Brad Oremland is a sportswriter and football historian. What follows is Brad’s latest work, a multi-part series on the greatest players in pro football history.
This is the final article in a twelve-part series profiling the greatest professional football players of all time. You can find the rest of the series below:
Greatest Football Players: 111-125
Greatest Football Players: 101-110
Greatest Football Players: 91-100
Greatest Football Players: 81-90
Greatest Football Players: 71-80
Greatest Football Players: 61-70
Greatest Football Players: 51-60
Greatest Football Players: 41-50
Greatest Football Players: 31-40
Greatest Football Players: 21-30
Greatest Football Players: 11-20
If you haven’t read those yet, I hope you’ll start there. Each post can be read independently, but they’re intended as a series, and skipping to the end undercuts the historical excellence of the players you’re reading about. I’m confident you’ll enjoy this article more if you read the rest of the series first.
This series is nearly 100,000 words. If you’ve enjoyed it, please credit the three sportswriters whose work has influenced me most: the late Paul Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated‘s legendary Dr. Z, the greatest football writer who ever lived; Bill James, best known for popularizing baseball analytics (and indirectly football analytics as well) but also an immensely underrated writer; and Dave Heeren, unknown compared to Zimmerman and James, but his TENDEX system and Basketball Abstract were the foundation for all subsequent statistical analysis of basketball; his work captured my imagination and made me aspire to better understand the sports I loved. All three have my deepest admiration and gratitude.
And now, the ten greatest football players of all time.
Best Players of All Time: 1-10
10. Ronnie Lott
Defensive Back
San Francisco 49ers, 1981-90; Los Angeles Raiders, 1991-92; New York Jets, 1993-94
63 INT, 730 yards, 5 TD; 8.5 sacks
4 consensus All-Pro, 6 AP All-Pro, 10 Pro Bowls, 1980s All-Decade Team, 1990s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team
The rookie class of 1981 is far and away the best group of defensive rookies in history. Ronnie Lott was a Pro Bowler, a consensus All-Pro, and a full-time starter on the team that won Super Bowl XVI. Lawrence Taylor won Defensive Player of the Year, in what is widely regarded as the greatest rookie season ever. Future Hall of Fame safety Kenny Easley had 7 takeaways, including an 82-yard interception return for a touchdown, while HOF linebacker Rickey Jackson is credited (unofficially) with 125 tackles and 8 sacks as a rookie in 1981. That’s a DROY season if you’re not going up against Taylor, Lott, and Everson Walls. Walls, undrafted as a rookie, made the Pro Bowl after leading the NFL with 11 interceptions.
HOFers Mike Singletary and Howie Long were also rookies in 1981; that’s six defensive Hall of Famers from this one draft class. Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson started all 16 games for the Super Bowl champion 49ers, combining for 11 takeaways. Dexter Manley got off to a good start, with (unofficially) 6 sacks, in a career that had over 100. Hugh Green had a good rookie season in Tampa. Hanford Dixon and Dennis Smith, who combined to make nine Pro Bowls, were also rookies in 1981.
Lott played left cornerback as a rookie. He was superb in coverage, intercepting 7 passes, which he returned for 117 yards and 3 touchdowns. He also knocked the hell out of anyone wearing a different color uniform. “I’m sorry I never got to see Lott playing under the old bump-and-run rules,” lamented Paul Zimmerman, “because if ever a cornerback was made for it, it was he.” Lott made the Pro Bowl as a rookie, and he was a consensus All-Pro, the only defensive back so distinguished that season.
Lott was aggressive, a gambler in coverage, but he studied opponents, never lost focus during the games, and guessed right more often than not. He picked off a lot of passes (tied for 8th all-time), often setting himself up for productive returns, but Lott also broke up countless throws with perfectly-timed, stadium-shaking hits. It’s not just a cliche that hits like that change games. If the receiver is afraid of you, looking to see where you are or pulling up when he knows you’re close, he’s not going to make as many catches. “When you see Ronnie taking out guys on film, it puts thoughts in the back of your mind,” admitted Pro Bowl tight end Doug Cosbie. Fellow Hall of Fame DB Rod Woodson added, “Ronnie thought that making a big hit in a game could change the momentum of the game, and he was the one guy that I could think of that did it constantly.”
Lott also was able to manhandle receivers, holding them up getting off the line or tackling them immediately after a reception. His boyhood hero was not Lem Barney or Mel Renfro or even Ken Houston — it was Dick Butkus. Hall of Fame coach Tom Landry declared, “He’s like a middle linebacker playing safety. He’s devastating.” Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster John Madden concurred, writing of Lott’s tackling, “It just adds to his value. It’s like having another linebacker.”
