Resolved: Tom Brady is a better quarterback than Peyton Manning

To make this a little easier to read, I will respond to my opponent’s C2 first, then his C1. Most of my arguments will be rooted in my counters of his contentions, however I will have a separate section for my own arguments and just refer back. == C2: Passing Efficiency == My opponent lists a small handful of stats, only one of them actually benefits Brady and one of the stats is in favor of Manning. And one, the average per completion is distorted thanks to rounding. My opponent lists it as 11.7 to 11.8. If we take the rounding to the hundredths rather than tenths, we find that Brady is only 11.76 [1] to Manning’s 11.74 [2]. That comes out to a difference of less than 1 inch per completion. However, measuring by completion is less accurate than measuring by pass attempt, after all, every pass attempt counts, not just the completions (this is why ESPN measure per attempt rather than per completion). Here, Manning wins out 7.69 over Brady’s 7.46, almost a quarter yard per attempt. Let us also not forget that Manning has a far better career Passer rating than Brady (97.2 [2] over 95.7 [1]) as well as beats him out in a ton of other stats too numerous to list. But most telling is ESPN’s relatively new QBR (Total QB Rating). As the Bleacher Report put it, “Where the Passer Rating formula only takes into account plays without considering the quarterback's teammates' efforts or the circumstances of a game, TQR allows for quarterbacks to be rated on every aspect of a passing play to establish their complete contributions to a game. ” [3] In this category (so far, only going back the last 8 years) has Manning head and shoulders above Brady, 80.7 [2] to 71.6 [1]. Manning is averaging just over 80, while Brady has only broken the 80 barrier once in the last 8 years. == C1: Winning == My opponent starts this section off by admitting that Football is a team sport, but then attributes none of the wins to the team. All the wins go to the QB. This is far from accurate. As already shown with the QBR, when the strength of the team is factored out, Manning is crazy better than Brady. We can look at that right there and stop, but I really like numbers so we will dive into it all [4]. One key component that is easy to measure is the power of the run game. Things like pocket protection are a little harder to measure and find free stats for. But it is a well-established key of Football that the running game opens up the passing game [5]. Basically, if teams know that you are going to be passing, they throw more defenders back, making it harder, even for good QBs. When the defense has to play close and worry about the running game, this opens up the passing, allowing even average QBs to look really good (see RG3 in 2012 and then in 2013). The success of the run is undeniably vital to the success of the QB. But, it is the run that establishes the pass, not the other way around. Looking at our two QBs in question, we can see a stark difference between what run games they had to work with. Averaging all the years for Brady and Manning, we find that Brady’s team averages 1,889 yards per season on 475.5 attempts per season, to Manning’s teams’ 1,667 yards and 427.4 carries per season [6]. From this, we can clearly see that Brady has a stronger team to fall back on and help him win. This is a far bigger reason that Brady has a better winning rate (not to mention, look at the teams in his division, lol, the Bills, really? They could barely break .500 against High School teams). == My arguments == While most of my arguments are already visible in the refutations, I would like to add one additional one. Performance under pressure, namely when they are down by only a single possession (1-8 points). Now, the career stats for this is not readily available, but you can get them for each season for both players on ESPN [1][2] and manually do the work to calculate it all out, which I have enjoyed doing. Let’s start with Brady. Over his career, he is only 596 of 1,012 for 7089 yards (A mere 58.89% and 7.00 yards per attempt). He has 46 TDs (4.55%) to 25 INTs (2.47%) for a total Passer rating of 85.2. Going to Manning, over his career, he is 975 of 1,502 for 11,513 yards (64.91% and 7.67 yards per attempt). He has 80 TDs (5.33%) with 43 INTs (2.86%) for a total Passer rating of 93.9. While there are instances for both players of choking, over the long run, Peyton Manning is by far the better choice when the game is close and just all around the better player. [1] . http://espn.go.com... [2] . http://espn.go.com... [3] . http://bleacherreport.com... [4] . http://www.debate.org... [5] . http://en.wikipedia.org...(American_football) [6] . http://www.nfl.com...