On the remaining quarterbacks
Let's have a look at the winning playoff teams and what we can learn
By Matthew Coller
IN FRONT OF THE TV — It’s that time of year again, friends. The waning days of the NFL season where every fan base whose team isn’t in the playoffs watches the final group of contenders and wonders what their team shoulda, coulda, woulda done to be there this year and how they can get there next year.
Playoff teams’ fans jump through flaming tables, flip over cars and climb up streetlights in celebration while everybody else’s faithful argues on Twitter about why they aren’t the ones enjoying all the fun.
But it’s an interesting time to pull our heads out of the purple sand and look around. During the season, some folks only watch Vikings games on Sunday and spend the rest of the day working on the yard. Some football lovers are dialed into the Vikings and then casually take in whatever game shows up on the squawk box. Others watch Red Zone and Red Zone only. The playoffs are the only time where everyone is watching entire games of other teams with the same concentration that they focus on their own.
It’s easy to see teams on a good or bad day and get a certain impression during the regular season. It wasn’t long ago when the Tampa Bay Bucs got shutout by New Orleans. If you only caught that game and not the others where they produced one of the best passing offenses in NFL history, your feeling on them might have been that they’re vulnerable and overrated.
In the playoffs, however, everything becomes clearer about how the best teams are winning, especially since every game becomes a week-long media profile of everything involving the Elite Eight.
So as the Vikings’ new general manager faces a very challenging decision on quarterback Kirk Cousins, who is set to enter the final year of his contract, let’s see what we can learn by focusing on the remaining playoff quarterbacks.
I’d need to put a Captain Obvious to point out that great QBs win in the NFL but this might be the best crop of Divisional Weekend quarterbacks ever. Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Ryan Tannehill in the AFC and Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford and Jimmy Garoppolo all rank in the top 16 by PFF grade this year, including numbers 1, 2, 4, and 6.
We would agree that the two weakest quarterbacks of the crop are Tannehill and Garoppolo, right? Well, they have gone 30-13 and 31-14, respectively, as starters since 2019.
The group of quarterbacks fit into groups. The legends, the Next Wave and The Debateables.
It feels like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady are still going to be playing deep into the playoffs in the year 2077 but realistically it’s possible Brady could retire after this season and it’s unclear how much longer Rodgers will be in Green Bay. They are the last of a dying breed. Ben Roethlisberger went out with a whimper against Kansas City. Drew Brees left for the NBC broadcast booth after losing to Tampa Bay last year and Peyton Manning walked away a Super Bowl winner in 2015.
The Legends need this ring and they need this ring right now. Save for Brady continuing to be a miracle of avocado science until age 50, we’re not far away from the Canton QB crop from 2000s being gone soon. But somehow, The Legends are playing just as well as the great QBs who are 10+ years their junior.
That’s The Next Wave. Mahomes has the highest QB rating in NFL history and has started his career 57-15 with two trips to the Super Bowl. Burrow has made the Bengals a legitimate contender for the first time since Carson Palmer was the Next Big Thing. Josh Allen is like Daunte Culpepper if Daunte had a stable franchise with a good defense. These guys are going to be here for a long time to come. Whoever falls short out of this group will be disappointed but they’ll have many chances down the road. These guys are special.
The other three playoff QBs, The Debateables, are good enough to be here but flawed enough for nobody to believe in them. And flawed enough that this is their one big chance at a Super Bowl. This isn’t a year-in-and-year-out type of thing. So much to the point that, based on their moves, their teams do not even believe they’ll be back over and over.
Stafford, Tannehill and Garoppolo are all on their second team. They all instantly found more success in their new locations than their previous clubs.
Once upon a time, Stafford had a 41-touchdown season in his third year, giving the Lions hope they found their savior. He also had a stretch from 2014-2017 of winning play that hinted toward Detroit being a few pieces away. But they fired Jim Caldwell, hired an incompetent head coach in Matt Patricia and lost and lost until the franchise was in shambles. The TV broadcast kept showing a graphic of how long it took Stafford to win a playoff game.
