Who would you rather have: Cam Newton or Ryan Tannehill?

On the surface, the question seems absurd. Cam Newton is Cam Newton. Heisman Trophy Winner, National Champion, #1 overall pick, MVP, the list goes on. On the other hand, Ryan Tannehill is… well his resume isn’t as impressive, to say the least. However, if you take a deep dive into their passing statistics, and forget the names, they are basically the same quarterback.

QB 1 season Averages: 3,582 yds, 22.6 TD, 13.4 INT, 58.5% Comp%, 85.3 Rating, 1.68 TD/INT ratio, 4.6% TD%, 2.7% INT%, 7.3 Y/A.

QB 2 season Averages: 3,691 yds, 21.2 TD, 13.2 INT, 62.7% Comp%, 86.5 Rating, 1.61 TD/INT ratio, 4.0% TD%, 2.5% INT%, 7.0 Y/A.

(Shout out to Pro Football Reference for the info those guys basically have every team or player stat you could ever want to know about.)

Looking at that comparison QB 2 beats QB 1 in six out of the nine categories posted. Realistically though, they are so close in every stat other than Comp% you could be satisfied with flipping a coin to decide who to pick.

Reveal time: Newton is QB 1 and Tannehill is QB 2. Other interesting stats are that Newton has just one more 4th Quater Comebacks (13 vs 12) and only 5 more Game Winning Drives (15 vs 10) than Tannehill despite starting 31 more games (108 vs 77).

With all that being said of course I would pick Newton over Tannehill. While I do think Newton is vastly overrated, only looking at passing statistics do not do Cam Newton justice as a player. He has rushed for 4,320 yds (3rd most by a QB) and 54 TDs (Most by a QB) and is well on his way to becoming the greatest rushing QB in NFL history- if he isn’t already. His rushing threat pushes him well past Tannehill in terms of choosing between them. I also like that Newton (65-45-1) has won more than Tannehill (37-40). While their floors are the same, Newton’s ceiling is much higher than Tannehill’s, as proven by his MVP season in 2015.

The point of this blog is that when you take away names and just look at stats it’s crazy how much easier it is to compare players and see who is overrated and who is underrated.