322 | 199-123 | 61.8% |
Peyton Manning | 280 | 190-90 | 67.9% |
Tom Brady | 236 | 181-55 | 76.7% |
John Elway | 252 | 162-89-1 | 64.3% |
Dan Marino | 258 | 155-103 | 60.1% |
Joe Montana | 187 | 133-54 | 71.1% |
Fran Tarkenton | 250 | 130-114-6 | 52.0% |
Drew Brees | 212 | 123-89 | 58.0% |
Terry Bradshaw | 177 | 121-56 | 68.4% |
Ben Roethlisberger | 173 | 116-57 | 67.1% |
Jim Kelly | 177 | 110-67 | 62.1% |
Donovan McNabb | 177 | 107-69-1 | 60.5% |
Troy Aikman | 180 | 105-75 | 58.3% |
Warren Moon | 213 | 105-108 | 49.3% |
Ken Stabler | 158 | 103-54-1 | 65.2% |
Steve Young | 157 | 102-55 | 65.0% |
Phil Simms | 169 | 101-68 | 59.8% |
Dave Krieg | 184 | 101-83 | 54.9% |
Drew Bledsoe | 199 | 101-98 | 50.8% |
I wanted to break down their records against teams with winning records vs their records against teams without winning records. A winning record is defined as a team with a winning percentage above 50%. These will be referred to as "good teams" for simplicity's sake. Teams with a winning percentage of 50% or worse will be referred to as "bad teams" for the same reason. To start, here are the quarterback's records against bad teams, ranked by winning percentage.
Quarterback | vs Bad Teams | Win % |
Tom Brady | 109-14 | 88.6% |
Peyton Manning | 122-22 | 84.7% |
Terry Bradshaw | 72-17 | 80.9% |
Ken Stabler | 60-15 | 80.0% |
Joe Montana | 75-21 | 78.1% |
Dan Marino | 96-30 | 76.2% |
John Elway | 102-31-1 | 76.1% |
Donovan McNabb | 73-24-1 | 74.5% |
Phil Simms | 70-24 | 74.5% |
Steve Young | 67-23 | 74.4% |
AVERAGE | 74.4% | |
Dave Krieg | 65-24 | 73.0% |
Ben Roethlisberger | 69-26 | 72.6% |
Brett Favre | 128-50 | 71.9% |
Drew Bledsoe | 66-26 | 71.7% |
Troy Aikman | 64-26 | 71.1% |
Fran Tarkenton | 92-37-2 | 70.2% |
Jim Kelly | 61-26 | 70.1% |
Drew Brees | 79-38 | 67.5% |
Warren Moon | 62-50 | 55.4% |
Only two quarterbacks, Tom Brady and Joe Montana, have career winning percentages over 70%. Yet when we look at all the quarterback's records against bad teams, 17 of the 19 have winning percentages over 70%, with Drew Brees really close at 67.5% as well. This list is chock full of good to great quarterbacks that helped lead their teams to prosperity. With the exception of Warren Moon, they all have pretty much enjoyed beating up on bad teams. To determine who feasts on the inferior the most, we need to know quarterback's records vs winning teams and then the difference between that record and their record vs bad teams.
Quarterback | vs Good Teams | Win % |
Joe Montana | 58-33 | 63.7% |
Tom Brady | 72-41 | 63.7% |
Ben Roethlisberger | 47-31 | 60.3% |
Terry Bradshaw | 49-39 | 55.7% |
Jim Kelly | 49-41 | 54.4% |
Steve Young | 35-32 | 52.2% |
Ken Stabler | 43-39-1 | 51.8% |
John Elway | 60-58 | 50.8% |
Peyton Manning | 68-68 | 50.0% |
Brett Favre | 71-73 | 49.3% |
AVERAGE | 48.0% | |
Drew Brees | 44-51 | 46.3% |
Troy Aikman | 41-49 | 45.6% |
Dan Marino | 59-73 | 44.7% |
Donovan McNabb | 34-45 | 43.0% |
Warren Moon | 43-58 | 42.6% |
Phil Simms | 31-44 | 41.3% |
Dave Krieg | 36-59 | 37.9% |
Drew Bledsoe | 35-72 | 32.7% |
Fran Tarkenton | 38-77-4 | 31.9% |
The reason that Montana is listed ahead of Brady is because his winning percentage is like two-hundredths of a percentage higher. It is irrelevant, but accurate. Tom Brady tops the list in total wins with 72, one more than second place Brett Favre. The Brady Patriots may dominate bad teams at an incredible rate, but they beat up on good teams as good or better than any other quarterback-team combination in history as well.
