From Monday, Brady has improved his average performance from 2.05 stars to 2.58 stars. Manning without 2015 is at 2.5. and Drew Brees is at 2.78.
Personally, how much do you weight postseason performance in evaluating players? I think it is probably most useful to look at how players play against top defenses and other top QBs weather that is during or before the postseason. Currently, I use it more as tie breaker given the small sample size.
Fight the good fight Marc. I'm always on the play index. It's where I get all my 'most impactful play of the 2021 season (by WPA)' type stuff.
I also think you've hit the nail right on the head with postseason performance. As far as determining how good (not great, because great takes into account team accomplishments) players are, about five percent of NFL games (13 out of 285) are played in the postseason. Therefore, the postseason gets five percent of the weight when determining who the best (not greatest) players are.
Greatest is a narrative thing. Best is a factual thing. Why greatest always seems to take precedence over best in the NFL discourse I have no idea.
Five percent weight on postseason is so negligible that it in essence serves as a tiebreaker in the way you were saying. For instance, right now Josh Allen and Tom Brady are pretty much in a dead tie when it comes to regular season performance. However, Josh's meh playoff performance (from best to worst 2, 0, 3, 2, 3) will likely lose him the tiebreak. We can even go further down the list and find Matt Ryan and Lamar Jackson pretty much tied (so far), but Matt Ryan's forever underrated playoff performance (1, 1, 4, 0, 4. Lots of bad but lots of good) takes him ahead.
I'm not sure if you saw my Note, but my whole impetus to do this series was the career of Tomas Vokoun, who was the best goaltender in the NHL over a six year period, but nobody cared because his teams couldn't make the playoffs. This is just not right to me. The best players in the world are the best players in the world, regardless of whether or not they have one bad week at the end of their seasons.
People say it's all about championships, but they're lying to themselves. I explored this in my post about the 2007 Patriots. People remember the 2007 Patriots, but do they remember anything about the 2007 Giants? People care about champions when the most interesting story is the champion (like the Chiefs right now). When the most interesting story is not the champion (like the Patriots in 2018), nobody cares, and if anybody would disagree with that, I would challenge them to tell me one thing they remember about either the 2007 Giants or the 2018 Patriots, exempting any relation to the most interesting story in their league that year (meaning no bringing up the Patriots when talking about the Giants, and no bringing up the Chiefs when talking about the Patriots).
The same goes for every league. I don't understand why people insist on lying to themselves pretending it's all about championships, but it's not. Often times the championship story and the real story will align (2022 and 2023), but often times it won't (2018 and 2021). This weird cognitive bias is in a way the whole purpose of this Substack existing. People look at things differently looking back than they do as it's happening, and articles like this are trying to correct that.
We're not even 6 sections removed from you claiming some air of impartiality on the evaluation of Tom and his stats with regard to other players and there you are deflating his score because of success of defensive players. It is the greatest super bowl comeback of all time. It is the second most yards thrown in a super bowl of all time, was the most at the time. It is 28-3 and any person, any person at all, claiming to evaluate the stats and performance honestly who can't give brady his flowers for that game can't be taken seriously. Down 14 points twice against the Ravens not being all time great? Okay I can see the argument being made. This game not being all time great? It calls into question your evaluation in the whole article.
Tom Brady's performance in the 2016 Super Bowl is all about personal preference.
There are some who think QB play is entirely about what you do in the big game, in the big spot. People who think that way will likely give Tom an 'All-Time Great' rating for this game. I could concur with that personally, IF it wasn't primarily Tom's own fault that he was behind so much. In this regard, it's a lot like the 2014 Baltimore game. Tom is the one that took the sack on the second drive to push the Patriots, out of FG range. Tom is not the one that fumbled the third drive (also in FG range) away. Fair enough, but he is the one that threw the pick six on the third to make it 21-0.
