1782

And this would be my ranking of starting QBs. I generally group guys together in 3 to 5 as it’s really hard to say x is better than y when they’re so close together. And there is probably some, a lot of perception issues as I follow the Niners and the NFC West and other divisions not so much. Also with rookies and first year players I tend to put them in the middle group if they played very well as it’s hard to say whether they’re good or not based on only a single season or less worth of games.

Tom Brady
Peyton Manning
Drew Brees
Arron Rodgers
Eli Manning
Ben Roethlisberger
Tony Romo

After Romo it gets kind of murky where I would exactly rank guys as they either haven’t proven themselves long enough or are a bit inconsistent.

Matt Stafford
Matt Ryan
Joe Flacco
Andy Dalton
Phillip Rivers
Matt Schaub

I would probably rank the rookies and Kaep here next due to inexperience.

RGIII
Russell Wilson
Colin Kaepernick
Andrew Luck
Cam Newton
Jay Cutler
Josh Freeman
Sam Bradford
Mike Vick
Carson Palmer

From this point on it’s probably a free for all and everybody here and everybody can kind of all be very closed ranked.

Ryan Fitzpatrick
Ryan Tannehill
Jake Locker
John Skelton/Kevin Kolb
Brandon Weedon
Brady Quinn
Chad Henne
Christian Ponder
Mark Sanchez

Looking at my list, Flacco is probably somewhere in the middle 10-20 range. So if he’s top 10, top 12 he’ll be borderline and I wouldn’t have a problem ranking him lower as all these guys seem to be pretty close. Not a top tier QB but not a bad one either like Quinn, Henne or Sanchez.

1783

I’m a Bronco fan and have never been able to stand Flacco and the Ravens so trust me, this isn’t biased. In reading up on our fateful matchup though, I was pretty surprised to find that at 61-30 (four wins more than Aaron Rodgers) he’s the winningest QB in the league since 2008 when he was drafted. He’s also the only QB in NFL history to win a playoff game in each of his first 5 seasons and he’s now won more road playoff games than any QB in history (6). Just cuz he doesn’t put up 4,000 yd seasons or sky-high QB ratings doesn’t change the fact that those stats qualify as a “high level of performance on a consistent bases across multiple seasons.”

And his longball stats are hardly a footnote. This season he was #1 in 20+ yd completions (44), #1 in yards on 20+ yd throws (1,442), and #1 in TDs on those throws (15). And of his 105 long attempts this year, zero have been intercepted.

I don’t like the guy and I’m not saying he’s “elite” (cuz who cares) but those long balls were pretty damn significant in the Divisional win and you can’t really ignore the 5 yr stats.

1784

Hold up man, Tony Romo in that first tier? I would rank him in the third tier you listed and I can not imagine anyone preferring him over Flacco. He is a loser when it comes to crunch time.

1785

Roma is borderline for me. He’s more in the second group than in the first. I just don’t know what to think about him. He looks great and has the stats to back it up but like you said he is not clutch and is probably closer to Carson Palmer than to Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees.

That third tier can also probably be cut in half with RGIII, Wilson, Kaepernick and Luck looking like future stars but then so did Newton last year. So I would take a wait and see approach. Otherwise my bias would kick in and I would rank Kaepernick after Rothisberger with all I have seen from him and the potential he has.

1786

Not that it invalidates the larger point, but this in particular stands out as “arbitrary football stat”, since not all players play the same number of road playoff games: it’s determined by regular season performance.

1787

Indeed. If he won more regular season games he wouldn’t be in road playoff games.

1788

So Brady has been fined $10,000 for his cleats up slide into second base on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Frank Gore has been fined $10,500 for wearing his socks too low on Sunday.

You know. Priorities.

1789

Sorry for picking on you for some seemingly inconsequential verbiage, but I think it’s actually consequential. Anyway: Joe Flacco did not win any of those football games you mentioned. The Baltimore Ravens won those games. There are forty-six other players dressed for every game. Is it possible that those players contributed to winning games? Especially given that Baltimore is acknowledged to have one of the best defenses in the NFL during the period we’re discussing.

My point: looking at wins is probably the worst way to evaluate individual players; any case for a player being “good” or “great” or “elite” or whatever that rests on wins can almost certainly be dismissed. You should evaluate Joe Flacco based on the things he actually does, which consist in main of throwing the football. Which is something he doesn’t do all that well. Which is why he’s not on the cusp of “very good”, much less “elite”. Likewise Super Bowl wins, which is one of the most annoying football talk radio cliches in history. Trent Dilfer has “won” more Super Bowls than Dan Marino, does anyone think Trent Dilfer was a better quarterback?