In order to find out which quarterback's benefited most from playing bad teams, I took each quarterback's winning percentage against bad teams and then subtracted their winning percentage against good teams. This will show the difference in performance of each quarterback's team depending on the quality of their opponent.
Quarterback | vs Bad Teams | vs Good Teams | Difference |
Drew Bledsoe | 71.7% | 32.7% | 39.0% |
Fran Tarkenton | 70.2% | 31.9% | 38.3% |
Dave Krieg | 73.0% | 37.9% | 35.1% |
Peyton Manning | 84.7% | 50.0% | 34.7% |
Phil Simms | 74.5% | 41.3% | 33.1% |
Dan Marino | 76.2% | 44.7% | 31.5% |
Donovan McNabb | 74.5% | 43.0% | 31.5% |
Ken Stabler | 80.0% | 51.8% | 28.2% |
Troy Aikman | 71.1% | 45.6% | 25.6% |
John Elway | 76.1% | 50.8% | 25.3% |
Terry Bradshaw | 80.9% | 55.7% | 25.2% |
Tom Brady | 88.6% | 63.7% | 24.9% |
Brett Favre | 71.9% | 49.3% | 22.6% |
Steve Young | 74.4% | 52.2% | 22.2% |
Drew Brees | 67.5% | 46.3% | 21.2% |
Jim Kelly | 70.1% | 54.4% | 15.7% |
Joe Montana | 78.1% | 63.7% | 14.4% |
Warren Moon | 55.4% | 42.6% | 12.8% |
Ben Roethlisberger | 72.6% | 60.3% | 12.4% |
Based on the difference, it would seem that the Patriots don't beat up on inferior teams any more than most. They are on the bottom half of the list. If anything, the data would suggest that Peyton Manning's teams are the ones that feast on inferior competition relative to the difference.
What's interesting is to see how the Drew Bledsoe Patriots performed against good teams vs the Brady counterparts. In Bledsoe's stint with the Patriots, they were 22-43 against good teams, a winning percentage of 33.8%. The small amount it cost for Brady in the early years as well as the very cap-friendly contracts he took throughout his career made it possible for Bill Belichick to build a consistently competitive team year in and year out. The Patriots of the Brady era are the Montana 49ers dynasty against good teams and Peyton Manning feasting on bad teams.
Now you may be wondering how frequent the quarterback's faced good teams or bad teams. The Patriots playing inferior opponents more often is going to give more merit to them having a weak schedule that catapults them to the playoffs every year. Here is the percentage of games each quarterback played against good teams in their careers.
Quarterback | Games | Games vs Good Teams | % of Games vs Good Teams |
Drew Bledsoe | 199 | 107 | 53.8% |
Ken Stabler | 158 | 83 | 52.5% |
Dave Krieg | 184 | 95 | 51.6% |
Dan Marino | 258 | 132 | 51.2% |
Jim Kelly | 177 | 90 | 50.8% |
Troy Aikman | 180 | 90 | 50.0% |
Terry Bradshaw | 177 | 88 | 49.7% |
Joe Montana | 187 | 91 | 48.7% |
Peyton Manning | 280 | 136 | 48.6% |
AVERAGE | 48.0% | ||
Tom Brady | 236 | 113 | 47.9% |
Fran Tarkenton | 250 | 119 | 47.6% |
Warren Moon | 213 | 101 | 47.4% |
John Elway | 252 | 118 | 46.8% |
Ben Roethlisberger | 173 | 78 | 45.1% |
Drew Brees | 212 | 95 | 44.8% |
Brett Favre | 322 | 144 | 44.7% |
Donovan McNabb | 177 | 79 | 44.6% |
Phil Simms | 169 | 75 | 44.4% |
Steve Young | 157 | 67 | 42.7% |
Well, it looks like the Patriots didn't play an abnormal amount of games against good teams. They actually played arguably the most appropriate amount. They win the games they should and win more than would be expected against good teams. It helps that they are good year in and year out, but it would be pretty stupid to blame the Patriots success on them being good and then try to hold that against them. Just say that they're good, because they are.
Hopefully some of you found this interesting. I'm having writer's block with the other fanpost so I figured I'd get something else out that I've been messing around with. All the balls madness kills my vibe every time a new development happens. Maybe Thursday night will knock me out of the funk and I'll finish it up. For now, this type of stuff is all I've got.
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