We Need to Pump Up Trent Green Pt. 3.5: Intermission

Another part of the Trent Green saga, where some things need to be known before 2003.

One more year, no more recognition.

Welcome back to the Trent Green saga, where last season we saw Trent have the best season of his NFL career so far. In this chapter, we’re going to take a quick detour to combat the reasons why people don’t like Trent Green, because I’m looking into the future and not seeing a better chance any time down the road.

I’m going to show you two QBs under assumed names, in addition to their 2002 statistics, and I’d like you to tell me which you think is better:

Lorenzo Alonso: 341 completions on 551 attempts (61.9%), 27 touchdowns to 16 interceptions, and 3658 yards passing. 0.106 EPA/Play, 5.70 ANY/A. Played with the ninth best receiver in the NFL

Edward Jones: 270 completions in 470 attempts (61.1%), 26 touchdowns to 13 interceptions, and 3690 yards passing. 0.211 EPA/Play, 7.02 ANY/A. Played with the 16th best receiver in the NFL.

The answer seems obvious. Edward got the same amount done (nearly identical yards and touchdowns) with 81 fewer pass attempts, threw three fewer interceptions (both in part explaining the gulf in the per play stats), and did it with a slightly weaker top receiver. It’s clear that he’s the better player right?

Not to the NFL fans and media.

Lorenzo was elected to the Pro Bowl, and finished second in the 2002 MVP voting. Edward Jones got nothing.

This is an outrage. Calls will be made to reform the MVP voting system (like when Joel Embiid won his clearly undeserved NBA MVP a few years back). Fans will deride the Pro Bowl for holding Edward out, deeming it a mere popularity contest. Faith in the awards system will be shattered forever. Lorenzo will be catcalled for his totally undeserved place in the voting.

Except none of this happens.

How, at a position that’s performance is so easily statistically quantifiable like QB, can the NFL world freeze out the clearly superior statistical player?

There are two reasons for it.

The first is that voters and fans for whatever reason love conservative QB play. They love short completions and an all around low risk game that keeps the chains moving. Rich Gannon won the 2002 NFL MVP doing this, averaging a puny 11.2 yards per completion. Therefore, Lorenzo and his really small 10.7 yards per completion was sure to represent a play style that voters were in favour of. Edward and his league leading (among full time starters) 12.9 yards per completion just weren’t what voters were looking for.

The second is that this gimmick is over. Lorenzo is Brett Favre. Edward Jones is Trent Green, and suddenly it begins to make a whole lot more sense doesn’t it?

The point of this exercise was to tell you that Trent has three strikes against him in his fight to get proper recognition. The first is that the NFL zeitgeist at large does not like his style of play. They will claim otherwise. They will claim that gunslingers are entertaining and fun and enjoyable to watch, and on the condition that they’re good, that they would love one on their team. They are lying to you.

If you showed these people the actual outcome of this exciting playstyle (low completion percentages, lots of turnovers, lots of passing yards, lots of points), they would look to trade that player immediately. Just look at what happened to Jameis Winston, absolutely an NFL starting calibre player that may never get the chance again because his playstyle is so badly hated.

You may not remember it this way, but leading the league in yards per completion speaks for itself. Trent is looking to get the ball down the field, and occasionally forces the ball where it doesn’t belong. He will never post a 70 percent completion percentage. He will never end a season with fewer than ten interceptions. None of these are bad things, but the community’s prejudices (everybody wants high completion percentage and no interceptions, even if you’re scoring no points) make them seem like bad things.

Trent also does not get the bonus that Brett Favre got of playing in the remarkably weak 1995 season, and therefore forever getting the bonus of being a ‘former MVP,’ which generally entails being overrated in perpetuity, which is why Brett gets away with this and Trent doesn’t.

That’s number one.

Number two is that Trent is an eighth round draft pick that at one point fell out of the NFL altogether. NFL analysts will say that nobody cares anymore whether you were a first round pick or not once you change teams. Just like the above point, this is (at best) selectively true. Generally, for QBs, draft position matters well beyond the point where it should. This is particularly true of those who change teams.