Teammate Bubba Paris likened Lott’s hitting to a cannonball: “He explodes into people.” All-Pro safety Jack Tatum, himself a much-feared hitter, agreed, “Ronnie slams into guys full force.” Zimmerman was awed not only by Lott’s force, but his perfection in applying it, “a knack of timing his hits so that he electrocutes people.” “It’s a violent game,” Lott himself reasoned. He was one of the most impactful hitters in history.
No play exemplifies that impact more than his tackle of Ickey Woods near the end of the first quarter in Super Bowl XXIII. Woods was a sensation: a 1,000-yard rusher, league-leading 5.25 average, 15 rush TDs, NEA Offensive Rookie of the Year, and a contagious end zone dance, the Ickey Shuffle. Although San Francisco led 3-0, it felt like momentum was with the Bengals, and Woods had just rushed 8 yards for a first down. He came around the left side, a 6-2, 231-pound locomotive, and turned upfield. Lott flew into him with a shoulder, and Woods fell backwards. “That hit on Ickey Woods set the tone,” reflected Bengals QB Boomer Esiason. “It set the tempo for the rest of our defense,” confirmed 49ers defensive coordinator George Seifert. “You could see the whole team jump up and down like they just won the game, and it rallied that football team,” agreed Woodson.
After making four Pro Bowls as a cornerback, Lott moved to safety, making another six Pro Bowls there. Playing safety, he combined the coverage skills of an elite corner and the ferocious hitting of a feared linebacker. Lott was also extraordinarily dedicated to understanding the game and studying his opponents. “Of all the defensive players I’ve been around as a broadcaster,” hailed Madden, “Ronnie Lott is the most knowledgeable.” Lott himself agreed, “My greatest asset as a football player is understanding the game, understanding what’s happening in every situation in the game.”
Lott was a leader on consistently excellent defenses. The 49ers ranked among the top 10 in fewest yards allowed and fewest points allowed in eight of his 10 seasons, and he started in four Super Bowl victories. The 1980s Forty-Niners are one of the greatest dynasties in pro football history. In their 1981 and 1984 Super Bowl seasons, they had a Hall of Fame head coach, Bill Walsh, plus Hall of Fame players Fred Dean, Joe Montana, and Lott. The 1988 and ’89 teams had Lott, Montana, Charles Haley, and Jerry Rice. That’s a lot of talent, 3-5 Hall of Famers. But the 1970s Steelers had nine HOF players in each of their four Super Bowl wins. The 1960s Packers had 12 HOF players. San Francisco had a deep team with a lot of good players who weren’t quite HOF caliber, but the Niners were able to reach extraordinary heights with fewer Hall of Famers partly because the ones they had were so outstanding, even in an HOF context.
Consider the Steelers. Who was the most valuable player on that offense? QB Terry Bradshaw eventually became an elite quarterback, but the Steelers were one of the best teams in the league when Bradshaw still had trouble keeping his starting job. Franco Harris was one of the most productive rushers in football, but he was never the best running back in the league. Lynn Swann and John Stallworth were big-game receivers, but not consistent enough to power a dynasty by themselves. Mike Webster might be the best center of all time, but you don’t build dynasties around a single offensive lineman. The defense was full of stars. None was bigger than Mean Joe Greene, but Jack Ham, Jack Lambert, and Mel Blount all joined Greene not only in Canton but on the 1994 All-Time Team. From 1974-76, all four of them were named Defensive Player of the Year by a major organization.
Pittsburgh had so many stars fueling its success, it wasn’t obvious who the team’s best players were. On the 49ers, there was no doubt: Montana and Lott (and later Rice). From 1981-89, Lott made twice as many Pro Bowls (8) as any of his defensive teammates (Dwight Hicks, 4), with more AP first-team All-Pro selections (4) than all the other defensive players combined (3). He was not only the heart and soul of the defense, its inspirational leader, he was its undisputed standout. The only dynasties with a comparable dynamic are the Otto Graham Browns and the Tom Brady Patriots.
Football cards are not known for their eloquence, but they are adept at brevity. My 1988 Topps Ronnie Lott card reads, “Ronnie combines hostile, competitive style with tactical play.” If you only had one sentence to describe Lott, I think that’s a great summation. He combined rigorous study and great field awareness, superior coverage skills and devastating hits, top-notch leadership and unparalleled toughness. “He may dominate the secondary,” praised Landry, “better than anyone I’ve seen.”
