OK, but if I invert your exercise and take the three best games off his season, he’s at -0.153 EPA/play, which is more like Will Levis in 2024*. That’s bad! I’m not going to argue about “worst QB in a Super Bowl”—he probably isn’t that, I’ll grant you. But Bad Rex was bad, and probably more memorably bad than some of the other candidates you mention. Peyton in 2015, for example, wasn’t helping his team—but he only threw one interception in the playoffs. Watching Rex sling it around produced more highlights—both positive and negative—than noodle-armed Peyton.
*Zach Wilson in 2021 is a closer comp in terms of EPA/play, but he’s terrible in terms of CPOE. I’m not confident about being able to reliably calculate a CPOE across games from the RBSDM box score stats, so I chose Levis as he’s closer to 0 in terms of CPOE despite being 0.02 worse in EPA/Play.
It's true. You've pointed out the flaw in my approach. Allow me to fix it.
Generally 0.66 EPA/Play is a bound. In fancy stat terms, it's three standard deviations away from the mean, which means that games basically never end up there. For an unrelated article, I looked at every game in the 2022 season, and found that there were only 18 individual QB games that fell outside of the bounds of -0.66 to 0.66 EPA/Play. 18 games across the whole NFL. In a whole season. Counting every appearance with 15 touches or better as a QB game, that's 18 out of about 600. About two percent of all QB games.
Rex Grossman, in 2006, had four of them (three bad, one good). Individually. Four out of 15 games with at least 15 total touches. He accounted for about 20 percent of the extreme outlier games in the entire league. Having even one of these games is enough to seriously skew season long stats, so the best approach is to simply remove all of them. This is what I should've done. It's a bit misleading to only remove the bad ones.
So let's do that. If Rex Grossman never played in week two, six, nine, or 13, what do his numbers look like?
It may not be as good as it was when I only got rid of the bad ones, but it's still not so bad. He is a 0.098 EPA/Play, -1.2 CPOE guy. Is that a good player? Not really, but it's a player you can absolutely make the playoffs with. It makes him look more like a standard all feet, no arm guy, because no matter what you do, you can't make Rex's amazing ability to avoid sacks go away. There is no 2024 allegory for this, but I like a comparison to 2022 Jared Goff. Jared got 0.171 EPA/Play that year, but his skill numbers (-1.4 CPOE, 119 sk%+) look very similar to Rex's excluding the outliers (-1.2 CPOE, 114 sk%+).
Keep in mind that 0.098 EPA/Play on a -1.2 CPOE is still dramatically better than guys like 2000 Trent Dilfer, 2007 Eli Manning, 2015 Peyton Manning, and also better than miscellaneous division winners like 2024 CJ Stroud, 2023 Joe Flacco, etc.. I'm not fighting the idea that Rex Grossman was a bad player. He probably was, as if this 2006 is your one off good season, your career has serious problems. My gripe is that people for some reason seem to think he was uniquely bad, and I don't believe he was. He simply got three two percent events in the space of two months, which drag his season stats way down, and his career stats way down, because he started very few games outside of 2006.
Thanks for taking the criticism to heart! I think the more principled approach is a better way to contextualize his performance that season. I looked at his 2007 and 2011 seasons, and they were absent of any of these outliers so it’s not as if he was just more prone to them in the rest of his career.
The other thing differentiating Grossman from Dilfer and the Mannings is the careers they had outside the identified Super Bowl seasons. You have to be pretty specific (justifiably so, but specific nonetheless) to identify Peyton Manning as the worst Super Bowl QB. Grossman didn’t play particularly much nor particularly well outside the 2006 season, so there’s a case to be made that he had a worse career than the others you’ve identified, even if he wasn’t worse within that particular season.
You're right. Most people think about it like a career thing, but it is not a career thing. Super Bowls aren't won based on career accomplishment. If they were, Peyton Manning would have more than anybody else, and Dan Marino would've won at least one of them. Super Bowls are won based on your team being able to win a tournament against all the other good teams, in your own native season.
Therefore, in my mind, instead of the 80 or so individual names that have started a Super Bowl, I look at the 118 Super Bowl starting QBs as different people. I don't have QB data for 1966-1969, but for all the post-merger Super Bowl games, I can name you several that were worse than 2006 Rex Grossman. If anybody cared to see it, I could make my own list, but I'll make a mini one for you right here. The worst QBs ever to start the Super Bowl, on a scale of worst to Rex Grossman. For this, I'll just exclude guys who hardly played (i.e. Nick Foles 2017, Jeff Hostetler 1990) as it's almost impossible to tell how good they were that year.
1) 1974 Terry Bradshaw (who was so bad he got benched for most of the year)
2) 2015 Peyton Manning (who was the very worst full time QB in the NFL)
3) 1982 David Woodley
4) 2000 Trent Dilfer
The list of Super Bowl starters who were among the NFL's worst ten QBs is small, and ends here, but there is still more who were not bottom ten, but still worse than 2006 Rex Grossman
5) 1980 Jim Plunkett
6) 2008 Ben Roethlisberger (who won the championship in what was by far the worst season of his prime, which has the effect of whitewashing how bad he was in 2008)
7) 2003 Jake Delhomme (for some reason people tend to remember Jake Delhomme's 2003 as if it was good. It wasn't)
8) 2001 Tom Brady (there's a reason the Patriots were 14 point underdogs in that game. You're looking at it)
9) 1983 Jim Plunkett (twice!)
