In the loss to the Vikings last season everyone blamed Romo. Honestly, watch that game. Not just the highlights. Watch it. The number of times Romo was able to make a throw without being hurried is nearly zero. Almost every play there's a defender either in his face, knocking him down, chasing him around the backfield, or all of the above. To blame the guy whose job it is to throw the football for a loss in a game when his offensive line almost never allowed him time to do so is ridiculous. On the flip side of this, Peyton is absolved of guilt when he loses big games. Take the Super Bowl. He threw an interception that was returned for a TD. He's touted as this really, really, smart QB who can read the defense like a book. He didn't throw it and someone fell, leaving the ball up for grabs. His receiver didn't tip it and the defense come up with it. One excuse I've heard for this is that the receiver "lazily telegraphed the route" and allowed the defensive back to make a play. What? You're blaming the receiver for a bad QB throw? Are you serious? The fact is that Peyton got out-smarted and out-played, but not a single major NFL analyst (someone who is paid real money and broadcast on a major network) is willing to admit that. Peyton lost the game. No one else, just Peyton. He blew a 10-3 1st quarter lead and lost it 31-17. In three quarters he managed to only lead his team to 7 points, and gift wrapped another 7 for the other team. That's not great play. You can't blame it on the running game (avg yards/attempt was a lot better than the Saint's). You can't blame it on the defense. They did fairly well, allowing only 24 points. It was Peyton's lack of play after the 1st quarter.
There are other statistical comparisons of Peyton to Romo, I know. So why am I doing this one? Because, as Mark Twain once said, there are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. What he meant by that is you can take any statistical data and manipulate it to show exactly what you want, your already pre-conceived notions. One of the comparisons I saw compared Peyton's numbers to Romo's numbers, for the 2006-2008 seasons, and Peyton won in 3 out of 4 categories compared (Interception %, YPG, and Total Yards went to Manning, whereas TD % went to Romo). I'm actually not entirely sure what statistical data this guy used. It could be the 2006-2008 seasons, or the 2006, 2007, 2008, and partial 2009 data, as he wrote the article on December 3rd of '09, I'm not sure if he used the '09 season-to-date data or not. It's crap like this that makes me mad when reading statistical analysis. What exactly is being compared is the most important information in the article, and no one ever tells you definitively what the items of comparison are.
Does anyone see the glaring problem with this comparison? Anyone? It's the first thing that popped into my mind. Peyton Manning's 2006-current stats vs. Tony Romo's 2006-current stats. How is this even remotely an accurate comparison of each players‘ skill? Those years compare Romo's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th seasons as a starter to Peyton's 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th seasons as a starter. Wow, that's a really big gap of 8 years of experience per season compared. It shows how good Romo really is to win anything at all compared to "the greatest QB of all time" 9 years into his career.
This is what I'm talking about. The author of that article (http://bleacherreport.com/articles/301819-manning-versus-romo-who-will-prevail) wanted Peyton to be better than Romo, so he uses a comparison that is so unbalanced it's ridiculous in the extreme.
Alright, so it's obvious by now I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan. I will do my best to be strictly objective throughout this comparison. Fair to all parties involved. By far the most difficult thing about a fair comparison is taking into account all the mitigating factors without being biased. Some of the things I'm trying to take into consideration are:
1) Romo's pinky finger injury. It's fairly easy to take this into account, I simply don't use overall season statistics, I use per game statistics. This is accurate, but not completely. The game that his injury occurred in was against Arizona in week 6 of 2008. It is documented that the injury affected Romo's play in the last drive where he had two missed passes to Terrell Owens. As these plays resulted in a punt that was blocked and returned for a score, in over-time, it is easy to conjecture that had his hand been okay they might have won the game. Anyway, the only affect this injury has on this analysis is on Romo's following 3 games, which he missed, and will not be counted.
2) If Peyton's 2008 and 2009 season were included in this comparison I would take out the last two games of the '09 season and the last of '08 because they didn't matter and Peyton got benched to save him for the playoffs, since home field was secure. These seasons are not included so these games are not a factor.
