I was perusing pro-football-reference.com to see just how bad Eli Manning has been this year because I'm a football sadist (pretty bad, but almost exclusively due to the INTs, which likely aren't completely his fault). While doing so, I saw a few things that I thought were interesting and could make for a fun game to pass what has been a long bye week. So let's play "Guess that Qb": Player A: (through 6 games) 5.29 Adjusted Net YPA Player B: (through 5 games) 5.37 Adjusted Net YPA Player C: (through 5 games) 5.49 Adjusted Net YPA If you disaggregate that ANYPA number (which I didn't do just to save space and make things more simple) you would see pretty similar numbers across the board. Player C has an edge in yards per attempt, but that's all but negated by sack yardage lost and a few more INTs. From a purely QB production standpoint, you would expect the offenses of these players' teams to be performing pretty similarly. And they are; with each team averaging 20.8, 22.7 and 22.8 points respectively. I gave a hint as to who Player C is by mentioning sacks. That's Ryan Tannehill. Player A is Tom Brady and Player B is EJ Manuel. Brady and Manuel are fairly surprising to me (Manuel just because he's a rookie holding his own). It's only 6 games, but Brady's numbers across the board are career lows. This is very likely due to the issues at WR the Patriots have. I haven't watched a ton of their games, but their offensive line seems ok. He routinely seems to have all day to throw. Perhaps there's a mutually beneficial trade to be worked out between us, a tackle for a WR. I'm mostly kidding about that (about 80% kidding). This was mostly just a "Well how about that" post. But if I were to try and lend any significance to it I'd say that it's just a reminder that while the game is so driven by what the Qb does, what the Qb does is dependent on several factors. We can look at the team records and reputations of players and conclude that because the Patriots are 5-1 that Tom Brady is performing at his usual levels, and that because the Dolphins are 3-2 and Tannehill hasn't proven himself, he must not be performing as well. But as the numbers show, that's not the case. And perhaps just as we can say, "Well, what would Brady be doing with some competent WRs?" we might also ask, "What would Tannehill be going with a competent offensive line?".
