Earlier this week, Mike Salfino at SNY Why Guys pointed out that Mark Sanchez and Eli Manning had identical QB ratings after their first three seasons in the NFL. Then, Chris Matassino added that Giants backup David Carr was only a touch better than the pair.

Sanchez stunk for long stretches of this season, but Eli stunk for parts of his early career too and now looks like one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. I think the most important thing to remember is that a quarterback’s performance — and stats, of course — is massively impacted by the play of his teammates and the schemes in which he plays.

It’s not entirely sensible to defend Sanchez for the way he played this year, but given the woefulness all around him on the offense, it’s also probably not fair to cite this season as evidence for why he’ll never be a successful NFL quarterback.