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Those are some clutch shirts

Those are some clutch shirts.

Eight years ago — almost to the day — our old PFR colleague Doug Drinen wrote a Sabernomics post about “The Manning Index”, a metric designed to roughly gauge the clutchness (or chokeitude) of a given quarterback by looking at how he did relative to expectations (he revived this concept in version two, six years ago). In a nutshell, Doug used the location of the game and the win differential of the two teams involved to establish an expected winning percentage for each quarterback in a given matchup. He then added those up across all of a quarterback’s playoff starts, and compared to the number of wins he actually had. Therefore, quarterbacks who frequently exceeded expectations in playoff games could be considered “clutch” while those who often fell short (like the Index’s namesake, Peyton Manning) might just be inveterate chokers.

Doug ran that study in the midst of the 2004-05 playoffs, so it shouldn’t be surprising that Tom Brady (who was at the time 8-0 as a playoff starter and would run it to 10-0 before ever suffering a loss) came out on top, winning 3.5 more games than you’d expect from the particulars of the games he started. Fast-forward eight years, though, and you get this list of quarterbacks who debuted after 1977:

QuarterbackGamesWonLostExp WIndex
Eli Manning11834.43.6
Joe Montana2116513.12.9
Joe Flacco12845.32.7
Trent Dilfer6512.62.4
John Elway2114711.62.4
Ben Roethlisberger141047.82.2
Mark Sanchez6422.02.0
Jeff Hostetler5412.11.9
Doug Williams6422.31.7
Tony Eason4311.51.5
Jake Delhomme8533.51.5
Kurt Warner13947.61.4
Mark Rypien7523.61.4
Tom Brady2316714.71.3
Phil Simms10644.81.2
Wade Wilson5322.01.0
Drew Bledsoe7433.10.9
Chris Chandler3211.10.9
Brad Johnson7433.10.9
Jay Schroeder5322.20.8
Colin Kaepernick2201.20.8
Donovan McNabb16978.20.8
Gifford Nielsen1100.30.7
David Woodley4312.30.7
Frank Reich3211.30.7
Steve Walsh1100.30.7
Troy Aikman1611510.30.7
Steve Beuerlein1100.40.6
Rodney Peete1100.40.6
Mark Brunell9453.40.6
Tim Tebow2110.40.6
Steve Fuller2110.50.5
Chris Miller2110.50.5
Bubby Brister2110.50.5
Boomer Esiason5322.60.4
Aaron Rodgers8534.60.4
Pat Ryan1100.60.4
Mark Malone2110.60.4
Aaron Brooks2110.60.4
Steve McNair10554.60.4
Scott Brunner2110.60.4
Stan Humphries6332.70.3
Jim Harbaugh5231.70.3
David Garrard2110.70.3
Jay Cutler1100.80.2
Dieter Brock2110.80.2
Mike Tomczak5322.80.2
Jim Everett5231.80.2
Matt Hasselbeck11564.90.1
Matt Schaub2110.90.1
Daunte Culpepper4221.90.1
T.J. Yates2110.90.1
Alex Smith2111.00.0
Russell Wilson2111.00.0
Jay Fiedler4222.00.0
Tommy Maddox2111.1-0.1
Kerry Collins7343.1-0.1
Jim Kelly16979.1-0.1
Michael Vick5232.2-0.2
Joe Webb1010.2-0.2
Ty Detmer1010.2-0.2
Matthew Stafford1010.2-0.2
Mark Vlasic1010.2-0.2
Rex Grossman4222.2-0.2
Vince Young1010.2-0.2
Chad Pennington6242.2-0.2
Jeff George3121.2-0.2
Jake Plummer6242.2-0.2
Philip Rivers7343.3-0.3
Paul McDonald1010.3-0.3
Scott Zolak1010.3-0.3
Brett Favre24131113.3-0.3
Kelly Holcomb1010.3-0.3
Byron Leftwich1010.3-0.3
Jack Trudeau1010.3-0.3
Andrew Luck1010.3-0.3
Cliff Stoudt1010.3-0.3
John Fourcade1010.3-0.3
Erik Kramer4131.3-0.3
Eric Hipple1010.3-0.3
Vinny Testaverde5232.4-0.4
Rob Johnson1010.4-0.4
Todd Marinovich1010.4-0.4
Shaun King3121.4-0.4
Neil Lomax1010.4-0.4
Marc Bulger3121.4-0.4
Caleb Hanie1010.4-0.4
Tarvaris Jackson1010.4-0.4
Cody Carlson1010.4-0.4
Todd Collins1010.4-0.4
Robert Griffin III1010.4-0.4
Todd Blackledge1010.4-0.4
Quincy Carter1010.4-0.4
Matt Cassel1010.4-0.4
Steve DeBerg3121.5-0.5
Anthony Wright1010.5-0.5
Rich Gannon7434.5-0.5
Drew Brees9545.6-0.6
Gary Hogeboom1010.6-0.6
Carson Palmer1010.6-0.6
Chris Simms1010.6-0.6
Shane Matthews1010.6-0.6
Mike Pagel1010.6-0.6
Sean Salisbury1010.6-0.6
Elvis Grbac4131.6-0.6
Danny Kanell1010.6-0.6
Kordell Stewart4222.6-0.6
Bernie Kosar7343.6-0.6
Marc Wilson1010.7-0.7
Jim McMahon6333.7-0.7
Steve Bono1010.7-0.7
Gus Frerotte2020.7-0.7
Neil O'Donnell7343.7-0.7
Dave Krieg9363.8-0.8
Andy Dalton2020.8-0.8
Steve Young13858.8-0.8
Trent Green2020.9-0.9
Jeff Garcia6242.9-0.9
Scott Mitchell2021.0-1.0
Jon Kitna2021.0-1.0
Dan Marino188109.0-1.0
Jeff Kemp2021.0-1.0
Doug Flutie2021.1-1.1
Ken O'Brien3031.1-1.1
Tony Romo4132.2-1.2
Matt Ryan5142.4-1.4
Randall Cunningham10374.7-1.7
Bobby Hebert3032.0-2.0
Warren Moon10375.1-2.1
Peyton Manning2091112.0-3.0