In short, Tom was good, but in the first half his sequencing was really poor, meaning he was awful in third down scenarios. Over the course of a full season, sequencing (meaning third down performance) can mostly be ignored, as it will even out eventually, but as part of a one game evaluation, sequencing has to come into it. The Patriots were not bad on offence. They got inside the Atlanta 40 on four separate occasions in the first half, but in a very non-Patriot fashion, they were able to convert these four trips into only three points. Once again, in a full season, things like this can be ignored, but in a one game evaluation, the buck has to stop with the QB for this, especially considering he turned one of the red zone trips into a pick six and seven points for the opponent.
To Tom's credit, he was fantastic in the second half, scoring on four of five tries (five of six if we count OT), but it's not like he shut the lights off. It was three TDs and one FG, which was just barely enough given the contributions of the Patriot defence, which everybody can admit were herculean, to hold a Kyle Shanahan offence completely scoreless in the final 23 minutes of a game.
The problem with this game is the first half, not the second one. Everybody knows the second half is all-time great, but football games are two halves. Tom Brady in this game comes equipped with one of the (perhaps the very most) clutch Super Bowl halves of all time in the second + OT, but it's also the guy that got inside the Falcon 40 four times in the first half, and got three combined points out of these four trips. That's one of the least clutch halves in Super Bowl history, and if the Kyle Shanahan offence had scored anything more than zero points in the final 23 minutes, this first half would've cost his team the game, regardless of what he was able to do in the second.
This is why my game gets merely a Good on my Tom Brady scale. If I had the luxury of grading it as if it were a full season, it would actually improve, because the Patriots did get inside the Atlanta 40 nine different times (!), meaning anybody watching the game could've seen that 28-3 was a mirage, and not indicative of how the game was actually going. The Patriots were just getting some bad red zone luck. These things happen, but in a one game sample, bad red zone luck must fall at the feet of somebody, and that's why I dislike this game more than almost anybody else.
This game did set the record for most passing yards in a Super Bowl, but that's meh to me, as Tom dropped back to pass an unprecedented 73 times, so in terms of counting stats, of course he should be the leader. It's a sham that he's not still the leader today with this many drop backs. He should've been the leader forever with this many drop backs. The reason he's not is that on a rate basis he was not especially impressive, be it the six scores on 12 offensive drives, or the good but not life changing 0.24 EPA/Play, or the similarly not all time great 7.5 Y/A in this game.
I give Tom all the respect in the world for what he did in 2016, but as far as Tom's Super Bowl performances, is it even in the top three? 2020 is obviously number one, as blowout beats comeback any day. 2017 is a clear number two, despite the loss, based on the sheer strength of statistical superiority, and I'm not even convinced 2016 is the most impressive Tom Brady Super Bowl comeback. Based on the quality of defensive opposition, I give overcoming a multiple possession fourth quarter deficit in 2014 against the Legion of Boom more credit than I give this Atlanta game, especially because it comes with significantly less first half failure attached to it.
Once again, it all comes down to personal preference. If you like watching comebacks, I prefer 2014 to this 2016 game, but I won't judge you for thinking this 2016 Brady game is All-Time Great, even if I disagree with that assessment. My personal preference is that having to come back at all indicates a lack of clutchness, because you've found yourself behind in the first place, which is why my favourite Tom Brady Super Bowl (and postseason in general) is 2020, where he put the foot on the throat, and did not allow there to be any tight spots in the fourth quarter.
To me, the number one rule of football is that it's good to play well in close games, but even better not to be in a close game at all. Based upon these parameters, I rank this 2016 Super Bowl fourth just among Tom Brady's Super Bowl performances, with serious competition from 2011, so how can it possibly be All-Time Great?
We're not even 6 sections removed from you claiming some air of impartiality on the evaluation of Tom and his stats with regard to other players and there you are deflating his score because of success of defensive players. It is the greatest super bowl comeback of all time. It is the second most yards thrown in a super bowl of all time, was the most at the time. It is 28-3 and any person, any person at all, claiming to evaluate the stats and performance honestly who can't give brady his flowers for that game can't be taken seriously. Down 14 points twice against the Ravens not being all time great? Okay I can see the argument being made. This game not being all time great? It calls into question your evaluation in the whole article.
