Monday, August 15, 2011
Eli Manning is Overrated
My colleague Neil Bright recently wrote an article for this site with a very strange premise: Eli Manning is underrated. With all due respect to Neil, this is absurd. Year-in, year-out, Eli is one of the most overrated players in the NFL.
He is one of the most famous and widely-praised QBs of the last decade. He made the Pro Bowl in 2008; I remember people on TV saying that year that he was better than Peyton. It actually seemed like a legitimate argument to some people. Even today, every time Eli has a half-decent game, the media declares that he has turned the corner and should be regarded as an elite quarterback, which is nonsense.
Eli is a solidly average quarterback. He is not top-10, and never has been, but he probably sneaks into the top 16 most years. Pro-Football-Reference.com keeps statistics comparing a player's performance in certain stats to the league average that season. Anything below 100 is worse than average, above 100 is better. By the numbers, Eli is a very average QB:
Completion Percentage: 91
Yards Per Attempt: 98
Touchdown Percentage: 107
Interception Percentage: 95
Sack Percentage: 110
All of those numbers are pretty close to 100. The guy is an average quarterback. For the sake of comparison, here are some other QBs:
Peyton Manning: 119, 114, 118, 106, 123
David Garrard: 104, 103, 98, 111, 92
Jake Delhomme: 97, 105, 103, 94, 106
Eli Manning: 91, 98, 107, 95, 110
Jason Campbell: 100, 96, 93, 110, 94
Tarvaris Jackson: 92, 92, 99, 89, 91
If we weight all the categories equally, Eli comes in about the same as Delhomme or Campbell, and no one pretends those guys are top-10 QBs. Please understand, I'm not saying that Eli is a bad quarterback. An average QB is actually a valuable commodity in the NFL. There are about a dozen teams that would love to trade their starter for the younger Manning. But with as much hype as this guy gets, he's hardly underrated.
However, I hear some of you saying, the numbers above are career figures. Maybe Eli has improved over time. Below are his numbers last season.
Completion Percentage: 107
Yards Per Attempt: 108
Touchdown Percentage: 118
Interception Percentage: 79
Sack Percentage: 125
Indeed, those are better than his career stats, but the number that jumps out is his 79 Int%+. Eli has 32 multi-interception games in his career. Since his rookie season of 2004, only Brett Favre has more. Even famously careless QBs like Delhomme (22), Jay Cutler (20), Jon Kitna (19), and Rex Grossman (10) can't touch Eli in this category. Last season alone, Manning had four games with at least 3 interceptions. Overall INT leaders, from 2004-present:
1. Brett Favre, 127
2. Eli Manning, 113
3. Drew Brees, 101
4. Carson Palmer, 100
5. Matt Hasselbeck, 95
It's basically Favre and Manning, then everyone else. Eli has more picks since '04 than Derek Anderson and Alex Smith combined (108), or all the QBs drafted in the first round in '02 (David Carr, Joey Harrington, and Patrick Ramsey, 103), or all the Kyles in NFL history (Boller, Orton, 1980s backup Kyle Mackey, and half a dozen non-quarterbacks, 96), or a thousand other weird combinations.
Neil pointed out in his column that Eli's interception total spiked last season — he became one of only three active players to throw at least 25 picks in a season — but it was always in the cards that Eli was going to have a season like that. Chance plays a role in interceptions, and in a bad-luck year a gunslinger like Eli is going to throw 20-30 picks. In 2005, his first full season as starter, Manning was second in the NFL in interceptions, behind only Favre, who had the worst season of his career. The next year, he and Favre tied for fourth. The year after that, he tied for the most interceptions in the NFL. 2008 and '09 were better, and last year he led the league again.
This is a guy who has played six full seasons, and in two of them he's led the NFL in picks. In two others, he was in the "top" five. Last year wasn't an aberration; it was entirely consistent with Eli's career.
His almost unparalleled tendency to throw interceptions has always been Eli's biggest problem. But he also seems to save his worst performances for the stretch run. With the exception of his genuinely fine play in the 2007 postseason, when the Giants won the Super Bowl, Manning has consistently played his worst at the end of the season. This is lifted from my Week 14 Power Rankings last season:
Eli Manning has entered his annual cold-weather swoon. This is like clockwork. Every year, Eli Manning plays well in September and October, and people announce with tremendous authority that he has turned the corner and is one of the great QBs in the NFL, sometimes even asserting that he is better than Peyton and sliced bread. Then November rolls around, and Eli turns into Mark Sanchez. This isn't just about weather: Tom Brady plays outdoors, in conditions just as bad, and his passer rating in December (92.8) is the same as in September (93.1). Eli's per-game averages, by month:
Eli's inconsistency is particularly baffling because he has so consistently played on good teams. He's always had a good offensive line. He had an exceptional running back (Tiki Barber), Pro Bowl tight end (Jeremy Shockey), and quality receivers like Amani Toomer, Plaxico Burress, and Steve Smith. Furthermore — and this matters — he's usually had a good defense. A strong defense takes pressure off the quarterback. You don't have to come from behind when the opponent knows you have to pass. You don't have to force a throw if it's not there. You get good field position. Eli has always had a fairly strong supporting cast, and let's not pretend that Ramses Barden and Victor Cruz were going to turn Eli into Aaron Rodgers.