QBs with low draft positions (lower than second is a good rule of thumb) often spend whole careers being underrated relative to their first round peers. I can name countless examples of this, but a good one to look at is Matt Schaub, who spent years winning and contending with the top QBs in the AFC, but was perpetually underrated and not thought to be in the same class. Why?

Third round draft pick.

Ryan Fitzpatrick (7th round) spent years running the same gambit for the same reason. I believe not being drafted in the first round is a big part of the residual hate that the always underrated Dak Prescott (4th round) still gets. Some of this gets on Kirk Cousins (4th round) to this day, and I believe if the San Francisco 49ers had drafted Brock Purdy in the first round (instead of the last one) that he, and not Lamar Jackson, would have won 2023 MVP.

This also works the other way, with people like Donovan McNabb, Matthew Stafford, Andrew Luck, Carson Wentz, and to a degree Justin Herbert all going years of people believing they are way better than they actually are, thanks to their draft pedigree and supposed ‘natural talents.’

This is the weakest argument I will present this entire series, because it is purely suppositional on my part. It’s my opinion of the influence of a number from years and years ago on people’s subconscious beliefs. Therefore, you can pick holes in it all you’d like. Just please don’t do so by bringing up Tom Brady or Joe Montana or any other late round pick so fantastic they overcome all of the thought discrimination. I am not trying to convince you Trent Green is on that level, but I am convinced that my theory fits the data fairly well. Trent (and his other late round brethren) are being discriminated against in the heads of football fans.

Don’t get me wrong. You can be underrated even as a first round pick (read it and weep), but in my opinion, it is dramatically easier to fall into being underrated if you’re a third round pick like Matt Schaub or a fourth round pick like Dak Prescott or a seventh round pick like Brock Purdy or an eighth round pick like Trent Green.

That’s two strikes against him.

Of course, all of these new strikes are in addition to the existing strikes I’ve already gone over as to why people dislike Trent (falling out of the NFL in 1994, athletically limited because of that dang carpet, robbed of touchdown pass statistics because of his unselfishness, unable to win because of a defence so bad that it’s hard to even conceptualize, etc.), but I’m finally about to address the elephant in the room.

In fact, it’s less like an elephant, and more like a four headed dragon.

This dragon has four names. You may call this dragon Tony Gonzalez, Will Shields, Willie Roaf, and Priest Holmes. Three of these players are in the Hall of Fame. Priest isn’t, but is better than some backs that are in the Hall (if you need an example, Edgerrin James), and all of these players supplement Trent Green in KC throughout this whole process.

People both contemporaneously and retrospectively have used this supreme collection of offensive talent to undercut and to diminish Trent’s greatness, but I don’t really think this is fair, and I’m going to explain to you why.

Beginning the with the first and least important head on this dragon, TE Tony Gonzalez. People don’t care to look into this one very much, mostly lumping Tony in when claiming that Trent ‘played with Hall of Famers’ on his offence. I got into this a little bit in 2001, but I’ll get into it more here.

Trent and Tony are not especially well suited to play together.

Writing this series and looking at Tony Gonzalez throughout has reminded me of the Pat McAfee Show, and his thoughts about Madden Ratings. Pat is constantly saying that while players may be rated 99 overall, they do not play like 99 overall players every day. I agree wholeheartedly with this, and Tony Gonzalez in this era is a great example.

Tony Gonzalez had a weird career. His performance is constantly bopping up and down without any real pattern. His best two year stretch is without doubt 1999 and 2000 with Elvis Grbac and an offence designed around himself, but when Elvis leaves and Trent comes in to replace him, along with a whole new offence, Tony struggles (by his lofty standards) in 2001, and actually struggles by reasonable standards in 2002.

That’s right. Trent had the best season of his NFL career so far without all that much help from his Hall of Fame TE.

Failing to ever truly get the most out of Tony Gonzalez is probably the biggest knock on Trent’s NFL career, and I really have no defence for it except to say that he’s not the only elite QB that has this problem. It’s actually a fairly common problem for top of the line QBs to struggle to get the most out of their TEs.

The most immediate example is the great Aaron Rodgers, who despite being blessed with some fantastic per play TEs in his time failed to ever target a TE more than 92 times in a season. Dan Marino also never had any time for throwing to TEs. This is also somewhat true in Indianapolis, as Peyton Manning took forever to maximize the true greatness of Dallas Clark because he was too busy maximizing the true greatness of Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison.