This year Stafford has been the same old Stafford, following up every unbelievable throw with a baffling one. But his coach and his roster are both working like well-paid machines around him. Even when Stafford lost a key receiver, the Rams found another one in Odell Beckham Jr. How many quarterbacks get that type of player showing up mid-season?
Tannehill had been a .500 quarterback with Miami, putting up so-so numbers with occasional hot streaks. He went 8-5 in 2016 but got hurt, causing him to miss all of 2017. When he returned, Adam Gase had wreaked havoc on the Dolphins and they moved on.
Tannehill found the perfect system in Tennessee — a play-action offense based around a freakish running back Derrick Henry. They stacked up receivers and offensive linemen around him and Tannehill started thriving. Never has it become clearer more quickly that his previous franchise was to blame. Tannehill put together a 110.6 rating in his first two seasons. This year, however, some of the infrastructure around him has fallen off — his OC took a head coaching job, the O-line, Henry and receivers got banged up. Yet his least impressive statistical performance might still be his best because of where his team stands with the No. 1 seed.
From the moment Garoppolo arrived in San Francisco, the 49ers took off as a franchise. They reached the Super Bowl in 2019 but his failure to put the Chiefs away in that game combined with injuries caused consternation within the front office, pushing them to trade up for Trey Lance and make the rookie their future. Garoppolo is making it hard on them by continuing to win but the opening-round win against the Cowboys was a microcosm of his time there. He made some great throws and some terrible throws and his very strong group of playmakers made plays and the 49ers’ defense did its thing. How much was the win on Jimmy, how much was everybody else?
Our group of legends and future legends seem to be bulletproof. They are too good to fail. They are playmakers with the talent and will to fight their way out of just about any corner to compete for a Super Bowl. They make everyone right, even when they’re wrong. Coaches, GMs, teammates are basically golden if Mahomes or Rodgers is your guy.
Stafford, Tannehill and Garoppolo aren’t like that. They have shortcomings. They throw bad picks and take bad sacks and their teams have done everything under the sun to prop them up rather than rolling the ball out and having them sling it around the yard.
They are the group that the Vikings envisioned Kirk Cousins being squarely in when he signed in Minnesota. Nobody thought he was going to be Rodgers or Brady. They thought they could load up enough talent in order to be playing in the divisional round every year and maybe have a chance to pull off a win over the legends with great defense. They were looking for that one shot where it all clicks, like Joe Flacco winning with the Ravens after years of being good-not-great.
This weekend Vikings fans have to be watching and wondering why Stafford, Tannehill and Garoppolo are here and the Vikings are watching at home.
It’s not very hard to figure out when you look at the Vikings’ roster over the last two years. They were wrought with weaknesses on defense, never fixed the offensive line and had a few injuries take them apart.
But in 2018 and 2019, they had the horses. The Vikings went 10-6 and reached the divisional round in 2019 but quickly proved unworthy of being on the same field as San Francisco. Maybe we’ll see one of these teams led by Stafford, Tannehill or Jimmy G suffer the same fate this weekend.
But Stafford’s Rams won more games this year than the Vikings ever have with Cousins. Tannehill’s team is a No. 1 seed. The Vikings topped out at a No. 6 seed. Garoppolo had his team in the Super Bowl the year he matched up with Cousins’ squad.
When you look for answers about the differences between The Debateables, which live up to their name with analysts (and their own teams) fluctuating opinions on them seemingly by the week, it’s hard to figure out why the results have been so much better than they were for the Vikings with Cousins.
Tannehill had more turnover-worthy plays than big-time throws. Titans pass blocked worse than the Vikings by PFF grade. Rams had no running game and lost Robert Woods and ranked worse in points allowed than the 2018 or 2019 Vikings teams. Garoppolo ranked 27th in big-time throws. None of them are runners.
Cousins graded higher than all of them by PFF. He had a lower turnover-worthy play rate than all of them. He had a higher quarterback rating than all of them. Yet he’ll be watching all of them at home just like you.
The first thing that might come to mind is overall roster strength. The Vikings ranked 11th, sixth, 17th and 15th in overall PFF grade in the last four years. The Rams and 49ers are in the top three but the Titans are 14th this year.
