Best QB in NFL today (career and current factors considered)

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I voted Manning based on the stipulation of career achievements, though Rodgers is the better player at the moment.

Chad Henne is better than like half these names. Why can't the NFL find any good QBs anymore.

     There are a surprising number of teams that are desperate for a QB this year. Texans, Titans, Bills, Cardinals, Browns, Vikings, Jaguars, Rams, Redskins, Jets, Eagles, and Buccaneers have all made midseason switches due to injury and poor play. That's literally a third of the league with turnover at the most important position on the field.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Chad Henne is better than like half these names. Why can't the NFL find any good QBs anymore.

     There are a surprising number of teams that are desperate for a QB this year. Texans, Titans, Bills, Cardinals, Browns, Vikings, Jaguars, Rams, Redskins, Jets, Eagles, and Buccaneers have all made midseason switches due to injury and poor play. That's literally a third of the league with turnover at the most important position on the field.

all that is is a list of teams that have started more than one QB this season.  for it to mean anything at all you'd have to compare the # of multiple-QB teams to other years.

and even then, what's the point?  not all of those teams are bad, one even has 11 wins, another has 9, a few more with 8, another with 7.  nor have all of those teams received poor play from their QB position in the aggregate.  the Texans QBs have posted a total of 21 td/12 int, and an 85 rating; the Cardinals, 19/9 and an 83; the Bills, 22/13 and an 85; the Eagles, 25/20 and 84, with 7.3 y/a...  none of those teams have been ruined by the play of their QBs.

--

looking to recent history: 12 of the past 15 Super Bowls have featured at least one team that started multiple players at QB during the regular season, though only 9 featured a team that started multiple QBs due to "poor performance or injury".  the other three cases involve a team opting not to play its starter in a meaningless Week 17 game.

digging deeper, we find that 5 of the past 15 Super Bowl champs started multiple QBs during the regular season "due to poor performance or injury":

-the 2000 Ravens: Trent Dilfer replaced Tony Banks;
-the 2001 Patriots: Tom Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe;
-the 2002 Buccaneers: Brad Johnson missed three games due to injury; Shaun King (one start) and Rob Johnson (two starts);
-the 2005 Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger missed four games due to injury; Tommy Maddox (2 starts) and Charlie Batch (2 starts)
-the 2010 Packers: Aaron Rodgers missed one game due to injury; Matt Flynn (1 start)

     I suppose the point I was getting at is that a lot of teams are struggling to make ends meet. The Cardinals would probably be getting more production out of Carson Palmer than they are out of Ryan Lindley. That Super Bowl stat is interesting, though.

     Going back to what you said in an earlier post, I have been thinking for a while that people overvalue the Super Bowl by a lot. The very idea that Russell Wilson is close to Rodgers is absurd, but people say it because Wilson just won the Super Bowl. The year before that, people were talking about how amazing Flacco was, when he had previously been described as a Trent Dilfer/Alex Smith-style game manager. I've seen people refer to Eli Manning as elite, which I can only surmise is due to him having won two Super Bowls. He is a perennial pick machine, though he has been improving in that regard. Sorry, Grumps, but the same applies to Ben Roethlisberger. In his two SB champion seasons, he threw for 17 TDs each. I guess Alex Smith is just two Super Bowls away from being a top QB, then.

      A big part of this problem is that it misses the roles of the rest of the team. A good running game is important, despite the erosion of rushing that the game has been experiencing. #1 defenses have a much better success rate in the big dance than #1 offenses do. The maxim is that "defense wins championships", and it is more or less true. You also really need a competent offense to make the playoffs, because having a bottom-tier offense tends to wear down the defense to the point that they start giving up big plays. It's not baseball where you just need to get three outs and you're good until the next inning.

     Overall, I'd say the idea about the playoffs being a crapshoot is easily most valid in football. One bad game, or drive or play, ends things very quickly. Harbaugh/Roman have been heavily criticized for repeatedly trying to throw the ball into the endzone at the end of the Super Bowl with the Ravens, when Frank Gore had just taken off on a long run down to their 7-yard line. Maybe we would have lost anyway, but Baseball averages that sort of stuff out with best-of-five and best-of-seven series.

     Also, if playoffs really were a crapshoot, I think the A's would succeed occasionally rather than fail consistently. Seven straight elimination game losses!

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Going back to what you said in an earlier post, I have been thinking for a while that people overvalue the Super Bowl by a lot. The very idea that Russell Wilson is close to Rodgers is absurd, but people say it because Wilson just won the Super Bowl. The year before that, people were talking about how amazing Flacco was, when he had previously been described as a Trent Dilfer/Alex Smith-style game manager. I've seen people refer to Eli Manning as elite, which I can only surmise is due to him having won two Super Bowls. He is a perennial pick machine, though he has been improving in that regard. Sorry, Grumps, but the same applies to Ben Roethlisberger. In his two SB champion seasons, he threw for 17 TDs each. I guess Alex Smith is just two Super Bowls away from being a top QB, then.

Those are some unfair comparisons. 

On one hand, not all average-good QBs are the same.  Some average QBs have a weak arm, but make up for it with accuracy, pocket presence and smarts, e.g. Chad Pennington.  Some average QBs have a cannon for an arm, but lack pocket presence and smarts, e.g. Joe Flacco and Kerry Collins. 

But, that's not the entire comparison because you can't necessarily compare QBs who have different roles and different offenses.  Some teams have a very conservative scheme and rely on the running game and field position.  Those offenses will minimize mistakes and average QBs can succeed in that type of system.  They'll have both fewer passing yards and fewer interceptions.  That's the sort of offense Ben Roethlisberger played in his first couple of years in the NFL.

Other teams ask their QB to throw long passes into tight windows and take large risks.  They're going to throw more interceptions, but they'll also have more passing yards.  And, you have to factor in the teams around those players.  Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger in their worst seasons played behind a patchwork offensive line and with a struggling running game.  If they didn't take the risks that resulted in those interceptions, they would have lost most of those games anyway. 

And, let's be fair to Eli Manning, he's been around the 8-11th best QB in the NFL for 8 years or so.  When there eree 32 teams, that level of consistency at the QB position is impressive.

     What you are getting at there is that stats aren't terribly useful for comparing NFL QBs. And there is certainly something there. Oftentimes, you'll see a QB put up 300 yards and lose, because he was throwing all over the field in an attempt to catch up. Other times, a QB will put up 150 yards in a winning effort because the team took control and never really needed the offensive production.

     Going back to my previous post, people have a strong tendency to underestimate these sorts of effects. The Seahawks/Ravens/Giants won the Super Bowl due to contributions that go well beyond the passing game. Each team's QB certainly contributed, but heralding them as great for what happened is rather silly. It reminds me a little of Moneyball, where the manager was getting all of the credit for the team's success, when Billy Beane was the one who made it possible by putting those players together.