Wins by Quarterback •• Some Blog Site

Wins by Quarterback

Feb

2016

With much ado made about a certain quarterback’s attainment of 200 career wins in the Super Bowl earlier this week, I thought I’d throw together a chart of career wins.

Quarterback career Wins by Year

chart of quarterback wins by year of career

This is based on the list of top 25 quarterbacks, ranked by most career wins.

I don’t know what one is supposed to learn from this, but here are some things I noticed.

Both Brady and Manning would have been even farther ahead of everyone else if they didn’t each have one year out due to injury.
Marino had the best start, but the second quarter of his career made up for that.
Don’t know that anyone will catch Favre for longevity.
Elway has the best finish, as far as slope of his chart line goes.
As far as the slowest start goes, I’m not sure if that award goes to Steve Young or Len Dawson.

And then, for fun, I normalized the data. You see, in 1978 the NFL expanded the season from 14 games to 16 games. So everyone who played before 1978 did not have the same opportunity to get as many wins as the people 1978 and after. I adjusted the wins before 1978 so they would be comparable, percentage-wise.

The biggest winners were Len Dawson and Bob Griese and Bart Starr. Johnny Unitas also jumped from 10th place to 7th, breaking his tie with Ben Roethlisberger.

Here are the data, both unadjusted and adjusted:
Original

1	Manning Peyton	200
2	Favre Brett	199
3	Brady Tom	194
4	Elway John	162
5	Marino Dan	155
6	Tarkenton Fran	136
7	Montana Joe	133
8	Brees Drew	130
9	Roethlisberger Ben	124
10	Unitas Johnny	124
11	Bradshaw Terry	121
12	Kelly Jim	110
13	McNabb Donovan	107
14	Aikman Troy	105
15	Manning Eli	105
16	Moon Warren	105
17	Stabler Ken	103
18	Starr Bart	103
19	Young teve	102
20	Bledsoe Drew	101
21	Krieg David	101
22	Simms Phil	101
23	Dawson Len	99
24	Griese Bob	98
25	Rivers Philip	96

Adjusted

1	Manning Peyton	200
2	Favre Brett	199
3	Brady Tom	194
4	Elway John	162
5	Marino Dan	155
6	Tarkenton Fran	154
7	Unitas Johnny	142
8	Montana Joe	133
9	Bradshaw Terry	130
10	Brees Drew	130
11	Roethlisberger Ben	124
12	Starr Bart	118
13	Dawson Len	113
14	Griese Bob	110
15	Kelly Jim	110
16	Stabler Ken	110
17	McNabb Donovan	107
18	Aikman Troy	105
19	Manning Eli	105
20	Moon Warren	105
21	Young Steve	102
22	Bledsoe Drew	101
23	Krieg David	101
24	Simms Phil	101
25	Rivers Philip	96