10) 2012 Joe Flacco
11) 1989 John Elway
Only here do we find 2006 Rex Grossman, who in my opinion is only the 12th worst individual QB season to start the Super Bowl. This still leaves him 98th of 110 eligible candidates, which is not great, but it's far from uniquely terrible in any way. As you can see, this plays into your point a little bit, as about half of this bottom ten list is made up of down seasons out of legends of the game, but there are also people like David Woodley and Trent Dilfer, neither of whom were ever as good as Rex was in 2006.
If we're crowning worst starter in a career sense, it should definitely still be one of those two. Probably David Woodley. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why the David Woodley fan club gains so many members every time I make the claim that Rex Grossman is not the worst SB starter ever. In a career sense, it's either him or Rex, but I would give Rex the nod, even though they're quite similar players.
What do you think David? Rex Grossman or David Woodley? In a one-season contest, the two are not really comparable, but when you do a career comparison, whose career do you like more? I'm curious as to your opinion on this.
It’s not a particularly well-informed opinion, but I’d have to agree Woodley’s career is worse on first impression. Hard to fault him for losing his starting gig to Dan Marino (especially when Grossman lost his to Kyle Orton), but the fact that never caught on as a starter for another team dooms him even without considering some of Grossman’s spectacular performances you highlight in ‘06.
I wonder what arguments the Woodley fans have marshaled to prop him up over Grossman—but to me, it probably is mostly an effect of recency bias and Woodley’s career ending before the advent of the internet.
Grossman had a career year despite only throwing for 3100 yards and 23 touchdowns. The 20 interceptions didn't help as well. If the Bears had a top 15 qb they would have easily won the SB.
Rex Grossman basically was a top 15 QB in my book. On my 2006 QB tier list, Rex lands in 16th place. That's the whole point of this article. He was not as bad as everybody likes to say he was.
I would like to quibble slightly with the low yardage too. Rex did not get in a lot of situations to throw for a lot of passing yards. The best way to throw for a lot of passing yards is to be behind in close games, and these Bears were almost never behind in close games. Either Rex played well, and the Bears won by 14+, or Rex did not play well, and the Bears lost by 14+. For the 2006 Bears, there is very little in the middle, so where most QBs have ten games or more to run up the stats by being behind, Rex had about four of them. Rate stats suit him a lot better, and if you look at simple New Yards per Attempt in 2006, there's Rex in 15th place. Another indication that he was likely around the 15th best QB this season.
Also, if the Bears have a top 15 QB, do they easily win the Super Bowl? It's possible, but as far as I'm aware, the QB does not play defence, and it was the defence that allowed the Colts to run 81 offensive plays. They allowed 42 rushing attempts. This vaunted Bears defence had nothing for Dominic Rhodes.
I'm not saying there's no way the Bears could've won this game, but it would've taken a lot more than passable QB play. Would they have won this game with Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Tom Brady under centre? Probably, but it's not like we can pick a random top 15 guy, stick him in there, and expect him to win. The Baltimore Ravens did basically exactly that a few weeks before this Super Bowl with Steve McNair, and they lost to the Colts at home.
I say if we can't have Peyton Manning, there's about five guys who could've won the Bears this Super Bowl. Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, and maybe Philip Rivers maybe not. You can throw out some other suggestions if you'd like, but I have trouble rationalising anybody active in 2006 other than these five who can overcome such a time of possession deficit in any game. It would require capitalising most of the time on the very scant chances that any Bears QB would've gotten in this game.
It depends who you think the top three is. Any opinion is valid Grant, but it requires a very specific argument to weasel Justin Herbert into the top four.
The primary hurdle you're going to have to jump in making this argument is that in terms of production on the field, Justin Herbert has never been a top four QB. I would assume the argument you are making is one that operates in terms of skill, because in terms of production, there is no argument. In any rate-based QB statistic (to account for the fact that Justin has a lot of counting stats due primarily to being behind in close games a lot, sort of like the opposite of Rex Grossman from above), Justin has never been in the top four. Not Net Yards per Attempt. Not Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. Not EPA/Play. Nothing.
If you were to say Justin Herbert has been a top four player in any season up to this point based on his production, I would simply disagree. In 2021, you might have an argument, but in any other season you would not, and 2021 is a long time ago now.
So, you would have to be basing your assessment on something else, but there is very little to base such an assessment on. To hold this belief, you must also believe that QB play is very independent of the receiver room, because Justin Herbert's WR cores have been fantastic for every season of his career. Not necessarily 2020, but in 2021 and 2022, he had two top 40 receivers in Mike Williams and Keenan Allen. 2023 was a bit thinner, but he still had one top 15 receiver in Keenan Allen, and in 2024 he had a top 15 WR in Ladd McConkey. This is a level of offensive talent surrounding Justin Herbert that most QBs would kill for.
To support Justin Herbert is a top four QB discussions, you would need to argue that something is artificially constraining his production, that isn't his receivers. That basically boils the conversation down to his offensive schemers, but the problem with that is that Justin Herbert's OCs throughout his career have been SHane Steichen, Joe Lombardi, and Greg Roman, all universally recognised as being some of the best in the business.
