Week 17 Quick Reads
by Vince Verhei
Quarterback Matt Flynn threw for 480 yards and six touchdowns against Detroit yesterday, setting Green Bay Packers benchmarks in both categories. As Flynn passed names like Bart Starr, Brett Favre, and Aaron Rodgers (not to mention 4,000-yard passers Lynn Dickey and Don Majkowski) in the Green Bay record books, he clearly played the best game of any passer this week, but where does it rank on the all-time list? And as Flynn enters free agency, what can it tell us about his future potential?
Flynn completed 31-of-44 passes with three sacks, one fumble, and one interception against Detroit. Combined with a couple of rushing plays, that all worked out to 290 DYAR (Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement - more info available here). That's the third-best game of year - Drew Brees' 412-yard, 5-touchdown game against Minnesota in Week 15 is still tops, and Tom Brady's 361-yard, 3-touchdown performance against Philadelphia in Week 12 is second. No other quarterbacks, though, have played a game this good all season. Not Ben Roethlisberger. Not Philip Rivers. Not Tony Romo or Matt Ryan or Eli Manning or Cam Newton. Not even Aaron Rodgers has played this well in 2011.
Football Outsiders' play-by-play database goes back to 1992, and Flynn's game against Detroit ranks as the 15th best game in that timeframe. The best game belongs to Trent Green, who in 2002 threw five touchdowns against a Miami team that only gave up 20 passing scores all year. Four former Super Bowl winners make the top-15 list: Brady (five times), Brees (three times), Peyton Manning, and Ben Roethlisberger.
Maybe Flynn will never win a Super Bowl like those men did. So let's not look at the best quarterbacks who have played this well, let's look instead at the worst quarterbacks to ever hit 290 DYAR in a game. In alphabetical order, that leaves us with Marc Bulger, Randall Cunningham, Green, and Scott Mitchell. The first three names of that list were Pro Bowlers, and the fourth was essentially a league-average starter for a half-decade in the mid-'90s.
Going a little further down the list, down to the 260-DYAR level, gives us more of the same: Pro Bowl quarterback after Pro Bowl quarterback, from Rodgers to Matt Hasselbeck to Carson Palmer to Rich Gannon to Steve Young to Drew Bledsoe to Bobby Hebert to Troy Aikman to Neil O'Donnell to Daunte Culpepper to Jeff Garcia. Obviously, some of those names are a lot better than others, but with the exception of Mitchell, every quarterback who has ever played even one game anywhere near Flynn's level played in Hawaii at least once in their careers. It's only one game, but the simple fact is that mediocre quarterbacks are almost never this good.
On the other hand, it's not the first start of Flynn's career. Last year, Flynn started in Foxborough and completed 65 percent of his passes with three touchdowns. New England's weak secondary had a lot to do with that, but it's still not a game that looks bad on a quarterback's resume.
Matt Flynn is 26 years old. He has four years of apprenticeship on one of the best offenses in the league. His ceiling is Hall of Famer; his realistic floor is Pro Bowler. That's got to be worth more than an unproven rookie, doesn't it?
Flynn is about to enter free agency, but the Packers would never be foolish enough to let him walk away for nothing. They're sure to franchise him and trade him away for picks, just like New England did with Matt Cassel. The Pats sent Cassel and Mike Vrabel to Kansas City for a second-round pick. Given how many teams are desperate for quality passing - Seattle, Miami, and Washington, to name some of the top candidates - the Pack are bound to get more than that for Flynn. Any team that gets Flynn for a first-round pick, though, will have gotten quite a bargain.
1. Matt Flynn (GB) - 31/44, 480 yards, 6 TDs, 1 INT, 290 (total DYAR), 295 (pass DYAR), -5 (run DYAR)
We just talked a lot about how good this game was. Well, here's a little more: On deep passes (more than 15 yards past the line of scrimmage), Flynn went 5-of-7 for 168 yards and two touchdowns, and also drew a 21-yard DPI call.
