AFC Championship Game: Can Andrew Luck take the torch as AFC’s best QB?

Can Andrew Luck emerge from Sunday’s AFC Championship Game as the best quarterback in the AFC? 

Quarterback wins. What a dumb stat! Sadly, in this day and age of advanced metrics and quite simply smarter analysis overall, we still use the wins stat to evaluate quarterbacks. Next to evaluating pitchers by their win-loss record, there is nothing more stupid in all of sports evaluation.

If wins was the only, or even the primary, mode of understanding the effectiveness of a quarterback we would have to conclude that Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson had better NFL careers than Dan Marino. The first two, of course, rode great defenses to championships while Marino made the Super Bowl in his second season in the league, lost and never made it back.

This simply will not do. We cannot stand idly by and allow these sorts of opinions to stand.

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And yet, as defiantly as I would defy the quarterback wins argument, I must at the same time admit that in the last 10 years, at least, it has become commonplace for a quarterback to carry a team through the postseason and onto a Super Bowl victory.

In many ways, this is the new criteria and/or deciding point for when an NFL quarterback becomes elite.

See I considered writing this article before the playoffs began. It was a piece I felt comfortable with, but I felt even more confident that the Baltimore Ravens—who no one was taking seriously entering the Wild Card Round—would pull off at least one playoff victory, and would make things interesting. So I wrote this instead.

Interestingly, I was correct. Only a few fortunate breaks and some legal trickery were enough for the Patriots to defeat the Ravens on Saturday afternoon in Foxborough. The Colts won on the road in Denver in a more convincing manner.

Though Andrew Luck threw two interceptions in the contest, he was quite impressive on the whole. Eight different receivers caught passes in the win, and none of them were to future borderline Hall of Famer Reggie Wayne. In fact, Wayne, who was bracketed on most every route he ran, was targeted only once in the game.

Luck instead took what the Broncos defense readily gave him, most perfectly evidenced by the fact that running back Daniel “Boom” Herron was the leading receiver with eight catches.

Luck, who generally likes to throw the ball down the field, reined in the aggressiveness, attempting only seven passes (out of 43) of 15-plus yards in the contest (one of the seven went for an interception on an obviously terrible decision).

Instead he made smart decisions with the football and played the game that Indianapolis had to play to defeat the Broncos, with their high-powered offense. That was a game in which the Colts possessed the ball for 34 minutes, while Denver had it just 26 minutes.

It was a game where the Colts converted a decent five-of-13 on third downs. It was a game where Luck, who though pressured quite often, was never sacked. And, it was a game where Luck was in full control the whole time.

In a short time, Luck has gone from top prospect to half-the-time game manager, half-the-time play maker as a rookie to full time play maker who manages the offense in the same manner of a veteran like Peyton Manning or Tom Brady.

Luck is already as good as anyone in the game. To use another metric which should not be considered absolute, but important, the third-year quarterback led the league in touchdown passes in 2014 with 40 (he threw 23 in each of his first two seasons in the NFL).

He also upped his completion percentage slightly, to 61.7, and significantly decreased the number of sacks he took (just 27 in 2014).

All of his advanced passing metrics: yards per attempt, adjusted yards per attempt, net yards per attempt and adjusted net yards per attempt were significantly increased in 2014.

Those numbers, as impressive as they are, leave him still prostrate in comparison to the resumes of Brady, Manning, Brees, Rodgers and even the less thought of Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson, all of whom have upped their game in the playoffs (yes even Manning, but we do not have time here to discuss that).

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For now we are stuck in a weird place with Luck. He has been quite impressive, starting all 48 regular season games over three years, and Sunday will already be Luck’s sixth NFL playoff game. But he remains a great quarterback who is yet to prove he can carry his team through the playoffs.

Every single quarterback mentioned above has done that at least once in their career. Luck is not helped by the fact that he has the worst remaining defense in the playoffs. But it also means that if he is able to do the very thing we are questioning here, his legacy will jump a few notches, perhaps quicker than it did with Wilson, Roethlisberger or Flacco, who all had really good defenses in the seasons in which they captured the Lombardi Trophy.

There’s another dynamic at play here, too. Luck is truly in the new school mold of quarterbacks. Brady and Manning were 1a and 1b, in either order, for the last decade-plus in the AFC. They were pocket passers exclusively.

Today, it is essential that a quarterback not only be able to throw from the pocket but be able to add value as a play maker with his feet. To that end, Patriots mastermind Bill Belichick thinks Luck is equally dangerous, expressing this week, “It’s like a sixth receiver you have to cover”.

He continued, “He can run, but if extends the play, then he has the ability to create big plays, and we’ve seen him do that multiple times throughout his career already.”

In other words, the new school quarterback is a dual-threat. To that end, Aaron Rodgers is the best in the NFC, and Luck will soon be that in the AFC. The question is, does he become that this weekend?

To do it, which despite quarterback wins being stupid, will mean the Colts win in Foxborough, he will have to avenge a mid-season loss that he and the Colts suffered in the much more comfortable confines of Lucas Oil Stadium.

In that particular game, Luck was quite good, completing 23 of 39 passes for 303 yards and two touchdowns, while throwing only one interception. The main problem that night was that New England out rushed Indy by 227 yards.

That was the night where Jonas Gray really had his 15 minutes of fame, rushing 37 times for 201 yards and four touchdowns. It appears that will be Jonas Gray’s career. It got the Pats the win that night.

By now we all know Belichick well enough to know that Gray isn’t getting another 37 carries. No New England back is going to get anywhere near that many carries on Sunday. Instead, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels will have a new wrinkle, likely something to keep Luck off the field, seeing as how Luck has propelled himself to the position of most exciting quarterback in the AFC.

In other words, the new school quarterback is a dual-threat. To that end, Aaron Rodgers is the best in the NFC, and Luck will soon be that in the AFC. The question is, does he become that this weekend?

He is a threat to create a Colts score on literally snap he takes.

It’s the reason Luck scares the pants off Belichick. It’s also the reason the Patriots will try to play a ball possession offensive game on Sunday. For if they do not, Luck will make them pay. He just needs enough snaps.

And if every formulation and theory posed here comes true on Sunday, Luck will wake up Monday morning headed to his first Super Bowl and as the rightful owner of the title best quarterback in the AFC. He will have earned it, not only by defeating the Manning-led Broncos and Brady-led Patriots, but by doing it with a sub-par defense and next to no running game, other than the one he provides with his own legs.

If Luck can lead this Colts team to the Super Bowl he will have done something that neither Manning nor Brady, nor any of the other quarterbacks mentioned previously did. He will have taken a sub-par outfit to within a win of the Lombardi Trophy.

That would most definitely make him elite. And it would certainly make him the best quarterback in the AFC by a wide margin, and with lots of time to cement that status. Like a decade-plus to add to that profile.

It seems we’re about to enter the Andrew Luck era in the AFC. It may very well begin on Sunday.

Next: Will Andrew Luck ever break our greatest 30 QB's of all-time list?