Brett Favre's INT numbers

D

DeadHorse

1,000+ Posts
I made this post in the $20 million Brett Farve thread but I thought the numbers were interesting enough but a seperate subject from the $20 million.

Anyway, here are Favre's INT numbers over the past 5 years compared to other QB's who have pllayed that long. It never really hit me how many INT's he threw until I started compared him to other QB's. I was stunned.


Brett Farve has AVERAGED 20 INT's per year over the past 5 years.

For comparable numbers:

Peyton Manning: Average of 10.6 per year. He had a five year high last year of 14. That's less that half of the one year high Favre had with 29.

Tom Brady: Average of 12 per year. He had 8 last year but the other 4 years were betwen 12 and 14 INT per year. VERY consistent.

Drew Brees: Average of 13.2 per year. I know that Brees isn't an elite QB but that's my point. He still throws 7 INT's per year less than Favre. That's about one every other game.

Matt Hassleback: 13.2 per year

McNabb: Not a fair comparison because he's had some injury shortened years lately but he's NEVER thrown more than 13 INT's in one season. So, his career high is a full 7 INT's below Favre's AVERAGE.

I could probably troll the entire history of the NFL and not find one QB who averaged 20 INT's over a 5 year span because any other QB's who throws that many picks gets benched.
 
A more accurate way to look at it would be to compare the INT% of each QB, as each threw a different number of passes.

Also, all of those QBs were on better teams than Favre over the last 5 years. Generally speaking, the better the surrounding team, the less the QB has to press to make plays.

Of course, Favre did have a few poor seasons, but 3 of the last 5 years his QB rating was over 90, which is really good in the NFL.
 
I will preface this by saying the Packers are my favorite team, and Favre has been my favorite player since I was a kid. The current situation leaves me conflicted, so I try to stay away from threads on it.

But your stats don't tell the whole story. For one thing, your comparing the two worst years of Favre's career - 05 and 06, including that 29 INT anomaly, by far the worst of his career - with guys that are in their prime. Further, Favre has always been a very aggressive type of quarterback, who threw a relatively large number of picks in his MVP years.

Leaving that aside, it took only a quick search to reveal that Manning averaged 20 INTs a year from 98-2002, and he wasn't benched. I didn't bother to look up anymore, but I am quite sure that it is far from unprecedented.

What I was really looking for - and why I didn't spend more time on INT numbers - was other numbers. For instance, excluding Manning, do you know how many 30 TD seasons the other guys you mentioned - Brees, Brady, McNabb, and Hasselbeck - have, combined? Two. And one of those was Brady's monster 50 TD year last year, one of the greatest years in NFL history, and he should get a lot of credit for that, but a definite outlier. Include Manning, who adds 4 more seasons, and they have 6 combined. Favre, on the other hand, has 8 such seasons, including 5 consecutive.

We all know Favre throws a lot of picks, that's no secret - he has never thrown as few as the 7 you posted for Brees - but he has put up lots of good numbers too. Your selective look at his stats is just hating.
 
When Manning threw his 20 per year, his best years were still ahead of him. I think it is relevant that the comparison is being made between BF and quarterbacks in their prime NOW. It would appear that years like 2005, 2006 might become the norm and 2007 the outlier with regard to BF.
 
From 1988 to 1992 Vinny Testeverde threw for 106 INT's and 72 TD's for the lowly Bucs. He played in 70 ouf of 80 possible games as Tampa went 24-56 in that five year run. But I digress.
 
Nice pass against the Giants last year Favre....

Most media hyped QB in History...the love affair with him is insane.

Still will be a HOF though
 
The stats on Favre were from the last 5 years. (2003-2008.)

Looking at the years 1998-2002 (which is a different 5 years), he averaged 18.6 INT's. That's not much different. Was Green Bay terrible for that 10 year stretch? I remember them having Ahman Green for awhile so they had a decent running game.

For what it's worth, take out his first year in Atlanta and he's averaged 18 INT's per year. That's huge. As for TD's, he's averaged 27 per year.

27/18 is not good. That's 1.5 TD for every INT.

As for comparable TD/INT ratios:

Manning: 306 TD's/153 INT's. (Career totals.) That's 2 to 1.

Brady: 197/86. That's 2.2 to 1. (Impressive.)

Brees: 134/82. 1.63 to 1. (Hell, even that's better than Favre.)

Hassleback: 142/84. 1.69 to 1. (Not great, either.)

McNabb: 171/79. 2.16 to 1. (Nice. Better than I thought.)

So, as you can see, Farve throws a lot of TD's but he throws INT's at a much higher rate than virtually any other QB that's played more than 5 years. That 1.5 to 1 rate basically means that for every 4 TD/1 INT game, it's matched by a 2 TD/3 INT game.