9. Walter Payton
Running Back
Chicago Bears, 1975-87
16,726 rush yards, 4.36 average, 110 TD; 492 rec, 4,538 yards, 15 TD
2 MVP, 1 OPOY, 4 consensus All-Pro, 8 AP All-Pro, 9 Pro Bowls, 1970s All-Decade Team, 1980s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team
You can’t properly tell the story of Walter Payton without O.J. Simpson. In the Bills’ 1973 season opener, Simpson rushed for 250 yards, a new single-game record. A Heisman Trophy winner and number one overall draft pick, O.J. went on to shatter Jim Brown‘s single-season rushing record, becoming the first player ever to top 2,000 yards in a season. Two years later, in Payton’s rookie season, Simpson not only led the NFL in rushing, averaging 130 yards per game, he tied the single-season TD record, 23. In 1976, Payton’s breakout year, Simpson broke his own single-game rushing record, 273 yards. O.J. redefined what was possible. He was untouchable.
Walter Payton had an excellent 1976 season, second only to O.J. in rushing yardage, and tied for second in rush TDs, as well, on a 7-7 team that didn’t afford him frequent scoring opportunities. But in 1977, with Simpson injured, Payton took his own place among the untouchables. On November 20, Payton rushed for 275 yards — with the flu, no less — breaking Simpson’s impossible record. His blockers in that game were Ted Albrecht, Noah Jackson, Dennis Lick, Dan Peiffer, and Revie Sorey. None of the five ever made a Pro Bowl, and none was ever named All-Pro by a major organization. In fact, Walter didn’t play with an All-Pro lineman in any of his first 10 seasons.
The Flu Game was merely the highlight of what is arguably the greatest season ever by a running back. In a 14-game season, Payton led the NFL in rushing yards (1,852), average (5.46), and touchdowns (14). It was the first season ever, and still one of only four, in which a player led all three categories. [1]Earl Campbell in 1980, Eric Dickerson in 1984, and Terrell Davis in 1998. Payton added 269 yards and 2 TDs receiving, and even two kickoffs returns for 95 yards (47.5 avg), including a 68-yarder. His 132.3 yards per game is the third-highest mark in history, better than Eric Dickerson’s record-setting 1984 season, and he led the league by almost 600 yards (Mark van Eeghen, 1,273), 45 percent. Payton led the NFL in touchdowns and the NFC in scoring, and the Bears reached the playoffs for the first time in over a decade. Payton was a consensus choice as Offensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player.
Statistically, I rank Payton’s 1977 season as the fifth-best of the Modern Era, behind Jim Brown in 1958 and ’63, and Simpson in ’73 and ’75. But Brown played with one of the greatest offensive lines in history. Center John Morrow was a two-time Pro Bowler, including 1963. The guard tandem of Gene Hickerson (6 Pro Bowls, Hall of Fame) and Jim Ray Smith (5 Pro Bowls, including 1958) was among the best of all time. Tackles Mike McCormack (6 Pro Bowls, Hall of Fame) and Dick Schafrath (6 Pro Bowls, including 1958) were even better.
Simpson played with the Electric Company. Right guard Joe DeLamielleure was a 6-time Pro Bowler, a starter on the 1970s All-Decade Team, and a Hall of Famer. The other guard, Reggie McKenzie, was a three-time All-Pro, including first-team in 1973. Tackle Dave Foley was a Pro Bowler in ’73, as well. Payton’s blocking unit didn’t produce any Hall of Famers or earn any nicknames. He produced a historic season with minimal support. Payton was also a much better blocker than Brown or Simpson. Was it the best season of all time? At a minimum, it belongs in the conversation.
Of course, Payton was as far as you can get from a one-year wonder. In 1984, he surpassed another untouchable rusher, breaking Jim Brown’s career record for rushing yardage (12,312). He didn’t limp to the record: Payton rushed for 154 yards that day, his fifth consecutive 100-yard rushing game, and finished the day as the NFL’s leading rusher for the 1984 season up to that point, averaging 129 yards per game. The 100-yard rushing game was the 59th of Payton’s career, breaking Brown’s record in that category as well (58).
Payton eventually topped Brown by over 4,000 yards. He retired with 77 hundred-yard rushing games, with Brown still in second place at 58. [2]The record is now Emmitt Smith‘s, 78. Payton set a career record for most receptions by a running back. He rushed for over 1,200 yards ten times, including three years over 1,600. The former is a record, and the latter has been matched only by LaDainian Tomlinson and Eric Dickerson. Payton not only reached extraordinary heights, he maintained them for an impossibly long and consistent duration.
Payton was perhaps the most complete running back of all time: speed, moves, power, good receiver, excellent blocker. He had an intense workout regimen that no one else could complete, and stayed remarkably healthy over a long career at a punishing position. Payton played in 190 regular-season games, and always swore that the one he missed, as a rookie in 1975, was due to a coach’s grudge and that he could have played. Payton’s resilience is all the more remarkable because he shouldered a titanic workload, leading the league in carries four consecutive seasons, and ran as physically and fearlessly as anyone who has ever played.
