There is an old adage in the NFL that the third preseason game is the most important one. Of all the preseason contests, this is the one that most resembles how a team might actually play in the regular season, or so the theory goes.

Others believe that this cliche is long outdated and has no merit these days.

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For the sake of Baltimore Ravens third-string quarterback Devin Leary, let’s hope the latter is true. In the Battle of the Beltway, with the Ravens beating the Washington Commanders 30-3, Leary went 17-23 passing for 71 yards.

No, that is not a typo. Leary really averaged just 3.1 yards per pass on Saturday.

For a running back yards-per-carry average, 3.1 would be pretty substandard. For a quarterback’s yards-per-attempt, it’s well, yikes! But hey, Leary was a big part of leading the Ravens to victory, for what it’s worth, as the QB always gets a lot of the credit for wins and much of the blame for losses.

Despite the laughably bad YPA, his passer rating isn’t actually that bad- 76.5.

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That is probably because Leary did not throw an interception, as INTs lower your passer rating like meditation lowers your pulse.

And Leary’s “strange,” yes, we’ll go with a strange box score, is undoubtedly not in the annals of NFL history, so to speak.

Nowhere near it, actually.

Like the grade point average of Daniel “Bluto” Blutarksi in Animal House, 0.0 can be “achieved.” It has actually happened more than 90 times, and every Manning who has played in the NFL (Peyton, Eli, Archie) has done it.

Two “Blutarski games” immediately come to mind, given who threw them.

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On New Year’s Eve 2006, Rex Grossman put up goose eggs at home versus the Green Bay Packers. Ending a regular season in which Grossman was as erratic statistically as possible, he went 2-12 for 33 yards with three interceptions.

He did not play in the second half.

And don’t forget Ryan Leaf, the second overall pick in the 1998 draft. In week three (Sept. 20, 1998) of his rookie season, he gave us a glimpse into how much of a bust he was destined to become. Leaf went 1-15 for four yards and two interceptions. He also lost three fumbles.

So Leary’s day wasn’t actually that awful, in the grand scheme of things. And after all, it was just preseason.

This article originally appeared on Ravens Wire: Devin Leary went 17-23 for 71 yards