We’re product of our pasts, and watching Dan Marino for 17 years showed me what a great quarterback can do — and what he can’t do, too.
He can’t win games by himself, for instance.
That sounds fundamental enough, but it causes controversy when you follow through from that thought to the next one: Winning isn’t a quarterback stat.
Football traditionally says it is. I say it obviously involves the quarterback but has other important factors to the point it’s a full organizational stat.
This subject has come up again because of a column I wrote regarding Tua Tagovailoa and Justin Herbert and how their organizations will decide who has more success — who, simply put, is labeled a “winning quarterback.”
Each is down the road to success. And it’s a nice stat about Tagovailoa being 8-0 this year in games he starts and finishes (he didn’t finish against San Francisco). But Dolphins fans, above all others, should understand while winning certainly involves the quarterback in a big way, their most tenured quarterbacks in recent years show it isn’t all about them.
Let’s look at the careers of Marino and Ryan Tannehill.
First, Marino. He’s a Hall of Fame quarterback. But his career was tied in many ways to the help around him. The defenses, primarily.
Marino had seven seasons where the Dolphins had a top-12 defense or better in fewest points allowed. Those seven years Marino’s regular-season record as a starter was 75-30 (71 winning percentage). He went to the playoffs all seven years. He went to three AFC titles games and a Super Bowl.
That helps explain why he was so great, right?
Now let’s look at the nine years he had a defense that ranked 16th or lower. His regular-season record those years was 75-66 (54%). He went to the playoffs three of those nine seasons. He advanced out of the wild-card round twice before losing. No AFC title games. No Super Bowl.
So was Marino a “winner” in those seven seasons with a good-to-great defense and a quarterback who didn’t have the “It” factor or “Clutch gene” when saddled with a below-average-to-bad defense?
Or was he just a quarterback whose fate was tied to the greater organization?
Now let’s look at Tannehill. My line in his first five years with the Dolphins was he was, “good enough if the team around him was good enough.” I gave up after that. I was worn down by the mediocrity.
Was it his fault?
We don’t need to break down the defensive numbers or rushing stats or field goal percentages in his case. You can remember the coaching and front office changes, issues like Bullygate and a cocaine-sniffing assistant, to understand the Dolphins at that time. But we have two different organizations to look at his numbers.
With the Dolphins from 2012 to 2018 (missing 2017 with injury), Tannehill went 42-46 as a starter (48%). They made one playoffs in 2016 (though he was hurt by then and Matt Moore played in the postseason loss).
With Tennessee since 2019, Tannehill is 37-17 in his starts (69%). He went to the playoffs the three previous seasons and is on the road to making it four playoffs in his four seasons there. He went to the AFC Championship Game his first year there in 2019 and had the No. 1 seed with the best regular-season record in 2020.
Is he a “winner” now?
Did he suddenly find, “It?”
Or is he just on a better organization, one where he’s good enough because everyone else around him is good enough.
Bottom-line: Winning isn’t an end-all quarterback stat. Need more? Marino won 64 percent of his starts. His replacement, Jay Fiedler had Ricky WIlliams’ running and defenses ranked third, 11th, third and fourth his first four seasons and won 67 percent of his games (35-17). Then Williams went to Australia in 2004, the defense slipped to 20th and Fiedler had a 1-6 record before getting hurt.
There’s a proviso to this idea to muddle up the view some. If I believe quarterbacks can’t win games alone, I also believe they can lose them alone. Look at baseball for this. A starting pitcher can give up 10 runs in the first inning and send his team to a loss. That same pitcher can throw a good game but to win is going to need help — defensively and offensively.
It’s similar for quarterbacks. If a quarterback throws four interceptions, the odds are his team is going to lose. That’s why the position is so important.
Tagovailoa always has understood a primary rule of being a great NFL quarterback: Don’t lose games. He hasn’t. He doesn’t make the big mistake — and hasn’t even when he had lesser talent around him.
He has more around him now and still isn’t making many mistakes. He’s like a good point guard making the right decisions of finding receivers running open in this sytem. The organization finally has given him good talent and good offensive coaching — and not just a good defense like he had the first two years.
So, no, winning isn’t just a quarterback stat. It involves the quarterback. It also involves a lot of other factors, as anyone watching Marino knew and anyone seeing Tannehill’s career play out understands.
Tua being 8-0 says something good about him — and something equally good about the help he’s getting, too.
Don’t take my word for that.
Tagovailoa, too, has said winning isn’t a quarterback stat.
