In the summer, I ran a contest to predict the final stats that Tom Brady would produce in 2013. Suffice it to say, nearly everyone was much more bullish on Brady than they should have been: of the 21 contest entries, 19 of them projected Brady to finish with a better ANY/A average than what he actually produced.

The average entry predicted 603 pass attempts, 4,467 yards, 30.8 TDs, 10.4 INTs, 28 sacks, and 139 sack yards lost, for an average ANY/A of 7.09.  In reality, Brady ended the year with 628 attempts, 4,343 yards, 25 TDs, 11 INTs, 40 sacks, and 256 sack yards lost. Basically, the group over-projected his Yards per Attempt by half a yard, expected six more touchdowns, and 12 fewer sacks. Brady’s ANY/A was 6.13, nearly one full adjusted net yard below the average projection.

The winning entry goes to Joe:

Name: Joe
B’s # pass attempts: 589
B’s # passing yards: 3890
B’s # touchdowns: 24
B’s # interceptions: 14
B’s # sacks: 32
B’s # sack yards lost: 115
Commentary: It’s the beginning of the end

Joe’s projections were very close in an efficiency sense: He had Brady with a 5.84 ANY/A average, which was the 2nd lowest ANY/A projection (Lil’ Mac was at 5.01) and one of only two projections within 0.30 ANY/A of Brady (Adam put Brady at 6.42 ANY/A).

So why does Joe win over Adam, even if Adam was ever so slightly closer in ANY/A? Well, Brady ended up providing 168 Adjusted Net Yards over Average. Joe D thought Brady would be slightly below average (-22 yards of Value), while Adam had Brady as being solidly in the above average category (378 yards of Value).

Here are all the results:

You may recall that the grand prize was Honor and Glory. After reviewing the rules, and in particular, rule 3, I’ve decided to award Adam Honor and Glory, too.  Adam and Joe D should shoot me an e-mail with their mailing addresses for an additional small prize. If you would like to quibble with the methodology, feel free to do so in the comments, but don’t forget about rule 3.