Color me unimpressed.
 
GOTJ, you don't think it works both ways? That his "gunslinger mentality" has led to him pulling out some games a more conservative approach wouldn't have?

If he were more conservative, he may not be a future HOFer.

And seeing as how he leads the NFL in Yards, TDs, Completions, etc... his stats are already pretty "insane."
 
Deadhorse, how about these numbers:

30+ TD seasons: 8
League Leader in TDs: 4
90+ RAT seasons: 8
Pro Bowl Seasons: 9
MVP seasons: 3
4,000+ yd seasons: 5
3,500+ yd seasons: 13

How do the rest of the QBs measure up to those?
 
Deadhorse, you'd have a point IF his QB rating were not so darned high. QB Rating takes the & the bad into account.

You're using one stat to say he sucks & I'm using many to show that his overall worth is, well, worth the INTs.

Again, he had a 90+ QB rating 8 times.

In reply to:
Click to expand...
 
No one cares about QB rating.

I'm not saying he sucks. I'm saying he's vastly overrated.

So, it's his WR's fault for his INT's? Let him get traded to Minnesota or Chicago then. Their WR's are absolutely horrible.
 
Favre overrated?

I have to disagree. If you have in your head he is the GOAT then yes he is overrated. If you call him one of the top 10 QB's of all-time, a year in year out pro bowler, consecutive game leader, superbowl winner then that more accurately describes him.

Peyton Manning and Tom Brady will go down as better QB's when all is said and done but that doesn't make Favre overrated.
 
Tory Aikman - Touchdowns:165 Interceptions:141
TD:INT ratio: 1.17

Brett Favre - Touchdowns:442 Interceptions:288
TD:INT ratio: 1.53

Interesting.
 
I thought that was interesting about Aikman as well. I didn't remember him throwing that many picks.

However, upon further review, the reason I don't remember it was because 36 of his INT's were thrown during his first two seasons. (The Cowboys were dreadful those years.) Those 36 INT's represent 25% of his career total.

Take those two years away and Aikman only averaged 10 INT's per year. Farve, on the other hand, is a lot more consistent in his INT's. If you take away his 29 INT year, his high mark is 24 and his low mark is 14 but over 5 year increments, his average stays around 18 per year.

To be fair, let's look at INT's per attempt. Favre had 1 INT for every 30 attempts. Comparable numbers:

Aikman: 1 INT for every 33 attempts

Brady: 1 INT for every 42 attempts. (Nice.)

Manning: 1 INT for every 35 attempts.

Hassleback: 1 INT for every 37 attempts.

McNabb: 1 INT for every 47 attempts. (Wow. That surprised me.)

Just for historical comparisons:

Marino: 1 INT for every 33 attempts.

Elway: 1 INT for every 32 attempts:

Montana: 1 INT for every 38 attempts.

Young: 1 INT for every 38 attempts

It should be noted that I had no idea how these comparable stats would turn out on a INT/attempt basis. I typed in each name and then looked them up.

Not surprisingly, Favre's ratio was the worst of the bunch and in some cases, much worse.

If Minnesota or Chicago give away a lot to get a 38 year old INT prone QB, then they're getting taken.
 
The point is the guy is overrated in a major way. He is not top 10 all time. In fact, I'll say that IMO he isn't top 10 since I have been watching football (I'm mid 30s). Favre is a good QB, but he just doesn't fit the bill for me. It is just unforgivable to give the ball away with the ridiculous INTs he throws too frequently.

Montana
Elway
Marino
Manning
Brady
S Young
Kelly
Aikman
Bradshaw
Fouts
 
FWIW, it looks like Aikman's ratio is low because of a lack of TD passes, not because of too many interceptions. I'm sure Emmitt's propensity to take TDs away from the passing game didn't help things.

I'm of the general opinion that, while scoring is obviously all that matters for the team to win, yards gained shows the individual contributions better than TDs scored (of course, no single stat shows it perfectly), since you can't reach the endzone without traversing the yards to get there.

Look at Chris McGaha of Arizona State last year. Only caught 1 TD pass all year, but he caught the most passes and gained the most yards, so a lot of other guys TD's might not have happened without him. In 2005, Melton had almost as many running TDs and Vince Young, but that doesn't mean they made almost equal contributions to our running game.
 
