On Friday, I explained the idea behind Playoff Leverage. That post is required reading before diving in today, but the summary is that the Super Bowl counts for more than the conference championship games, which count for more than the division round games, which count for more than the wild card games. The value that is assigned to each game — the Super Bowl is currently worth 3.14 times as much as the average playoff game — is then used to adjust the stats of the players in those games.

For quarterbacks, the main stat used to measure passing performance is Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. In case you forgot, ANY/A is defined as

Today, we’re going to look at every quarterback since 1966. Players like Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas who played before 1966 will count, but their stats from 1965 and earlier will not be included. This obviously is a serious disservice to Starr in particular, but for now, I’m going to only focus on the Super Bowl era.

Comparing across eras requires an era adjustment, and ideally, an adjustment for opponent strength. Fortunately, we can do that in one step: for each quarterback, he only receives positive grades for the ANY/A provided by that passer above expectation, which is defined as the average ANY/A allowed by the opposing defense in that year. Then we adjust for leverage and give credit for yards provided above (or below) average.

The table below shows the 105 quarterbacks to start at least three playoff games since 1966. ^[1]Sincere apologies to Kelly Holcomb, Lynn Dickey, Scott Brunner, and Roman Gabriel, who were all excellent over 1 or 2 starts. On the other hand, Scott Mitchell, Jon Kitna, Todd Marinovich, … Continue reading You will not be surprised to see Joe Montana on the top of the list. Let me walk you through his line to make sure you understand how to read the table. Montana ranks 1st in this system, and started 23 games in his playoff career, going 16-7. He completed 460 of 734 passes for 5,772 yards, and had a 45/21 touchdown to interception ratio. He was sacked 44 times for 268 yards. He had 778 total attempts in his playoff career, which includes sacks. The average Leverage of each pass attempt in his postseason career was 1.21. Based on the defenses he faced, he would have been expected to average 4.34 ANY/A. However, based on the stats he produced, he actually averaged 7.95 ANY/A. That means Montana produced 3.61 ANY/A over average; over 778 attempts, that means Montana provided 2,812 of yards over average, the most of any passer from 1966 to 2013.

You might be surprised to see Terry Bradshaw at number two on the list. Well, you shouldn’t be. Unlike say, Montana, Starr, or Otto Graham, winning championship after championship didn’t vault Bradshaw into the greatest quarterback of all time debate. And with good reason: Bradshaw’s regular season numbers were good but not great, and he was blessed to be on a team with many Hall of Famers. He ranked only 48th when I ranked the best regular season quarterbacks in NFL history.

But make no mistake: in the playoffs, Bradshaw was outstanding. He may have been along for the ride as Pittsburgh strung together 12-2 seasons, but in the postseason, he was one of the main reasons for the success of the ’70s Steelers. His raw numbers may not look amazing — heck, a 30/26 TD/INT ratio doesn’t sound great — but context is paramount. For his era, he put up excellent postseason numbers. Bradshaw was also at his best in the biggest games; subjective notions of “clutch” aside, he is credited in this system by playing very well in high-leverage games.

You might be surprised to see Peyton Manning at number three. To be fair, Manning barely cracks the top 30 on a rate basis, but Manning also ranked 2nd in total pass attempts. What happens when you compare Manning to Brady, who is down at #11? Since both Brady and Manning have 22 career playoff interceptions, if you type “/22” into the search box you will see just Brady and Manning. Manning’s leverage-adjusted ANY/A is slightly better than Brady’s ^[2]His non-leveraged adjusted ANY/A is significantly better, at 6.71 to 5.99. Of course, some would argue that this is evidence that Manning is not clutch. If that’s the case, it appears as … Continue reading, but the gap between the two ratings is mostly due to strength of schedule. That jives with Scott Kacsmar’s research that Brady faced easier defenses in the playoffs than Manning.

But before continuing the Brady/Manning discussion, a few thoughts on other quarterbacks.

• Ken Anderson was a very good postseason quarterback, but that hasn’t helped his Hall of Fame cause.
• On the other hand, Bengals fans, Andy Dalton’s playoff struggles are as ugly as you remember.
• Dan Marino was pretty good in the playoffs — in fact, nearly as good as Brady. Of course, his biggest problem was sharing the spotlight with Montana.
• Until they won Super Bowls, both John Elway and Steve Young had reputations as playoff chokers. But by the end of their career, after adjusting for leverage and SOS, both come out as very good playoff passers (and that ignores anything they added on the ground).
• Jim Kelly is in the Hall of Fame, while Donovan McNabb is remembered as the quarterback who couldn’t win the big game. Is that fair? Kelly won four AFC Championship Games but no Super Bowls, and his performances on the biggest stage were not very good. Both quarterbacks were essentially average in the playoffs, but McNabb does come out slightly ahead. And that ignores his rushing ability.

Okay, back to Manning and Tom Brady. Because we know that’s why you’re here. Let’s start with Brady. The table below shows all of his 26 playoff games, listed in order from best to worst (after adjusting for leverage, strength of schedule, and number of attempts). Here’s how to read the line: His best game came in 2003 against Carolina in the Super Bowl, and you can click on the Boxscore link to see the boxscore at PFR. In that game, he completed 32 of 48 passes for 354 yards with 3 touchdowns and 1 interception, and was not sacked and therefore lost no yards on sacks. That gave him an ANY/A average of 7.69. That season, the Panthers allowed 4.74 ANY/A to opposing passers, which mean Brady gets credit for being 2.95 ANY/A over average. Being the Super Bowl, the leverage in the game was 3.14 times that of the average playoff game that year. Without adjusting for leverage, Brady provided 142 adjusted net yards of value over average (2.95 * 48). His leverage-adjusted value is 445.

Now, let’s do the same for Manning.

Both quarterbacks had 8 below-average games, but Manning had 9 games with 100+ yards of leverage-adjusted value (compared to only 7 for Brady). Note: If you sum the “Lev Value” columns for each quarterback, and then divide by each passer’s average leverage (1.46 for Brady, 1.07 for Manning), you will reproduce the values in the main table. It’s close, but most of the indicators here are slightly in Manning’s favor. Of course, #RINGZ.