"Tony Romo is having the best season of his career to this point, and I am not even sure it is close. He is having a simply amazing season and, of course, picked a rather unlikely time to do it in his career arc." -- Bob Sturm
When Romo signed his contract extension, he said that he was not an 8-8 quarterback. If you're one of those like Sturm, you probably though he was just blowing smoke. After all, look at his "career arc." In his first four years, three Pro Bowls, a couple of top 5 seasons in passer rating and three trips to the playoffs. Since then, no Pro Bowls, only one top 5 season and never able to lead his team above .500. He'd become little more than an average quarterback. Now he's suddenly the #2 rated passer in the NFL, and his team has its best record this late in a season since 2009. Amazing. Unlikely.
Whatever.
These are the team's yearly rankings during the Romo era, excluding pass offense. The first ranking is the average rank in rushing yards/TD, the second is defensive pass rating/points allowed per drive. I then took the average of both rankings to make a "rest of team" ranking (in parentheses)
2006 8th, 21st (14.5)
2007 13th, 9th (11.0)
2008 21st, 17th (19.0)
2009 11th, 9th (10.0)
2010 22nd, 24th (23.0)
2011 24th, 22nd (23.0)
2012 29th, 27th (28.0)
2013 25th, 28th (26.5)
2014 7th, 17th (12.0)
If you were paying attention, you knew this when it was happening -- excluding the pass offense, from 2010-13, this was a bad team that would have had about 5 wins per season with an average QB performance.
Romo's best season was when he had his most complete receiving corps (2011 -- Dez, healthy Miles, Robinson). His season rating was above 100, but this didn't show in W-L because of how weak the rest of the team was. His next two best years (2009, 2007) were when he had his best teams around him. His worst year was 2012 when he had his worst team around him. These are not coincidences.
Top 5 Rated Passers Since 2010
Rogers 111.3 (17th, 12th) 14.5
Manning 105.1 (15th, 15th) 15.0
Brady 100.3 (7th, 13th) 10.0
Brees 100.2 (17th, 20th) 18.5
Romo 98.0 (21st, 24th) 22.5
The rankings in parentheses are for those teams' running games and defenses. The last number is the average of those two ranks -- it's where the team ranks without the passing game. Romo said it all with the words, "I'm not an 8-8 quarterback." Of course he isn't. His numbers over the last five seasons are up there with the game's elites. The main difference between him and the other four is that Romo did most of this on a bottom 10 team.
Which tends to have an effect on your career arc.
The whole point of looking at individual statistics is to separate the performance of the team from that of the individual player. If you weren't paying attention to the player's individual performance on bad teams (or didn't understand their significance), then naturally you are surprised by his individual performance this year. Sure it's his best season so far, but there's nothing amazing or unlikely about it.
