The true Mad Bomber

Cold, Hard Football Facts for Sep 14, 2009

(Ed. note: Data for this story was compiled with the aid of the awesome play index at ProFootballReference.com. We wrote about this new tool a couple of weeks ago. See the entire spreadsheet used for this piece here.)

By Kerry J. Byrne

Cold, Hard Football Facts B-17 bombardier

No quarterback in the history of football could "carry a team" like Tom Brady can carry a team.

We got more proof last night, as the Patriots eked out a 25-24 victory over Buffalo in a game that they had absolutely no business winning. Aided by a fumble recovery on special teams, Brady threw two touchdown passes to Ben Stonehands Watson in the final 130 seconds.

Brady completed 39 of 53 (73.6%) for 387 yards, 7.1 YPA, 2 TD, 1 INT, and a 97.8 rating.

He is now 7-2 when attemping 50+ passes in a game and few quarterbacks in the history of football are even remotely close to that kind of success when the game is completely in their hands.

No quarterback in NFL history boasts more victories than Brady when attempting 50 passes. (Warren Moon and Dan Marino are tied for second: each won five 50-plus games.)
Brady is one of just three quarterbacks in NFL history with a winning record when attempting 50 passes (min. four decisions). The others are Donovan McNabb (3-1-1) and Dan Fouts (3-2). (Bernie Kosar, it should be noted, went 2-0 in 50-plus games, both of them in the 1986 season).

Cold, Hard Football Facts readers have long known that passing often is irrelevant and that passing efficiently means everything. Volume numbers, as we have so often proved, are useless. Efficiency numbers win games.

We got further proof this summer, when CHFF ombudsdouche Mark Wald compiled the list of quarterbacks who win when called upon to "carry a team." He defined "carry a team" as 30 attempts in games before 1977 and 40 attempts in games since the liberalization of the passing rules in 1978 (The Live Ball Era).

The original "Mad Bomber" Darryl Lamonica was the most successful QB on the list, with a 25-10-2 (.703) record when called upon to "carry a team."
The new "Mad Bomber" Tom Brady was No. 2 on the list, with a 17-8 (.680) record when called upon to "carry a team."

This list proved that quarterbacks historically have a very poor records then they pass a lot, winning just 30 percent of the time when called upon to "carry a team." It makes sense: passing a lot is typically a sign of desperation and desperate teams are not winning teams.

If we use the 40-attempt barrier across the board, Brady is clearly No. 1 – after Monday night's game he's 18-8 when asked to "carry a team." Lamonica, playing in a different era, attempted 40 or more passes just six times in his career. (Mad bombing clearly had a different meaning in the 1960s than it does here in the pass-happy 21st century.) Lamonica went 3-2-1 in those six games.

The desperation of 50 attempts

But 50 attempts is a whole different stratosphere, one rarely if ever called for in a game plan.

Fifty attempts is a sign that 1) your defense is playing very poorly so you're locked in a shootout, or 2) that your team simply can't run the ball, or that 3) your team has completely abandoned the running game based upon circumstances – namely a big deficit. In all these cases, the chances of victory are slim.

Teams in these circumstances are desperate – much like the Patriots were desperate last night, trailing 24-13 in the final minutes. Quarterbacks in these circumstances are also desperate. They play frantically. They take risks they wouldn't take in other circumstances. They make poor decisions. They throw bad passes to well-covered receivers. They make mistakes that lose games. This description applies to almost everybody in the history of the game – except for Brady and a small handful of others.

(Just think of all the excuses Brett Favre fans made for him over the years. Everytime he had a multi-pick game that cost his team a victory, fans would say he was forced to play that way out of desperation.)

These desperate quarterbacks, even Hall of Fame-caliber desperate quarterbacks, lose games. But Brady is high on the very, very, very short list of QBs who have won consistently in these desperate circumstances.

In the entire history of the NFL, quarterbacks who attempt 50-plus passes are a pathetic 73-260-6 (.224) in the regular season and 4-22 (.154) in the playoffs.
Brady, meanwhile, is 5-2 (.667) in the regular season and 2-0 (1.000) in the playoffs when attempting 50-plus passes.
In other words, among all the postseason victories on the record books by QBs with 50-plus attempts, Brady has won half of them.