If Peyton Manning and Dan Marino (one and two on my best QBs of all time list) are allowed to have this flaw, then Trent Green is allowed to have it, and although Tony will lead the team in targets every year Trent is in KC, he will be the team’s most productive receiver just three times, often being outdone by top outside receiver Eddie Kennison.

This opens the door to a discussion I can’t have right now on the value of the TE position as a whole if a run of the mill WR1 can outdo a Hall of Fame TE on a somewhat regular basis, but what you need to take from it is this. Yes, Trent Green played with a Hall of Fame TE, but he did not play with the same Hall of Fame TE that Elvis Grbac played with.

On to more important dragon heads.

Trent got to enjoy the absolute prime of Guard Will Shields, and the tail end of the prime of LT Willie Roaf. Playing with two Hall of Fame offensive linemen more or less in their primes is rare, but not unprecedented. It has happened before Trent Green, and it will happen after Trent Green, and I’m going to tell you what.

It didn’t help very much.

This exact description has a very modern allegory in Carson Wentz, who in Philadelphia also got to enjoy the prime of two Hall of Fame offensive linemen at the same time (Jason Kelce and Lane Johnson). He parlayed this into being elite in 2017 (3rd in EPA/Play) before losing that season (and in truth, the prime of his career) to a horrifying knee injury.

From a human perspective, I feel terrible for him, but this is a series from the perspective of Trent Green, so cry me a river if you think you’re going to get a pass because your physical talents were robbed from you. The fact is that Carson Wentz played behind two Hall of Fame calibre offensive linemen for years in Philadelphia, and it didn’t help him one bit.

The elite offensive linemen could not make that average QB into a good one. They couldn’t even make a once great QB great again, and after Carson left Philadelphia to go to a team with a dramatically worse offensive line in Indianapolis, he did not get worse. In fact, he got better.

I understand this is just one example. However, I view it as an exceptionally effective one to demonstrate that offensive lines do not make QBs, but if you need another, look at this:

This is Ben Baldwin’s compiled composite ranking of every offensive line in the NFL in 2023 in terms of how good they were at pass protection. I’d like to draw your attention to numbers two, and nine. I’ll address these in order.

At second place you will find the Minnesota Vikings, a team with an acceptable (17th), but no better than that pass offence. This offence fell off the cliff when their great QB Kirk Cousins, who was having his best season in a while, missed the back half of the year, and they had to replace him with okay (at best) alternative options. As we discussed above with Wentz, even top of the league offensive lines cannot turn okay QBs into good ones.

What about good offensive lines with bad QBs?

This is addressed with the ninth ranked offensive line of the Las Vegas Raiders. This solid unit was undermined by horrendous QB play from both Aidan O’Connell and Jimmy Garoppolo. I will credit you that Aidan got carried a little bit, but being lifted all the way to the 24th ranked pass offence in the NFL isn’t exactly to the level that people think the Chiefs carried Trent Green.

Therefore, the 2023 season has definitively proven that a top of the league offensive line (which is comparable to the Chiefs in our period) cannot make okay QBs into good ones, and a good offensive line cannot make bad QBs into okay ones. I would perhaps even wager that the fourth ranked offensive line of the 2023 Packers in front of Jordan Love provides evidence that a great O-Line cannot turn good QBs into great ones either.

If you think that Trent does not belong in the bad, okay, or good tiers, and therefore I haven’t provided a suitable example, then evidently this series has begun to make an impression on you. Elsewise, refer to the suitable example of a fantastic offensive line failing to elevate a QB of whatever stature you believe Trent was.

The facts are singular. Great offensive line play is certainly a bonus, and is sure to make things easier, but evidently making things slightly easier is not enough to significantly alter the quality of a particular QB’s play. As far as this argument goes, score one for Trent.

That brings us to the next and final head on this dragon. It’s the biggest and most powerful head of them all. It’s Priest, and he is the one that can cause my entire Trent Green argument to come crashing down on me.