To me, a credible logical argument to call Justin Herbert a top four QB would require explanation of why his production has never been top four, despite some of the best receiving talent in the game and some of my favourite offensive coordinators in the game. It cannot be a winning argument obviously, because Justin's career record is just 41-38 in his five seasons, for a team that'd gone 35-45 in the five seasons before he got there, so he hasn't really changed the Chargers in terms of team record either.
You see what I'm getting at here? You have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this work. The Chargers have had great receiving talent. The Chargers have had great play callers, and yet they have not won significantly more with Justin than without him, and he's been top five in no non-counting statistic ever.
The argument people have generally made in favour of Justin Herbert is to ignore the reality that the Chargers have had a top five receiver room over the last five years, and if that's your argument, I will not vibe with that. How many top 15 NFL receivers can one man have and still blame the receiver room? He's got one of the best WRs in the league right now on his team. One of the best rookie WRs in NFL history actually, so that cannot be the argument, either looking back to 2024 or forward into 2025.
This is where I pass the buck to you Grant. What have you got for me? I don't want to hear about the receivers. Tell me why you think this guy is a top four QB in the game. Here is the top ten in EPA/Play last year (Justin exempted): Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, Joe Burrow, Baker Mayfield, Jayden Daniels, Tua Tagovailoa, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, Patrick Mahomes. You need to convince me that Justin is better than at least six of these guys, elsewise I suppose your argument cannot be valid.
My top 3 is Mahomes, Jackson, and Allen. Herbert just elevates all the players around him. I don't think McConkey is a top 15 receiver, I just think he is elevated by having a qb like Herbert. A wr2 in Johnston is not a top 50 receiver. Will Dissly at Tight End isn't stellar, and the Chargers receivers dropped the second most passes this year. If you don't want to hear about that, then I have more for you. In terms of raw talent he is easily top 4. Part of being an elite qb is passing the eye test, and when he goes out there every Sunday he is one of if not the most physically talented qbs at throwing a football. I'm also not just talking about last year. Also, in 2021 Herbert went 9-8 with a defense allowing 27 points per game. Burrow just went 9-8 with a defense allowing 25.5 points per game. Herbert might have had Williams and Allen, but they were nowhere near the caliber of receivers of Chase and Higgins. Herbert also had one of the worst coaches in NFL history in Brandon Staley. Burrow has Zac Taylor who is an excellent head coach. Therefore, Herbert did equal with less. People would still call Burrow a better qb than Herbert. Herbert also has the best turnover worthy play rate in NFL history, and the third best Interception percentage all time. He can extend plays at the level of only Allen, Jackson, and Mahomes Those qbs not named Allen, Mahomes, and Jackson mentioned above have shown to be underwhelming when playing with low level talent He is just an otherworldy physical talent, and has set literally every passing record for a qb's first 5 season except for touchdowns. That's my arguement, and I would love to hear what you have to say back.
I like you Grant. You've got some fire. We disagree on Justin Herbert, but as the full-time writer here, I dig your conviction.
As it relates to Ladd McConkey, according to ESPN Analytics, his Open score puts him in 15th place, meaning he gets open a lot. That's independent of who his QB is, and he's also a pretty good runner with the ball. Combine these two skills, and you get a top 15 receiver in my book. 'Crafty white guy who's always open' is an underrated WR archetype in the NFL. Tom Brady benefits massively from this, as he played a whole career full of crafty white guys who were always open. The receivers being underrated led to him being overrated.
I know it's not cool these days to call a white guy a top 15 NFL receiver, but these crafty slot guys deserve more recognition than they get as guys who can be the drivers of an offence. Now it's Ladd McConkey. A few years before that it was Cooper Kupp. A few years before him it was Wes Welker. If you have a premium slot receiver, you hang onto him with both hands and you do not let go. That's my opinion on the matter.
My apologies though. That's about Ladd McConkey. It's only tangentially related to Justin Herbert. I will grant you that the Chargers receiver group was not deep, but cry up that river to the ten franchises who did not have a top 40 receiver at all last year, and continue crying to the five further teams who have one receiver at the bottom end of the top 40 and no other representation. This is at least half the league with a receiver group strictly worse than LA's.
Even if we say I'm overrating Ladd McConkey, which I don't think I am, but say that I am. We can put the Chargers right at the lower bound of where their WR core can reasonably be ranked. 20th or so. Let's go with that.
As far as raw talent goes, I'm not entirely sure I can argue with you, but there is no direct line between talent and scoring points, which is a QB's only job at the end of the day. There are guys with very little physical talent who have led the league in EPA/Play. Chad Pennington in 2002 is the obvious example, but there are others. I would even put Drew Brees in this category. Compared to the NFL, he was quite untalented physically, but the physical is only half the battle, if you can even grant it half importance.
Might I ask you what was wrong with Brandon Staley as head coach? He had a 24-24 record with the Chargers. They've had an 11-9 record since he left. It's not as if it was magical and things got better instantaneously. As far as I remember, the main knock on Staley is allowing the Jaguars to rush the ball more times than the Chargers did in a playoff game they were leading by 28 points, which meant the Chargers didn't run enough clock, which meant the Jaguars won, but you wouldn't make that argument, because it implicitly acknowledges that using Justin Herbert so much was a mistake, which I don't think you'd be willing to do.
