Don’t you dare disrespect the Quiet Storm like that.Brees has had by far the worst weapons of the three. His second best receiver is Marques Colston and his third is probably like, Robert Meachem or Lance Moore.
Don’t you dare disrespect the Quiet Storm like that.Brees has had by far the worst weapons of the three. His second best receiver is Marques Colston and his third is probably like, Robert Meachem or Lance Moore.
I don't agree with your characterization of my position here (from a very old argument). I would never say play caller doesn't matter. I think it is a difficult thing to introduce into a discussion like this because it's almost impossible to quantify. I think it's likely Brees benefitted from Payton more than Brady or Manning did from their offensive playcallers, but I have no idea by how much.Perhaps, but you need to pick a side of the issue on the value of assistant coaches and stick to it—-you argued that we can’t give BB any credit for the Giants success under Parcells, and if that is true we shouldn’t be looking at coordinators (or their reps) here either. Either the play caller matters or they don’t.
I don't have global data for it, but I did a piece on the best per-drive offenses of the past ~30 years (the time period for which we have drive data) and of the best offenses in that time period, Manning had the slowest, two of the three slowest, three of the six slowest (with two NE teams in there also) ... and also the fastest.I think the number of drives argument is interesting—-but is there data on that?
I'm not saying you're wrong on Brees, but the level of terrible defense he was dealing with was on another level. The 2015 Saints allowed opposing quarterbacks to play at basically an MVP level over the course of the season: 45 TDs against only 9 INT, 68.4 completion %, 8.7 YPA, 116.2 passer rating, etc. Going 7-9 against that is actually kind of impressive.I also kind of hate the bad defenses argument. This is the nature of the beast with the NFC South -- none of those teams have consistently fielded defenses (at least after 2005 or so Buccs), and they all have very favorable conditions for passing. You can't both give Brees credit for his inflated passing stats while also trying to use the bad defense argument to support him. The fact is - if you are one of the best quarterbacks ever, you're going to be a sure bet for the playoffs every year. Could you imagine a year of Manning or Brady or Montana's careers that they weren't one of the 2-3 favorites of their conference every year? Could you imagine any of them playing in the post realignment NFC South, and defense be damned, ever struggling in getting a playoff spot?
The causation arrow runs both ways here. Quarterbacks on trailing teams throw more interceptions, because the D knows they are going to pass and because they have to take more chances: http://www.footballperspective.com/analyzing-interceptions-2000-to-2012/It's also not a coincidence that once he and the Saints in general stopped turning the ball over they started winning. They had 25-30 turnovers a year for a while. The Pats have been between 10-15 in the last decade.
Manning is the best QB of the SB era statistically and by accolade (MVP, All-Pro, etc.). YMMV on how much to weigh that stuff but I'm not looking askance at anyone who puts him #1. I have him #2 behind only Brady.I don’t disagree with this other than the statement that manning “has a legitimate argument for #1.” Some people may try to argue that but it’s not a legitimate argument
Brees has had at least equal (if not better) weapons than Brady.I misinterpreted the post, I thought he was comparing Brees vs Brady vs Manning.
The idea of the thing was to identify the best players, who stood out the most in their times, not the best athletes ever (bigger, stronger, faster). If you did the same thing in baseball, with your selection process, you might throw out, or seriously degrade Babe Ruth because he didn’t look like a great athlete, probably never had to hit a fastball over 90 mph, certainly no sliders or night baseball or 3 timezone changes between series, or anything but white competition. And, of course, he had the luxury of hitting homers to the shortest porch in baseball (still there). In basketball, Bill Russell as a 6’9” 215 pound center? How could he have been great?Start with two premises that I think are not controversial:
- The game of football is more complex today than ever before and the athletes who play it are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before.
- Quarterback is the most important position in the game if not in all of team sports.
If you believe these, it’s crazy to think that a list of the 100 (really 90) greatest players can include only two QBs who played their best football in this century.
There are reasonable arguments that Brees isn’t one of the two best QBs of his own era. I can’t see any argument that Brees isn’t obviously one of the 100 best players ever.
The whole NFL 100 list has a weird anti-recency bias that seems to overvalue the era the voters grew up watching. It’s also kind of a bummer that the voting was so long ago that Brees has thrown for 6600 yards, 56 TDs and a 115.7 rating since the voting but even that is sort of understandable if you want to make these shows - which have been great - with BB prior to the 2019 season. They’re fun shows but the whole list implies some cockeyed ideas about when football was at its best.
Right, and if you take that approach to its logical conclusion you end up with mostly players in the last 20 years. That’s not a particularly exciting exercise. We know athletes are always getting better.The idea of the thing was to identify the best players, who stood out the most in their times, not the best athletes ever (bigger, stronger, faster). If you did the same thing in baseball, with your selection process, you might throw out, or seriously degrade Babe Ruth because he didn’t look like a great athlete, probably never had to hit a fastball over 90 mph, certainly no sliders or night baseball or 3 timezone changes between series, or anything but white competition. And, of course, he had the luxury of hitting homers to the shortest porch in baseball (still there). In basketball, Bill Russell as a 6’9” 215 pound center? How could he have been great?
You don't have to agree with my characterization, but you've now adopted my position so that kind of speaks for itself. I agree with you it is tough to quantify the impact of coaching or playcalling. To me, this says we need to be very aware of our incoming biases in these kinds of discussions because we don't have a lot of data to cite to rebut those presumptions.I don't agree with your characterization of my position here (from a very old argument). I would never say play caller doesn't matter. I think it is a difficult thing to introduce into a discussion like this because it's almost impossible to quantify. I think it's likely Brees benefitted from Payton more than Brady or Manning did from their offensive playcallers, but I have no idea by how much.