I think it's pretty much stipulated that great QB's (Manning, Tom) have
elite pass protection.

You can't throw 49 TD's (OR FIFTY!!) without sick people up front.

DZ:

When the other team scores 25 points? That's your index?

And to use defensive play in ANY WAY in this conversation is almost
nothing more than a distraction.

How can you say that, once the Patriots took a lead, they didn't
completely change the way they ran their offense for the final 3, 4 or 5
minutes of a game in an attempt to make the other team use their timeouts
and then, subsequently, run out the clock?

To say 'Yea he came back to win, but he didn't come back and win by a big
enough margin' is silly.

1. I agree about the pass pro point

2. The defense isn't a distraction. I'm trying to mark how the two QBs played in games where their defenses completely failed to get the job done and their teams HAD to depend on the QB to score.

I'm not saying it's a great standard, but it's better than 40 attempts.

3. What are you referring to? I'm not following your argument... Where did I talk about the Pats not coming back to win by enough? What was that point about? One of us has misunderstood the other...

'Only won by three points or less'

I read that as in, he won but didn't win big enough...

No, you misunderstood my point.

Both QBs played some close games in which they had 50+ attempts. Brady won almost all his...Manning lost almost all his.

The difference is that Manning's D gave up more than a TD more than Brady's in those games. That accounts for their disparate records as much as anything. If Brady's D was a little worse, he would have a record of ZERO wins when throwing over 50 times.

It's why arguing about QB record without factoring in defensive play is insane.

I wasn't killing him for winning those games close, just pointing out that they were close games and he's glad he didn't have a crappier D.

Ok. Fair enough.

But how many times did he throw 50+ times in 2007, the only year that they really beat on people?

I can see most of the games in my head where he had to throw like that (the 2001 snow bowl being one of them) and they definitely were NOT blowouts.

I mean....who's to say if they were down 13 instead of 7, he still wouldn't have pull those wins out.

When you've watched every start the guy has made for 9 years, you know exactly the drive/play/throw where the switch gets flipped and you look at your boy on the couch and say 'he just found it.....we're gonna win this s**t' - regardless of the score.

And I love when JC joins the fray.

But, and I know you are really not, but just accepting the premise that the more you throw the more a QB is carrying his team, is ridiculous.

For example, the Colts have had the fewest number of offensive possessions for the last four years running. How can you measure the pressure Manning is under everytime he takes the field, because he knows every offensive possession is so precious? In my mind, efficiency is a much better indicator of how much you are "carrying" a team.

Creating a premise like this, is just another great example of how CHFF creates a "impressive" sounding scenario, to justify an outcome they want to have. And it is why they are completely irrelevant. Still, I love it when you beat them at their own game.

Points scored in the 4th quarter while trailing at the end of three is what I'd want to see.

That would be a fascinating study. Maybe in the offseason...

I won't stipulate that Manning has had great pass pro. And in his big record setting year, he started the year without one lineman lost to free agency. Then three more starters went down with injury. By the middle of the year, Indy was starting a rookie 5th round pick and a free agent rookie who'd been cut by another team.


Talk about carrying a team.

Another bigger project: It would be curious to see how these numbers compare to Drew Brees' and Philip Rivers' numbers, the two QB's that are constantly labeled as being "a championship" away from Manning/Brady level. Especially since, historically, the Saints/Chargers have given them almost no defensive help.

I think JC is off a little by ignoring the D--how else can you say a guy carries his team. If the D allows just 7 pts, any breathing NFL caliber QB should be able to lead his team to victory and it's not carrying the team unless the RBs have all broken their legs and the OL is all rookies. Since nobody has that kind of time to put in, D inadequacies seems a reasonably proxy for "we need someone else to lead us to a W." (I was stunned at how many times the Pats allowed that much--really shocked.)

DZ, don't fret about the incidental capture of D TDs, since you also want to include ST TDs allowed, so it's a wash.

JC, "4th qtr points..." is not bad, but what kills me is when the QB has three prior picks, or has a 50% completion % before that 4th qtr--sure he bailed them out, but he also shot them in the foot to begin with and mixed metaphors too!

SCB has an excellent point about the OL--it was not elite last year. It was, objectively, below-average NFL caliber.

Maybe a common vocabulary can be established when looking at one game (JC, sorry that it's Colts-centric, but hey, it was national TV and you are ona Colts site) Colts-Chargers, two years ago. Everybody on OL and WR corps injured, two ST TDs allowed, Manning almost brings them back to win. Carry-on-back guy, right? Well, he DID throw those six picks... any one of which might not have required such heroics. So if they had won, does this count as a carry or not? The pts are below the random 25 pt threshold, but it was a 4th Qtr comeback. Of course those 6 picks look pretty bad. I'd say no. The Steelers Playoff game loss that year, had we won, would have been in my mind. The deficit was no fault of PM's, and though the final points would have relied largely on chance (rec Bettis fumble and return) and refs (Polamalu's non-int) 18 also had a lot to do with pushing them toward late victory. Again, the pts were lower than the threshold and it's very subjective.