Barry Sanders fans will think I’m crazy for this, but my favorite player to watch highlights of is Walter Payton. What set Payton apart, and made him such a joy to watch, was his heart. I’ve never seen a more determined runner. Payton was small, barely 200 pounds, but he never accepted being tackled. Whatever instinct we have, that it’s time to fall down, Payton didn’t have it. Payton never believed you would be able to tackle him. He always thought that if he simply tried a little harder, he could keep his feet and gain more yardage. More than that, he punished defenders. He ran through tacklers, ran over them. The only recent player with a similar style was Marshawn Lynch.
“The thing about defensive players,” advised Payton, “is that they want to hit you as hard as they can. My coach at Jackson State, Bob Hill, always said, ‘If you’re going to die anyway, die hard, never die easy.’ So that’s what I try to do.” Walter took the fight to tacklers who outweighed him by 50 and more, but if they tried to tackle him like they would a normal human being, Payton bounced off and kept going. It was inspiring. “A little package of fury,” Paul Zimmerman called him.
Writing in 1982, Zimmerman particularly admired Payton’s perseverance and success in the face of defenses geared toward stopping him. “Everybody in the stadium, especially the people on defense, knew he was going to carry it. The Bears haven’t had a passing attack since the days of Rudy Bukich. Payton left. Payton right. Payton up the middle. Walter Payton carrying the Chicago Bears on his shoulders.”
Payton had historic accomplishments at the single-game, single-season, and career levels. He had speed and agility, but also the best stiff-arm of his era and the most determined running style in the history of the sport. He was nicknamed Sweetness because of his personality, and the NFL’s Man of the Year award is named after him. He was a record-setting receiver and probably the best blocking back of his generation. “Walter was the greatest player who ever lived,” raved head coach Mike Ditka. “He was a power back, a speed back, a blocking back . . . There’s no question he was one of the best blocking backs ever.” Payton was incredibly durable and maintained his excellence for over a decade, succeeding despite lackluster support for most of his career. Payton’s record-setting accomplishments and unparalleled combination of skills distinguish him even among the greatest RBs in history.
8. Otto Graham
Quarterback
Cleveland Browns, 1946-55
23,584 yards, 174 TD, 135 INT, 86.6 rating
5 MVP, 5 consensus All-Pro, 8 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 1950s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team
Otto Graham started off as a basketball player. He was the sixth man for the Rochester Royals (who later became the Sacramento Kings), and didn’t play pro football until he was 24. Legendary coach Paul Brown recruited Graham to play for his new team in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). The AAFC was a major league, at least as strong as the early AFL (and much stronger relative to the NFL). The Cleveland Browns, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Colts all began in the AAFC, and in the four-year history of the league, it produced 15 Hall of Famers. The AAFC was ahead of the NFL on racial integration, West Coast football, air travel between games, and regular use of zone defense, not to mention Paul Brown’s numerous innovations. The younger league’s trail-blazing forced the NFL to adapt to keep up. “The AAFC was on a par with the NFL,” wrote Paul Zimmerman. “Some people, such as me, think it played a better brand of football.”
The AAFC competed with the NFL for players and coaches, and came out about even. The new league not only found new talent, it poached players from NFL rosters, signed veterans returning from war, and aggressively signed college prospects, including Heisman Trophy winner Angelo Bertelli. In its first year of operation, the AAFC signed 50% more College All-Stars (40) than the NFL (26). About 100 players with NFL experience joined the AAFC: nearly a quarter of the established league defected. The AAFC also attracted Hall of Fame coaches Paul Brown and Ray Flaherty, plus future NFL Championship-winning head coach Buck Shaw.
The AAFC drew higher attendance than the established league, and competed with the NFL by placing teams in Chicago, Cleveland, and New York; in each case, the AAFC team played in a larger stadium. The NFL’s Los Angeles Rams, defending league champions, were outdrawn by the AAFC’s L.A. Dons, and the AAFC won the battle to put a football team in Yankee Stadium, a target the NFL fell short of. In 1948, the Browns, 49ers, and Dons outdrew every team in the NFL. When the two leagues merged in 1950, the opening game between the AAFC-Champion Browns and the NFL-Champion Eagles drew higher attendance (71,237) than the first NFL-AFL Super Bowl (61,946). AAFC players from contracted franchises bolstered NFL rosters — especially the Giants, who were assigned players from the AAFC’s New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers, including Arnie Weinmeister, Otto Schnellbacher, and Tom Landry.