I agree that Aikman's ratio has more to do with Emmit Smith than his propensity to throw INTs, Stat. I decided to look up both TDs and INTs as a percentage of attempts for all the QBs Back to Texas listed as better than Favre. I subtracted the INT/Attempt % from the TD/Attempt % (to the nearest tenth) to come up with a 1.8 for Favre (5.04 TD/A -3.28 INT/Attem.) Respectable, right along with the average for most of these guys. Marino, for example, has a 2.0. Young, Manning, and Brady (based mostly on last season for Brady) are tops, with numbers at the 2.9 and 3 levels.

Aikman's number is .5. I will conced that a lot of those TDs were taken away by Smith. So what about guys that didn't have the luxury of a great running game? Well, Dan Fouts number is a .2. Not only did he throw TDs at a lesser clip than most of these guys (4.5%) but he also thre a pick 4.3% of the time - a full percentage point higher than Favre. Terry Bradshaw came out with a net of 0. While he threw TDs at a rate comparable to the rest of these guys, he also threw INTs at the highest rate by far - 5.4% for both. Jim Kelly also came out with a low number, 1.3, based on his 3.7% interception rate.

The real kicker, for me, was numerical evidence that John Elway is down towards the bottom of this list, because I have always viewed him as extremely overrated. I shudder everytime I see him discussed as potentially the greatest of all time. Elway had the lowest TD to attempt number of everybody but Aikman - 4.1% - and he didn't have Emmit Smith to hand off to. (He never had a 30 TD season) Subtracting his 3.1% INT rate - which is about middle of the pack, not much better than Favre's 3.28% -, he nets a 1.

Favre threw alot of INTs that were stupid in his career, no doubt. He also made a lot of huge plays. Whether you want him on your team or not reflects more on what style of play you want out of your QB, I suppose. I'm just throwing these numbers out to demonstrate that our perceptions of some of these guys don't always match reality.
 
Great analysis, formermav.

I've always thought that Bradshaw was the most overrated ever, with Elway a close second. Bradshaw had the luxery of playing with more Hall of Famers than anybody, & still didn't put up very good numbers even for his era.
 
I think that maybe the best way to judge a QB through the eras (and I do firmly believe that today's game is even a different era than the 1990s) is to look at number of Pro Bowl selections as 2/3 of the determining factor are the players & coaches.

Here's what I've found (active players in BOLD. * = AFL Pro Bowls included):

Unitas- 10
Favre- 9
Marino- 9
Elway- 9
Moon- 9
Tarkenton- 9
MANNING- 8
Montana- 8
Griese- 8
Young- 7
Dawson- 7*
Aikman- 6
Fouts- 6
Staubach- 6
MCNABB- 5
Namath- 5*
Jurgensen- 5
BRADY- 4
Anderson- 4
Bledsoe- 4
Gabriel- 4
Kelly- 4
Esiason- 4
Cunningham- 4
Starr- 4
Stabler- 4
Hasselbeck- 3
Krieg- 3
Bradshaw- 3
Simms- 2

I kept the list to 1960-present. Did I miss anyone?

1st Observation: Bradshaw is waaay down there.

2nd Observation: Bob Griese ranks a LOT higher than i would have thought.
 
Pro bowls are a tough one to use as a standard because reputation and the cohort of QBs in your conference has more to do with it than anything. Lots of mediocre QBs go to the Pro Bowl multiple years because they take several and there is no one else worth the appearance.

So, Favre could be a top 2 QB or he could of have not had a lot of NFC QB competition (just think about his division and when was the last time anyone in it had a decent QB?) and had his performances highlighted favorably in the media where his peers get some of their impressions formed?
 
Back to Texas, I thnk players & coaches are the most qualified to answer the question. Besides, Favre was making pro bowls in a conference of Aikman, Young, etc...

Did you actually look at the list? Where are all these mediocre QBs with multiple Pro Bowls? Jim everett only went to 1 Pro bowl. Hasslebeck with 3? OK, but how about 4 or more? Remember, Favre had 9, second most to Unitas.

But to humor you, same list but with 1st Team NFL All-Pro (only one per year in the entire NFL):
Unitas- 5
Favre- 3
MANNING- 3
Montana- 3
Marino- 3
Young- 3
Jurgensen- 2
Griese- 2
Dawson- 2
Fouts- 2
Tarkenton- 1
BRADY- 1
Anderson- 1
Namath- 1
Gabriel- 1
Kelly- 1
Esiason- 1
Cunningham- 1
Starr- 1
Stabler- 1
Bradshaw- 1
Aikman- 0
Staubach- 0
MCNABB- 0
Elway- 0
Moon- 0
Bledsoe- 0
Hasselbeck- 0
Krieg- 0
Simms- 0

Again, the only guy with more than Favre is Unitas.

Also, no one has ever led the NFL in TD passes more often than Favre.

Conclusions...
 
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