Intro
So as I was doing an Ultimus Week interview I waxed poetic about Borkus' performance yesterday against the Otters and how it felt like a changing of the guard as we begin to transition from the quarterbacks who created in S1 and S2 to the new generation. Indeed, next season it looks like we'll have just 1 starting quarterback from S1 (Akselsen) and 1 from S2 (Blocksdale) as the rest of the league transitions to younger players:
One of the S10 QBs or stop gap free agent
Kevin Fitzpatrick (S9)
Gus TT Showbiz (S9)
Brad Pennington (S8)
Ryan Applehort (S7)
And of course the oldest and highest TPE of this new wave of quarterbacks:
Borkus Maximus III (S6)
So I decided to pull passing data from every NSFL playoff game ever played to see where Borkus' performance ranks. That performance, as a reminder, was:
24/43 for 344 yards, 4 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and 0 sacks
Turns out this performance is one of the best we've ever seen in the playoffs.
But to back up a step, I used two related formulas to evaluate passing performances. First was Adjusted Yards per Attempt (AY/A) which takes touchdowns and interceptions and converts their value to yards (I used the NFL values: 20 and -45, respectively) then divides by passing attempts. This is a quick, easy way to measure passing efficiency. One step further, I also found the Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A) which is the same as the first formula except it includes sacks as passing plays so sack yardage is counted as negative yards and sacks are added to attempts. This takes a bit more manual work but does give a more complete picture of passing performances.
These may seem familiar because of kolbe's series on TANY/A (Total Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt) which takes ANY/A and adds quarterback rushes, rushing yards, and fumbles to the equation to get their total offensive efficiency. I did not do this here.
Best Passing Performances
Anyway on to the data.
In this sample, an "average" AY/A is around 6.6 (both median and mean), and ANY/A is around 5.3 (both median and mean). Our numbers don't translate perfectly to the NFL but in Peyton Manning's record setting 2004 regular season his lowest AY/A game was 7.414 at Jacksonville in Week 4 and he broke 10.000 a total of 8 times. His ANY/A numbers were, of course, similar as he his lowest was week 16 vs San Diego with a 7.396 and he broke 10.000 a total of 7 times. This is apropos of nothing except to give you a point of reference as we dig into NSFL performances.
The best performance in terms of both AY/A and ANY/A was Mike Boss in the S7 ASFC Championship when he went 28/46 for 484 yards, 4 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and took 2 sacks for 13 yards in a 48-24 victory over Arizona. This was good for a 12.261 AY/A and a 11.479 ANY/A.
The second-best was Mat Akselsen in the S5 NSFC Championship when he posted a 28/45 for 486 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions stat line and took 2 sacks for 12 yards. Extremely similar stat line to Boss above and got him a 12.133 AY/A and a 11.362 ANY/A.
Those are the only two playoff performances in NSFL history to break 10.000 in either AY/A or ANY/A. However, young Borkus came close in his game against Orange County yesterday. His stat line, posted above, was the first time a quarterback (this is a good time to note that I used a minimum of 15 pass attempts for this analysis so Bronko in the S1 Ultimus and Strike in the S2 Ultimus don't count) did not take a sack in NSFL playoff history.
Borkus posted a 9.860 AY/A and an identical ANY/A (due to taking zero sacks). That's a good step behind the top two performances but is clear of the rest of the pack (S4 Akselsen in the NSFC Championship, S8 Akselsen in the Ultimus, and S3 Kyubee in the NSFC Championship) coming in between 8.432 and 8.333 in ANY/A. Borkus' 4 touchdowns and 0 interceptions ties the best ratio there with the above Mike Boss stat line as well as King Bronko in the S3 Ultimus and he had the third-fewest attempts to throw 4 touchdowns behind Avon Blocksdale in his own game yesterday (32) and Scrub Kyubee in the S3 NSFC Championship (37).
In AY/A it's a bit closer as the aforementioned S4 Akselsen in NSFC Championship comes in with a 9.706 before the drop off. Either way, a historic performance for Borkus.
