That's not the point. He assisted in helping the Pats win the game. Absolutely, no question about it. But to SOLELY attribute the first Pats SB win in their dynasty to him is nothing short of hysterical. He barely did anything the entire season (by QB standards), even moreso in the post season. The same logic applies with Sanchez. People think he won us the WC game against the Colts cause he drove us down the field setting up Folk. He ASSISTED in it. People forget the defense kept Peyton freakin Manning to 14 points on his home field.
You have to factor it in within the game. Every game is different, if your D or special teams stake you to an early lead, you change your play calls and maybe the QB stats don't look as good but he ran the game in order to win. Conversely you can fall behind and run up a lot of impressive stats in a losing effort. In the end of course it's a team effort, but in evaluating a QB, because he has the ball in his hands and the clock in his management, you have to factor in wins and losses certainly.
I agree with that. The Pats pretty much had the reigns on Brady his first 2 seasons, and rightfully so.
Funny coming from a poster who couldn't argue his way out of a paper bag. You think a QB with a 77 QB rating in the playoffs deserves full credit for the first Pats SB? Enlighten me.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. He should have had the reigns on him and obviously it worked out for the best. It just irritates me when posters play the W/L game with QB, like they are the sole reason those W/L exist in the first place.
I do not necessarily disagree with this, but of course even if in agreement, yours is not an argument for saying that a team's won lost record, which includes all those different games, is an individual Qb stat. I agree with those who said people who use it do so to skew an argument, as well as the other poster who said any poster who believes it is an individual Qb stat doesn't really know the game.
Yup. People used this same W/L stat to complain about why Dalton didn't get ROY last yr even though his numbers were inferior to Cams. People use it to skew their arguments and only end up looking foolish in the process.
Football has so many intangibles and gray areas, it leaves a lot open for debate unlike most sports. In baseball and basketball the stats paint a lot clearer picture of what went on. When you look at a QB trying to win a game, look at all the variables--guys have to block, other guys have to run routes and catch, you have to change plays based on the defense, if you're on the road in the playoffs you have to deal with the crowd and pressure. To me it's always a team game but unlike any other position on the field, except kicker in some instances, a lot of the win or loss can be traced back to what the QB does. Any time you see any Joe Namath commentary on Super Bowl III and that season, he always credits the team when people wanted to make it all about him. Even now he goes out of his way to credit the team and he's right, but do you think we get there and win if Joe was injured?
I agree your related topic is interesting. One thing I always used to say about Marino, in assessing his relative place among the greats, is that there was SOME connection in his case where the lack of overall team success for the fish SHOULD be taken into account, leading to a more skeptical take on his individual stats. In effect his case shows how there is some connection, but not a direct connection. How so? The answer was that the fish were built to help Marino in the passing game, but not to have an overall balanced team that probably would have had more success in the won lost record and playoff success if they had that balance. Long gone were the salad days of Czonka, Kiick and Morris. Even the OL seemed to be chosen more for their ability to pass protect rather than run block. Certainly the receivers as a group tended to be more talented than other players on the team. I always felt that way about Marino and the way the fish were put together while he was there...
I don't disagree with a single thing you have said here, but the point remains that team won loss records are a relatively poor metric for judging the Qb's individual performance, and overall at best show an indirect effect of that performance.
In 2001 Tom Brady had 2 TD passes and 1 Int in the 3 game run through the Super Bowl. He lead the Patriots offense to 32 points in 3 games. In 2009 Mark Sanchez had 4 TD passes and 2 Ints in the 3 game run through the AFC Championshop Game. He lead the Jets offense to 58 points in 3 games. Just pointing out that people talking about how Tom Brady lead the Patriots to that Super Bowl are kind of mis-remembering things. There was talk in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl of Drew Bledsoe playing QB for the Pats as he had almost fully recovered from his injury at that point. Bledsoe in fact replaced Brady at QB during the AFC Championship Game and lead the Pats to their only offensive TD of the game. Think about that for a minute when you start putting first year starter Tim Brady up on a pedestal. If he'd lost the fumble to the Raiders a week earlier he'd probably have been Matt Cassell for the rest of his career.
Individual #s tell part of the story, if a player is stat padding on losing teams it could make him look better. A guy like sanchez hasn't put up great #s but he's made plays to win games, I'd rather have the guy making plays to win than the guy "lighting it up" in blowout games.
Brady played one game in a snowstorm, played a little over a qtr agaisnt Pitt then played the SB. Bledsoe came in after Brady completed a long pass for a 1st down in Pitt territory making ti a short TD drive and he did nothing the rest of the game. The only reason there was any debate was b/c Brady was HURT and they won despite Bledsoe. There was no chance Brady was not starting in '02 even if they rule the woodson play a fumble. Remember they were 5-11 in 2000 w/ Bledsoe and started 0-2 before Brady rescued them.
I wouldn't say at best, there is usually a direct link to the QB play and a win or a loss. We're saying the same thing about there being a lot of other factors, but I don't think the QB's play can be completely disconnected from the W/L result. Again, usually the score of the game affects what the QB does. Then you get those crazy Mondays after a win when people all come on here and bitch that we averaged 7 yards per completion or some silly thing when we were ahead by two TDs.
There is absolutely a lot of truth to this. It wasn't like Brady came in with guns blazing and threw for 300 yards and 5 TDs a game. There were three things about him, though, that were evident early on, and both were huge as far as the team's success goes: 1. He didn't make a lot of mistakes. I think he still holds the record for the number of passes attempted to start a career without throwing an INT. Bledsoe was killing the team with picks and fumbles, usually at very critical moments. A huge part of being a young player isn't what you do... it's what you DON'T do, right? (Like, make game-killing mistakes...) 2. Situationally, he was fantastic. I remember the 5th game of that season, an OT win over San Diego. It was his first game with big numbers. Every time they needed a play he came up big. 3. He brought a winning attitude that was very contagious. When coaches saw him running the scout team as a rookie, he was yelling at guys and directing players, etc. It was strange, because I've rarely seen a football player step into a leadership role like that with almost instant (and probably at the time undeserved) credibility among his teammates. Kind of like Tebow, only Brady could throw, lol... You're right on though, so don't get me wrong. He didn't light it up in 2001. Not even 2002, really... I think his first 4,000+ yard season didn't come until 2005.
I agree completely... I remember stories (don't know if they were valid, but there was of course no Internet back in those days) where coaches would call run plays to keep defenses honest and he'd audible out of them for no apparent reason. Marino always wanted the ball. If they'd let him throw 75 times a game he would have. One thing that's true across eras in the NFL is that unbalanced teams generally don't win titles or playoff games. The Dolphins in the 80s, the Colts in the early 2000s... all great regular-season teams that had fatal flaws that were exposed when the competition got tougher. Maybe, also, a lot of Marino's production came from playing teams that were not very good, lol... the Patriots, the Colts (when they were in the AFCE), the Jets... the only real consistent threat was Buffalo. (Weird to say that now, huh?)