From Monday, Brady has improved his average performance from 2.05 stars to 2.58 stars. Manning without 2015 is at 2.5. and Drew Brees is at 2.78.
Personally, how much do you weight postseason performance in evaluating players? I think it is probably most useful to look at how players play against top defenses and other top QBs weather that is during or before the postseason. Currently, I use it more as tie breaker given the small sample size.
Also, if any wants to see the playoff performance of all these guys at glance, check out (https://nflfastr-app.herokuapp.com/index?), really useful site.
Fight the good fight Marc. I'm always on the play index. It's where I get all my 'most impactful play of the 2021 season (by WPA)' type stuff.
I also think you've hit the nail right on the head with postseason performance. As far as determining how good (not great, because great takes into account team accomplishments) players are, about five percent of NFL games (13 out of 285) are played in the postseason. Therefore, the postseason gets five percent of the weight when determining who the best (not greatest) players are.
Greatest is a narrative thing. Best is a factual thing. Why greatest always seems to take precedence over best in the NFL discourse I have no idea.
Five percent weight on postseason is so negligible that it in essence serves as a tiebreaker in the way you were saying. For instance, right now Josh Allen and Tom Brady are pretty much in a dead tie when it comes to regular season performance. However, Josh's meh playoff performance (from best to worst 2, 0, 3, 2, 3) will likely lose him the tiebreak. We can even go further down the list and find Matt Ryan and Lamar Jackson pretty much tied (so far), but Matt Ryan's forever underrated playoff performance (1, 1, 4, 0, 4. Lots of bad but lots of good) takes him ahead.
I'm not sure if you saw my Note, but my whole impetus to do this series was the career of Tomas Vokoun, who was the best goaltender in the NHL over a six year period, but nobody cared because his teams couldn't make the playoffs. This is just not right to me. The best players in the world are the best players in the world, regardless of whether or not they have one bad week at the end of their seasons.
People say it's all about championships, but they're lying to themselves. I explored this in my post about the 2007 Patriots. People remember the 2007 Patriots, but do they remember anything about the 2007 Giants? People care about champions when the most interesting story is the champion (like the Chiefs right now). When the most interesting story is not the champion (like the Patriots in 2018), nobody cares, and if anybody would disagree with that, I would challenge them to tell me one thing they remember about either the 2007 Giants or the 2018 Patriots, exempting any relation to the most interesting story in their league that year (meaning no bringing up the Patriots when talking about the Giants, and no bringing up the Chiefs when talking about the Patriots).
The same goes for every league. I don't understand why people insist on lying to themselves pretending it's all about championships, but it's not. Often times the championship story and the real story will align (2022 and 2023), but often times it won't (2018 and 2021). This weird cognitive bias is in a way the whole purpose of this Substack existing. People look at things differently looking back than they do as it's happening, and articles like this are trying to correct that.
We're not even 6 sections removed from you claiming some air of impartiality on the evaluation of Tom and his stats with regard to other players and there you are deflating his score because of success of defensive players. It is the greatest super bowl comeback of all time. It is the second most yards thrown in a super bowl of all time, was the most at the time. It is 28-3 and any person, any person at all, claiming to evaluate the stats and performance honestly who can't give brady his flowers for that game can't be taken seriously. Down 14 points twice against the Ravens not being all time great? Okay I can see the argument being made. This game not being all time great? It calls into question your evaluation in the whole article.
Tom Brady's performance in the 2016 Super Bowl is all about personal preference.
There are some who think QB play is entirely about what you do in the big game, in the big spot. People who think that way will likely give Tom an 'All-Time Great' rating for this game. I could concur with that personally, IF it wasn't primarily Tom's own fault that he was behind so much. In this regard, it's a lot like the 2014 Baltimore game. Tom is the one that took the sack on the second drive to push the Patriots, out of FG range. Tom is not the one that fumbled the third drive (also in FG range) away. Fair enough, but he is the one that threw the pick six on the third to make it 21-0.
