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Tony Romo as good of an MVP candidate as anyone

By Kevin Parvizi

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Earlier this season, Dallas Cowboys star running back DeMarco Murray looked like a bona fide MVP candidate after regularly trampling defenses behind one of the NFL’s best offensive lines, but quarterback Tony Romo has recently become a top MVP candidate in his own right. It’s been almost a foregone conclusion that the MVP award will go to Green Bay Packers elite QB Aaron Rodgers, who has been nearly flawless this season with just five interceptions, 36 touchdowns, and a 111.0 QB Rating.

Before looking at the numbers, I was like, “Look, there’s no way Rodgers isn’t the MVP this season,” but the crazy thing is that Romo’s stats are more impressive across the board. Romo has the league’s highest completion percentage at 70.3%, he averages the most yards per attempt at 8.5, he has the highest TD% (the percentage of attempts that go for six), the best QB Rating at an insane 114.4, and the highest ESPN TQBR. Aaron Rodgers is second to Romo in yards per attempt, QB Rating, ESPN TQBR, and TD%, so the most-used statistics for QB effectiveness point to Romo has the better candidate.

That said, the “Offensive Player of the Year” award (Romo and Murray are definitely prime candidates for this honor) is used for the player who racks up the best numbers, as the “value” part of the MVP award generally carries the most weight with people. One way of discerning value is to assess the strength of each player’s supporting casts, and it’s clear that neither team is the same without their star QB. Both the Packers and Cowboys have great running backs, though Murray has been better this season. There’s no doubt that the Cowboys offensive line is the better unit, but there’s also no doubt that Rodgers has better weapons around him. Dez Bryant is incredible and Jason Witten is still a very good tight end, but how do you top the trio of Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, and Davante Adams?

It almost seems like the supporting cast argument is a wash, because both teams are 11-4 and seem to have equally good players around them. Another way of putting a finger on “value” is to use advanced statistics, and this also isn’t a foolproof method since the stats can’t account for everything. Even so, it’s still interesting to see that Rodgers and Romo are 1-2 in WPA and EPA, as per Advanced Football Analytics.

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Romo has played in 14 games (most QBs have played in 15), it’s important to use WPA per game and EPA per play as a way of adjusting for this. Carson Palmer is actually first in the league in WPA per game, but he doesn’t qualify as he played in just six games before being injured for the season. Rodgers tops the list in EPA per play and WPA per game, while Romo is a close second.

Although Romo’s numbers are better in most categories, Rodgers has thrown less interceptions (Romo has still done a great job of minimizing turnovers with just eight picks of his own), and that can be the difference in WPA and EPA, which account for time of game, field position, and down and distance when assessing win and point value.

Per Pro-Football Reference, Romo is among the league leaders in game-winning drives and fourth-quarter comebacks while Rodgers has just one of each, but this shouldn’t be used as a way of saying that Romo is more clutch than Rodgers. It’s an unfair comparison, since the Packers have jumped out to so many early leads that they don’t need comebacks or game-winning drives. In fact, the Packers pulled him early in some games because they had racked up so many points, which prevented Rodgers from adding to his already impressive numbers. It makes the Romo-Rodgers comparison all the more difficult, though WPA and EPA help account for some of these inaccuracies.

Although the Packers have more talented pass-catching weapons due to the elite duo of Nelson and Cobb, it’s interesting to note that Aaron Rodgers has been victimized by drops more often than Tony Romo. Per the Pro Football Focus, Rodgers had had 32 pass attempts dropped, whereas Cowboys pass-catchers have dropped just ten of Romo’s passes, making him the QB with the least amount of drops and the QB with the second-least yards lost on dropped passes. Even so, his “Accuracy Percentage” (a PFF stat that strips away drops, throw-aways, spikes, and other incompletions that are not the fault of the QB) is still higher than Rodgers’s, but it isn’t by as much as the five percent difference in their completion percentages.

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This post isn’t entirely about comparing Rodgers and Romo as MVP candidates, because the numbers show that they are both about even. It’s obvious that if you replaced either QB with a league-average passer, such as Alex Smith, neither team would be as successful. Both teams have some gifted players on offense and improved defenses, but they are clearly elevated by two quarterbacks who are the league leaders in all of the most important statistical categories for a quarterback.

All of the stats used are rate stats that don’t directly depend on the amount of attempts (Rodgers has more, by the way, but that’s also because his running game isn’t as good, which, some would argue, makes him all the more valuable to his team), but that can be used to argue for either player’s case, depending on the angle you want to take.

The fact that the numbers are so close means that the argument is incredibly close, and it means that Tony Romo is as good of an MVP candidate as anyone. He’s quietly been just as productive as Rodgers, and, if you frame the argument using statistics such as QB Rating and yards per attempt, you could argue that he’s been even more statistically dominant than the Packers star.

Romo is a fully legitimate MVP candidate, though Rodgers still stands as the MVP favorite. It will be interesting to see how much thought the voters give to the debate, but Rodgers’s slightly worse supporting cast, impressive big leads, low INT totals, and marquee win over the elite New England Patriots will likely make him the victor. J.J. Watt is very much a legit candidate, but comparing Romo and Watt would open up a different can of worms; comparing his numbers to another QB MVP candidate’s numbers is the best way of illustrating that the MVP might be more of a toss-up than some think.

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