By Mark Simon

As the 100^th NFL season kicks off, the attention always seems to fall on the marquee position in sports – the quarterback.

The NFL is loaded with talented quarterbacks, young and old, with a variety of skills. Case in point is the top of the quarterback leaderboard with veteran Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints and up-and-coming Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs.

What has made Brees so great over his long career is precision and efficiency. That was true in 2018 too. Last season, 83.6% of Brees’ passes were deemed catchable by our video scouts, the highest rate in the league. He was nearly three full percentage points ahead of Carson Wentz, who ranked second (80.8%).

Brees also had the highest completion percentage on throws at least 20 yards downfield. He was 26-of-50 (52%).

Brees’ 26 completions on deep throws ranked tied for seventh overall. Mahomes led all quarterbacks with 35. By volume, Mahomes was notably better than anyone else. The next-closest was Russell Wilson with 29.

Mahomes had the league’s highest Independent Quarterback Rating on short passes (IQR is a version of the NFL’s QB rating that adjusts for things outside a quarterback's control, including dropped passes and dropped interceptions). He also ranked tied for third with Brees in IQR on intermediate-length passes (10 to 19 yards).

What separated Mahomes in 2018 is that he had 125 more dropbacks than Brees and still maintained high efficiency.

After making further adjustments to evaluate other aspects of quarterback play, including running, Mahomes’ volume wins out. By our all-encompassing Total Points Earned metric, Mahomes and Brees ranked 1-2 last season. Now we’ll get to see if each has the staying power to maintain that success in 2019.

These stats can all be found on the new SIS DataHub which offers some of the best football information available online. We've launched a free version to go along with our premium DataHub Pro, which has additional filters and options for navigating the data. Give it a try and gain a whole new perspective on the game of football!