More stuff about Eli

I came across a few statistics about Eli (thanks to my friend Ray and my brother for directing me to them). There are lots of QBs in the NFL that put up their numbers like A-Rod puts up his homers. In case you don't know what I mean, it sure seems like A-Rod gets a disproportionate percentage of his HRs and RBIs against tired back of the bullpen pitchers in games where one team or the other already has a 6 run lead. The same can be said about some QBs who continue to pile up their stats in games against second rate defenses  where the lead is already two scores. Our boy Eli is not that way at all. Of Eli's 4,933 yards last year, 3,000 of them were complied when the Giants were behind in the game. Now, you might say that is expected, because a QB is forced to throw when his team is behind and likely to compile more yardage then. Maybe so, but Eli threw for a little more than 60% of his yards trying to bring the Giants back and that's more than a statistical coincidence or one caused by flow of a game.

If you don't like that statistic, try this one which my brother directed me to and I verified on coldhardfootballfacts.com. The piece did an analysis of QBs that can bring their team back from a 4th quarter deficit. When your team is down 2 or 3 scores, the game is excluded from consideration because you can assume that the team is getting routed and no QB would be able to bring his team back. However, the analysis considered all games where the team was down by 1 score (i.e. between 1 and 8 points) and counted how many times the QB brought his team back to win. It turns out Aaron Rodgers is really poor in this situation, with a record of 3-18 when the Packers are down. Tony Romo, often discredited as one who is unclutch in the fourth quarter has in fact brought his team back around 35% of the time in such situations. Here's the punch line: the best active QB by far in this situation is Giants QB Eli Manning who has a 21-22 record in games where the Giants were down by a score sometime in the 4th quarter. To emphasize this point, in the recent two Super Bowl runs, Eli brought the Giants back from fourth quarter deficits in 4 of the 8 games. In 2007, Giants were down 17-14 to the Cowboys in the divisional round game and were down to the Patriots (twice) in the Super Bowl. In the recent playoffs, Giants were down in the 4th quarter in the conference championship against the 49ers and the Super Bowl to the Patriots.

He is demonstrably the best clutch QB in the NFL.