Taking snaps from center and avoiding fumbling the ball when being sacked. You would think those would be generic skills -- that Blaine Gabbert and Mark Sanchez might be just as good as Tom Brady and Drew Brees in that regard. But that's not the case. The best quarterbacks also fumble far less often than the worse.
Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers. These are some of the very best quarterbacks -- arguably the top 4.
But they are also the best at simply not fumbling the ball. For whatever reason, they're less likely to mishandle a snap or cough up the ball when being tackled.
Manning is by far the best. He's handled the ball 1,340 times since 2010 on pass and run attempts and has fumbled the ball only 5 times. That's once per every 268 snaps. Compare that to Blaine Gabbert, Tim Tebow, Michael Vick and Kevin Kolb. They all average a fumble for every less than every 50 plays.
It's odd that of the six quarterbacks who are the best at avoiding fumbles, five of them might also be the league's best quarterbacks (if you want to add Matt Ryan in there). Tony Romo and Matthew Stafford aren't far behind.
If you want to look at below-average quarterbacks (in terms of fumbles), there are only two upper-level type quarterbacks in there -- Philip Rivers and Joe Flacco.
Here are the numbers since 2010. "Attempts" includes pass attempts and run attempts.
| Pass/run attempts per fumble, 2010- | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Att | Fum | Avg | |
| Peyton Manning | 1340 | 5 | 268.0 |
| Tom Brady | 1921 | 11 | 174.6 |
| Matt Ryan | 1946 | 12 | 162.2 |
| Andy Dalton | 1198 | 8 | 149.8 |
| Drew Brees | 2114 | 15 | 140.9 |
| Aaron Rodgers | 1825 | 13 | 140.4 |
| Kyle Orton | 837 | 6 | 139.5 |
| Tony Romo | 1520 | 12 | 126.7 |
| Matthew Stafford | 1616 | 13 | 124.3 |
| Chad Henne | 1048 | 10 | 104.8 |
| Carson Palmer | 1614 | 16 | 100.9 |
| Matt Schaub | 1543 | 16 | 96.4 |
| Matt Hasselbeck | 1301 | 14 | 92.9 |
| Eli Manning | 1814 | 20 | 90.7 |
| Cam Newton | 1326 | 15 | 88.4 |
| Alex Smith | 1200 | 15 | 80.0 |
| Ryan Fitzpatrick | 1735 | 23 | 75.4 |
| Ben Roethlisberger | 1544 | 21 | 73.5 |
| Colt McCoy | 854 | 12 | 71.2 |
| Christian Ponder | 924 | 13 | 71.1 |
| Josh Freeman | 1828 | 26 | 70.3 |
| Sam Bradford | 1685 | 24 | 70.2 |
| Matt Cassel | 1148 | 17 | 67.5 |
| Joe Flacco | 1782 | 28 | 63.6 |
| John Skelton | 691 | 11 | 62.8 |
| Donovan McNabb | 724 | 12 | 60.3 |
| Tarvaris Jackson | 603 | 10 | 60.3 |
| Philip Rivers | 1849 | 31 | 59.6 |
| Jay Cutler | 1402 | 25 | 56.1 |
| Jason Campbell | 661 | 12 | 55.1 |
| Rex Grossman | 648 | 12 | 54.0 |
| Mark Sanchez | 1692 | 33 | 51.3 |
| Kevin Kolb | 745 | 16 | 46.6 |
| Michael Vick | 1469 | 32 | 45.9 |
| Blaine Gabbert | 819 | 19 | 43.1 |
| Tim Tebow | 599 | 14 | 42.8 |
| Matt Moore | 602 | 18 | 33.4 |
--Ian Allan