Here's the top 25 playoff passing performances with at least 15 attempts (sorted by ANY/A):
![[Image: sABTkXr.png]](https://i.imgur.com/sABTkXr.png)
Other Interesting Tidbits
Moving on to more general league fun facts now we've had 1 performance that resulted in a negative AY/A and three that resulted in negative ANY/A, meaning performances where the quarterback was a net negative to his team on his drop backs:
S3 Scrub Kyubee Ultimus: 17/37, 221 yards, 0 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, 12 sacks for 82 yards
-0.108 AY/A, -1.755 ANY/A
S2 Scrub Kyubee Ultimus: 14/31, 111 yards, 0 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, 6 sacks for 40 yards
0.677 AY/A, -0.514 ANY/A
S1 Mike Boss ASFC Championship: 17/41, 190 yards, 1 touchdown, 4 interceptions, 4 sacks for 31 yards
0.732 AY/A, -0.022 ANY/A
Now the thing all three of those performances have in common is that they came against peak dynasty Arizona Outlaws defenses. Take that as you will but the next worst performances were 3.520 AY/A and 1.925 ANY/A so those three are in a class of their own.
Mat Akselsen boasts the highest career playoff AY/A with 7.594 from a career stat line of: 174/330, 2431 yards, 15 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, and 26 sacks for 161 yards. The rest of the top 5 is:
2. Tyler Oles 7.396 AY/A
79/154, 1,179 yards, 7 touchdowns, 4 interceptions, and 18 sacks for 115 yards
3. Borkus Maximus 7.286 AY/A
85/147, 1,041 yards, 6 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, and 11 sacks for 70 yards
4. Vincent Draxel 7.159 AY/A
39/69, 454 yards, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and 10 sacks for 76 yards
5. Avon Blocksdale 7.074 AY/A
80/136, 977 yards, 6 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, and 12 sacks for 69 yards
*If you put the cut off at 100 pass attempts Boss checks in at 5th - 6.637 AY/A.
Akselsen also has the highest career playoff ANY/A with 6.587. The rest of the top 5 is:
2. Borkus Maxiumus 6.335 ANY/A
3. Avon Blocksdale 6.034 ANY/A
4. Tyler Oles 5.953 ANY/A
5. Ryan Applehort 5.451 ANY/A
26/47, 291 yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception, and 4 sacks for 28 yards
*Again, Boss is 5th if you set the cutoff at 100 attempts - 5.238 ANY/A.
Here's the full career leaderboard for quarterbacks with at least 100 playoff pass attempts:
![[Image: D7uqaHn.png]](https://i.imgur.com/D7uqaHn.png)
As Always, Context Matters
Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Self, Bronko and Boss are considered two surefire first ballot hall of famers, this is clearly horrible analysis since it says they're two of the worst playoff quarterbacks in their career." There's certainly some merit to that but that's one of the follies in comparing different eras as well as not accounting for the difference in playoff pathing. In the early years the league's landscape was totally different, without offensive line bots, corners being completely different, and teams hesitant to run the ball.
Boss has the 3rd- and 4th-worst playoff performances ever and they both came against Arizona's defense in Season 1 and 3 - his Season 2 performance wasn't much better. Those 3 games really sink his career efficiency. Likewise, Bronko is hindered by his S2, S4, and S5 performances against Orange County's defense. You'll notice the players atop the career board mostly played in the NSFC who had some good defenses to contend with themselves but not to the extent Boss and Bronko did year-in and year-out. Those 6 performances account for half of the worst 12 playoff passing performances all time, as measured by ANY/A. So while Borkus is sitting at a 6.96% sack rate and Akselsen is at 7.30%, Boss and Bronko are sitting at 10.49% and 11.80% respectively. Some of that is due to the mobility of the former and immobility of the latter but I'd say that's secondary compared to the defenses that were running roughshod on Boss and Bronko's offensive lines.
To accentuate this point, if you just look at the Seasons 2-4 playoffs when those two defenses were so strong, the top 3 passing performances came against NSFC defenses while the 3 worst performances came against ASFC defenses. Of the 18 total games those three seasons, only 2 performances against ASFC defenses were above average: Bronko in S3 and Boss in S4.
Red names faced ASFC defenses while blue names faced NSFC defenses:
![[Image: Zm7sMxO.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Zm7sMxO.png)
As you can see, it's split much closer to even in Seasons 6-8:
![[Image: nSiUHL4.png]](https://i.imgur.com/nSiUHL4.png)
Another thing to consider is that Boss has always been a volume passer, which is not necessarily a bad thing in the sim but efficiency stats like this don't take kindly to that. He's thrown at least 50 passes in 5 of his 13 playoff games and at least 40 in 11 of 13. In comparison, Akselsen has thrown at least 50 passes just once and at least 40 in 3 of 8 games.
