1. I think this hammers home that W-L record is not a QB stat, or at a very least a lot of context needs to be put on it. I mean at this point Green is basically the anti-Brady. Brady is almost undoubtedly the luckiest QB in NFL history while Trent may be the unluckiest
2. This article rekindles my frustration I have with coach's infatuation with running the ball. Its certainty has its place, but it shouldn't be the default.
3. Trent in some ways reminds of Dak. Many of the criticisms labeled at Dak are the ones labeled at Trent.
This is not a bash on Tom Brady session. I'm here to be positive about Trent Green, but I agree with your statement, and the 2003 playoffs are perhaps the ultimate example in the whole of NFL history as to why. The very night before (in the same Divisional round) Trent takes on one league MVP, generates 0.508 EPA/Play, and loses, Tom Brady takes on the other, generates 0.138 EPA/Play, and wins because Drew Bennett drops the fourth down pass and pretty much singlehandedly starts the Patriot dynasty.
Imagine if Drew catches that ball on that fourth down and the Patriots just lose at home to the five seed Titans (as by all means they should have). The SB champions in 2003 are almost certainly the IND Colts, and how differently would history have turned out then?
In the context of this series, how differently would we look at Trent Green if the Colts beat the white hot Broncos 41-10, beat the limping Titans (Steve McNair is on two bad legs by this point) by 20 points, healthily beat the 2003 Panthers like a real team would've, but could only get by these Chiefs by the skin of their teeth, with the only differentiating factor being the one OPI penalty?
Just a question.
Instead, the next week we get the ultimate Bill Belichick masterpiece, where he decides Peyton is not going to put up numbers like these against his team. The Patriots break every rule in the book defending the Colts' receivers, and just dare the refs to call them on it (they never do), and the Patriots limp all the way to the Super Bowl. I have a serious grudge against the 2003 AFC Championship game, and the retroactive narratives that it creates, but I cannot deny that it's likely Bill's finest hour.
This is what makes Tom Brady great? Get real everybody.
Forgive my soapbox. The 2003 AFC is likely my favourite NFL conference of all time, and I cannot control my hatred for how it ends.
As for Dak Prescott, you're entirely correct. Dak is often criticized for the same reasons Trent is criticized, right down to (in 2023) getting blown up by a QB having one of the best playoff games of all time, despite not playing all that badly, and also shaping up to be one of the best QBs of his era and never being recognized for it. As far as QBs drafted since 2010, Dak is worse only than Mahomes and Allen, and would the prevailing narrative let you know that fact? Even a little bit?
Peyton Manning is my favorite football player of all time so I very much like the reality of him winning the 2003 Super Bowl and having a 89 Montanan type run. I think these playoff results would be more bearable if there weren't co-opted into making false narratives. The margins can be so thin in football that changing on play of one game in each postseason could lead to vary different results. Just look at the 2018 conference championship games.
(Trent is also similar to Drew Brees. They probable have the highest percentage of games were they player great but lost.
I think you do a great job of re-framing the narrative around these players and teams.)
With 2003, I think I read the RS, but I haven't read the PS (which I will). It's clear you have a great fondness for this type of period given the number of articles you have during this time period. It seems that you view 2003 as a huge turning point in NFL history but is there another season you feel comes close to it during the play-by-play era?
2015 seems like a turning point to me as it will probably be the last time a defensive carried team won the SB. This year or next maybe as well as the QB landscape truly enters its next area with Rodgers and Wilson probably retiring soon and with the historic 2024 NFL QB draft class.
You are right that my favourite period of NFL is after we got nice looking TV broadcasts in the late 90s or so, but before offence explodes in 2011 and the genie can never be put back in the bottle. We are really on the same wavelength today though, because 2015 is my favourite overall season in my NFL watching period.
In the middle of what should've been an era of stale sameness, all of a sudden the entire league flips upside down for no reason at all. The best two teams in in the NFL are the Arizona Cardinals and Cincinnati Bengals. The best two QBs in the NFL are Carson Palmer and Andy Dalton, but both go down with injury (and both never get back to this level again btw) so we get a Super Bowl that technically features the two number one seeds but one that nobody would've predicted at the start of those playoffs.
First and foremost you have the turning point of the KC Chiefs franchise. They start the season 1-5, on the verge of blowing it all up, lose their best player (Jamaal Charles) forever, and only after that win each of their final ten games, become one third of maybe the best wild card fight of all time, with three really good teams (Jets, Chiefs, Steelers) going for two playoff spots, winning that fight, and never looking back since. Just that one storyline would have people coming back to this season, but there's more.
