FanPost

Tom Brady, Patriots Feast on Everyone

Tom Brady approves of this fanpost. - Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

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.

The views expressed in these FanPosts are not necessarily those of the writers or SB Nation.