By adding a lot of subjectivity and ignoring the pts totals, maybe what I am getting at is, there's no real way to measure this without a Cray supercomputer review of every game, play by play, injury by injury. Not sure. Maybe the best we can do is an approximate shorthand. 25 pts still sounds reasonable to me, but it does miss items like the OL imploding due to injury, or both RBs being carted off the field (Remember when James Mungro got the start vs Philly with Edge and Rhodes both out, and Manning threw a perfect game in the W? That should probably count as a carry regardless of the D performance....)

And I thought Proust was long-winded.

So we'd have to combine a look at efficiency (I prefer FO metrics to the standard QB rating), but efficiency all game, when your D allows 7 pts is not exactly carrying the team. So what else? 4Q efficiency when trailing after 3Q? Efficiency when the D allows 25 pts? Efficiency when the TOP is under 29 minutes?

I'm all for creating more work for somebody in these tough economic times. I'm like my own little stimulus package. Okay, please no snarky comments on that one; sound like Tobias Funke there....

There's no measurement for this.....there just isn't.

Games where Tom carried us are games where I'd say 'we couldn't move the ball all game....we were outplayed, outcoached and outperformed......yet in the the 4th quarter he put together two drives that got us points when the entire fanbase didn't think it was possible based on the previous 50 minutes of play'

That can't be measured by any statistic, no matter how clever we think we are. It's all subjective, and subjective to a massive quantity of variables.

I think that's why I got irked yesterday. An NFL game is an equation, and that equation has a large number of variables that change on a minute to minute basis (weather, injuries, officiating, execution, coaching decisions, clock management).

We can't set the Patriots' defensive production in those games over an 8 year span as a constant. If anything, that's the MOST varying variable.

We line up and jam the receivers when we're down four, but sit in a shell zone when we retake the lead.

I'd say the best (only) way to do it is to recap the actual game, i.e: 2001, blizzard conditions, completely outclassed by a tough, veteran Oakland Raider team.

They throw #12 in the shotgun and let him sling that s**t......he goes on an epic 9-9 drive capped off by a rushing TD. Nobody on Earth thought that could or would happen. That kind of 'how the f**k did that happen?' game is a 'Carry' game, not 25 points allowed or 50 attempts.

That's why they call it 'intangibles' - because we can't quantify it.

Winning is a team stat. Quit giving it to individual players to enhance their perceived greatness.

Show me what the QB did with the ball, and I'll tell you how great of a QB he is.

Show me what the team accomplishes, and I'll tell you how great of a team it is.

JC-You are right. This isn't the best way to measure "Carrying a team", if there even is a way to measure it.

My entire point has been just to show how inane the CHFF article was.

http://www.patriots.com/schedu...eason=2007

But for the record, I went through the games in the record setting '07 schedule, and in the biggest blowouts, Tom was under or right around 40 attempts.

We connected on so many long balls that year, he didn't need to throw 50 times to score 40 points.

He didn't rack up 15 attempts after we were already smoking someone. Shots downfield, sure, but not a bunch of them.

But DZ didn't start it, they did, the big fat liars. nyah nyah nyah

I agree that it's a silly attempt to quantify and leadership, will... a lot of that is intangible. But if there's ever an argument in a bar, it's good to be able to pull some criteria out of thin air, just to shut the drunks up.

You want an even tougher one to measure: how many games did a LT carry a team, or a DT? Where he was such a force, and he was against the opponent's top guy, the guy THEY were relying on to win the game for THEM, but he shut the opponent's stud down..... I am sure there were those games too. Frankly, I'd love the unsung guys to get some ink on this topic.

Might be a fun series for a commercial media outlet--have one of their reporters/analysts collect a bunch of suggestions form the past 20 years, then go over game film play by play and write about how one OG was so dominant and disruptive that he essentially carried his team. One could argue that Ty Law did it for the Pats vs the Colts in the 2003 AFCCG--intercepted the MVP 3 times after he had racked up about 700 yards and 8 TDs in the two previous playoff games? That's just insane. Take away Law and maybe the Pats win relatively comfortably anyway, or maybe not--arguments could be made either way.

DZ,
Since this is not a Colts "Exclusive" blog, are you thinking about doing a posting on the loss of Mel and Brand? Pretty big losses in terms of the Indiana sports scene in a single day. I didn't really like Brand but I felt he did what he had to do with Knight. Mel in my opinion should be on the top tier of Indianapolis legend's for his contributions to both the city in general and the sports scene in particular. He should be considered one of the "Giants" of Indianapolis's history.

It deserves mention, and I will if I can get to it. I have a huge day today, and already have a big post to do (it'll be up in a few hours). Maybe by tonight...