You've got the worst 15-1 team of all time in the Carolina Panthers, finding different ways to pull the rabbit out of the hat every week. This was a very likeable squad with an exuberant young feel to it. Also likeable but in an entirely different way were the sinking Denver Broncos limping to a SB in a very Patriots-esque, but somehow actually very likeable kind of way.
Along the way, the Bengals jumped out to a 8-0 record and looked to be pretty clearly the best team in the AFC before losing their franchise QB (in essence) forever (Andy would stay around for a while, but never be near the top of the league again after this season).
On the other side of the league, you have the Seahawks, who everybody had as a lock to win the NFC again, limp out to a 2-4 record before storming back to steal the last playoff spot and become an extremely live dog in the 2015 playoffs.
Speaking of the 2015 playoffs...
The Blair Walsh game happens in these playoffs, on the very same day that Vontaze Burfict tries to murder Antonio Brown, and singlehandedly blows up the one playoff win that the Bengals of this era had in the bag. In contrast, the Chiefs win their first playoff game in years to truly cement that they've turned the corner, and that they (and not the Bengals) would be the team of the AFC going forward. However, they also prove it's not yet by losing pretty convincingly in the Divisional to the Patriots.
On the very same day as that game, we get one of the most iconic drives of all time, as Aaron Rodgers completes two consecutive hail mary passes to draw even with the juggernaut Cardinals in a game the Packers had no business even being close in, and Carson Palmer (already injured, and will never be the same as he once was) is able to muster his last bit of greatness in response to get that win, and we even get a nostalgia hit in the championship game.
Tom vs Peyton one last time, for old times' sake.
It's almost like this game was written by a scriptwriter, because the two old greats (both in down seasons at the time. It was a reasonable thought at the time to think this may be the last AFC Championship for both men) fight each other to a dead draw (-0.09 EPA/Play for each player, -11 total EPA for each team), and just this once the luck comes out on Peyton's side. Truly a storybook moment.
Coming out of that season the whole league has to flip again. The Broncos are over, the Bengals are over, the Cardinals are over, the Panthers are over, the Seahawks (as a serious SB contender) are over. The Packers are not over, but are going to be gone from the upper echelon for a while.
Regrettably, this lurch is going to ruin the NFL for a long time, as it leads to a really boring 2016 where everybody knows for pretty much the whole season that the SB is going to be the Patriots against either Dallas or Atlanta, and if not for the miracle 2017 Jaguars it would've ruined that season too. The league just wasn't ready to replace all that was leaving, and it left the Patriots as the one great team left standing.
Notice that before all the great teams left at once the Patriots had won one SB in ten years. Afterwards, they won two of the next three (and truly should've won all three) while the league got their act back together.
Turning point indeed.
(Sorry. You didn't ask for the cliffnotes of a 2015 deep dive, but this season is so awesome I couldn't help it)
With the Patriots, you could argue they shouldn't have won any of those. 2016 there were down 28-3, 2017 and 2018 they would have lost in the AFC Championship if weren't for a bad call in 2017 (as well as coaching mistakes) and Dee Ford's fingers.
The 2016 Super Bowl will always come with a bit of a skewed narrative of its own. While it is an impressive comeback, the Patriots' estimated Win Probability never got below two percent, which is of course miniscule, but not the biggest comeback I've ever covered here. It's not even in the top five. Trent's comeback against GB in this article is a bigger comeback than that.
People just don't remember that the Falcons got beat into the dirt every quarter except the second. In the first (which is important to note), third, and fourth quarters this game is not competitive, and if not for everything in the world going Atlanta's way in the first half this would've just been a 10 point win and nobody would remember it. I'm not attempting to say that this comeback wasn't extremely fortuitous, because it was, but being the better team throughout the whole process certainly helps. If we're ranking luck in Patriot Super Bowls, it's certainly behind 2003, and probably 2001 as well.
I'm not sure I remember what happened in the 2017 AFC Championship. I'd need my memory refreshed on that one.
Regardless, it's a toss up between the 2013 Broncos and the 2017 Jaguars as to who is the best team the Patriots ever had to face in a playoff game, and against the Broncos back then (and in general throughout the Belichick era against top competition) New England folded like a cheap suit in a rain storm. As of 2017, they hadn't beaten a truly great team in a playoff game in ten years (2006 Chargers).