Flacco, whom Chase wrote about yesterday, predictably finishes near the top of the list. As usual, the table is fully sortable (the table includes 130 quarterbacks, and you can change the number of quarterbacks displayed or use the search function to find other quarterbacks), and you can click on the “Index” column to bring the “biggest chokers” to the top. A few other notes: I generated the expected wins for this Manning Index not from Doug’s formula, but from the pregame win probabilities we can derive from the Vegas lines. Also, since I don’t have a list of all QB starts since 1978, I’m considering a player to be the QB of record for his team if he led them in pass attempts in a game (with yards as the tiebreaker). [1][Chase Note: Scanning the old comments to Doug’s post, Jason Lisk chimed in with this still-applicable comment: Steve Young is unfairly penalized for throwing more than 10 pass attempts in the … Continue reading

By now, you’ve probably noticed that the Manning Index has reached its full potential, with a Manning brother at the top and at the bottom! But I also want to focus on the strange career arc of Brady, and how much his Manning Index has changed since the end of the 2004 season.

Here are Brady’s career playoff stats as the Patriots’ primary QB in a game, year-by-year:

YearAgeGmtmPtsopPtsCmpAttYdsTDIntSkSkYdRushrYdsrTDWonLostExp WIndex
200124236304879457114266191200.7+1.3
2003263735775126792520012180302.0+1.0
20042738551558158750757731301.8+1.2
20052824130356354242412380111.1-0.1
2006293957570119724544228180211.5+0.5
2007303664977109737638524-10212.5-0.5
20093211433234215423322000010.6-0.6
20103312128294529921540220010.8-0.8
2011343855175111878843159101212.1-0.1
2012352545654946644219340111.5-0.5

The big thing that jumps out is the difference between his Manning Index early (through age 27 it’s +3.5; through age 29 it’s +3.8) and late in his career (starting in 2007, it’s -2.5). As an aside, two years ago, Jason Lisk wrote about Brady’s career in reverse (and Bill Barnwell did the same earlier this week), showing how easy it is to flip the narrative about him depending on which direction you view his playoff record. It’s almost as though perceived early-career clutchness has no predictive value for the latter half of a QB’s career… How shocking!

But it’s worth noting that Brady isn’t alone — here are the QBs who had the most playoff games before and after age 27:

PlayerGm Thru 27W Thru 27eW Thru 27IndexGm After 27W After 27eW After 27Index
Brett Favre1075.02.01468.2-2.2
Tom Brady884.53.515810.1-2.1
Troy Aikman764.51.5955.9-0.9
John Elway743.90.114107.82.2
Donovan McNabb954.60.4743.70.3
Peyton Manning622.9-0.91479.0-2.0
Dan Marino634.0-1.01255.00.0
Steve McNair532.30.7522.4-0.4
Joe Montana542.61.4161210.51.5
Mark Brunell421.01.0522.4-0.4
Dave Krieg431.71.3502.1-2.1
Eli Manning742.71.3441.72.3
Ben Roethlisberger1085.52.5422.3-0.3

There are some exceptions, of course, but the majority of QBs who had playoff success (as measured by the Manning Index) through age 27 saw their late-career performance fall off a cliff. In fact, if we run a linear regression attempting to predict a QB’s Manning Index from age 28 onward using his Manning Index through age 27, we get a statistically significant negative coefficient:

Post27ManningIndex ~ -0.3997 * Thru27ManningIndex

In other words, the better you do relative to expectations (i.e., the “clutcher” you are) early in your career, the more you can expect to choke later in your career. The same trend also holds up, albeit with less significance, if we split quarterbacks’ Manning Indices at age 29 (through which Brady was +3.8) instead of 27. It’s unclear what causes this “Brady Effect” — whether it be Vegas and/or the betting public becoming overconfident in a QB who had success early in his career, the effect of opponents having more tape on a QB as he ages, or just a matter of QBs peaking as playoff performers at an early age — but it’s a real historical phenomenon.

While you could argue that quarterbacks lose their clutchness over time, maybe this just means clutch quarterbacking doesn’t exist — or at least isn’t detectable to the point that it could be used to predict future outcomes. Here’s a final bit of evidence for the latter camp: the correlation between a quarterback’s Manning Index in even-numbered years and his Manning Index in odd-numbered ones is just 0.05, meaning there’s really no relationship there at all.

If a quarterback’s Manning Index/clutchness was a persistent skill, we would expect to be able to predict it in one random subset of a player’s career from another random subset. But we see here that it’s impossible to predict the “even” half of a player’s playoff career from the “odd” half… and if we try to predict future performance from a quarterback’s Manning Index at an early age, we end up with a negative correlation! In other words, this basically means we should avoid forming any opinion of a quarterback’s clutchness from his playoff W-L record. Period.

References

References
1 [Chase Note: Scanning the old comments to Doug’s post, Jason Lisk chimed in with this still-applicable comment: Steve Young is unfairly penalized for throwing more than 10 pass attempts in the 1987 loss to Minnesota at home (13-2 vs 8-7). Montana threw more passes that game, and was the starter, so Young got mop up duty in the loss. Take that game out when he was not the starter and did not throw the most attempts in the game, and Young moves up the list and is closer to zero.
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