It is true that Graham’s efficiency stats were much higher in the AAFC than the NFL. It is not true, however, that this is because the AAFC was a low-quality league; it wasn’t. Even if we significantly discount AAFC performance relative to the 1940s NFL — and it’s not clear that we should — but even if we do, Graham was far and away the best quarterback of the late ’40s. His stats are out of this world, his team won the league championship game every year — literally — he played great in the title games, and everyone who covered football in that era agrees that Graham was the best. There’s probably no other era of football in which it’s so clear who was the best QB. The 1950s were more competitive, but Graham continued to lead the pack. All-Pro QBs, 1950-55:
1950 — Johnny Lujack
1951 — Graham
1952 — Graham and Bobby Layne
1953 — Graham
1954 — Graham
1955 — Graham
During Graham’s six seasons in the NFL, the Browns went 58-13-1 (.817), played in all six NFL Championship Games, and won three titles. The 1950-55 Browns were the greatest six-year dynasty in NFL history. Their .817 winning percentage is the second-best for any team over a six-year period (1939-44 Chicago Bears, .822), they made 50% more championship appearances than any other team (no one else has more than four), and they won three titles, trailing only the Vince Lombardi Packers and the Steel Curtain, both of whom were less consistent than the Browns. That’s not even the peak of the Graham Dynasty; 1946-51 is. That span features a 68-7-3 (.907) record, still six championship appearances — Graham started the league championship game every year of his career — and five victories in the title games. When Graham retired in 1956, the Browns had their first losing season ever, dropping from 9-2-1 to 5-7. The team rebounded when it drafted Jim Brown the following season, but didn’t win another championship until 1964, with a new coach and a new group of players: Graham’s retirement ended the Cleveland Dynasty.
Graham wasn’t just the best regular-season QB in football, winning All-Pro every year; he was a big-game performer. In the ’46 Championship Game, Graham passed for the winning touchdown with five minutes left, and intercepted a pass on defense to clinch the victory. In ’47, he rushed for a touchdown in a 14-3 win. The 1948 championship was a 49-7 rout of the Buffalo Bills, the ’49 title game a 21-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers. All that set up “the World Series of Pro Football” in 1950.
Following a partial merger of the NFL and AAFC, Week 1 pitted the defending two-time NFL-champion Eagles against the AAFC’s Browns. The Eagles were heavy favorites, but the game was so heavily anticipated, it was moved to a Saturday night and a larger stadium. Graham passed for 346 yards and 3 TDs, and the Browns dominated the NFL champs, 35-10. They went on to win the NFL championship, their fifth straight title, with Graham passing for all four Cleveland TDs in a 30-28 victory.
That’s a résumé any quarterback would envy: five championships in five seasons, plus a decisive victory in the biggest non-championship game in history. Graham was just getting warmed up. His performance in the ’54 title game is among the greatest in history: he passed for three TDs and ran for three more, and the Browns won 56-10. The next year, in his final game, Graham threw 50- and 35-yard TD passes, rushed for two more scores, and led Cleveland to a 38-14 win. In his three NFL Championship victories, Graham passed or ran for 14 touchdowns. He personally accounted for five TDs per game! Graham’s Browns went 9-3 in the postseason, including seven league championships — and he was a star in all of them.
If the All-Pro consensus, the postseason performances, and the greatest dynasty in the history of professional football don’t convince you, Graham’s stats also validate his primacy. From 1950-55, he led the NFL in both passing yards and passer rating, with a better TD/INT differential than Hall of Fame contemporaries Bobby Layne, Y.A. Tittle, and Norm Van Brocklin. Graham also rushed for 33 TDs in those seasons., compared to 13 for Tittle, 8 for Layne, and 3 for Van Brocklin.
That’s an important consideration. I’m a guest contributor here at Football Perspective, and the usual method for statistical evaluation of QBs at this site is RANY/A, Relative Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt. It’s a pretty good metric for evaluating passing, but a flawed and incomplete approach to evaluating quarterbacks, who do important things besides throw the ball. I have seen RANY/A advocates dismiss Cam Newton, for instance, with that stat as their only evidence. RANY/A doesn’t include rushing. I have multiple issues with RANY/A, but that’s the most glaring weakness.
From 1950-55, Otto Graham outrushed Norm Van Brocklin, his closest statistical competitor, by 643 yards and 30 touchdowns. Please don’t use RANY/A to compare them. You’re missing 30 touchdowns. In 12-games seasons! During those years, Graham passed for 88 TDs and Van Brocklin 85 — basically no difference. But include rushing, and Graham’s ahead, 121-88, a 38% advantage. That’s massive. Graham fumbled more than Van Brocklin — another critical factor RANY/A misses — and I think that more or less balances out the 643 rushing yards, but those TDs, whew. Graham’s record for most rushing TDs by a quarterback (44) stood for six decades, and that doesn’t even include his six rushing TDs in the postseason. [3]Projecting his postseason career to a 16-game season yields 479 rushing yards and 8 rushing touchdowns. He was the best passer in the league, but he was also a highly impactful runner.
