Burrow and 17 game seasons for 18 years?

[Shake n Blake]

(04-03-2021, 04:42 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: He was also a .500 starter his first 4 years, and I just can't get over the fact he averaged 20 INT/yr his first 5 years.

He also had a stacked offense early in his career. Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Edgerrin James, Ken Dilger, Marcus Pollard... it would be hard to NOT put up accumulation numbers with those guys in your offense.

Was he good? Sure, but was he Peyton Manning good? Not really, until Year 6 onwards.

Year 1-5: 62.1% completion, 7.3 YPA, 1.4 TD/1 INT, 85.9 QB Rating
Year 6-10: 66.4% completion, 8.1 YPA, 3.2 TD/1 INT, 104.4 QB Rating


If you look at PFR, they actually do have a QB Rating+ stat now for QBs, so anything below 100 is that % below average and anything above 100 is that % above average.

Manning
Yr1: 93
Yr2: 115
Yr3: 123
Yr4: 107
Yr5: 115

He was above average yr2-4, but really only yr3 was great. Then...

Yr6: 124
Yr7: 151 (led NFL)
Yr8: 129 (led NFL)
Yr9: 126 (led NFL)
Yr10: 122

In fact, if you look at the Adjusted Passing part of his page..
https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/MannPe00.htm

...You will see that the only black ink (led the league that year) he has the first 5 years is attempts his rookie year. Then starting at the 6th year you start seeing a whole lot of black ink pop up.


(EDIT: Also worth noting that Yr6 was also 2003, the year he won his first playoff game and broke his 0-fer streak.)

If we're being honest, he had 28 picks his rookie season. Other than that, it wasn't a huge issue over the following 5 year span. The game was different back then. QB's generally threw more picks. When Peyton threw 15 picks in 1999, he only ranked 9th in the league. Now 15 picks would probably lead the league.

When he threw 23 picks, he was one of 6 QB's to do throw 20+...one of them being Kurt Warner in one of his greatest seasons. Peyton still ranked 8th in passer rating the year he threw 23. His production was just that great.

Peyton posted these average ranks from years 2-6:

Rating: 5.0
Yards: 2.0
TD's: 2.6
INT's: 9.8

I can't look at that and say he wasn't elite. I don't care who his teammates were. The production was off the charts, and people VIEWED him as elite at the time. Peyton also had a 51-29 record over those 5 years with 2 division titles.

He was viewed as elite at everything except winning in the playoffs. That was the only real concern with him at the time.

If you made this about Peyton's rookie season, I'd get it. He showed promise, but threw a staggering amount of picks, and the team went 3-13. That said, after that he was def viewed as an elite top 3-4 QB. Just had questions about choking come playoff time. Yes, Peyton did get even better as his career went on, but he was def elite in years 2-6 as well.