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Brandon Marshall is a member of the New York Jets. As such, he is supportive of the starting quarterback of the Jets, Ryan Fitzpatrick. He's been so throughout the offseason, and he is still so now. How supportive? Well, maybe a bit too supportive in his appearance on First Take.

Let's unpack this statement. First, we'll start with the definition of the word "elite." Here:

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We'll give Marshall the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he was not saying that Fitzpatrick deserves to be called "a size of letter in typewriting, with 12 characters to the inch" and instead that Fitzpatrick deserves to be called "a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities."

Luckily, we can actually measure whether or not Fitzpatrick fits that description in a variety of ways.

Fitzpatrick has been in the NFL since 2005 and has been a somewhat regular starting quarterback since 2008. Among the 43 quarterbacks that have thrown at least 1,000 passes since 2008 (a rough estimate for players that have played two seasons' worth of games), Fitzpatrick ranks: 38th in winning percentage (his 33-52-1 record as a starter works out to a 0.390 clip), 26th in completion percentage, 18th in touchdown percentage, 38th in interception percentage, 34th in yards per attempt, and 33rd in passer rating.

None of those rankings could reasonably be described as "elite." Only one of them (touchdown percentage) could even be described as "above average." The rest are somewhere between "considerably below average" and "terrible."

Let's give Marshall the benefit of the doubt again, though. Maybe he just meant that Fitzpatrick deserves to be called "elite" based on his performance last season. Well, he's still wrong.

Among the 15 quarterbacks that threw at least 500 passes in 2015, Fitzpatrick ranked: 13th in completion percentage, sixth in touchdown percentage, 13th in interception percentage, 14th in yards per attempt, and 13th in passer rating. Again, none of those rankings could reasonably be described as "elite." Only one of them (touchdown percentage) could even be described as "above average." The rest are somewhere between "considerably below average" and "terrible."

Also noteworthy: The Jets went 10-6 against the NFL's third-easiest schedule and failed to make the playoffs.

Again, none of this points toward Fitzpatrick being anywhere close to "elite." So we have to draw one of two conclusions: either Brandon Marshall does not know the definition of the word "elite," which seems unlikely, or Brandon Marshall is just being a good dude and supporting the guy that will be throwing him footballs for the next five months or so.