Tale of the Tape - Brady and Mahomes

The countdown is on until the Tampa Bay Buccaneers face off with the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 55. The Buccaneers are representing the NFC in the Super Bowl after a hard-fought playoff run starting in the Wild-Card Round. The Chiefs are looking to defend their title as best team in the NFL and Super Bowl champs. One of the most intriguing storylines is Patrick Mahomes facing off with Tom Brady. Mahomes has had an historic start to his career, and Tom Brady could take his legacy to another level by winning the Super Bowl during the year after leaving the Patriots. We take a deep dive into Brady's and Mahomes' performances throughout the regular season and playoffs to get a deeper understanding of what this iconic Super Bowl matchup may look like on Sunday.

​First, the meaning of the stats

In order to get a glimpse of how these two quarterbacks and teams truly performed, we are going to conduct analysis through the lenses of two telling stats. These stats are Performance Value and Average Opponent Production vs. Others

Performance Value (PV) measures how valuable a touchdown, interception, point, or yard is considering a team's opponents. Having a PV = 1 means that the team is exactly average in that stat, or that they produce the same amount that their opponents normally allow. Therefore, having PV > 1 means that they produce on average more than what their opponents normally allow. Typically, if it is better for an offense to have higher totals for that stat (Offensive touchdowns, points, yards OR Defensive interceptions and sacks) it is better for their performance value to be higher, and vice versa for stats that you want to be lower (such as interceptions on offense OR yards allowed, points allowed, or touchdowns allowed on Defense).

Average Opponent Production vs. Others considers how good are the team's opponents. The Opponent's Production vs Others considers how many touchdowns (or other stat) that opponent allows (or gains) against all other teams they faced. We consider the the Average of this for all opponents a team faced during the 2020 season. These are all normalized as well so that they are on a similar scale / have a similar meaning to the PV stat.  

TLDR: If it is better to have more of something in a game, having a higher PV is better (and vice versa). Average Opponent will always be demonstrated in the graphs as worse teams being lower on the Y-axis, and better teams being higher on the Y-axis

Passing Yards

The first statistic to consider is Pass Yards. Although having higher yards doesn't always mean a win, the two have a high correlation so it is a good statistic to consider. In the graph below, each team is plotted based on their PV and the average of their opponents Pass Yards Allowed. The Chiefs (yellow) and Buccaneers (red) are colored, and both their regular season (circle) and playoff (star) results are shown.

This chart is showing that both the Mahomes and Brady are doing much better than their regular season performance with Pass Yards. Chiefs were #1 in this stat after the regular season and are even higher during the playoffs. Similarly for the Buccaneers, they were #3 in this stat after the regular season and are performing better in the playoffs.

One important thing to note here is the strength of their opponents. For the Chiefs and Mahomes, the strength of their opponents decreased from the regular season to the playoffs, so such a gain in performance is somewhat expected. On the other hand, Brady and the Buccaneers faced tougher opponents against Pass Yards during the playoffs so far against Pass Yards, and his performance still increased.

So going into the Super Bowl, Brady's Pass Yards are more impressive than Mahomes'.

Pass Touchdowns

Next, time to consider Pass Touchdowns (TDs). I don't think its a debate to say that scoring more touchdowns helps with winning. Here is a similar plot, but now comparing just Pass TDs. The color and symbols have the same meaning as the previous graph:

This gives us a good insight into the two quarterback's performances with scoring pass touchdowns. First looking at the PV of the two quarterbacks, Mahomes and the Chiefs have moved down quite a bit in their performance. For Chiefs fans: don't be alarmed. The sample size is quite small to be concerned over with just two games to consider. But, the result still gives us some insight into Mahomes and the Chiefs. Against the Browns, who are ranked #31 (yes, second to worst) with giving up Pass TDs, the Chiefs scored just 1 Pass TD. But against the Bills, who are ranked #8 against Pass TDs, the Chiefs scored 3 Pass TDs. Maybe we can chalk that up to being somewhat rusty off of the 1st-round bye and also due to Mahomes having to leave that game early.

For Brady and the Buccaneers, this shows that their Performance is hovering right around the same value even though their playoff opponents give up more Pass TDs than average. Tampa Bay fans shouldn't be too concerned about that fact either, because Brady and the Buccaneers are still are putting up at least 2 Pass TD per game along with a Rush TD. I imagine that this consistency will continue in the playoffs.

This category is a little more even. The Bucs have faced a balanced opponent strength through the playoffs with regard to Pass TDs and have stayed consistent. It makes sense that they will continue to be consistent in the game where it matters most. And going off of that, one theme for the Chiefs this year is that they can turn it on when it matters most, so there should be no doubt that they will be locked in against a tough Buccaneers defense in the most important game of the year.

Interceptions

The final statistic to consider: Interceptions Thrown (INT). Throwing INTs means giving the other team extra possessions to score, so the lower the better. Here is a similar plot now comparing the Pass INTs that both quarterbacks have thrown. The color and symbols have the same meaning as the previous graphs:

To start off, both Mahomes' and Brady' regular season performances are in the upper left section of the grid. This shows great regular season performance by throwing less INTs than other quarterbacks while facing more difficult pass defenses than others. However, the strength of opponent for Pass INTs in the playoffs has not been the same. 

Patrick Mahomes has been excellent with his lack of throwing INTs. He has thrown no INTs throughout the playoffs, and although their average strength of opponents is low on on this graph, it is somewhat skewed because the Browns are in the bottom third of the league in this stat. However, the Bills defense is #8 in INTs, so it is quite impressive throwing no INTs when facing them.

The bottom right quadrant of this graph is where you do not want to be, and that is where Tom Brady has been in the playoffs. Although he did not throw any INTs in the first two games, he threw 3 INTs against the Packers who are ranked as the 4th worst in Defensive INTs. Although Brady being experienced in the Super Bowl may help him not turn the ball over, this can be seen as a concern leading up to facing a Kansas City defense that is much better than the Packers.

Conclusion

The Tale of the Tape shows a close comparison when it comes to Mahomes and Brady going into the Super Bowl. Although Brady has the edge in Pass Yards, Mahomes has the edge with Pass INTs. After conducting our analysis, its a close call when comparing the Pass TDs because the playoff sample size is a bit too small. Considering the Regular Season as well as the Playoffs, the slight edge for Pass TDs should go to Brady because he has been more consistent with Pass TDs over the playoff run.

This is going to be an iconic matchup between two quarterbacks that will definitely be in the Hall of Fame at the end of their careers, and this game may play a big part in comparing their legacies in the future. Based on this analysis, we can conclude that it will be an exciting game and an exciting and more even matchup than people think between two fantastic NFL Quarterbacks.