You would think that in a series that’s sworn purpose is to make you believe Trent Green was a great QB, that an easy path to take would be to drag Priest Holmes’ name through the mud, but I just can’t do it. He’s too good of a player.

Begin with LaDainian Tomlinson’s very best season, then make him a dramatically better receiver out of the backfield, and then you will have arrived at what Priest Holmes does for an offence. It’s hard to even make a comparison for people who aren’t truly learned football fans. Priest is like if receiving specialists like Le’Veon Bell were better at running the ball traditionally. He’s like if one of the monsters out of the backfield like Josh Jacobs didn’t struggle so much with catching the ball.

Priest left the game in 2007, and in my opinion, we’re still waiting for a back that can fill his shoes. That’s how good he was.

Having so dynamic of a weapon on offence puts us in an unprecedented situation. In the play tracking era, where we can know the results of every play individually, which begins in 1999, the 2002 Chiefs are actually not the best rush offence. They come in second to the 2011 Carolina Panthers, but considering rushing QBs (Cam Newton, Lamar Jackson, etc.) interact with their rush offence in a unique way, it’s not really comparable.

Therefore, excluding teams with QBs that are real threats to rush themselves, the 2002 Chiefs are the best rushing offence of the new millennium on a per play basis. This puts a series that’s premise is comparing Trent’s circumstances to other comparable scenarios in an awkward position, because how do you compare to the very best?

Generally accepted wisdom is that good rush offence helps the pass game by forcing the defence to put more big and slow players on the field, which opens up bigger holes for the pass attack, but I’ve always been skeptical of this.

To me, this is more of a chicken and egg question.

Obviously, the pass offence and rush offence of any particular team have a symbiotic relationship. One being great will help the other. The question is, which helps the other more? Do you pass to open up the run, or run to open up the pass?

This article from

Ben Wylie

on his Plot the Ball publication seems to suggest the line of causality that the pass opens up the run, but I’m not sure that this is anything more than a philosophical question, or if it can be answered in any definitive way, but I will say this. Great pass offences without any backup from their horrendous rush offences happen somewhat often. Just in the ten year stretch from 1999-2009, you have the 2000 Oakland Raiders, 2003 Tennessee Titans (extra true in this case), 2004 Green Bay Packers, 2005 Pittsburgh Steelers, 2007 Dallas Cowboys, 2009 Minnesota Vikings, and 2009 San Diego Chargers. All of these are only including great pass offences with really bad rush offences. This list can expand a lot with the inclusion of below average or merely okay ones.

It’s only seven examples over the course of 11 seasons, but let’s flip this exercise around and see how many elite rush offences you can find with a horrendous pass game to back them up. Among the top 32 rush offences by EPA/Play over this span (the same criteria I used in the last paragraph), but excluding Michael Vick for the mobile QB dilemma I mentioned above, you can find the 2001 Kansas City Chiefs (hey! We know that story!), 2003 San Diego Chargers, 2006 Jacksonville Jaguars, 2009 Jacksonville Jaguars, and 2009 Miami Dolphins as teams with fantastic rush offence but quite bad pass offence.

Over these ten years, seven to five, and if it weren’t for the insistence of David Garrard in Jacksonville to appear on this list twice it could’ve been a wider margin than that. Nevertheless, this exercise hasn’t proven anything, just as I suspected it wouldn’t, but the devil is in the details.

The KC Chiefs’ greatness in the run game began in 2001. Trent’s personal greatness wasn’t there yet due to all the reasons we discussed in part two. In the 2001 season, it held the team back, but as far as Trent Green’s personal legacy, his worst (full) season in the NFL might come in clutch to save him in arguments just like these.

The four headed dragon was in Kansas City in 2001. If (as many people claim) Trent spent a whole career riding the four headed dragon to success, then what’s with 2001? Trust me, it’s not like it took a year to get up to speed. The 2001 Kansas City Chiefs are the 31st best rushing offence of the entire 25 year play tracking era, better than any team had to offer in 2023. If they exclusively are the reason for Trent’s success, how come they waited a full year to sprinkle their pixie dust on him?

I think you know where I’m going with this.