In short, Tom was good, but in the first half his sequencing was really poor, meaning he was awful in third down scenarios. Over the course of a full season, sequencing (meaning third down performance) can mostly be ignored, as it will even out eventually, but as part of a one game evaluation, sequencing has to come into it. The Patriots were not bad on offence. They got inside the Atlanta 40 on four separate occasions in the first half, but in a very non-Patriot fashion, they were able to convert these four trips into only three points. Once again, in a full season, things like this can be ignored, but in a one game evaluation, the buck has to stop with the QB for this, especially considering he turned one of the red zone trips into a pick six and seven points for the opponent.
To Tom's credit, he was fantastic in the second half, scoring on four of five tries (five of six if we count OT), but it's not like he shut the lights off. It was three TDs and one FG, which was just barely enough given the contributions of the Patriot defence, which everybody can admit were herculean, to hold a Kyle Shanahan offence completely scoreless in the final 23 minutes of a game.
The problem with this game is the first half, not the second one. Everybody knows the second half is all-time great, but football games are two halves. Tom Brady in this game comes equipped with one of the (perhaps the very most) clutch Super Bowl halves of all time in the second + OT, but it's also the guy that got inside the Falcon 40 four times in the first half, and got three combined points out of these four trips. That's one of the least clutch halves in Super Bowl history, and if the Kyle Shanahan offence had scored anything more than zero points in the final 23 minutes, this first half would've cost his team the game, regardless of what he was able to do in the second.
This is why my game gets merely a Good on my Tom Brady scale. If I had the luxury of grading it as if it were a full season, it would actually improve, because the Patriots did get inside the Atlanta 40 nine different times (!), meaning anybody watching the game could've seen that 28-3 was a mirage, and not indicative of how the game was actually going. The Patriots were just getting some bad red zone luck. These things happen, but in a one game sample, bad red zone luck must fall at the feet of somebody, and that's why I dislike this game more than almost anybody else.
This game did set the record for most passing yards in a Super Bowl, but that's meh to me, as Tom dropped back to pass an unprecedented 73 times, so in terms of counting stats, of course he should be the leader. It's a sham that he's not still the leader today with this many drop backs. He should've been the leader forever with this many drop backs. The reason he's not is that on a rate basis he was not especially impressive, be it the six scores on 12 offensive drives, or the good but not life changing 0.24 EPA/Play, or the similarly not all time great 7.5 Y/A in this game.
I give Tom all the respect in the world for what he did in 2016, but as far as Tom's Super Bowl performances, is it even in the top three? 2020 is obviously number one, as blowout beats comeback any day. 2017 is a clear number two, despite the loss, based on the sheer strength of statistical superiority, and I'm not even convinced 2016 is the most impressive Tom Brady Super Bowl comeback. Based on the quality of defensive opposition, I give overcoming a multiple possession fourth quarter deficit in 2014 against the Legion of Boom more credit than I give this Atlanta game, especially because it comes with significantly less first half failure attached to it.
Once again, it all comes down to personal preference. If you like watching comebacks, I prefer 2014 to this 2016 game, but I won't judge you for thinking this 2016 Brady game is All-Time Great, even if I disagree with that assessment. My personal preference is that having to come back at all indicates a lack of clutchness, because you've found yourself behind in the first place, which is why my favourite Tom Brady Super Bowl (and postseason in general) is 2020, where he put the foot on the throat, and did not allow there to be any tight spots in the fourth quarter.
To me, the number one rule of football is that it's good to play well in close games, but even better not to be in a close game at all. Based upon these parameters, I rank this 2016 Super Bowl fourth just among Tom Brady's Super Bowl performances, with serious competition from 2011, so how can it possibly be All-Time Great?
We're not even 6 sections removed from you claiming some air of impartiality on the evaluation of Tom and his stats with regard to other players and there you are deflating his score because of success of defensive players. It is the greatest super bowl comeback of all time. It is the second most yards thrown in a super bowl of all time, was the most at the time. It is 28-3 and any person, any person at all, claiming to evaluate the stats and performance honestly who can't give brady his flowers for that game can't be taken seriously. Down 14 points twice against the Ravens not being all time great? Okay I can see the argument being made. This game not being all time great? It calls into question your evaluation in the whole article.