1790

Quarterback wins is the most useless stat there is. He attempted 10 passes (completing 4 of them) in one of those road wins.

1791

Wow, almost a page and a half of arguing over Joe Flacco and nobody has really brought up his, you know, actual career statistics. Fill yer boots:









http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/qb

Take from them what you will, they are the areas that I would consider most important: non-counting stats among active quarterbacks, plus synthetic stats from two popular sources. My takeaway is that Flacco is average to above average in most aspects, but well above average in one significant category: interception percentage. An average to good quarterback that doesn’t turn the ball over is rare in the NFL; an average to good quarterback who doesn’t turn the ball over and can throw a deep pass is even rarer still.

Flacco has a skillset that makes his value on the free-market right now enormous and that’s way more important to him, his team, and than league on whole than whether he meets some arbitrary definition of elite. His leverage going into this offseason is absolutely huge. He will be able to get a contract that is far out of line with his actual abilities, regardless of how you rate him

1792

This is actually really surprising to me as I always thought that was one of the knocks on him. It’s funny, the perceptions you develop of a quarterback that you don’t watch regularly.

1793

How much of that interception number is tied to the fact that Flacco has had (until probably this year) a top tier defense? How often is he put in a position where ints are more likely due to playing from behind or a shoot out? He has a rocket for an arm, but until they got Torrey Smith, they didn’t have a good reason to go deep that often.

1794

Flacco’s FO numbers are actually slightly better than I expected:
2008: DYAR 1 (19) DVOA -11.3% (19)
2009: DYAR 667 (14) DVOA 8.4% (17)
2010: DYAR 695 (11) DVOA 9.4% (15)
2011: DYAR 409 (14) DVOA 0.0% (18)
2012: DYAR 354 (17) DVOA -1.4% (17)

(numbers in parenthesis are his relative rank)

For the most part he’s pretty much average as a starter, maybe a bit above average on a good year. He’s certainly not on the cusp of great!

And the reason we’re talking Flacco is because the alternative is Harbowl and ugh, no.

1795

Has it only been 1 and half pages? And if this is arguing, it is surely the most pleasant argument I have ever had. Hey it was either this or we spend two weeks about the Harbaughs, HarBowl II, and Harbombing media conference calls.

1796

You’re right, it has been more pleasant than the asinine Eli discussion a while back.

Flacco’s overall interception percentage: 2.2%
Flacco’s interception percentage in losses: 4.0%

Unfortunately, I have no idea how this compares to league average, nor do I have data for losses of 7+ points, which would be more meaningful than just losses. Just for some context, Aaron Rodgers:

Overall: 1.7%
In losses: 2.4%

And Matt Ryan (whose interception rate and career length are very similar):

Overall: 2.3%
In losses: 2.6%

Sooo… you might be on to something, but it’s tough to say with just the data from losses. Maybe the Ravens are just more likely to lose when Flacco has a bad game.

1797

So basically… when QBs win they play good and when they lose they play bad.

The logic here is… amazing.

— Alan

1798

I didn’t say it was a big revelation or anything, just an attempt to see if Flacco’s interception rate has benefited from playing with a lead more often due to the Ravens’ good defense. Unfortunately looking at stats from losses isn’t the best way to do that, but I don’t have access to other useful career splits.

1799

I think a point in Flacco’s favor, regarding wins, is in the entire run of the Ravens elite defense, how often have they appeared in Super Bowls? Right, and half of those appearances include this one with Flacco.

As awesome as that defense is and has been, they still needed more than just an average QB make it to the big game. Someone might bring up Trent Dilfer but look at the scores in those playoff games that year. Ten points was the max in four games(counting the SB) the team gave up. That’s a far cry from the 35 the Broncos put up on them this year.

1800

Actually, I think it’s a little more interesting than that. There’s a significant difference between Flacco’s interception rate during wins vs losses as compared to Rogers and Ryan. That may be where my impression comes from. When Flacco is good he’s good but when he’s bad he’s dreadful.

As it turns out, he’s good a lot more than he’s dreadful but, as someone who doesn’t follow the Ravens, I only hear about it when he blows a game by turning into a pick machine.

1801

Just looking at someone who is known for interceptions during losses:

Tony Romo - 2012 - 2.9% of his passes were interceptions

16 of them in 8 losses on 358 attempts - 4.47%
3 in 8 victories on 290 attemopts - 1.03%