That's the KWA Common Spirit Health hotline though, and bring on our favorite Ryan Michael at the Ryan Michael on Twitter contributor and writer, an analyst at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Right, I gotta ask you, when does Lucas Kroll get in?
I'm not qualified to say, I'm not the gate keeper.
The fans want to know. Is he getting his own wing?
You know?
At what point are they just gonna build a whole new Hall of Fame.
Separate for him? I kid, how you doing?
Man?
We'll get right too.
Of these quarterbacks here, you know, the first two days with no pads, and it really does look like Jared Stidham's gotta lead on the other quarterbacks. He should by virtue of the fact that he's been around these these players and been in this offense for a year. But with with Bo Nicks and Zach Wilson sort of you know, getting their snaps, getting their turn up at bat and and all of that, how long does it take do you think for someone to emerge and take that role.
I think that as we get a few weeks of training camp underway, and I'm in agreement with Nick, I don't feel that training camp is truly training camp until the pads are on, so I don't really read much into what's happening right now. I'd give it a solid two to three weeks before we have more of a clear indication as far as who's going to be QB one to open up the twenty twenty four seasons.
So before you join those. Ben and I were having a conversation, and I really want to get your take on this. Would you rather be a guy on a team that won a championship but you really didn't contribute, or would you rather be a major contributor on a team that did not win a title.
I think that's a great question, and I think that most players would say that they would rather be part of a championship winning team, even if they individually didn't contribute as much, because football is the ultimate team sport, and I think there's something about the nature of team
sports that attracts players to American football specifically. So given the fact that almost every football player I've ever spoken to Nick has that in common, I would say maybe it's not universal, but I'd be willing to guess that at least nine out of every ten people would answer they'd rather have the Super Bowl.
Yeah, I mean that's the way I'm at Nick is.
Nick's like I want to be a contributor and I want to be out there, and I'm.
Like, man, you could carry me.
I could sleep on a waterbed while everybody else goes and wins the Super Bowl.
I'm showing that ring off. I'm just it's just mean.
I don't know, it's about winning, It's about championships, I think. But you have positive that using Super Bowl rings to measure greatness at the quarterback position might be a faulty way to look at it.
Yeah, I've never felt that Super Bowl rings are a good measure of individual performance at any position, much less the quarterback position. So you know what I did then, was I put together a chart where I compared every single Super Bowl winner since two thousand to their first team All Pro selection at the position. Counterpart, and what I did to level the playing field was I also incorporated postseason performance. So and the Associated Press selects they're
All Pro team, they're not factoring in the postseason. Oftentimes those teams are announced before the end of the regular season, and so by leveling the playing field to include postseason performance, I had a pretty good idea as far as which group would play at a higher level, but even I was surprised by the results and posted that chart on Twitter in the twenty four season. Since two thousand, twenty one of the twenty four quarterbacks that I charted ranked
higher and adjusted net yards per attempt. And it's just stat that we often talk about here on VCT, but twenty one of the twenty four ranked higher and adjusted netyards per attempt regular season and postseason combined as first team All Pro selections. There were only two occasions were the Super Bowl winner ranked higher than their first team All Pro counterpart, and well, Patrick Mahomes was both in twenty twenty two, so you kind of set that on
the side as its own thing. But you had Drew Brees, who rand number one and adjusting net yards per attempt in two thousand and nine he tought Haydon Manning, who was the first team All Pro selection finished fifth, and Patrick Mahomes in twenty nineteen actually also led the league and adjusted net yards per attempt higher than Lamar Jackson, who also finished fit beyond that its first team All Pro selections playing at a higher level and by a considerable margin so ron.
With that being said, when did everyone start measuring the success of a quarterback based on the number of wins as far as Super Bowl wins or appearances?
And the reason I asked that because.
Dan Fouls in the Hall of Fame, Dan Marino in a Hall of Fame. Neither one of those guys have super Bowls.