In terms of defensive arguments, you've basically got me. Justin went 9-8 with the NFL's 24th ranked defence. Joe Burrow went 9-8 with the NFL's 27th ranked defence. We do have to talk in terms of offensive environments though. The league offensive environment from 2018-2021 was nuts, so a defence allowing 27 points then is actually slightly better than one allowing 25.5 points now, but it's still basically equal, and each QB did basically equal things with it. No quibbles from me there. However, Daniel Jones won nine games with the league's 28th best defence in 2022, trumping them both, so let's not go crazy using arguments like this.
I also won't quibble with you that Herbert is good at avoiding turnovers. My faith in PFF is limited for reasons I can't get into here, but in terms of the real numbers, Justin's INT%+ is 115. That's really good. My basic disagreement would be that the football world in general vastly overrates the importance of turnover avoidance as a skill. It's important, but it's far down the list. I would much rather move the ball down the field and turn it over all the time than never turn it over but fail to ever get a first down. Phrasing it that way, it sounds like 'of course,' but it scales. You'd generally be better to trade a few more turnovers per season for a few spots in a NY/A ranking, if you can do it. That's a good argument for Herbert. I'm just a bad guy to make it to.
Finally, we make it to extending plays, and I can't mess with you on this one either. He's really good at it. I do feel like you slightly overrate how good he is at it though. Where is Bo Nix on your list? Bo Nix is the best in the world at extending plays other than Lamar. Brock Purdy is darn good at it too, likely better than Herbert, because he gets sacked less trying to do it. Jordan Love too. I should've mentioned him before Brock. He would be in my top five play extenders.
As you can see, this gets muddy. I don't think Justin Herbert is a top five play extender, because I think Jordan Love and Bo Nix at least are better than him. Both hold the ball just as long as Justin, and get sacked less, so they're better by definition at extending the play than Justin is.
Then finally, we move to the low level talent, and I would like to ask you a simple question. Did you watch any Miami Dolphins games last year? Specifically the ones with no Tua Tagovailoa?
You want to talk about elevating one's surroundings. Oh my goodness. That Miami offence without Tua there was one of the worst NFL offences I have ever seen. I mean this is a team that got blown out by 20 to the Tennessee Titans, who would go on to get the first overall draft pick. I'll admit that this is a bit recency biased, but with the evidence I've just seen, if we're going to talk about elevating one's surroundings, that conversation needs to begin with Tua Tagovailoa, who generated better than 0.2 EPA/Play with that group again, despite I think them showing us pretty clearly that they're worthless without him. Worthless.
This is basically the same as happened to Justin. When he missed the final four games of 2023, the Charger offence fell right down to 31st in those four weeks, just like the Miami offence fell right to 32nd without Tua. The point I'm getting at is that if this is the argument, Tua was higher in the EPA/Play rankings last year, and every year since 2021. Tua has to go above him. That's a must, otherwise I don't think elevating one's surroundings can be part of a good faith argument.
In sum, Justin does likely elevate the offence he's in, but not as far as Tua Tagovailoa does. He is very good at extending plays, just not as good as Jordan Love is. He has won with horrendous defence, but not as bad as the defence Daniel Jones won with. He's exceptional at avoiding turnovers, which is a skill I put a minimal amount of importance on, and I also believe you underrate both Brandon Staley and Ladd McConkey, but those can be discussions for another day.
As for your final sentence, I would amend it to Justin has set every counting stat record. Like I said, he's behind in close games a lot. He gets a lot of counting stats. I won't take that away, but in terms of rate stats, he's third in his own draft class in ANY/A, second in NY/A, and third in EPA/Play. He's also third in winning percentage. They're all tied with just two playoff appearances through five years, and etc.. He has not differentiated himself from his draft classmates. In fact, he's fallen behind them both in my opinion.
The fact is that Herbert has a better td:int ratio than anyone in his class and has broken every record for a QBs first five years. He is just an otherworldly talent. Can you let me know where you think Herbert is and who you think is ahead of him?
Sorry for forgetting to let you know why Herbert is better than at least six of those guys. I gave you my arguement for Burrow, but the other ones i'll do now. Daniels was just a rookie, and while he may have had a better season than Herbert, I put Herbert above him just due to body of work. Jared Goff had the best rb duo and a top 3 receiver duo, along with a top 5 tight end and a top 3 oline and didn't even have a 3:1 td-int ratio. Baker doesn't even have a 2:1 td-int ratio throughout his career and is a turnover machine. Tua is the ultimate checkdown machine, and beneifts from yards after catch due to his speedy supporting cast. Tua also is immobile and can't throw a proper deep ball. Purdy is just a game manager and an average starting qb, and Love while he may end up being as good or better than Herbert, makes too many ill-advised throws. PFF even gave Herbert a top 4 passing grade this year, covering every single qb stat.
I’m sorry Robbie, but your list is laughable. CJ Stroud at 25, Matthew Stafford at 19, Justin Herbert at 10, Jayden Daniels at 12, Brock Purdy at 7, and Hurts and Tua in the top 5 are all pure comedy of takes.