So as I was doing an Ultimus Week interview I waxed poetic about Borkus' performance yesterday against the Otters and how it felt like a changing of the guard as we begin to transition from the quarterbacks who created in S1 and S2 to the new generation. Indeed, next season it looks like we'll have just 1 starting quarterback from S1 (Akselsen) and 1 from S2 (Blocksdale) as the rest of the league transitions to younger players:
One of the S10 QBs or stop gap free agent Kevin Fitzpatrick (S9) Gus TT Showbiz (S9) Brad Pennington (S8) Ryan Applehort (S7)And of course the oldest and highest TPE of this new wave of quarterbacks:
Borkus Maximus III (S6)So I decided to pull passing data from every NSFL playoff game ever played to see where Borkus' performance ranks. That performance, as a reminder, was:
24/43 for 344 yards, 4 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and 0 sacks
Turns out this performance is one of the best we've ever seen in the playoffs.
But to back up a step, I used two related formulas to evaluate passing performances. First was Adjusted Yards per Attempt (AY/A) which takes touchdowns and interceptions and converts their value to yards (I used the NFL values: 20 and -45, respectively) then divides by passing attempts. This is a quick, easy way to measure passing efficiency. One step further, I also found the Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (ANY/A) which is the same as the first formula except it includes sacks as passing plays so sack yardage is counted as negative yards and sacks are added to attempts. This takes a bit more manual work but does give a more complete picture of passing performances.
These may seem familiar because of kolbe's series on TANY/A (Total Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt) which takes ANY/A and adds quarterback rushes, rushing yards, and fumbles to the equation to get their total offensive efficiency. I did not do this here.
Best Passing Performances
Anyway on to the data.
In this sample, an "average" AY/A is around 6.6 (both median and mean), and ANY/A is around 5.3 (both median and mean). Our numbers don't translate perfectly to the NFL but in Peyton Manning's record setting 2004 regular season his lowest AY/A game was 7.414 at Jacksonville in Week 4 and he broke 10.000 a total of 8 times. His ANY/A numbers were, of course, similar as he his lowest was week 16 vs San Diego with a 7.396 and he broke 10.000 a total of 7 times. This is apropos of nothing except to give you a point of reference as we dig into NSFL performances.
The best performance in terms of both AY/A and ANY/A was Mike Boss in the S7 ASFC Championship when he went 28/46 for 484 yards, 4 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and took 2 sacks for 13 yards in a 48-24 victory over Arizona. This was good for a 12.261 AY/A and a 11.479 ANY/A.
The second-best was Mat Akselsen in the S5 NSFC Championship when he posted a 28/45 for 486 yards, 3 touchdowns, and 0 interceptions stat line and took 2 sacks for 12 yards. Extremely similar stat line to Boss above and got him a 12.133 AY/A and a 11.362 ANY/A.
Those are the only two playoff performances in NSFL history to break 10.000 in either AY/A or ANY/A. However, young Borkus came close in his game against Orange County yesterday. His stat line, posted above, was the first time a quarterback (this is a good time to note that I used a minimum of 15 pass attempts for this analysis so Bronko in the S1 Ultimus and Strike in the S2 Ultimus don't count) did not take a sack in NSFL playoff history.
Borkus posted a 9.860 AY/A and an identical ANY/A (due to taking zero sacks). That's a good step behind the top two performances but is clear of the rest of the pack (S4 Akselsen in the NSFC Championship, S8 Akselsen in the Ultimus, and S3 Kyubee in the NSFC Championship) coming in between 8.432 and 8.333 in ANY/A. Borkus' 4 touchdowns and 0 interceptions ties the best ratio there with the above Mike Boss stat line as well as King Bronko in the S3 Ultimus and he had the third-fewest attempts to throw 4 touchdowns behind Avon Blocksdale in his own game yesterday (32) and Scrub Kyubee in the S3 NSFC Championship (37).
In AY/A it's a bit closer as the aforementioned S4 Akselsen in NSFC Championship comes in with a 9.706 before the drop off. Either way, a historic performance for Borkus.
