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How have I dinged VY for leaving early?  I'm worried we're very barely speaking the same language.

So we're to ignore volume?

For this debate on these players, while what you quoted should matter, you can remove TT's final season if you want.  Or his first.  To make it more "fair." 
I don't view it as dinging VY because of what TT did his first year as a starter.  You know, won the Heisman.  55 total TDs. 

Again, I care mostly with what actually happened.  Am I dinging Barry Sanders for having started 1 season?  For an all-time ranking or all-decade team....I guess?  Why was he a backup if he was that good (I know, I know, Thurman Thomas )?

VY was not as efficient (good?), not as productive, and his biggest strength was scrambling.  His peak in a 1-game sample was higher than TT's.  Fantastic. 

I guess RB Tony Sands of KU was better than Barry Sanders, then.  That's where we end up with holding a 1-game peak as the end-all, be-all.

But it 'twas.  VY had A TON of called passing plays where the ball never left his hand.  
First guy wasn't there, he's taking off.

oh well

That would be useful data.  Scramble %.  

useful for Whoa Nellie??

Yeah, but that would be super limited to just recent seasons.  I have a dynamic in WN, IDing QBs who have scrambling/sack avoidance, but it's very basic.
I'd like to make it a little more precise, but that requires updating the QBs of every team ordered going forward.

But it would be nice to differentiate guys who simply scrambled enough to break even vs guys who actively gained a lot of yardage scrambling, like VY.

You're missing something here - it's not that I think VY was only good for 2 RBs, it's that he's given his halo based on those games.  The average fan either doesn't know his stats or sees them and obviously notices that they're great, but that those game s were special.

I say he's overrated due to having 1 amazing RB.  There's a reason for that.  His game vs UM got Texas the win, and sure, as usual, his scrambling saved the day.  But he's a QB and his passing was ho-hum.  I'm not going to post all the stats here, but there are better arguments for VY than what's out there.
In that 05 season, after being utterly destroyed by great OU teams the previous 2 years, what turned out to be an 8-4 OU squad limited his scrambling, so he hit big passes and threw 3 TDs with 0 INTs. 
The comeback vs OKST is good and bad....VY helped Texas get down 28-9 just as much as he helped them come back, right?  And his QBing didn't really do it, it was OKST giving up 367 yards rushing.  Most of it was by VY himself, and good on him, but again, his scrambling saved the day.

And my focus on stats is one way of rephrasing how I'd describe it as what actually happened on the field.  VY's great 2005 included "only" 26 TD passes.  Okay, but if we look at it, Texas seemed to prefer running the ball close the end zone, as they had 4 players with 10+ rushing TDs, and other with 8.  That context helps explain the lack of passing TDs. 
Stats also include the ho-hum and the bad. VY was basically garbage until game 7 of 2004.  An athlete playing QB, in the worst way. 
I don't say that to disparage him, but again, based on what actually happened on the field, that's what the reality is.
So when someone picks VY, they're saying his season and a half of great play, acknowledging that scrambling was always his greatest strength at QB, was better than 3+ years of unprecedented play from TT.  The 55-TD season, the 26-2 final 2 years, the contributions as a FR, etc. 
Huh?
If Sam Bradford wasn't an exact contemporary of TT, Tebow would have finished his career with the all-time best passer rating.  Ever.  That gets brushed under the rug because of the system or the throwing motion, but we have to pretend that VY was an actual QB playing QB?

I've tried to get this thread back on track multiple times, but other people keep bringing it back to this.  And no one wants to acknowledge that I didn't say a peep until the QB position was filled.  This is a zero-stakes exercise, lol.  But here we are.

To pick VY over TT, you have to just say "I think he was better," because nothing measurable on the field supports it.  He was a great runner.  Lots of yards.  Great yards per rush.  But he's a QB.  And I don't care of TT have a club foot or threw the ball like Uncle Leo, he had the 2nd-best passing career ever.  And 57 rushing TDs.  Less yards than VY.  Less ypc average. 

But 88 TD passes with 16 INTs vs a much MUCH tougher schedule dwarfs anything you can say for VY.  And his % of each dwarf VY's as well. 
Shit, this is like the "SEC isn't better than the Big Ten" argument from the past 15 years.  Even when every conceivable measure favors one side, a simple "nuh uh" seems to suffice as rebuttal. 

I respect the opinion of the board, I simply disagree.  Duh.  No shit, Sherlock.  But at least my opinion is based on something other than "I think he was better."  That's all I'm saying.

NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY-SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING, PLEASE.

It seems you have no idea how much you've agreed with me here.

And where you disagree, you either missed my point entirely, still aren't seeing the picture, or are just being deliberately obtuse.  Next time you might include rules about if we're picking careers or a player at a specific point in time.  This was my point, which you longwindedly....agreed with?  

But, I don't care to try to get you to understand any more than you already do.  

As you said, back to the regularly scheduled programming.