OK, but if I invert your exercise and take the three best games off his season, he’s at -0.153 EPA/play, which is more like Will Levis in 2024*. That’s bad! I’m not going to argue about “worst QB in a Super Bowl”—he probably isn’t that, I’ll grant you. But Bad Rex was bad, and probably more memorably bad than some of the other candidates you mention. Peyton in 2015, for example, wasn’t helping his team—but he only threw one interception in the playoffs. Watching Rex sling it around produced more highlights—both positive and negative—than noodle-armed Peyton.
*Zach Wilson in 2021 is a closer comp in terms of EPA/play, but he’s terrible in terms of CPOE. I’m not confident about being able to reliably calculate a CPOE across games from the RBSDM box score stats, so I chose Levis as he’s closer to 0 in terms of CPOE despite being 0.02 worse in EPA/Play.
It's true. You've pointed out the flaw in my approach. Allow me to fix it.
Generally 0.66 EPA/Play is a bound. In fancy stat terms, it's three standard deviations away from the mean, which means that games basically never end up there. For an unrelated article, I looked at every game in the 2022 season, and found that there were only 18 individual QB games that fell outside of the bounds of -0.66 to 0.66 EPA/Play. 18 games across the whole NFL. In a whole season. Counting every appearance with 15 touches or better as a QB game, that's 18 out of about 600. About two percent of all QB games.
Rex Grossman, in 2006, had four of them (three bad, one good). Individually. Four out of 15 games with at least 15 total touches. He accounted for about 20 percent of the extreme outlier games in the entire league. Having even one of these games is enough to seriously skew season long stats, so the best approach is to simply remove all of them. This is what I should've done. It's a bit misleading to only remove the bad ones.
So let's do that. If Rex Grossman never played in week two, six, nine, or 13, what do his numbers look like?
It may not be as good as it was when I only got rid of the bad ones, but it's still not so bad. He is a 0.098 EPA/Play, -1.2 CPOE guy. Is that a good player? Not really, but it's a player you can absolutely make the playoffs with. It makes him look more like a standard all feet, no arm guy, because no matter what you do, you can't make Rex's amazing ability to avoid sacks go away. There is no 2024 allegory for this, but I like a comparison to 2022 Jared Goff. Jared got 0.171 EPA/Play that year, but his skill numbers (-1.4 CPOE, 119 sk%+) look very similar to Rex's excluding the outliers (-1.2 CPOE, 114 sk%+).
Keep in mind that 0.098 EPA/Play on a -1.2 CPOE is still dramatically better than guys like 2000 Trent Dilfer, 2007 Eli Manning, 2015 Peyton Manning, and also better than miscellaneous division winners like 2024 CJ Stroud, 2023 Joe Flacco, etc.. I'm not fighting the idea that Rex Grossman was a bad player. He probably was, as if this 2006 is your one off good season, your career has serious problems. My gripe is that people for some reason seem to think he was uniquely bad, and I don't believe he was. He simply got three two percent events in the space of two months, which drag his season stats way down, and his career stats way down, because he started very few games outside of 2006.
Thanks for taking the criticism to heart! I think the more principled approach is a better way to contextualize his performance that season. I looked at his 2007 and 2011 seasons, and they were absent of any of these outliers so it’s not as if he was just more prone to them in the rest of his career.
The other thing differentiating Grossman from Dilfer and the Mannings is the careers they had outside the identified Super Bowl seasons. You have to be pretty specific (justifiably so, but specific nonetheless) to identify Peyton Manning as the worst Super Bowl QB. Grossman didn’t play particularly much nor particularly well outside the 2006 season, so there’s a case to be made that he had a worse career than the others you’ve identified, even if he wasn’t worse within that particular season.
You're right. Most people think about it like a career thing, but it is not a career thing. Super Bowls aren't won based on career accomplishment. If they were, Peyton Manning would have more than anybody else, and Dan Marino would've won at least one of them. Super Bowls are won based on your team being able to win a tournament against all the other good teams, in your own native season.
Therefore, in my mind, instead of the 80 or so individual names that have started a Super Bowl, I look at the 118 Super Bowl starting QBs as different people. I don't have QB data for 1966-1969, but for all the post-merger Super Bowl games, I can name you several that were worse than 2006 Rex Grossman. If anybody cared to see it, I could make my own list, but I'll make a mini one for you right here. The worst QBs ever to start the Super Bowl, on a scale of worst to Rex Grossman. For this, I'll just exclude guys who hardly played (i.e. Nick Foles 2017, Jeff Hostetler 1990) as it's almost impossible to tell how good they were that year.
1) 1974 Terry Bradshaw (who was so bad he got benched for most of the year)
2) 2015 Peyton Manning (who was the very worst full time QB in the NFL)
3) 1982 David Woodley
4) 2000 Trent Dilfer
The list of Super Bowl starters who were among the NFL's worst ten QBs is small, and ends here, but there is still more who were not bottom ten, but still worse than 2006 Rex Grossman
5) 1980 Jim Plunkett
6) 2008 Ben Roethlisberger (who won the championship in what was by far the worst season of his prime, which has the effect of whitewashing how bad he was in 2008)
7) 2003 Jake Delhomme (for some reason people tend to remember Jake Delhomme's 2003 as if it was good. It wasn't)
8) 2001 Tom Brady (there's a reason the Patriots were 14 point underdogs in that game. You're looking at it)
9) 1983 Jim Plunkett (twice!)
