Much has been noted of the fact that the Buffalo Bills have been snake bitten by their quarterback drafting the last few years. The common bond between Rob Johnson, JP Losman, and Trent Edwards has been that they all hail from the great state of California. The knock is not only how they performed but that they are not suited for Western New York weather. Jim Kelly himself said that “you look for a guy with good character, good leadership, and good arm strength—and a guy who doesn’t come from California.” Kelly of course was alluding to the fact of the Bills history with quarterbacks from there. The fact of the matter is, are the Bills unlucky in drafting quarterbacks or are warm-weather QBs not suited for cold-weather cities?
In looking at current teams, only eight starting QBs come from warm-weather climates and now play in cold-weather cities. They are Mark Sanchez of the Jets, Carson Palmer of the Bengals, Aaron Rodgers of the Packers, Eli Manning of the Giants, Peyton Manning of the Colts, Brett Favre of the Vikings, Matthew Stafford of the Lions, and Jake Delhomme of the Browns (this is Delhomme’s first season with the Browns and he has yet to play in cold weather in Cleveland). Palmer has had a successful career with the Bengals as he holds many team passing records including the only Bengals QB to throw for 4,000 yards twice and the NFL record for most consecutive games with a passer rating over 100 (9 which is tied with Peyton Manning and Tom Brady). Sanchez led the Jets to the AFC Championship game in his rookie season. Of note was the Wildcard game against the Bengals where the temperature was 19 degrees. Sanchez went 12-15 for 182 yards and 1 TD in that game. Rodgers in a few short years has established himself as one of the top QBs in the league. Eli Manning has won a Super Bowl as has Bret Favre who is a future Hall of Famer. While Manning and Stafford both play in cold-weather cities, they play half of their games in domes and therefore I will count them technically.
Bill Barnwell of Football Outsiders crunched some numbers to see if indeed warm-weather QBs play worse in cold weather than cold-weather QBs. His study goes back to 1993 and “cold weather” games are those where the temperature is 35 degrees or colder. The stats were also scaled to 30 pass attempts which is the average number of attempts a QB accrued in an NFL start over that time frame.
The first chart compared cold weather and warm weather QBs in cold weather games. The edge is slight and nearly even in both groups. Warm weather QBs complete slightly more of their passes but cold weather QBs throw for more yards, have a better average, throw more TDs, and have fewer INTs. In just isolated cold weather games on the road, warm weather QBs fare better in every category except INTs (1.1 to 1.0). In his third chart for games on the road in temperatures 36 or higher, warm weather QBs are better in completions and percentage and TDs while cold weather QBs average a yard more.
The theory that warm weather QBs do not perform well in cold weather seems to be false. It really depends more on the player. Of course this takes into affect where was from and not who he played for. Dan Marino for Miami his whole career and he came from Pittsburgh. Matt Ryan played his college ball at Boston College and now plays for the Falcons. Mark Brunell, who is from California and played at the University of Washington, had a successful career with the Jaguars and had two memorable cold weather games when he defeated the Bills in Buffalo in 1996 and the Broncos in Denver in the playoffs. In the Bills case, it seems to be more talent than the location.
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