Even if that article had a point at any time, the writer did an awful job at proving it.
Point 1: Formatting is a huge issue, because you can't properly tell what's going on. A table would have been best, and this format is really distracting. It was clearly just a "here's numbers, I know you won't read them but they prove x" kind of thing.
Here's how it should have looked:
Player: Games with rating +100 / Games with rating 80-100 / 60-80 / under 60 /
Games with +80 rating
Brady: 6 / 4 / 4 / 2 /
10
Brees: 5 / 7 / 3 / 1
12
Peyton: 3 / 7 / 5 / 1
10
------------------------------------------------- elite line
Eli: 3 / 6 / 5 / 2 /
9
Roethlisberger: 4 / 6 / 1 / 4 /
10
Flacco: 6 / 3 / 5 / 2 /
9
They're not drastically far apart, but this is a shitty way to compare the players and a shitty formatting for the comparison anyway. If he wanted a real way to measure consistency, a simple average/standard deviation of QB rating (which in itself is a shitty stat) would have sufficed. For example, in this chart it looks like Flacco's stats were better than Peyton's, but if you compare their QB rating statistically:
Peyton (2002): Average QB rating 92.0, std dev of 26.0
Flacco (2012): Average QB rating 87.8, std dev of 30.9
And here's Brady/Brees:
Brady (2005): Average QB rating of 93.0, std dev of 26.1
Brees (2006): Average QB rating of 96.6, std dev of 24.4
So you're saying Flacco is the lowest rated and least consistent of those four quarterbacks!?!? You don't fucking say!
Point 2: Seriously you guys? Seriously?
He posts the stats of the Big 4 - Rodgers + Flacco, then
doesn't talk about them. First thing he says is that yardage stats don't matter, then he goes on a completely unrelated tangent about Matt Stafford's inflated yardage and average ypa. He doesn't mention the other stats at all, just declares them "similar." Really?
First, let's look at the ypa for each of the four in their first five years. Taking after this guy, let's play "Find the Flacco!" using letters instead of names:
Player [A]: 7.32 YPA
Player : 7.08 YPA
Player [C]: 7.08 YPA
Player [D]: 7.08 YPA
Freaky. Moving on to TD/Int ratio:
[A]: 1.38 TD/Int
: 1.86 TD/Int
[C]: 1.82 TD/Int
[D]: 1.64 TD/Int
Still not too much of a difference between B/C. Finally, since we all love ratios so much, completion percentage:
[A]: 62.09%
: 61.93%
[C]: 60.55%
[D]: 62.76%
And there we have it. The completion percentages might have spoiled the ending, but C was the correct choice for our hero Joe. I used absolutely no silly persuasive argument to claim Flacco was equal to the rest of these players, I just let the numbers do the talking themselves. Even though he's less accurate than the other three, Flacco was basically on par with them for his first five seasons.
Player A was Peyton Manning, Player B was Tom Brady and the real winner here, and player D was Drew Brees.
Point 3: This argument was even sillier than the last one. Small sample size for the actually good quarterbacks, arbitrary cutoff, proving the opposite of what he was arguing, etc.
Comparisons: It's silly to compare at all with the young QBs in the league, because we have no idea if they'll be able to sustain their success.
The "ceiling QB" section might have been able to show something by comparing their stats, but he just blew it out of the water by comparing wins. Newsflash: Wins are not a quarterback stat.
The "not battle tested" section was fine, except for throwing Matt Ryan in there... but I'm too butthurt to argue against that one.
ITT: Killah makes fun of an article's formatting, can't properly format his own posts
Final verdict: 4/10, for making me salty enough to reply.
Wait, you guys said you read an article. All I read was a full foot and a half of Confirmation Bias.
shhhh. no tears. only dreams now.