Yesterday was a bad day to be a Quarterback named Jake

As I noticed this yesterday, with both of these guys not just losing, but playing horribly, I also figured out why Peyton Manning is having such a rough time winning a Superbowl, and why my son will face an uphill battle to ever be a Superbowl Champion quarterback. I noticed that all four quarterbacks left had short one-syllable names: Jake, Jake, Matt and Ben. Then I started thinking about all the Superbowl winning quarterbacks and realized the vast majority of them share this trait.

Bart, Joe, Len, Johnny, Roger, Bob, Terry, Ken, Jim, Joe, Joe, Jim, Phil, Doug, Jeff, Mark, Troy, Steve, Brett, John, Kurt, Trent, Tom, Brad, Matt/Ben.

So, out of 40 games, only 7 of them have been won by guys with more than one syllable in their first name, and those 7 represent only 3 out of 25 guys, and none for the last 25 years. So, obviously, if Manning wants to win one, he needs to change his name. His brother is also screwed. We were thinking about calling my son Jake before he was born, but at some point decided not to. I didn't realize we were destroying his chances of ever quarterbacking a Superbowl winning team. Of course, with the two Jakes doing so lousy yesterday, it might not have helped. You'll notice that this research does nothing to excuse Dan Marino from never winning it all. Also, as I thought about this, I thought maybe that's it's just that one syllable names are more common, so as a control group, I also considered the starting running backs for these championship teams:

Elijah, Donny, Matt, Robert, Tom, Walt, Larry, Franco, Clarence, Tony, Franco, Mark, Ricky, John, Marcus, Roger, Walter, Joe, Timmy, Ottis, Earnest, Emmitt, Ricky, Edgar, Terrell, Marshall, Jamal, Antowain, Michael, Corey, Shaun/Willie