3) Romo didn't start a game until game 8 of his fourth year, and only passed in two previous games. This is probably the hardest thing to account for. Romo undoubtedly gained experience being on the bench behind Bledsoe and others for the first 55 games of his career. How much experience is difficult to account for. Romo not starting the first 55 games of his career undoubtedly makes it unfair to compare Romo's first 55 games with Manning's first 55 games, since for the first 55 games Romo has no passing statistics, and Manning started all of his first 55 games.
So what do I compare here? Should I compare the first 55 games?
Obviously not. It would be Manning's impressive numbers vs. Romo's nil.
Should I compare season to season? (Romo's 2006 to Peyton's 2006, 2007 to 2007, etc)
I still don't think that's a fair comparison, considering Romo only started his first game in week 8 of 2006, plus it was his first season as a starter. The gap in starting experience is 8 years, even the gap in NFL experience is 5 years.)
I can't compare season to season (9th as starter vs. 1st as starter), or Rookie to Rookie (Starting 1st overall pick vs. Benched and undrafted). Both of those would be extremely unfair to Romo. It would be slightly unfair to Peyton to compare Romo's 2006 (1st season as a starter) vs. Peyton's 1998 (1st season as a starter) because Romo did have three years on the bench to learn from veteran QB's, whereas Peyton was thrown straight into it as a rookie.
Comparing Romo's 4th season (1st as starter) vs. Peyton's 4th (4th as starter) still seems a little unbalanced in favor of Peyton, because he started all the games previous to his 4th NFL season. Still a difference of three years as a starter vs. three years on the bench.
Now, because of this difficulty, I'm going to compare Romo's 2nd year as a starter (2007) 3rd year (2008), and 4th year (2009) to Peyton's 2nd (1999), 3rd (2000), and 4th (2001) years starting. Why these seasons? Why not include Romo's 2006 campaign, when he was a Pro-Bowler, and Peyton's rookie year when he had 3739 total yards?
Well, the reasoning is this:
Romo sat for 52 games in a row, came off the bench and played 2 downs in another, then came off the bench and took over the starting job for Bledsoe in another, then started the last 10 games. I'll count 2 downs as a benched game here since it was two plays.(Although he went 2/2 with 30 some yards, a TD, no interceptions, and had a perfect passer rating.) So that's 53.5 benched games and 10.5 started in 4 seasons. That's the experience Romo has coming into the 2007 season.
Peyton's experience going into the 1999 season was 16 games as the starter. So, since Romo has 10.5 games under his belt going into the seasons being compared, we subtract that from Peyton's 16, which then compares Peyton's left over 5.5 games to Romo's 53.5 benches. That equates 1 full game played to about 10 games on the bench. I think 10 games watching from the sidelines would probably be a quite a bit less beneficial than actually playing 16 full games as a starting QB, but this is about as even as it can get, taking into account that there is probably experience gained from sitting on a bench.
Also, for you Peyton Manning fans out there, Romo's 2006 season vs. Peyton's 1998 season... Romo wins every per game statistic, except TD/game, even if you count the two games he didn't start. (Romo wins: TD/Int ratio, Yards/Game, Yards/Attempt, Completion %, Rating, Int/Game, literally every stat other than TD/game, usually by a large margin.) You don't want to compare Romo's 2006-2009 to Peyton’s 1998-2001, the gap between the two would go more in Romo's favor.
Alright, so let's see some numbers:
Results Win% Comp% Yds/G Yds/A TD Int Rating Romo 32W-13L 71.1% 63% 269.8 8.16 88 42 95.94 Manning 29W-19L 60.4% 62.4% 264.1 7.82 85 53 91.38Playing 3 fewer games, Romo wins 3 more, has almost 10.7% higher winning %, gets 5.7 more Yds/Game, averages .34 more yards per attempt, gets 3 more TD, 11 less interceptions, has a TD/Interception positive ratio of 14 more, and is rated 4.57 higher as a passer than Peyton Manning, who is touted as "The Best Quarterback To Ever Hold A Football in History". Fairest possible comparison of regular season statistics, Romo's better in every conceivable way.