Very difficult to get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Of that Super Bowl raining had Warren, Ya title, France, Argent and also part of that Elague group. But as far as when the criteria shifted to place a greater emphasis on rings, if you go all the way back to the nineteen forties, the premier quarterback rivalry was between Hall of famers Sammy Baugh and Said Luckman, who were
also personal friends. Said Luckman was the greater champion, four time champion, even beat Sammy Baugh in Washington seventy three to zero in a nineteen forty NFL championship. Law only had two rings. But nobody made the argument. When I say nobody, I'm being a bit hyperbolic. Generally speaking, it was an understood consensus that Sammy Ball was the greatest quarterback of all time, despite having half championships you fast forward to the nineteen sixties, you had John Unitis and
Bart Starr. Bart Star was a five time champion. Uniteds was a three time champion, but a super Bowl win in nineteen seventy was more similar to Peyton Manning super Bowl win in twenty fifteen, so he had three rings total, truly on two. But very few people would make the argument that bart Star was better than John Uniteds. He carried that goat title. It wasn't really until the nineteen eighties when the debate came down to Dan Marino and
Joe Montana. In the reality of Joe having four rings to Marino's zero, and with one of those four rings being the reality that he outplayed Marino in a super Bowl. That changed the discussion and the super Bowl itself was evolving into more of a spectacle. In the nineties, most people would probably pick Brett Farves, Steve Young, or John Elway before Troy Aman who won three and the debate again Manning and Brady brought rings that into the conversation.
I would say before Brady won his fourth maybe three quarters of people would have picked Manning over Brady, but Brady had the longevity and went on to win seven rings. So we're really looking at a trend that started in the nineteen eighties and began to solidify itself in the latter half of Tom Brady's career.
When we look at the data, we can see that that Drew Brees won a Super Bowl while he led.
The NFL and adjusted that yards poor attempt.
Is that an indicator that that could perhaps be one of the greatest quarterback seasons of all time where the quarterback did carry a team to a Super Bowl.
Absolutely, and especially when you consider the reality that the Saints finished twentieth in the NFL I believe in points for games surrendered on defense, it's one of the lowest ranked scoring defenses in the history of the NFL to win a Super Bowl, and not only that New Orleans
cruise to the number one seed in the NFC. So when you look at Drew's postseason run, knocking off Kurt Warner, outperforming Brett fav in the NFC Championship Game, and then outperforming the quarterback who's in my opinion, the on field performance go Paid Manning. Drew Brees outperformed Paid Manning in the Super Bowl. So it's one of the greatest runs of all time from Week one to the moment he hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.
For sure.
When we talk about quarterbacks, we talk about their level to command the offense and then their level of leadership. As we were talking about the whole conversation about winning a title and not really contributing, someone on the text line brought up the fact that Peyton Manning did not Oh he was pulled across the finish line and Super
Bowl fifty. Are there, in your opinion, other elements that quarterbacks can provide to their team when their skills, like Peyton in that particular situation, start to diminish.
Absolutely, And I've often referred to Manning's twenty sixteen season this game the greatest add season of all time. He actually finished dead last and adjusted nit yards per time the monkst quarterbacks who threw three hundred or more passes. So I can't exercise this enough. He won the Super Bowl finishing dead last in one of the most efficient
efficiency metrics that we have. And you compare that to two thousand and three, two thousand and four, two thousand and five, twenty twelve, and twenty thirteen, twenty thirteen, eighty second if you include Nick Foles, who attending fewer passes, but he led the league in adjusted NT yards per attempt more than anybody to ever play in the game,
and in those seasons never won a championships. So I think that that paradox is a testament to help adition using super Bowl rings to evaluate performance at the quarterback position.
Really is is that the worst all time quarterback season to get a Super Bowl?
Because it's got to be thinking.
We're talking about the successes, but you know, you think about maybe Brad Johnson with the Tampay Buccaneers. You think about Fred Dilfer with the Baltimore Ravens. Grossman, I don't think he won one, but he was they got there. I'm trying to think what the worst season by a quarterback would be to to get to a super.
Bowl, to get to a super Bowl, And I want to answer your question first, to win a super Bowl statistically adjusted for era, Yes, the answer is yes. There is a caveat that. Manning didn't play a complete season, so his overall efficiency levels were dragged down to significantly do the reality he was playing injured, especially on November fifteenth of twenty two thousand to fifteen, when he played Kansas City broke the all time passing record. He finished
that game with a zero point zero passer rating. So the bad games in twenty fifteen dragged down his numbers considerably on the flip side of the coin. And I'm not saying this to say he had a good year, but he did average more passing yards per game on the road than TODM Brady did that year, and Brady
played at an MVP level. He also led the league in fourth quarter comebacks if you include the postseason, and it's two touchdown no interception performance in the clutch in the twenty fifteen AFC Championship game allowed our defense to do what they did best that year, and they teed
off on Brady for the rest of the game. So if you're looking at an overall statistical finish, yes, twenty fifteen Manning is the worst amongst Super Bowl champions, but you have to take into consideration the reality he didn't play a.