Here's the top 25 playoff passing performances with at least 15 attempts (sorted by ANY/A):
Other Interesting Tidbits
Moving on to more general league fun facts now we've had 1 performance that resulted in a negative AY/A and three that resulted in negative ANY/A, meaning performances where the quarterback was a net negative to his team on his drop backs:
S3 Scrub Kyubee Ultimus: 17/37, 221 yards, 0 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, 12 sacks for 82 yards
-0.108 AY/A, -1.755 ANY/A
S2 Scrub Kyubee Ultimus: 14/31, 111 yards, 0 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, 6 sacks for 40 yards
0.677 AY/A, -0.514 ANY/A
S1 Mike Boss ASFC Championship: 17/41, 190 yards, 1 touchdown, 4 interceptions, 4 sacks for 31 yards
0.732 AY/A, -0.022 ANY/A
Now the thing all three of those performances have in common is that they came against peak dynasty Arizona Outlaws defenses. Take that as you will but the next worst performances were 3.520 AY/A and 1.925 ANY/A so those three are in a class of their own.
Mat Akselsen boasts the highest career playoff AY/A with 7.594 from a career stat line of: 174/330, 2431 yards, 15 touchdowns, 5 interceptions, and 26 sacks for 161 yards. The rest of the top 5 is:
2. Tyler Oles 7.396 AY/A
79/154, 1,179 yards, 7 touchdowns, 4 interceptions, and 18 sacks for 115 yards
3. Borkus Maximus 7.286 AY/A
85/147, 1,041 yards, 6 touchdowns, 2 interceptions, and 11 sacks for 70 yards
4. Vincent Draxel 7.159 AY/A
39/69, 454 yards, 2 touchdowns, 0 interceptions, and 10 sacks for 76 yards
5. Avon Blocksdale 7.074 AY/A
80/136, 977 yards, 6 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, and 12 sacks for 69 yards
*If you put the cut off at 100 pass attempts Boss checks in at 5th - 6.637 AY/A.
Akselsen also has the highest career playoff ANY/A with 6.587. The rest of the top 5 is:
2. Borkus Maxiumus 6.335 ANY/A
3. Avon Blocksdale 6.034 ANY/A
4. Tyler Oles 5.953 ANY/A
5. Ryan Applehort 5.451 ANY/A
26/47, 291 yards, 3 touchdowns, 1 interception, and 4 sacks for 28 yards
*Again, Boss is 5th if you set the cutoff at 100 attempts - 5.238 ANY/A.
Here's the full career leaderboard for quarterbacks with at least 100 playoff pass attempts:
As Always, Context Matters
Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Self, Bronko and Boss are considered two surefire first ballot hall of famers, this is clearly horrible analysis since it says they're two of the worst playoff quarterbacks in their career." There's certainly some merit to that but that's one of the follies in comparing different eras as well as not accounting for the difference in playoff pathing. In the early years the league's landscape was totally different, without offensive line bots, corners being completely different, and teams hesitant to run the ball.
Boss has the 3rd- and 4th-worst playoff performances ever and they both came against Arizona's defense in Season 1 and 3 - his Season 2 performance wasn't much better. Those 3 games really sink his career efficiency. Likewise, Bronko is hindered by his S2, S4, and S5 performances against Orange County's defense. You'll notice the players atop the career board mostly played in the NSFC who had some good defenses to contend with themselves but not to the extent Boss and Bronko did year-in and year-out. Those 6 performances account for half of the worst 12 playoff passing performances all time, as measured by ANY/A. So while Borkus is sitting at a 6.96% sack rate and Akselsen is at 7.30%, Boss and Bronko are sitting at 10.49% and 11.80% respectively. Some of that is due to the mobility of the former and immobility of the latter but I'd say that's secondary compared to the defenses that were running roughshod on Boss and Bronko's offensive lines.
To accentuate this point, if you just look at the Seasons 2-4 playoffs when those two defenses were so strong, the top 3 passing performances came against NSFC defenses while the 3 worst performances came against ASFC defenses. Of the 18 total games those three seasons, only 2 performances against ASFC defenses were above average: Bronko in S3 and Boss in S4.
Red names faced ASFC defenses while blue names faced NSFC defenses:
As you can see, it's split much closer to even in Seasons 6-8:
Another thing to consider is that Boss has always been a volume passer, which is not necessarily a bad thing in the sim but efficiency stats like this don't take kindly to that. He's thrown at least 50 passes in 5 of his 13 playoff games and at least 40 in 11 of 13. In comparison, Akselsen has thrown at least 50 passes just once and at least 40 in 3 of 8 games.
![[Image: h5Ta7H1.png]](https://i.imgur.com/h5Ta7H1.png)
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