Those are his NFL stats, but Graham was even more statistically dominant before the merger. His 112.1 passer rating in 1946 was the highest in a single season for more than 40 years (Joe Montana, 1989). And lest you spuriously attribute that to the weakness of the AAFC, the league’s second-leading passer, Hall of Famer Ace Parker, checked in at just 87.0. Sid Luckman led the NFL at 71.0.
The following season, Graham’s passer rating was 109.2. Frankie Albert was second in the AAFC (74.3), while Sammy Baugh led the NFL (92.0). Graham’s rating in 1948 was an excellent but mere-human 85.6, but he led both leagues in passing yards and rushed for 6 TDs, and the Browns went undefeated. In ’49, Graham’s 97.5 rating again dramatically outdistanced all his peers. Passer rating is an imperfect measure — worse than RANY/A, certainly — but it’s a familiar statistic, and Graham’s leads are so commanding as to dispel any reasonable doubts about his dominance. He had 1990s passer ratings in the 1940s and ’50s. [4]Graham’s 86.6 career rating is higher than those of Dan Marino (86.4), Brett Favre (86.0), Jim Kelly (84.4), Troy Aikman (81.6), Warren Moon (80.9), and John Elway (79.9). Special context for … Continue reading
Graham, a professional basketball for a championship team, was an exceptional athlete. He had great movement inside the pocket, and he was a deadly short-yardage runner. Graham may be the only quarterback famous for his peripheral vision, and he was the most accurate passer of his generation; even the normally humble Graham bragged, decades later, “I could throw a pass to a spot as well as anyone who ever lived.” Graham also had great touch on his long passes; he is one of the finest deep passers of all time.
Legendary coach Paul Brown enthusiastically praised his quarterback: “Otto Graham was the key to the whole team. He had the finest peripheral vision I’ve ever witnessed, and that is a very big factor in a quarterback. He had total composure on the field, the ability to find whatever receiver was going to come open, and the arm and athletic ability to get the ball to him. His hand-eye coordination was most unusual, and he was bigger than you’d think and faster than you’d think.” At his HOF induction in 1967, Brown chose Otto Graham to present him.
No matter what objective criteria you use to evaluate quarterbacks, Graham is at or near the top of the list. You like stats? By the numbers, Graham was the most dominant quarterback of his era. Awards and honors? Graham was All-Pro every year, and he won five league MVP Awards in seven years — no major organization named an MVP in 1949, 1950, or 1952, all years in which he would have been a candidate. Do you believe quarterbacks win championships? Nobody won more than Otto Graham. His team made the title game every year of his career, won seven championships, and stopped winning them when he retired. Graham wasn’t just along for the ride, either; he’s one of the greatest postseason players in history.
That synergy of evidence points to Graham as the most exceptional quarterback of all time. Last week, I wrote about judging the best QBs of all time not by trying to parse their excellence, but by assessing my confidence in their excellence. Graham, with unimpeachable support from so many different methods of player analysis, merits a very high degree of confidence.
He excelled when the Browns leaned on Marion Motley and the run game, and he excelled after Motley retired and the offense went through the air. He was accurate and athletic, a threat with both his arm and his legs, and he never had a bad season. His stats were excellent in the 1950s and otherworldly in the late ’40s. In only 10 seasons, he led his league in passing yards five times, TDs four times, and rating five times. Graham is dimly remembered today, because he played in a small market, before the Super Bowl and before football was widely televised, at a time when baseball players and boxers were the athletes who became legends. But there is no other QB in history who excelled so dramatically by every measure we use to evaluate quarterbacks.
7. Sammy Baugh
Quarterback (Pre-Modern)
Washington, 1937-52
21,886 yards, 187 TD, 203 INT, 72.2 rating
3 consensus All-Pro, 8 All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 1940s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team, 75th Anniversary Team
“I used to practice by throwing a football at a tire hung from a tree in our backyard . . . I worked at punting a lot, too. Every day in the summer I used to go over to our football field for an hour or so and I’d just kick the ball from one end of it to the other. I’d punt, trot down and get the ball, and then punt it back. I spent a lot of time working at kicking the ball out of bounds, too, angling it so I could get it out of bounds inside the 10 yard line.”
Sammy Baugh was a marvelous athlete. A wiry 6-2, 180, he was a three-sport athlete at Texas Christian University (football, baseball, and basketball), and he played semi-pro baseball against the likes of Rogers Hornsby and Cool Papa Bell. He hoped to play major league baseball, and it was as a third baseman and shortstop that he first earned his “Slingin’ Sammy” nickname. [5]Hornsby signed Baugh to a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, but Baugh’s MLB dreams were derailed when he ended up on the depth chart behind Marty Marion, a future eight-time All-Star who … Continue reading
Baugh was a star at TCU, in an era when college football was much more popular than the pro game. Joe Namath, Joe Montana, and Baugh remain the only starting quarterbacks to win both an NCAA Championship and a major league professional championship. Baugh also quarterbacked the College All-Stars to a victory over the NFL-champion Green Bay Packers prior to his rookie season in 1937. He arrived in Washington as the league’s newest star, and quickly justified the accolades. New York Giants Hall of Famer Tuffy Leemans, after facing Baugh for the first time, affirmed that the rookie was “all they said he was.” Baugh led the league in pass completions, yards, TDs, and passer rating.
