Tom Brady has the best record in NFL history when his defense allows 21+ points

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Back in November, Cian Fahey tweeted me a simple question: “What is Alex Smith’s record in games where his D gives up 21 or more points?”

I made a note to run the numbers in the off-season, and guess what? It’s the off-season. Smith now holds a career record of 7-38-1 (including a 1-1 mark in the postseason) when his team allows 21 or more points. That’s really bad, as it turns out. In fact, among quarterbacks who started such a game last year, only Ryan Fitzpatrick (5-43-0) has a worse career record.

How am I defining a “good” or “bad” record? Well, that’s somewhat subjective. But you might be surprised to learn that over history, teams have won about 25% of their games when allowing 21+ points, and there hasn’t been quite as much variation as you would expect. So while it would probably help a little to adjust for era, it’s not as necessary as I would have originally thought.


The best quarterback by this metric? Tom Brady. Brady has played in 106 games (including playoffs) where the Patriots allowed at least 21 points. In those games, Brady is 60-46, for a 0.566 winning percentage. Given that we would “expect” Brady to win 25% of those 106 games — that is, 26.5 games — Brady has exceeded expectations by 33.5 wins. All the usual caveats apply: wins should not be applied to the quarterback, there are lots of reasons not to read too much into the data, etc. But sometimes, it’s just good to do a data dump, even if you only find the information useful for trivia purposes.

Wins over expectation

1. Tom Brady 33.5
2. Peyton Manning 28
3. Brett Favre 16.75
4. Joe Montana 16
5t. John Elway 14.5
5t. Norm Van Brocklin 14.5
7. Randall Cunningham 13.5
8t. Aaron Rodgers 11.75
8t. Drew Brees 11.75
10. Johnny Unitas 11.25

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