Is Aaron Rodgers having the best season for a QB ever? When you watch Aaron Rodgers play now, it’s difficult to imagine that this is the same player that fell to #24 in the 2005 draft. It’s hard to conceive that Mike Nolan passed up Rodgers in favor of Alex Smith. I’m not sure if it was because of his fall on draft day, playing behind a legend for 3 seasons, or his own natural ability that is the biggest reason for his success. What I do know is that Aaron Rodgers is having arguably the greatest single season any Quarterback has ever had. I lined up some of the greatest seasons by Quarterbacks for comparison purposes. There’s the 2007 Brady season, the 2004 Manning season and Dan Marino’s 1984 season. I looked at Kurt Warner’s 1999 season and even Sid Luckman’s 1943 season. Code: Year Player Comp Att Comp % TDs INTs Yds/Att Yards 2008 Drew Brees 413 635 65.0% 34 17 7.98 5069 2007 Tom Brady 398 578 68.9% 50 8 8.31 4806 2004 Peyton Manning 336 497 67.6% 49 10 9.17 4557 1999 Kurt Warner 325 499 65.1% 41 13 8.72 4353 1995 Brett Favre 359 570 63.0% 38 13 7.74 4413 1994 Steve Young 324 461 70.3% 35 10 8.61 3969 1989 Joe Montana 271 386 70.2% 26 8 9.12 3521 1984 Dan Marino 362 564 64.2% 48 17 9.01 5084 1943 Sid Luckman 110 202 54.5% 28 12 10.86 2194 2011 Aaron Rodgers* 384 530 72.5% 48 6 9.88 5238 Above are the stat lines for some of the greatest single seasons on record. The numbers for Aaron Rodgers are prorated out to 16 games. There have been only 4 Quarterbacks to ever complete 70% of their passes (with at least 250 attempts) in a single season. Rodgers and Brees are both on pace to do that this year and Rodgers is on pace to set the record at 72.5%. Only Joe Montana has ever completed 70% of his passes and average 9.0 Yds per attempt. Rodgers is on pace to be the 2nd. Only 2 QB’s have ever thrown for more than 5,000 yards. Brees and Rodgers are both on pace to surpass that and both are on pace to break Dan Marino’s 1984 record of 5,084 yards. Big plays? Rodgers has thrown 5 Touchdowns of more than 50 yards thru the first 8 games. The record for most 50+ yard TD’s in a single season is 11 set by George Blanda in 1961. While Blanda did it in only 14 games, the level of competition was not the same in 1961 AFL as it is in today’s NFL. All of these numbers are great alone, but there’s even more. The Packers are 8-0 and are averaging 34.4 points per game which is the 6th highest total of all time. Aaron Rodgers has proven to be the best QB in the NFL. Will his season be the best one ever?
Statistically the closest competition is Manning in '04. However, you have to also take into account that the NFL is much more pass friendly than it used to be. It will also be interesting to see if his numbers retreat a bit as the weather deteriorates.
if those numbers hold up? absolutely. If not, it will just be one of the greats, just probably not the greatest.
Rodgers is a great QB, no doubt about it but this is exactly my view - the league is now so biased in favour of the QB that its just not going to be possible to accurately compare what QBs can put up now compared to what they could do when it was possible to mug the receivers.
Weren't we talking about Brady having this sort of season after 3 weeks. What happened there? Lots of games left to play.
We heard that when marino smashed records, we heard it w/ Peyton, we heard it w/ Brady. Times change, Unitas had advantages that otto Graham never had, marino had advantages that Unitas never had, Peyton/Brady have advantages than marino never had,...
'07 Brady and '04 Manning would be the benchmarks, with '07 Brady getting the nod for me thanks to the 6 cold weather-location games from mid-November on (and then two more in the playoffs). Green Bay has 5 straight December/January games at New Jersey, Green Bay, Kansas City, Green Bay, and Green Bay - if he can keep this pace up through that I'd say he's got a pretty case for best year ever.
After 8 games in 2007 Brady had better stats than Rodgers does now. Yards: Rodgers: 2,619; Brady, 2,431 Touchdowns: Brady, 30; Rodgers, 24 Interceptions: Brady, 2; Rodgers, 3; Completion percentage: Brady, 75.2; Rodgers, 72.5 OB rating: Brady, 131.1; Rodgers, 129.7 Yards per completion: Brady, 11.51; Rodgers, 9.88 It's possible, but I think the numbers will come down a bit. He's still having a hell of a year by any measure. GB has 5 possible bad weather games left. they could have five straight December-January games, with weather a possible factor in any or all: at the Giants, Oakland at home, at K.C., and Chicago and Detroit to finish at Lambeau. The info is from SI.com
No. Let's start with the rules being dramatically altered to favor offenses, so I'd say that everyone between Luckman and Warner in '99 belong in a different list. Now that we've gotten the oranges out, in terms of apples to apples Bardy's 07 season is the standout. (and he's still on pace after 8 games to shatter Marino's record. (2700 yards/8 games...Early in the year he was on pace for 6K, but has fallen off a bit, and if you look at their remaining schedule he could easily get back on that pace.) *P.S. Thanks for making me look at their schedule. After Sunday, they could win out without too much effort. We still have to beat the Giants.
which is why you can say that a player was the best in his era but you cannot really compare players from different eras (at least statistically).
Why is Brady's 07 season the standout? Manning 2004 season was much better. Manning threw 49 TDs with 81 less pass attempts and barely played in the season finale. His TD% was an astounding 9.9%! He averaged 9.2 yds/att vs. Brady's 8.3. I'm not saying Brady didn't have a great season, but Manning's should be the standout.
In bad weather games last year (including the playoffs) down the stretch Rodgers threw 11 TDs vs 3 INTs
I would say higher completion %, more TD's, more yards, less interceptions and going 16 -0 would clearly give the edge to Brady's season over Manning.
meh. he has 1 more td with 80+ more pass attempts. The ints are valid, but manning did that in 15 games and would have had more TDs and more yards if the attempts were equal.
Manning had Higher Yds per Att, Higher TD% the completion % difference was only 1% difference and the Colts went 13-2 (in games where Manning played in most of the game). The INT difference was 2 INT's. It's not like Manning threw 20.
Brady actually had weather to deal w/ and he didn't lead his team to 3 pts in their playoff loss. manning has always had the benefit of more than half his games in domes which is a HUGE advantage. The only cold weather game Manning played in was at Den in week 17 whewre he threw 2 passes and rested the rest of the game.
16-0 is better than 13-2 and Brady led his team to the SB where he led a last few mins drive to give his team the lead w/ an 80 yd TD dribe while Manning led his his O to 3 pts in a divisional round loss.