Full disclosure, I am a Jaguars fan, so this paragraph is torture to type out, but they beat us, and (in my mind) put to bed the concerns that'd existed for a long time as to whether they could win when faced with truly top level opposition. Perhaps this point requires more detailed explanation of why the 2017 Jaguars were the real deal, but I'm going to let it rest for now.
As for the 2018 Chiefs, were they a truly great team? Likely not. Constant NE mistakes kept the Chiefs in that game throughout its whole duration. Did KC cheat themselves out of yet another NE mistake late in the fourth? Yes they did, but a team that were ready for this moment (like the 2013 Broncos or 2012 Ravens or 2010 Jets or 2009 Ravens or 2007 Giants, the Patriots liked to cough up playoff games a lot) would've buried the Patriots in the ground long before then.
Much like Atlanta, this was a fortuitous outcome, and there certainly was no bad luck through this whole process. No doubt Trent Green would've lost all three of these games just because. But being (by far) the better team throughout the whole process really helps. The only time I would argue they weren't the better team on the day was in 2017, and they managed to beat JAX anyway. That's what great teams do.
The 2000s Patriots' legacy is done a great service by being allowed to tag along with the 2010s version. The 2010s Patriots' legacy is dragged down by anybody believing they have anything to do with those 2000s teams. We can argue how much it means to be the one great left standing as the whole league falls apart around you, but at least in the 2010s (especially after '15) NE was the class of the NFL.
The 2000s teams (other than 2007) just managed to be the beneficiaries of winning some fluke championships.
With the Jags, I was thinking of the Myles Jack play.
Also, as a Browns fan, I can empathize with your pain; we had a golden opportunity to beat the Chiefs in Arrowhead with an injured Mahomes in the 4th Q in 2020.
I am wondering what your definition of a great team is? The Chiefs had the second-best SRS in the league and while they were certainly one sided, I don't think that disqualifies them.
Patriots dynasty is an interesting one as Brady's peak seasons (07, 10-12) all ended without a Lombardi, but they won two SBs with mediocre teams (01 and 18) by their standards. While there a lot of similarities between them and the Spurs, one of the least talked about is them being light weight choke artist during the middle of their runs and benefitting from other great teams deuterating around them.
1. I think this hammers home that W-L record is not a QB stat, or at a very least a lot of context needs to be put on it. I mean at this point Green is basically the anti-Brady. Brady is almost undoubtedly the luckiest QB in NFL history while Trent may be the unluckiest
2. This article rekindles my frustration I have with coach's infatuation with running the ball. Its certainty has its place, but it shouldn't be the default.
3. Trent in some ways reminds of Dak. Many of the criticisms labeled at Dak are the ones labeled at Trent.
This is not a bash on Tom Brady session. I'm here to be positive about Trent Green, but I agree with your statement, and the 2003 playoffs are perhaps the ultimate example in the whole of NFL history as to why. The very night before (in the same Divisional round) Trent takes on one league MVP, generates 0.508 EPA/Play, and loses, Tom Brady takes on the other, generates 0.138 EPA/Play, and wins because Drew Bennett drops the fourth down pass and pretty much singlehandedly starts the Patriot dynasty.
Imagine if Drew catches that ball on that fourth down and the Patriots just lose at home to the five seed Titans (as by all means they should have). The SB champions in 2003 are almost certainly the IND Colts, and how differently would history have turned out then?
In the context of this series, how differently would we look at Trent Green if the Colts beat the white hot Broncos 41-10, beat the limping Titans (Steve McNair is on two bad legs by this point) by 20 points, healthily beat the 2003 Panthers like a real team would've, but could only get by these Chiefs by the skin of their teeth, with the only differentiating factor being the one OPI penalty?
Just a question.
Instead, the next week we get the ultimate Bill Belichick masterpiece, where he decides Peyton is not going to put up numbers like these against his team. The Patriots break every rule in the book defending the Colts' receivers, and just dare the refs to call them on it (they never do), and the Patriots limp all the way to the Super Bowl. I have a serious grudge against the 2003 AFC Championship game, and the retroactive narratives that it creates, but I cannot deny that it's likely Bill's finest hour.
This is what makes Tom Brady great? Get real everybody.
Forgive my soapbox. The 2003 AFC is likely my favourite NFL conference of all time, and I cannot control my hatred for how it ends.