Okay, so that's for the Regular season. What about post-season play? Romo is always catching flak about his post-season play, and Peyton's always receiving kudos for how well he does under pressure, right? Well, let's see.
As much as I would like to not include Romo's game against the Vikings in 2009, it will be included. First four playoff appearances against first four playoff appearances. (In Manning's last appearance that I'm counting he went on to lose to the Patriots in the 2003 AFC Championship.)
There are a freakish number of similarities between their first four playoff appearances.
1) They both lost 3 and won 1.
2) Both of their first two losses were by less than 7. (One possession games.)
3) Both of their third losses were blowouts. (The Colt's loss was a shutout.)
4) Both threw for 4 interceptions total.
5) Their teams both scored exactly 74 points in four playoff appearances.
6) Which means the same total number of touchdowns and field goals were scored. (No safeties or conversions in any game.)
The stats:
win% Comp Att Cmp% Yds Yds/G Avg TD Int Rating Romo .250 80 135 59.3 832 208 6.2 4 2 81.33 Manning .250 72 131 57 935 234 7.6 6 2 83.45Wow, very similar. Same Win Pct, nearly identical Comp, Att, and Comp Pct, with Romo taking a lead there, but Peyton edging him out 2.32 points in Passer Rating. Peyton leads in yards, giving him an edge in Yds per game and attempt. Peyton up by 2 TD with the same number of interceptions: .5 per game. All in all, pretty equal, but Peyton seems to be able to make more points when it counts.
Something to note though, Peyton's last playoff game in this comparison was from his sixth season as a starter, and his 4th trip into the playoffs. Romo's 4th game came from his 4th year as a starter, and his 3rd trip to the playoffs. So as far as playoff trips go, Romo's a few seasons ahead of Manning.
I know I probably shouldn't do this, but as a fan I have to defend the QB when I can, so here's some notes on why Romo lost the three playoff games:
1st against Seahawks: Romo boggled a snap on a field-goal attempt. Would've won the game. Completely and utterly Romo's fault.
2nd against Giants: Ware's offside’s call kept NYG drive alive and gave them 7 points. (Literally kept alive. Ware didn't pass rush, wasn't in on the tackle, and it was third down.) Crayton’s 3rd down drop cost them a 1st, NYG took the punt and scored on that as well.
3rd against the Vikings: F. Adams is injured and protection for Romo breaks down completely. Favre was just perfect. Two of his TD passes were so well defended the ball had about a 12 inch wide lane to travel through and that's where it traveled. You can't even get mad at the defense for that. Brett just had the best post-season game of his career.
I’m sure someone will tell me why Peyton lost his games, I couldn’t find video footage of them on NFL.com.
Romo has made it to the playoffs 75% of the seasons he has started games in, and 100% of the seasons in which he was the starter and missed no games due to injury. Peyton missed the playoffs 2 of his first 4 years as a starter ('98 and '01) and missed no games due to injury. If not for a freak occurrence the Cowboys would've been in the playoffs in ‘08. This freak occurrence I speak of is the Eagles tying the Browns. If the Browns had pulled an actual win out of it then the Cowboys would've been in the playoffs. This is the only tie to happen since November of 2002.
I know I’m a Cowboys fan, I say that up-front. However, I feel I was extremely objective in this analysis. In my comparisons I strived to explain, without the possibility of misinterpretations, the way in which I chose to analyze Tony Romo’s statistics vs. Peyton Manning’s statistics. I hope everyone agrees that the methods used were as fair as possible, considering the differences between how Peyton and Romo became starting quarterbacks for their teams, with Romo riding the bench for over fifty-five games to start his career as an undrafted rookie, and Peyton never being on the bench in his entire career as the number one overall draft pick in the 1998 draft.
I’m debating doing a Tony Romo vs. Tom Brady article as well… but we all know that Romo’s playoff trips won’t compare in the slightest to Brady’s, whose first two trips to the post-season ended with victory.
Sources: NFL.com player statistics