Brady, in fact, is the only quarterback in history with more than one playoff victory when attempting more than 50 passes -- though critics will note that the first of those games was New England's controversial 16-13 "tuck rule" win over the Raiders in the 2001 playoffs (52 attempts). The other came in New England's 24-21 win at San Diego in the 2006 playoffs, a victory just as improbable as Monday night's game. (Notice a pattern here? Improbability all but defines 50-attempt victories.)

Regardless of the "tuck rule" controversy, the distance between his success in these games and that of almost every other QB is so vast that there's really no fair way to compare Brady to other quarterbacks who attempted 50 passes.

But here's how Brady stacks up in these games against some other notable "gunslingers" in the history of the game. The only one who comes close is Hall of Famer Moon. (Lamonica, the original Mad Bomber, by the way, never attempted 50 passes in a game.)

Notable gunslingers when attempting 50-plus passes

includes postseason (alphabetical order)

Player	Record	Comp.	Att.	Pct.	Yards	YPA	TD	INT	Rating
Tom Brady	7-2	307	481	63.8	3125	6.50	17	9	86.3
Drew Brees	1-4	167	272	61.4	1867	6.86	11	10	80.0
Jake Delhomme	0-1	24	50	0.48	307	6.14	2	0	81.0
Brett Favre	3-8	332	582	57.0	3587	6.16	13	25	64.8
Dan Fouts	3-2	153	261	58.6	1838	7.04	13	4	90.5
Jim Kelly	0-4	120	215	55.8	1287	5.98	8	8	70.4
Bernie Kosar	2-0	65	114	57.0	890	7.81	1	2	77.7
P.Manning	1-7	244	418	58.4	2693	6.44	12	20	67.2
Dan Marino	5-11	503	868	57.9	6337	7.30	42	34	80.6
D. McNabb	3-1-1	149	270	55.2	1561	5.78	9	9	69.4
Joe Montana	2-3	173	278	62.2	1824	6.56	9	6	78.6
Warren Moon	5-5	337	523	64.4	3789	7.24	21	18	85.0
Joe Namath	0-4-1	139	282	49.3	1714	6.08	10	20	50.8
Big Ben	0-1	38	54	70.4	433	8.02	1	3	77.2
Kurt Warner	1-3	141	215	65.6	1534	7.13	7	5	87.6

The frantic, 53-attempt win over the Bills Monday night pushed Brady further past Marino and Moon for the most wins in history when attempting 50-plus passes. Of course, Marino's five wins came against 11 losses. So even the great Marino had difficulity winning when forced to shoulder such a heavy burden.

***

As we first reported this summer, Tom Brady has the best TD to INT ratio in the history of football (2.3 to 1). It's interesting to note that, even in the desperate circumstances of a 50-attempt game, his TD to INT ratio is still nearly 2 to 1. Except for Dan Fouts (whose numbers were spectacular) nobody on this list is even close.

***

On a related note: Brady's Patriots have now gone 1,010 days since their last regular-season loss (21-0 to Miami on Dec. 10, 2006).

***

It's interesting to note that only three quarterbacks this week won when attempting 40 plus passes.

Not so coincidentally, two of the three are the two quarterbacks we named the best two in the league last summer: Ben Roethlisberger and Tom Brady. (See this week's Big Ben report here.)

Also not coincidentally, these two players are also the only quarterbacks in the game today with multiple championship rings.

We took tons of heat from readers around the country for listing Big Ben ahead of Peyton Manning. But it's so obvious that Roethlisberger is a better quarterback that it's not even worth having this debate with people any more.

The ability of Brady and Roethlisberger to "carry their team" in desperate situations is just another reason why they're the two best in the league today.

By the way, the third quarterback this week who won when attempting 40 or more passes was sophomore phenom Joe Flacco, who looks bound for a brilliant career.

By Kerry Byrne

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