In Baugh’s rookie season, the team scored 43% more points per game than the previous year, and improved from 7-5 to league champs. The title game, played at Wrigley Field against the Chicago Bears, was a brutal affair. It was 15°, and the field was covered in snow and ice. Both teams wore sneakers, having learned the lesson of the famous 1934 NFL Championship Game, but each tackle was an invitation to injury. “I never saw so much blood after a ball game in my life,” Baugh recalled. “Every time you hit the frozen ground, you landed on little pebbles.” Washington lost three starters to injury, including both guards, in the first quarter. Baugh himself missed most of the second quarter after banging his knee on the ice.
He returned to have a historic day. Down 14-7, Baugh directed what sportswriter Francis Stann called “probably the greatest 15 minutes of play in history.” Baugh threw 55-yard, 78-yard, and 35-yard TD passes, and Washington won 28-21. Baugh passed for 352 yards — unthinkable in an era when Baugh had just led the league by averaging 102 yards per game — against the league’s best defense. The next day’s headline read, “Baugh’s Bewildering Passes Put Redskins Atop Pro Grid World.” He left the field to a standing ovation from the awed Chicago fans.
Baugh’s passing ability sparked an offensive revolution: passing as a non-desperation strategy. He threw on first and second downs, or out of punt formations, in an era when passes were reserved for 3rd-and-long. Baugh led the NFL in passing yards four times and in passer rating six times, a record which still stands. [6]Steve Young and Baugh are tied.
The “Texas Tornado” retired as the single-season record-holder for completions, yards, and passer rating. He also held nearly every major career passing record, including completions, yards, and touchdowns. Baugh was the greatest passer of his era, but he was also distinguished by extraordinary longevity. Baugh played 16 seasons, a record that stood for over a decade. Contemporary HOF QB Sid Luckman was the Bears’ primary passer nine times. Baugh was Washington’s 14 times, a 55% difference. That longevity, and sustained effectiveness, were remarkable because the game was so rough in those days. Not only did they have to play on frozen dirt fields, with minimal safety equipment, and no sports medicine to speak of, but the rules allowed tactics that would be unthinkable today.
“There really wasn’t any protection whatsoever for a man throwing a pass,” Baugh remembered. “The other team could go after you until the whistle blew. In other words, you’d complete a pass to a fellow out in the flat and he’d take off running, back and forth across the field maybe, and the rushers would be going after the passer all the while. In those days, they’d want to put the quarterback on the ground regardless, even though he’s got nothing to do with the play by that time . . . they’d chase you all over the field, maybe 30 yards, until they got their hands on you.”
Furthermore, Baugh spent most of his career playing all 60 minutes. He was an excellent defensive player. Interceptions weren’t an official statistic until his fourth season, but Baugh’s official record of 31, compiled only in the six seasons between 1940-45, was the most by any player until 1949, when the stat had existed for a decade.
Perhaps even more impressively, all those hours practicing punts at the local field paid off. Baugh was the greatest punter of his generation, at a time when punting was a more important part of the game than it is today. Baugh led the league in punting average four times, setting career and single-season records that stood for over 50 years.
Today, Baugh is most famous for his “Triple Crown” in 1943. He led the NFL in pass completions on offense, interceptions on defense, and punting. Baugh’s 11 interceptions — in a 10-game season, on a team that only faced 193 pass attempts — were perhaps the most impressive. Baugh personally intercepted 5.7% of all opponents’ passes. In one game that season, Baugh threw 4 TD passes on offense and intercepted 4 passes on defense. In the 1943 Championship Game, though, Baugh got a concussion in the first quarter, and the Bears coasted to a 41-21 victory.
Baugh missed most of the first half, sobbing on the sideline, asking teammates, “What’s the score? What’s going on out there? Why won’t they let me play?” He returned halfway through the third quarter, but functioning solely on instinct. “I couldn’t remember anything,” Baugh reflected later. “I was calling plays we’d used the year before.” Baugh’s legendary season ended with a fizzle, and Luckman helped the Bears to their third title in four years.
I wrote about Baugh and Luckman (who were friends as well as rivals) earlier in this series, explaining why I rank Baugh ahead. I don’t intend to reproduce that explanation, but I hope you’ll read my profile of Luckman if you haven’t already.
