by Tommy Hayfield

Created on: February 03, 2009   Last Updated: September 23, 2009

Drew Brees's Howitzer-like Arm Delivers Best Quarterback Title

The best quarterback in the National Football League is not so hard to figure this year. This season has circumstances which make it even more interesting than usual, though.The two best quarterbacks I feel are Philip Rivers and Drew Brees and both played for .500 teams.

Brees who plays for New Orleans passed for an incredible 5069 yards while Rivers threw for a mere 4009 yards and led the NFL in pass efficiency. Rivers's numbers are excellent as his 105.5 efficiency rating indicates. His yards-per-pass-attempt is number one in the league coming in at 8.39 yards per attempt. Brees's yards-per-pass-attempt is 7.98 and perhaps is indicative of a New Orleans team that had a weaker defense than San Diego and had to throw more to stay competitive in games. Brees threw the ball ten more times per game than Rivers did at San Diego.

Both San Diego and New Orleans finished the regular season at 8-8 with the Chargers making the playoffs and New Orleans missing out. It's not typical for the number one rated quarterback's team to not have a winning record. Throwing for 5000 yards and having a non-winning record is also not typical although there have been so few 5000 yard passers it's hard to establish a trend for that achievement.

San Diego and New Orleans could both have had much better records with perhaps a handful of plays coming out in their favor this season. New Orleans lost it's eight games by a combined 55 points with five of their losses coming by three points or less. The New Orleans offense with Brees in charge kept them in almost every game with only two double-digit losses in their eight losses.

San Diego's Rivers showed great poise in keeping the Chargers in games as their eight losses were by combined total of 35 points with none of their losses by double-digit margins. They were competitive in every game and played nail-biting games to the final seconds of their losses.

A mere field goal at the end of New Orleans losses would have given them four more wins. In two other losses a field goal would have sent the Saints into overtime. Similarly, San Diego would have won three more games with a mere field goal added to their point total and another of those games would have been sent into overtime.

After having weighed the circumstances of their losses I give the edge to Drew Brees as the best quarterback in the NFL. Based on the New Orleans defense which is weaker than San Diego's and surrenders more points I give more credit to Brees for rallying his offense to give his team a chance to win in the final seconds. The 1000 yards more Brees amassed over Rivers yardage is amazing. His efficiency rating didn't suffer much either as he finished with a 96.2. His 40 pass attempts a game meant he was forcing a lot of passes yet his rating didn't suffer much for the need to move the ball down field.

Finally, Drew Brees has an arm which delivers passes at a John Elway-like speed. His changeup pace pass is akin to a hardball pass by Phillip Rivers. As a fan of the fastball-type passer I have to go with Drew Brees whose laser-like passes are spectaculaar. Rivers puts up yardage numbers as well but the fans and I'm one of them like the hard thrower. Drew Brees is cleaarly the best quarterback in the NFL in 2008.

Learn more about this author, Tommy Hayfield.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.