Trent Green is a fantastic example (probably one of only two, alongside David Garrard) of a man being carried by his fantastic rush offence through the horrendous TrINT season of 2001, but then improving immensely and allowing that rush offence to be the best (non-mobile QB) rushing offence of the new millennium.

Once again, rush offence and pass offence are symbiotic. I am not claiming that having Priest wasn’t a massive boon for Trent’s career, but keep in mind that Peyton Manning had a Hall of Fame RB for years and years and years in Edgerrin James. Nobody tried to pawn his success off. Kurt Warner had it even better than the four headed dragon in St Louis, and he couldn’t even stick as a starter. If anybody should have his success downplayed, it’s him, but nobody ever does.

Nobody tried to take these men’s credit away from them as they voted these QBs into the Hall of Fame. Why Trent Green?

In sum, I cannot prove to you either way how much Priest Holmes and Trent Green impacted each other’s careers, but I think that despite the positive impact they have on each other on the field, they continue to negatively impact each other off the field.

Think about it. Priest Holmes in his prime was definitively a better player than either LaDainian Tomlinson or Edgerrin James, yet they are both in the Hall of Fame and he is not. The same goes for Trent. His prime statistically can bury contemporaries like Donovan McNabb and Ben Roethlisberger (once you adjust for Ben’s best years coming in very different offensive eras), yet Donovan made six Pro Bowls. Ben made six and is touch and go on the Hall of Fame ballot. Trent hasn’t made a Pro Bowl yet.

I wonder if these two men ever think to themselves about how they both just happen to be the only two elite offensive players ever to be overshadowed by their offensive linemen. I know I’m making a bold assertion there, but how else do you explain this systematic historical underrating of each of the best two skill players on the best offence in the NFL for years?

This is not normal. It doesn’t happen. Normally when a team is so definitively the best offence in the NFL, when all is said and done the public wipes their hands and throws them all in the Hall of Fame. Look at St Louis before these Chiefs. Look at Indianapolis after these Chiefs, and yet here we are. The public threw up their hands and put Gonzelez, Shields, and Roaf in the Hall of Fame, but stopped short of including the two players most responsible for making it tick.

I don’t understand the reasoning behind this, and I don’t think I ever will.

Nevertheless, those are the reasons people don’t like Trent Green. All of them.

People don’t like that he never played in a weak QB season and therefore never got the MVP by default like Brett Favre did. People don’t like that Trent refuses to play conservatively to suit their easily understandable completion percentage and passer rating numbers. For the same reason, people don’t like that he’s a team player that refuses to hog all the touchdowns for himself.

People don’t like how easy his style always looks. People don’t like how the Chiefs can’t build a defence, so Trent lost despite scoring 30 points four times just in 2002 (something that did not happen to Tom Brady in the regular season at all until 2009, a whopping eight years into his career). People don’t like that Trent got the privilege of playing with the four headed dragon, and people don’t like that he plays in small market Kansas City.

How many strikes is that against Trent? I’ve lost count.

Whichever of these strikes applies to you, one almost certainly does.

Maybe you don’t like that he never placed in the MVP voting. Maybe you get scared when your QB is as mistake prone as Trent is. Maybe you don’t like that his stats are somewhat difficult to understand at a glance. Maybe you watched him and just thought it looked too easy. Maybe you thought that Trent coasted on the back of Priest and the rest of the dragon heads. Maybe you somehow thought all of the losing was Trent’s fault, or maybe you just didn’t watch that much Kansas City in this time.

Whatever your hurdle was, I sincerely hope that now you are past it, or have at least come to terms with the idea that maybe it isn’t quite like you remembered, because we all need to be united to go take on the biggest hurdle of them all together.

Despite being the legal owner of a Super Bowl ring from the 1999 Rams, Trent hasn’t worn it, doesn’t feel proud of it, and seldom even acknowledges it.

It wasn’t his team.

At 33 years old, Trent has still never started a playoff game of his own. However, that’s finally about to change. Look back into your memory bank and search for Trent Green playoff games. If you know what’s coming, prepare to have me dig into it with depth the likes of which you’ve never seen before, and if you don’t you’re in for a real treat.

Click back to see Trent knock it out of the park, but once again fall victim to cruel circumstances that rip it all away from him.

Thanks so much for reading.