So what’s the big idea? Why has it worked out for QBs who consistently get compared to Cousins and not his teams over the last seven years.
One person whose opinion I respect offered this answer: A cheat code.
They may be flawed but they each have an answer. Stafford has a cannon. Tannehill is a very good athlete, running a 4.65 40-yard dash. Garoppolo has a blazing quick release and guts to throw it into traffic.
Stafford and Garoppolo ranked No. 1 and 3 in terms of yards per attempt on third downs with six or more yards to go. Cousins tied with Tua Tagovailoa for 11th.
Since joining the Titans, Tannehill has 721 yards rushing and 18 touchdowns in 43 starts. Cousins has 334 yards and three touchdowns on the ground in 47 starts. Tannehill is 12th in QB rushing yards and third in touchdowns since 2019, Cousins is 25th and 32nd.
The ability to find somebody in a tight window on third-and-9 like Stafford or Garoppolo or to escape the pocket to run for a key first down or touchdown like Tannehill might be the tiny edges that keep drives alive. All three teams had higher Expected Points Added this year on offense than the Vikings, who ranked 17th.
Those are just theories though. It might be that the play calling is slightly better or the offensive lines are better in the right spots or the matchups and schedules were just right or that there’s something intangible or random at play here.
It also might not matter. Reaching the divisional round is dandy but the quarterbacks to reach championship weekend have included Brady, Mahomes, Manning or Roethlisberger every year since 2002 in the AFC. The NFC has Wilson, Rodgers or Brees featured in nine NFC Championship weekends of the last 14 years. Hall of Famer Kurt Warner was in one. MVPs Matt Ryan and Cam Newton also made appearances.
The teams with The Debateables still won’t be favored to win the Super Bowl if they face The Legends or The Next Wave on Championship weekend. Maybe that tells us everything we need to know.
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Good article, a lot of great points in here. I would add a few smaller factors in to help explain why Tannehill/Stafford/Jimmy are currently in while Kirk has the Vikings watching out.
Schedule. For example, the NFC West (home to both Stafford and Jimmy) played the AFC South and the NFC North, which is easier than facing the AFC North and NFC West. Obviously having to play in a hard division takes out some of that, but then in general your division opponents are always a different kind of beast - e.g., when a team wins with scheme like the rams, it is easier to play them twice a year because you have seen more of their wrinkles and they will have less new stuff to use that is specifically honed to your personnel. Similarly, the Titans (on top of getting to play the Jags and Texans twice) played the AFC East rather than the AFC North. Case in point - MN had the 10th hardest schedule, whereas the Rams, Titans, and Niners played the 16th, 17th, and 21st hardest schedules. Not a huge difference, admittedly, but enough for a win or a half a win, I would say.
Covid - the Niners and Titans were among the teams less affected by Covid, with the two teams having a combined 11 games lost among their players, though the rams were "only" middle of the pack with 19 absences (MN had 27 games lost).
Leadership - Kirk is weird, man. I know that this is nebulous, but I will forever believe that teams are just a bit less likely to rally around Kirk as they are to a player like Stafford or Tannehill or Jimmy, and that sometimes/often counts for a few wins by the end of the year.
Lastly, luck. It feels like Coller hates to ever bring luck into any of this, but I would strongly suggest that those teams had more luck than the Vikings this year. I mean, in one of my favorite exercises every year you can check out what the standings would have been if the result in every single one-score game had been reversed, and in that case the Vikings would end up one game in front of the Titans, one game behind the Niners, and tied with the Rams at 9-7.
Frankly, this Vikings team has had a string of mediocre luck.
That said, in many cases teams build their own luck (largely through the help of that leadership deal, IMO), so this isn't exactly a factor to be weighed in a vacuum, and also this scenario still has the Vikes end up at a disappointing 9-7 as the first team to miss the playoffs, so it isn't like this is earth shattering in and of itself... but it goes to show that maybe there is less difference between us and these division round teams as some would suggest.
And none of them are cheap QB's on their rookie contracts ;)