Not to get into promoter mode, but I did write a deep dive on the 2003 AFC as part of a separate series that I may or may not go back to: https://open.substack.com/pub/sportspassion/p/the-era-of-the-big-four-pt-1-a-brave?r=294axo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
As for Dak Prescott, you're entirely correct. Dak is often criticized for the same reasons Trent is criticized, right down to (in 2023) getting blown up by a QB having one of the best playoff games of all time, despite not playing all that badly, and also shaping up to be one of the best QBs of his era and never being recognized for it. As far as QBs drafted since 2010, Dak is worse only than Mahomes and Allen, and would the prevailing narrative let you know that fact? Even a little bit?
Just another question.
Peyton Manning is my favorite football player of all time so I very much like the reality of him winning the 2003 Super Bowl and having a 89 Montanan type run. I think these playoff results would be more bearable if there weren't co-opted into making false narratives. The margins can be so thin in football that changing on play of one game in each postseason could lead to vary different results. Just look at the 2018 conference championship games.
(Trent is also similar to Drew Brees. They probable have the highest percentage of games were they player great but lost.
I think you do a great job of re-framing the narrative around these players and teams.)
With 2003, I think I read the RS, but I haven't read the PS (which I will). It's clear you have a great fondness for this type of period given the number of articles you have during this time period. It seems that you view 2003 as a huge turning point in NFL history but is there another season you feel comes close to it during the play-by-play era?
2015 seems like a turning point to me as it will probably be the last time a defensive carried team won the SB. This year or next maybe as well as the QB landscape truly enters its next area with Rodgers and Wilson probably retiring soon and with the historic 2024 NFL QB draft class.
You are right that my favourite period of NFL is after we got nice looking TV broadcasts in the late 90s or so, but before offence explodes in 2011 and the genie can never be put back in the bottle. We are really on the same wavelength today though, because 2015 is my favourite overall season in my NFL watching period.
In the middle of what should've been an era of stale sameness, all of a sudden the entire league flips upside down for no reason at all. The best two teams in in the NFL are the Arizona Cardinals and Cincinnati Bengals. The best two QBs in the NFL are Carson Palmer and Andy Dalton, but both go down with injury (and both never get back to this level again btw) so we get a Super Bowl that technically features the two number one seeds but one that nobody would've predicted at the start of those playoffs.
First and foremost you have the turning point of the KC Chiefs franchise. They start the season 1-5, on the verge of blowing it all up, lose their best player (Jamaal Charles) forever, and only after that win each of their final ten games, become one third of maybe the best wild card fight of all time, with three really good teams (Jets, Chiefs, Steelers) going for two playoff spots, winning that fight, and never looking back since. Just that one storyline would have people coming back to this season, but there's more.
You've got the worst 15-1 team of all time in the Carolina Panthers, finding different ways to pull the rabbit out of the hat every week. This was a very likeable squad with an exuberant young feel to it. Also likeable but in an entirely different way were the sinking Denver Broncos limping to a SB in a very Patriots-esque, but somehow actually very likeable kind of way.
Along the way, the Bengals jumped out to a 8-0 record and looked to be pretty clearly the best team in the AFC before losing their franchise QB (in essence) forever (Andy would stay around for a while, but never be near the top of the league again after this season).
On the other side of the league, you have the Seahawks, who everybody had as a lock to win the NFC again, limp out to a 2-4 record before storming back to steal the last playoff spot and become an extremely live dog in the 2015 playoffs.
Speaking of the 2015 playoffs...
The Blair Walsh game happens in these playoffs, on the very same day that Vontaze Burfict tries to murder Antonio Brown, and singlehandedly blows up the one playoff win that the Bengals of this era had in the bag. In contrast, the Chiefs win their first playoff game in years to truly cement that they've turned the corner, and that they (and not the Bengals) would be the team of the AFC going forward. However, they also prove it's not yet by losing pretty convincingly in the Divisional to the Patriots.
On the very same day as that game, we get one of the most iconic drives of all time, as Aaron Rodgers completes two consecutive hail mary passes to draw even with the juggernaut Cardinals in a game the Packers had no business even being close in, and Carson Palmer (already injured, and will never be the same as he once was) is able to muster his last bit of greatness in response to get that win, and we even get a nostalgia hit in the championship game.
Tom vs Peyton one last time, for old times' sake.
It's almost like this game was written by a scriptwriter, because the two old greats (both in down seasons at the time. It was a reasonable thought at the time to think this may be the last AFC Championship for both men) fight each other to a dead draw (-0.09 EPA/Play for each player, -11 total EPA for each team), and just this once the luck comes out on Peyton's side. Truly a storybook moment.
Coming out of that season the whole league has to flip again. The Broncos are over, the Bengals are over, the Cardinals are over, the Panthers are over, the Seahawks (as a serious SB contender) are over. The Packers are not over, but are going to be gone from the upper echelon for a while.