Four year Well, there's a lot of young quarterbacks that will be understanding this year and for a lot of these teams will be the starter. Now, wins in law losses is said to be the greatest measure of how that player is developing. Well, you know, there's a lot of things that kind of go into it. Is there another statistics that fans should pay attention to where they're watching these young guys actually developed in front of their eyes.
That may not be just wins and losses.
Sure, there are plenty of advanced metrics that are are far better than wins and losses. Adjusted EPA per play is a fantastic one. Adjust the ntyards per attempt as a fantastic one. You could look at DVOA, total TVR, a number of measures. Because if you're looking just at wins and losses, then Mark Sanchez would be one of the greatest young quarterbacks they ever played the game. And now we know the reality that the two thousand and nine and twenty ten Jets were some of the best
defensive squads of that generation. So I look more towards those advanced metrics that I cited before you're looking at wins and losses because its history has proven a well rounded team can carry quarterbacks who are even playing at a below average level to wins that Patrick Mahomes is actually a great example of that, even including his impressive postseason run last year, he finished thirteenth and adjusted net
yards per attempt. He played with a defense that finished second in the NFL in points surrendered, and during the Super Bowl run, I don't remember the exact number because I don't have it in front of me, but the Chiefs needed to score the same amount of points per game to win that championship. Hear their playoff run as the New York Jets did during the tocality of the
twenty twenty three season. So if you have a well ended team, especially a dominant defense, which I'm sure Nick you can appreciate, a quarterback of almost any caliber can win more games than they lose.
All off the script here, but I got to thinking about something the other day. What is the data say about quarterbacks that have had a low late career, whether that be due to injury a lot Eric Rodgers trying to come back this year, whether that be to you know, transitioning to a new team and a new coach and now working out.
Russell Wilson with Nate Hackett.
What does it say about Super Bowl winners that having the opportunity to bounce back and maybe win again.
It's incredibly difficult. So Kyton Manning and Tom Brady would obviously be the exceptions. Tom played at an elite level in twenty twenty when the Buccaneers won, ironically played an even higher level the following year when they ended up losing the Stafford and the Rams Manning, as we discussed, he had his twenty fifteen run, but he had arguably the greatest season in the history of Pro football in twenty thirteen in helping the Broncos at least get to
the Super Bowl. It's incredibly rare, and it's even rarer for a quarterback to be the driving force behind that team that's winning or even getting through a championship late in their careers.
When we look at the quarterback position, obviously the Broncos, I guess I have a three horse race, but there's only one guy who everyone is hoping actually gets to the finish line and be the starter for the Denver Broncos.
Both knicks. You've watched him at Oregon.
Is there something that jumps out to you that gives you the indicators that you know what. I don't know exactly what the first couple of games are going to be like, but I can say, what's your confidence that this kid is going to have a great career because of what you've seen.
Is there one thing or a couple of things.
Yeah, there are a couple of things, and there's certainly no sure vets Nake. I had Bonnick's number two on my board under CABLEB. Williams, I would say information processing and pass accuracy are his two greatest strengths. And they're
not classy strengths. If you look at the way, say Drew Brees played the quarterback position during the final years of his career, it wasn't nearly as exciting from a highlight play standpoint as what we've seen from the Homes or Lamar Jackson or Trevor Warrence or Josh Allen, but it was remarkably efficient. So if you're winning games and you're executing the offense death by a thousand payper cut that up. I don't care how you get it done.
I care that you score points. So when I see a quarterback, who's two greatest strengths or even three if you want to, for football IQ into that because they're all interconnected. Football IQ, information processing and pass accuracy. Those are three of the most important core ingredients for success over the long term. They're not necessarily traits that I expect to flash early in year one or even in
year one altogether. It's something that's going to take time, especially learning a complicated system like the one that Sean runs here at Denver.
Well, Ryan, we appreciate it as always at the Ryan michael on Twitter and look forward to you getting us that information on when we can expect the Lucas Croll induction.
All right, I'll get the work on it.
Absolutely. Take care, Ryan Michael. Let the Ryan michael on