Brett Favre vs. Chad Pennington

This Sunday the Dolphins will play the New York Jets. And as ESPN's First Take loves to, they asked this question to Skip Bayless and um, nobody cares who else Skip faced: "This year, who is the better QB, Favre or Pennington?" The opponent said Pennington, I think, and Skip went on a two minute pompous rant about about how Favre is better. His logic actually isn't that bad. Pennington is in a West Coast offense which includes a lot of dink and dumps which pad Pennington's stats whereas Brett Favre plays the more traditional role as a QB and essentially "earns" his stats because he's forced to actually look at defensive schemes and make plays.

But let's take a closer look at stats. I'm going to discount passer rating for this argument because if Pennington truely is better because of lots of dink and dumps, his passer rating should be inflated. I think the best stat to look at is Yards Per Attempt. If Brett Favre is truly better because he doesn't dink and dump, then he should have a better YPA than Pennington.

Pennington: 7.74 YPA, 6th in the NFL
Farve: 6.72 YPA, 22nd in the NFL

Even if run after the catches help Chad's YPA, there's no reason Favre's YPA should be THAT low. Advantage: Pennington

Another important stat one COULD look at is completion percentage. Now here, Pennington should have a high comp %. (In fact, I was watching SportsCenter one day and they showed one game where Chad P. had 11 straight completions yet the vast majority of them WERE dink and dumps and it would have been pathetic if he DIDN'T have 11 straight completions on the type of passes he threw). But if Favre has a comp % even CLOSE to Pennington, then Farve his better because his completions are more skilled and harder to do

Pennington: 67.0% t-2nd
Favre: 67.0% t-2nd

Advantage: Favre

Let's look over some other stats:

TD/INT ratio:

Pennignton: 17 TD/ 7 INT, 2.43
Favre: 21 TD/ 19 INT, 1.11

Yes Favre should have more INTs and TDs than Chad but there's absolutely no excuse, whatsoever, for that low of a TD/INT ratio

Advantage: Pennington

Football Outsider stats:

Pennington: 5th in DVOA, 7th in DYAR
Favre: 23rd in DVOA, 19th in DYAR

Advantage: Pennington (and it's not even close)

Chad Pennington is BY FAR the better quarterback this year. Brett Favre gives up WAY too many interceptions and has superior less value than Chad Pennington. And considering Favre's top two receivers are far better than Pennington's (look up Ted Ginn Jr, Devone Bess, Jericho Cotchery, and Lav Coles's stats on footballoutsiders.com) it's really pathetic how bad Favre is this year.

Kudos, Chad P. for having a great 2008 season and I'm sorry Favre stole your pro bowl selection

SIDENOTE: Chad Pennington is 2nd in the NFL in passer rating and Favre is 18th behind QBs like Shaun Hill, Trent Edwards, Eli Manning, and Jason Campbell. Now passer rating is clearly a flawed statistic but if you're really high in passer rating then your a really good QB. If you're mediocre in passer rating, then you're just a mediocre QB. So don't look how many spots there are between Pennington and Favre so know that Pennington is at the top so he's good and Favre is towards the middle so he's just mediocre.

SIDENOTE 2: This is NOT a statement for who's career is better because Brett Favre CLEARLY wins that one, this is JUST for the 2008/2009 season