Regrettably, this lurch is going to ruin the NFL for a long time, as it leads to a really boring 2016 where everybody knows for pretty much the whole season that the SB is going to be the Patriots against either Dallas or Atlanta, and if not for the miracle 2017 Jaguars it would've ruined that season too. The league just wasn't ready to replace all that was leaving, and it left the Patriots as the one great team left standing.
Notice that before all the great teams left at once the Patriots had won one SB in ten years. Afterwards, they won two of the next three (and truly should've won all three) while the league got their act back together.
Turning point indeed.
(Sorry. You didn't ask for the cliffnotes of a 2015 deep dive, but this season is so awesome I couldn't help it)
With the Patriots, you could argue they shouldn't have won any of those. 2016 there were down 28-3, 2017 and 2018 they would have lost in the AFC Championship if weren't for a bad call in 2017 (as well as coaching mistakes) and Dee Ford's fingers.
No doubt. You can absolutely make that argument.
The 2016 Super Bowl will always come with a bit of a skewed narrative of its own. While it is an impressive comeback, the Patriots' estimated Win Probability never got below two percent, which is of course miniscule, but not the biggest comeback I've ever covered here. It's not even in the top five. Trent's comeback against GB in this article is a bigger comeback than that.
People just don't remember that the Falcons got beat into the dirt every quarter except the second. In the first (which is important to note), third, and fourth quarters this game is not competitive, and if not for everything in the world going Atlanta's way in the first half this would've just been a 10 point win and nobody would remember it. I'm not attempting to say that this comeback wasn't extremely fortuitous, because it was, but being the better team throughout the whole process certainly helps. If we're ranking luck in Patriot Super Bowls, it's certainly behind 2003, and probably 2001 as well.
I'm not sure I remember what happened in the 2017 AFC Championship. I'd need my memory refreshed on that one.
Regardless, it's a toss up between the 2013 Broncos and the 2017 Jaguars as to who is the best team the Patriots ever had to face in a playoff game, and against the Broncos back then (and in general throughout the Belichick era against top competition) New England folded like a cheap suit in a rain storm. As of 2017, they hadn't beaten a truly great team in a playoff game in ten years (2006 Chargers).
Full disclosure, I am a Jaguars fan, so this paragraph is torture to type out, but they beat us, and (in my mind) put to bed the concerns that'd existed for a long time as to whether they could win when faced with truly top level opposition. Perhaps this point requires more detailed explanation of why the 2017 Jaguars were the real deal, but I'm going to let it rest for now.
As for the 2018 Chiefs, were they a truly great team? Likely not. Constant NE mistakes kept the Chiefs in that game throughout its whole duration. Did KC cheat themselves out of yet another NE mistake late in the fourth? Yes they did, but a team that were ready for this moment (like the 2013 Broncos or 2012 Ravens or 2010 Jets or 2009 Ravens or 2007 Giants, the Patriots liked to cough up playoff games a lot) would've buried the Patriots in the ground long before then.
Much like Atlanta, this was a fortuitous outcome, and there certainly was no bad luck through this whole process. No doubt Trent Green would've lost all three of these games just because. But being (by far) the better team throughout the whole process really helps. The only time I would argue they weren't the better team on the day was in 2017, and they managed to beat JAX anyway. That's what great teams do.
The 2000s Patriots' legacy is done a great service by being allowed to tag along with the 2010s version. The 2010s Patriots' legacy is dragged down by anybody believing they have anything to do with those 2000s teams. We can argue how much it means to be the one great left standing as the whole league falls apart around you, but at least in the 2010s (especially after '15) NE was the class of the NFL.
The 2000s teams (other than 2007) just managed to be the beneficiaries of winning some fluke championships.
With the Jags, I was thinking of the Myles Jack play.
Also, as a Browns fan, I can empathize with your pain; we had a golden opportunity to beat the Chiefs in Arrowhead with an injured Mahomes in the 4th Q in 2020.
I am wondering what your definition of a great team is? The Chiefs had the second-best SRS in the league and while they were certainly one sided, I don't think that disqualifies them.
Patriots dynasty is an interesting one as Brady's peak seasons (07, 10-12) all ended without a Lombardi, but they won two SBs with mediocre teams (01 and 18) by their standards. While there a lot of similarities between them and the Spurs, one of the least talked about is them being light weight choke artist during the middle of their runs and benefitting from other great teams deuterating around them.