Comebacks: Young vs. Elway vs. Brady vs. Montana vs. Marino

I wanted to see just how clutch Vince Young was or was not. So I compared him to the greatest comeback quarterbacks of all time based on % of comebacks per start. This includes all playoff games. The stats come directly from pro-football reference.com. They only include 4th quarter comebacks or game winning drives. That's all. I thought it was going to be very favorable for VY going in, but I did not expect Vince Young to beat all of them, especially Marino, and to beat most of them so handily. So for me this was real eye opener.

Total comebacks - Total Game Winning Drives - Total Starts
Vince Young (7) (11) (30)
John Elway (35) (50) (251)
Tom Brady (21) (30) (128)
Joe Montana (31) (34) (177)
Dan Marino (37) (51) (258)
Steve McNair (18) (23) (163)

so the results are as follows for percentage of/start

Comebacks:
0.23333 Vince Young
0.175141243 Joe Montana
0.1640625 Tom Brady
0.143410853 Dan Marino
0.139442231 John Elway
0.110429448 Steve McNair

Game Winning Drives:
0.36667 Vince Young
0.234375 Tom Brady
0.199203187 John Elway
0.197674419 Dan Marino
0.192090395 Joe Montana
0.141104294 Steve McNair

I thought it extraordinary that Vince Young has a game winning drive every 3 starts. Wow.

What this stat does not determine is how many situations were blown vs won. Those stats are not available yet, but I think VY would win that category too as he very rarely loses or has lost. I'm sure those stats will be made available next year according to the site.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty remarkable.

 

I have to agree that argument doesn't hold any water given that McNair played under the same coach a vast majority of his career, and was known as being a clutch player in the 4th quarter, and Steve isn't even at the halfway mark of what VY has accomplished. That is what makes this so remarkable to me.

Additionally, I just looked at Kerry Collins with the Titans to take this one step further. Kerry won a lot games here, and yet he too is outdistanced by VY under the same coach in Fisher.

Kerry Collins on the Titans:
Kerry Collins (2) (4) (20)
Vince Young (7) (11) (30)

Comebacks:
Vince Young .233333
Kerry Collins .100000

Game Winning Drives
Vince Young .366667
Kerry Collins .200000

Now if you look at Kerry Collins career numbers, you'll see the following:

Kerry Collins Career Numbers:
Kerry Collins (21) (29) (171)
Comebacks:
0.117318436
Game Winning Drives:
0.162011173

Kerry's comeback numbers are actually better with the Panthers and Giants than they are with the Titans. So Jeff Fisher did not provide a higher frequency than Kerry Collins other teams. And both of those teams made the playoffs and nearly the superbowl. He did have more game winning drives with the titans on average than during his carreer with the Panthers and Giants, but only slightly, and he still gets crushed by VY in the numbers game there too. McNair also helps to refute this.

So now you have two pretty good qb's, McNair and Collins, under the same coach, not even coming close to VY in Clutch statistics. They aren't even half of what VY has done in this area.

 

First of all, we are talking about clutch moments, not domination moments. So that's bit of apples and oranges. But let's think about that anyway because I know what you are trying to point out. And it's a decent question to pose. The argument would be that the dominant teams, or the teams that win a lot are less likely to need a comeback because they were winning. And also, and this is important too, that they were not losing as much, and therefor were not in a position to comeback from deficits as much. So you have to ask yourself, where the 49ers, Patriots, Dolphins, or Broncos in any less a postion to come back from a deficit than VY? Or where they really that much more dominant than the Titans? And ultimately, does that mean that they were more clutch?

Montana: 72% wins ( 1 more win or 1 fewer loss per season )
Brady: 79% wins ( 2 more wins or 2 fewer losses per season )
Marino: 61% wins ( 0 fewer wins/losses per season )
Elway: 64% wins ( 0 fewer wins/losses per season )
Vince Young: 62% wins

So Elway and Marino, the same amount of chances in general to comeback as VY. They lost just as many games and won just as many games. They were really no more dominant than the Titans. and they were facing deficits just as much as the Titans. They just did not deliver as many clutch moments in those same opps.

Montana and Brady had a few missed opportunites to come back, because they were a little more dominant, but lets say you gave them 2 extra opportunities per year to come back based on their winning percentages listed above and they did it, does that make up the ground on Vince? At best, it brings them in line with Vince's 23% comeback number. and that's in an optimal world where they get the comebacks. There is no reason to think they would get those at a 100% clip. So even in a hypothethical world where they have a few more tighter games, and they get all their extra comeback chances, Vince is still beating Marino and Elway, and VY is in the ball park of Montana and Brady. But that's a totally hypothetical world, not based in the real statistics.

In my opinion you can only look at the moments that actually took place and the stats that are available. And Vince has a higher clutch factor based on those numbers.