For many people, the New England Patriots' chances of avenging their Super Bowl loss were blown to bits at the same time as Tom Brady's knee. That got me wondering: What is the effect of a good team losing its starting quarterback?
I did a study to answer this question, and found a group of 18 teams since the 1970 merger. To meet the criteria, the team had to have a winning record in the prior season and lose their quarterback to a holdout or an unexpected injury in the offseason or early in the next season.
I disregarded the 1982 season in the study because of the nine-game regular season. I also confined the study to good teams, because the Patriots are obviously a good team, and I wanted to study the effect of a strong team losing a quarterback. I disregarded free agents because I wanted to limit the study to players whose teams obviously wanted to keep them, and in many cases, deciding that with great certainty would be too difficult.
The parameters of my study eliminate two of the most obvious successes: Drew Bledsoe getting injured in 2001, and Brady taking over and leading the Patriots to the Super Bowl win, and Trent Green suffering a preseason injury in 1999, allowing Kurt Warner to take over and lead the Rams to the Super Bowl. Bledsoe is excluded because the Patriots were 5-11 with him the year before, and Green was excluded because he was not the Rams' starter during the previous season.
These 16 teams had an average record of 10.5 wins the season before their unexpected injury to their starting quarterback. To figure their expected wins, I looked at the teams from 1978-2006 who were not in the study and posted a record of 10-6 or 11-5 (again, excluding 1982). This group of well over 100 teams had an average record of a little better than 9-7 the next season.
(Note: In all cases where a team played 14 games, I figured their percentage for a 16-game season by using the same winning percentage and multiplying by 16.)
Here are the 18 teams:
1972 Cowboys -- Roger Staubach (shoulder injury)
1972 Dolphins -- Bob Griese (injured in 5th game of 1972)
1978 Colts -- Bert Jones (separated shoulder in preseason)
1980 Rams -- Pat Haden (broken thumb in first game of 1980)
1981 Lions -- Gary Danielson (injured in 4th game of '81)
1984 Rams -- Vince Ferragamo (broken hand in third game of '84)
1986 Rams -- Dieter Brock (injured all season)
1989 Colts -- Chris Chandler (knee injury in 3rd game of '89)
1990 Saints -- Bobby Hebert (held out all season)
1991 49ers -- Joe Montana (offseason elbow surgery)
1991 Eagles -- Randall Cunningham (knee injury 1st game of '91)
1993 Dolphins -- Dan Marino (injured in 5th game of '93)
1998 Vikings -- Brad Johnson (injured in 2nd game of '98)
1999 Jets -- Vinny Testaverde (tore Achilles' tendon in 1st game of '99)
1999 49ers -- Steve Young (about 500th concussion in 3rd game of '99)
2002 Falcons -- Michael Vick (injured in first preseason game of '02)
2005 Jets -- Chad Pennington (various injuries knocked him out for good in September)
2006 Buccaneers -- Chris Simms (ruptured spleen in 3rd game of '06)
All of these guys were at least good quarterbacks (Brock, the worst of the lot as far as NFL performance, was a very successful quarterback in the Canadian Football League for many years and was well past his prime by the time he joined the Rams.). Depending on how you rate Staubach, Griese, Montana and Marino, Brady would be somewhere between first and fifth if you rated the quarterbacks on this list.
THE SUCCESSES
Some of these kept right on rolling or even improved after their quarterback went down and didn't get up. The 1972 Dolphins are the best example, winning their last 10 regular season games after Griese went out.
The Vikings went from 9-7 in 1997 under Brad Johnson to 15-1 under Randall Cunningham in 1998. The 1972 Cowboys fell off by a game from their 11-3 mark of 1971, but still finished 10-4 and played in the NFC Championship game (although they wouldn't have gotten there without Staubach's performance in the previous playoff game).
The Rams got better when Vince Ferragamo replaced Pat Haden in 1980, and again when Jeff Kemp replaced Ferragamo in 1984.
THE FAILURES
Strangely enough, the five most recent teams on this list bombed worse than Gilbert Gottfried doing stand-up in a convent.The 1999 Jets went from 12-4 to 8-8. The 49ers that year fell from 12-4 to 4-12. The '02 Falcons went from 9-6-1 to 5-11, and three of those wins came in Michael Vick's four starts at the end of the season. The '05 Jets and '06 Bucs dropped off six and seven games, respectively.
The 1978 Colts also went straight downhill when Bert Jones was injured, and were in fact shut out in their first two games. From 1975 to 1979, the Colts were 36-13 in the regular season when Jones started, and 5-20 when he didn't.
THE BOTTOM LINE
On average, the teams in the study went from 10.5 wins per 16-game schedule to 8.6 -- a drop of 1.89 wins, and around a half win less than expected.
I don't know about you, but that number surprises me. The recent numbers aren't encouraging, and it's a small sample size, but I would have thought the study would have showed a greater effect on a team's fortunes.
My study of 43 teams who finished 13-3 or better from 1978-2006 (as always, excluding 1982) found that on average, they lost four wins the next year. With that as a history, the Patriots should have been expected to finish about 12-4 this season (I think that would have been low if Brady had stayed healthy, but that's why we look at that many teams.).
Combine those two, and you get a decline of around five or six wins from last season. Absent some unforeseeable factors, I think 10 or 11 wins is a reasonable estimate of how the Patriots will fare this season.
What you can't help noticing, though, is that only seven of the 18 teams made the playoffs, and those seven teams were a combined 5-6. Based on last season's records, the Patriots have the easiest schedule in the NFL this season, and you should never underestimate this team and what it has done, but history says their Super Bowl dreams have probably gone poof.
Matt DiFilippo may be reached at allthings222@fastmail.fm