Neil complained in his article that Little Manning didn't make the NFL Network's "Top 100 Players of 2011" list, while Donovan McNabb, Joe Flacco, Josh Freeman, Tony Romo, and Matt Ryan all did. McNabb is at a strange point in his career, and I don't think anyone really knows what to expect of him in 2011, but I felt like he made the best of a bad situation last year in Washington, and in '09, his stats were very much in line with Eli's. That season, the Eagles finished 11-5. Then they replaced McNabb with Michael Vick and dropped to 10-6. If we all agree that Vick is better than Eli, it seems reasonable to put McNabb around the same level.
Tony Romo, when he's healthy, is a far better quarterback than Eli, and that's so obvious I'm sure Neil would agree. What about the young guys: Flacco and Freeman and Ryan? Neil noted that Eli passed for more yards and more touchdowns than any of the three, and that's true. He also threw as many interceptions as all three combined, rushed for the fewest yards, and lost the most fumbles. Does none of that matter? Seriously, Eli threw as many interceptions (25) as Flacco (10), Freeman (6), and Ryan (9) put together. That's a really big deal. The Giants led the NFL in turnovers last season (42), with 30 of those falling on Eli. The last team to commit 40 turnovers and make the playoffs was the 2001 Rams, but that team averaged 40 yards a game more than last year's Giants.
Freeman is a hugely promising talent. Last season, he passed for 3,451 yards. That's 550 fewer than Eli. He threw 25 TD passes, 6 fewer than Manning. But he committed 21 fewer turnovers and rushed for 300 more yards. Plus, Freeman played his best at the end of the season. Freeman is only 23, and he visibly improved during the season. Seriously, look at his passer rating month by month:
Sep: 84.6
Oct: 88.6
Nov: 93.8
Dec: 105.2
Jan: 133.2
Eli, in contrast, did his dismal December dance, with a 71.7 passer rating in the last full month of the season. Who do you want, the guy that throws 20 interceptions every year and is turning 31 this season, or the 23-year-old who played as well at the end of last season as anyone this side of Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers?
Matt Ryan passed for 3,705 yards and 28 TDs last season, with only 9 INTs. Flacco passed for over 3,600 yards and 25 TDs, with 10 picks. Eli got picked 16 times more than Ryan, 15 more than Flacco. Think about your favorite team's quarterback. If he threw an extra interception every Sunday, would you trade that for 25 yards per game and an extra TD pass once every three weeks? I wouldn't. An interception typically costs much more than 25 yards.
Perhaps most importantly, Flacco and Ryan, like Freeman, figure to be even better in 2011, improve as they get more experience. Eli isn't likely to get any better at this point in his career. A good quarterback can play well into his 30s, but you normally stop improving by that point. The young guys got visibly better from month to month, week to week in Freeman's case. Neil wrote about the Giants' injuries last season, like Freeman was throwing passes to Jerry Rice and Lance Alworth. The Bucs' leading receivers last year were a tight end, a rookie, and a running back with no knees (Cadillac Williams).
Eli has good counting stats (yards, TDs) because he never misses a game. But his rate stats are consistently middle of the road, because he's simply not a great quarterback. Neil conceded that Eli isn't on the same level as Brady and Peyton and the other top-of-the-list QBs, but he inexplicably claimed that "the numbers also don't suggest that he is a middle-of-the-road quarterback," which actually is exactly what the numbers suggest. To reach a different conclusion, you have to focus exclusively on the last season or two and ignore the defining characteristic of Eli's playing style, which is high-risk, high-reward: lots of touchdowns and lots of interceptions. You can't give him credit for one and ignore the other, because they're both a function of the way Eli has always played.
Peyton's little brother is not a bad quarterback; he's average, maybe even a little above average. His reputation makes him more than that. Eli Manning is not someone I have ever felt sorry for. This is a kid who was born in a well-off family, raised in a loving environment, tutored by Archie and Peyton, drafted first overall, traded by his own demand to the team of his choice, got hot at the right time and won a Super Bowl MVP Award, signed a $100 million contract, and has several national endorsement deals. He gets a ton of hype because of his last name, his college career, the fact that he plays in New York, and the good fortune that members of the media adore his family. With so many things going for him, Eli doesn't need our sympathy.
So let's be realistic. He's an inconsistent player who throws too many interceptions, can't run, and fades every December. He's a good fantasy backup because he never sits and he plays on a team that scores touchdowns, but he's a mediocre starter in real life because he doesn't protect the ball and has struggled with his accuracy. There are easily a dozen better QBs in the league, and Eli would cause serious problems for a team that wasn't already pretty good. Ever year, Eli is a very average quarterback, sometimes a touch better than average. But he's not elite, and he's not underrated.