10) 2012 Joe Flacco
11) 1989 John Elway
Only here do we find 2006 Rex Grossman, who in my opinion is only the 12th worst individual QB season to start the Super Bowl. This still leaves him 98th of 110 eligible candidates, which is not great, but it's far from uniquely terrible in any way. As you can see, this plays into your point a little bit, as about half of this bottom ten list is made up of down seasons out of legends of the game, but there are also people like David Woodley and Trent Dilfer, neither of whom were ever as good as Rex was in 2006.
If we're crowning worst starter in a career sense, it should definitely still be one of those two. Probably David Woodley. Quite frankly, I'm not sure why the David Woodley fan club gains so many members every time I make the claim that Rex Grossman is not the worst SB starter ever. In a career sense, it's either him or Rex, but I would give Rex the nod, even though they're quite similar players.
What do you think David? Rex Grossman or David Woodley? In a one-season contest, the two are not really comparable, but when you do a career comparison, whose career do you like more? I'm curious as to your opinion on this.
It’s not a particularly well-informed opinion, but I’d have to agree Woodley’s career is worse on first impression. Hard to fault him for losing his starting gig to Dan Marino (especially when Grossman lost his to Kyle Orton), but the fact that never caught on as a starter for another team dooms him even without considering some of Grossman’s spectacular performances you highlight in ‘06.
I wonder what arguments the Woodley fans have marshaled to prop him up over Grossman—but to me, it probably is mostly an effect of recency bias and Woodley’s career ending before the advent of the internet.
Grossman had a career year despite only throwing for 3100 yards and 23 touchdowns. The 20 interceptions didn't help as well. If the Bears had a top 15 qb they would have easily won the SB.
Rex Grossman basically was a top 15 QB in my book. On my 2006 QB tier list, Rex lands in 16th place. That's the whole point of this article. He was not as bad as everybody likes to say he was.
I would like to quibble slightly with the low yardage too. Rex did not get in a lot of situations to throw for a lot of passing yards. The best way to throw for a lot of passing yards is to be behind in close games, and these Bears were almost never behind in close games. Either Rex played well, and the Bears won by 14+, or Rex did not play well, and the Bears lost by 14+. For the 2006 Bears, there is very little in the middle, so where most QBs have ten games or more to run up the stats by being behind, Rex had about four of them. Rate stats suit him a lot better, and if you look at simple New Yards per Attempt in 2006, there's Rex in 15th place. Another indication that he was likely around the 15th best QB this season.
Also, if the Bears have a top 15 QB, do they easily win the Super Bowl? It's possible, but as far as I'm aware, the QB does not play defence, and it was the defence that allowed the Colts to run 81 offensive plays. They allowed 42 rushing attempts. This vaunted Bears defence had nothing for Dominic Rhodes.
I'm not saying there's no way the Bears could've won this game, but it would've taken a lot more than passable QB play. Would they have won this game with Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Tom Brady under centre? Probably, but it's not like we can pick a random top 15 guy, stick him in there, and expect him to win. The Baltimore Ravens did basically exactly that a few weeks before this Super Bowl with Steve McNair, and they lost to the Colts at home.
I say if we can't have Peyton Manning, there's about five guys who could've won the Bears this Super Bowl. Tony Romo, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Carson Palmer, and maybe Philip Rivers maybe not. You can throw out some other suggestions if you'd like, but I have trouble rationalising anybody active in 2006 other than these five who can overcome such a time of possession deficit in any game. It would require capitalising most of the time on the very scant chances that any Bears QB would've gotten in this game.
Ok thanks for giving me the bigger picture. Also is it valid that I think that Justin Herbert is a top 4 qb?
It depends who you think the top three is. Any opinion is valid Grant, but it requires a very specific argument to weasel Justin Herbert into the top four.
The primary hurdle you're going to have to jump in making this argument is that in terms of production on the field, Justin Herbert has never been a top four QB. I would assume the argument you are making is one that operates in terms of skill, because in terms of production, there is no argument. In any rate-based QB statistic (to account for the fact that Justin has a lot of counting stats due primarily to being behind in close games a lot, sort of like the opposite of Rex Grossman from above), Justin has never been in the top four. Not Net Yards per Attempt. Not Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. Not EPA/Play. Nothing.
If you were to say Justin Herbert has been a top four player in any season up to this point based on his production, I would simply disagree. In 2021, you might have an argument, but in any other season you would not, and 2021 is a long time ago now.
So, you would have to be basing your assessment on something else, but there is very little to base such an assessment on. To hold this belief, you must also believe that QB play is very independent of the receiver room, because Justin Herbert's WR cores have been fantastic for every season of his career. Not necessarily 2020, but in 2021 and 2022, he had two top 40 receivers in Mike Williams and Keenan Allen. 2023 was a bit thinner, but he still had one top 15 receiver in Keenan Allen, and in 2024 he had a top 15 WR in Ladd McConkey. This is a level of offensive talent surrounding Justin Herbert that most QBs would kill for.
To support Justin Herbert is a top four QB discussions, you would need to argue that something is artificially constraining his production, that isn't his receivers. That basically boils the conversation down to his offensive schemers, but the problem with that is that Justin Herbert's OCs throughout his career have been SHane Steichen, Joe Lombardi, and Greg Roman, all universally recognised as being some of the best in the business.
