Why Eli Isn’t Average

I posted the below analysis to my fantasy football league email thread. Upon writing up the analysis, I felt Eli’s career (in my words) deserved a post.

In lieu of a weekly analysis, I wanted to share my thoughts on Eli. First, take a look at Kevin Clark’s piece on The Ringer, who speaks about this generation of QB’s. I think he’s one of the smartest writers of the NFL out there right now.

Firstly, ‘average’ gets thrown around way too liberally. What exactly does average even mean? When you look at careers that span multiple eras and against QB’s from seemingly different sports altogether, it’s hard to define what represents an average career. As an extreme example, how do you compare Y.A. Tittle’s career to Eli’s career? In Tittle’s 17-year career, he had 11 years…11 years were he threw more interceptions than TD’s. In fact, he finished his career with 9 more interceptions than touchdowns. He’s regarded as one of the legends of the sport. He led the Giants to three consecutive NFC championship games towards the end of his career and made 7 Pro Bowls. Yet, when you look at his stats, they’re well…pretty average.

‘Average’ has so much nuance and I think we throw it around too loosely. Playing the QB position in the NFL is the most difficult and complex position in all of sports. Look at Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, Matt Leinart and Brady Quinn. So many of these college stars never even had a cup of coffee in the NFL. Most were carrying clipboards for the majority of their careers, and/or lasted a mere few years.

Eli finished his career with 362 TD’s against 241 interceptions, and while his efficiency stats actually fall short of Jeff George in most cases (who many people point to as the definition of average…look it up, I’m serious), the playoffs is where he really made his money, and name. He had a 103.3 rating in the 2011 playoffs and a 95.7 rating in the 2007 playoffs, which were not Brady level by any means (in those same playoffs, Brady had a 117.2 & 105.6 rating, respectively) but were respectable.

Eli didn’t take us to the playoffs a ton. We went to the playoffs 6x, and I would argue the 2008 team was the most talented of the group, but the late season drama of Plaxico shooting himself in the leg doomed that team. And Eli’s sub-par playoff performance. Remember that team had a first round bye as well…

I’ll remember Eli in the sense that we had a QB on Sundays, and we could depend on him year-in and year-out to be under center every Sunday. In today’s and yesterday’s NFL that means something. I look at the Bears who have Mitch Trubisky, who at best is a talented athlete who is developing into a passer, and at worst is not a good NFL QB. Last week he completed less than 60% of his passes and passed for a measly 120 yards with no TD’s (albeit no INT’s either). So many teams are in this Mitch Trubisky QB continuum (Tennessee, Miami, Buffalo, Arizona, Jacksonville, Minnesota, Oakland, the list goes on). So many teams have an overpaid veteran who’s not that good, or a youngster who the GM has bet his draft haul on that he will develop into the franchise QB of the next 10 years. So many bets, and so many unreliable dudes. There’s a reason why Jacksonville dumped $88M on Nick Foles, for 4-years. He has proven he can win, but even Foles hasn’t proven he can even be competent from one regular season to the next. He’s only shown his ability in spurts.

As this generation of QB’s ages out (Romo, Brees, Manning (x2), Brady, Rodgers, Rivers, Roethslisberger), there’s just not a ton of signal callers that are a sure thing in the sport. Even Baker Mayfield has looked shaky at times, and Lamar Jackson while dynamic, is still finding his place at that position. Eli was dependable, generally reliable and was behind center every day for 15 years, including 6 playoff appearances. That means something and certainly qualifies him as above average.

Average is a tricky word, but Eli wasn’t average. The current state of the quarterback position in the NFL bears that out.