To me, a credible logical argument to call Justin Herbert a top four QB would require explanation of why his production has never been top four, despite some of the best receiving talent in the game and some of my favourite offensive coordinators in the game. It cannot be a winning argument obviously, because Justin's career record is just 41-38 in his five seasons, for a team that'd gone 35-45 in the five seasons before he got there, so he hasn't really changed the Chargers in terms of team record either.
You see what I'm getting at here? You have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this work. The Chargers have had great receiving talent. The Chargers have had great play callers, and yet they have not won significantly more with Justin than without him, and he's been top five in no non-counting statistic ever.
The argument people have generally made in favour of Justin Herbert is to ignore the reality that the Chargers have had a top five receiver room over the last five years, and if that's your argument, I will not vibe with that. How many top 15 NFL receivers can one man have and still blame the receiver room? He's got one of the best WRs in the league right now on his team. One of the best rookie WRs in NFL history actually, so that cannot be the argument, either looking back to 2024 or forward into 2025.
This is where I pass the buck to you Grant. What have you got for me? I don't want to hear about the receivers. Tell me why you think this guy is a top four QB in the game. Here is the top ten in EPA/Play last year (Justin exempted): Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Jared Goff, Joe Burrow, Baker Mayfield, Jayden Daniels, Tua Tagovailoa, Brock Purdy, Jordan Love, Patrick Mahomes. You need to convince me that Justin is better than at least six of these guys, elsewise I suppose your argument cannot be valid.
My top 3 is Mahomes, Jackson, and Allen. Herbert just elevates all the players around him. I don't think McConkey is a top 15 receiver, I just think he is elevated by having a qb like Herbert. A wr2 in Johnston is not a top 50 receiver. Will Dissly at Tight End isn't stellar, and the Chargers receivers dropped the second most passes this year. If you don't want to hear about that, then I have more for you. In terms of raw talent he is easily top 4. Part of being an elite qb is passing the eye test, and when he goes out there every Sunday he is one of if not the most physically talented qbs at throwing a football. I'm also not just talking about last year. Also, in 2021 Herbert went 9-8 with a defense allowing 27 points per game. Burrow just went 9-8 with a defense allowing 25.5 points per game. Herbert might have had Williams and Allen, but they were nowhere near the caliber of receivers of Chase and Higgins. Herbert also had one of the worst coaches in NFL history in Brandon Staley. Burrow has Zac Taylor who is an excellent head coach. Therefore, Herbert did equal with less. People would still call Burrow a better qb than Herbert. Herbert also has the best turnover worthy play rate in NFL history, and the third best Interception percentage all time. He can extend plays at the level of only Allen, Jackson, and Mahomes Those qbs not named Allen, Mahomes, and Jackson mentioned above have shown to be underwhelming when playing with low level talent He is just an otherworldy physical talent, and has set literally every passing record for a qb's first 5 season except for touchdowns. That's my arguement, and I would love to hear what you have to say back.
I like you Grant. You've got some fire. We disagree on Justin Herbert, but as the full-time writer here, I dig your conviction.
As it relates to Ladd McConkey, according to ESPN Analytics, his Open score puts him in 15th place, meaning he gets open a lot. That's independent of who his QB is, and he's also a pretty good runner with the ball. Combine these two skills, and you get a top 15 receiver in my book. 'Crafty white guy who's always open' is an underrated WR archetype in the NFL. Tom Brady benefits massively from this, as he played a whole career full of crafty white guys who were always open. The receivers being underrated led to him being overrated.
I know it's not cool these days to call a white guy a top 15 NFL receiver, but these crafty slot guys deserve more recognition than they get as guys who can be the drivers of an offence. Now it's Ladd McConkey. A few years before that it was Cooper Kupp. A few years before him it was Wes Welker. If you have a premium slot receiver, you hang onto him with both hands and you do not let go. That's my opinion on the matter.
My apologies though. That's about Ladd McConkey. It's only tangentially related to Justin Herbert. I will grant you that the Chargers receiver group was not deep, but cry up that river to the ten franchises who did not have a top 40 receiver at all last year, and continue crying to the five further teams who have one receiver at the bottom end of the top 40 and no other representation. This is at least half the league with a receiver group strictly worse than LA's.
Even if we say I'm overrating Ladd McConkey, which I don't think I am, but say that I am. We can put the Chargers right at the lower bound of where their WR core can reasonably be ranked. 20th or so. Let's go with that.
As far as raw talent goes, I'm not entirely sure I can argue with you, but there is no direct line between talent and scoring points, which is a QB's only job at the end of the day. There are guys with very little physical talent who have led the league in EPA/Play. Chad Pennington in 2002 is the obvious example, but there are others. I would even put Drew Brees in this category. Compared to the NFL, he was quite untalented physically, but the physical is only half the battle, if you can even grant it half importance.
Might I ask you what was wrong with Brandon Staley as head coach? He had a 24-24 record with the Chargers. They've had an 11-9 record since he left. It's not as if it was magical and things got better instantaneously. As far as I remember, the main knock on Staley is allowing the Jaguars to rush the ball more times than the Chargers did in a playoff game they were leading by 28 points, which meant the Chargers didn't run enough clock, which meant the Jaguars won, but you wouldn't make that argument, because it implicitly acknowledges that using Justin Herbert so much was a mistake, which I don't think you'd be willing to do.
In terms of defensive arguments, you've basically got me. Justin went 9-8 with the NFL's 24th ranked defence. Joe Burrow went 9-8 with the NFL's 27th ranked defence. We do have to talk in terms of offensive environments though. The league offensive environment from 2018-2021 was nuts, so a defence allowing 27 points then is actually slightly better than one allowing 25.5 points now, but it's still basically equal, and each QB did basically equal things with it. No quibbles from me there. However, Daniel Jones won nine games with the league's 28th best defence in 2022, trumping them both, so let's not go crazy using arguments like this.
I also won't quibble with you that Herbert is good at avoiding turnovers. My faith in PFF is limited for reasons I can't get into here, but in terms of the real numbers, Justin's INT%+ is 115. That's really good. My basic disagreement would be that the football world in general vastly overrates the importance of turnover avoidance as a skill. It's important, but it's far down the list. I would much rather move the ball down the field and turn it over all the time than never turn it over but fail to ever get a first down. Phrasing it that way, it sounds like 'of course,' but it scales. You'd generally be better to trade a few more turnovers per season for a few spots in a NY/A ranking, if you can do it. That's a good argument for Herbert. I'm just a bad guy to make it to.
Finally, we make it to extending plays, and I can't mess with you on this one either. He's really good at it. I do feel like you slightly overrate how good he is at it though. Where is Bo Nix on your list? Bo Nix is the best in the world at extending plays other than Lamar. Brock Purdy is darn good at it too, likely better than Herbert, because he gets sacked less trying to do it. Jordan Love too. I should've mentioned him before Brock. He would be in my top five play extenders.
As you can see, this gets muddy. I don't think Justin Herbert is a top five play extender, because I think Jordan Love and Bo Nix at least are better than him. Both hold the ball just as long as Justin, and get sacked less, so they're better by definition at extending the play than Justin is.
Then finally, we move to the low level talent, and I would like to ask you a simple question. Did you watch any Miami Dolphins games last year? Specifically the ones with no Tua Tagovailoa?
You want to talk about elevating one's surroundings. Oh my goodness. That Miami offence without Tua there was one of the worst NFL offences I have ever seen. I mean this is a team that got blown out by 20 to the Tennessee Titans, who would go on to get the first overall draft pick. I'll admit that this is a bit recency biased, but with the evidence I've just seen, if we're going to talk about elevating one's surroundings, that conversation needs to begin with Tua Tagovailoa, who generated better than 0.2 EPA/Play with that group again, despite I think them showing us pretty clearly that they're worthless without him. Worthless.
This is basically the same as happened to Justin. When he missed the final four games of 2023, the Charger offence fell right down to 31st in those four weeks, just like the Miami offence fell right to 32nd without Tua. The point I'm getting at is that if this is the argument, Tua was higher in the EPA/Play rankings last year, and every year since 2021. Tua has to go above him. That's a must, otherwise I don't think elevating one's surroundings can be part of a good faith argument.
In sum, Justin does likely elevate the offence he's in, but not as far as Tua Tagovailoa does. He is very good at extending plays, just not as good as Jordan Love is. He has won with horrendous defence, but not as bad as the defence Daniel Jones won with. He's exceptional at avoiding turnovers, which is a skill I put a minimal amount of importance on, and I also believe you underrate both Brandon Staley and Ladd McConkey, but those can be discussions for another day.
As for your final sentence, I would amend it to Justin has set every counting stat record. Like I said, he's behind in close games a lot. He gets a lot of counting stats. I won't take that away, but in terms of rate stats, he's third in his own draft class in ANY/A, second in NY/A, and third in EPA/Play. He's also third in winning percentage. They're all tied with just two playoff appearances through five years, and etc.. He has not differentiated himself from his draft classmates. In fact, he's fallen behind them both in my opinion.
The fact is that Herbert has a better td:int ratio than anyone in his class and has broken every record for a QBs first five years. He is just an otherworldly talent. Can you let me know where you think Herbert is and who you think is ahead of him?
Thanks,
Grant
The fact is that Herbert has a better td:int ratio than anyone in his class, and has an extreme level of talent. He
I would also like to know where you think Justin is.
Sorry for forgetting to let you know why Herbert is better than at least six of those guys. I gave you my arguement for Burrow, but the other ones i'll do now. Daniels was just a rookie, and while he may have had a better season than Herbert, I put Herbert above him just due to body of work. Jared Goff had the best rb duo and a top 3 receiver duo, along with a top 5 tight end and a top 3 oline and didn't even have a 3:1 td-int ratio. Baker doesn't even have a 2:1 td-int ratio throughout his career and is a turnover machine. Tua is the ultimate checkdown machine, and beneifts from yards after catch due to his speedy supporting cast. Tua also is immobile and can't throw a proper deep ball. Purdy is just a game manager and an average starting qb, and Love while he may end up being as good or better than Herbert, makes too many ill-advised throws. PFF even gave Herbert a top 4 passing grade this year, covering every single qb stat.
I’m sorry Robbie, but your list is laughable. CJ Stroud at 25, Matthew Stafford at 19, Justin Herbert at 10, Jayden Daniels at 12, Brock Purdy at 7, and Hurts and Tua in the top 5 are all pure comedy of takes.