Baugh’s 1945 season is less famous than 1943, but equally impressive. He again led the league in completions, and his 70.3 completion percentage was the record for many years; his 109.9 passer rating was also the highest in history to that point. Defensively, he intercepted four passes and returned them for 114 yards. His 43.3 punting average led the league by more than two yards.
The 1945 Championship Game, which Washington lost 15-14, is among the most fascinating in history. The Rams’ final game in Cleveland, played the day after a snowstorm, it was contested in sub-zero temperatures and terrible wind gusts, on a frozen field. The Rams inexplicably failed to provide their players with sneakers, and Washington coach Dudley DeGroot inexplicably agreed to forbid his own players from wearing theirs, as a favor to Rams coach Adam Walsh. Team owner George Preston Marshall fired DeGroot immediately after the game as a result.
The game included two famous plays involving the crossbar. At that time, the goalposts were at the front of the end zone, rather than the back. In the first quarter, a Baugh pass out of his own end zone struck the crossbar and bounced back into the end zone, which according to an obscure rule resulted in a safety. [7]This rule was the 1945 equivalent of today’s fumble-out-the-end zone is a safety. It’s also similar to the Tuck Rule: a rule that most people never knew existed until it changed who won … Continue reading The rule was so excessively punitive, and the play so decisive — it swung the championship — that the rule was changed prior to the following season. Later in the game, Bob Waterfield‘s extra point was partially blocked, bounced off the crossbar, and hovered in the air for a second before falling over. In a game decided by a single point, both plays were critical.
In the fourth quarter, Washington attempted a 31-yard field goal to take the lead, but a poorly-timed wind gust carried the ball just wide left. There were a hundred reasons Washington should have won, but once again, Baugh’s magnificent season ended in disappointment. Baugh played in five NFL Championship Games, winning twice, but it wouldn’t take much to enhance his championship legacy.
Baugh was the best passer of his era, comparable to Fran Tarkenton in his sustained excellence and record-setting statistics, although with a stronger arm. Quarterbacks throw much harder now than they did in the NFL’s early years. Part of what distinguished Baugh is that he was the first player to go out there and throw missiles. Baugh was the most accurate passer of his generation, a perennial league-leader in highest completion percentage and lowest interception percentage. “The thing that really stood out about Baugh was his deep passing accuracy,” praised Bill Belichick. Baugh wasn’t the runner Tarkenton was, but he was a good scrambler, excellent throwing on the run, and he took many fewer sacks than Tarkenton. “Defensing Sammy Baugh was an almost impossible situation,” recalled Hall of Fame end Don Hutson.
Baugh was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, a unanimous choice and the only real quarterback in the inaugural HOF Class of 1963. [8]The other charter HOFer sometimes identified as a QB is Dutch Clark, who retired with 1,507 passing yards, 11 pass TDs, and a 40.3 rating. He was an excellent player, but he wasn’t a … Continue reading Because of his value in every phase of the game, Baugh is commonly ranked as the greatest player in NFL history. Ace Parker raved, “He was the best passer I ever saw. He could do everything. He could pass, he could play defense, he was the best kicker.” Hall of Fame RB Bill Dudley agreed, “He was the best, as far as I’m concerned. He could not only throw the ball. He could play defense, he could punt the football, he ran it when he had to.”
“A lot of people, they think of Sammy Baugh as being a great passer,” reflected Hall of Fame center Mel Hein, “but he also was one of the greatest defensive backs in the National Football League [and] a pretty fair ball-carrier. The greatest quick kicker that ever lived.” Naming his all-time team for Richard Whittington’s 1984 book What A Game They Played, Hein was unequivocal: “I would rate Sammy Baugh the best quarterback of that time and maybe any other time as well.”
What separated Baugh was his excellence in every aspect of the game. “Back then a lot of damn good offensive ballplayers were eliminated because they couldn’t play defense well enough,” Baugh recalled. “There just wasn’t any such thing as a specialist in those days. You had to be able to play both ways.”
Some of Baugh’s best seasons came against wartime competition and before widespread racial integration, and his accomplishments should be viewed in context. [9]Baugh himself argued, “When all the teams started using blacks, I think that’s when football picked up a great deal.” There’s a strong case to rank Baugh as the greatest player of all time; I wouldn’t argue against him. I have him a little lower based on that context, but I don’t think there’s any doubt that he was the greatest all-around player in the history of the game. “Sammy Baugh would be a combination of today’s version of Tom Brady, Brian Moorman, and Ed Reed, three all-star players at their positions all rolled into one,” declared Belichick. That’s high praise from a man not known for hyperbole.
6. Lawrence Taylor
Rush Linebacker
New York Giants, 1981-93
142 sacks (132.5 official); 53 FF (unofficial), 11 FR, 34 yards; 9 INT, 134 yards, 2 TD
1 MVP, 3 DPOY, 6 consensus All-Pro, 10 AP All-Pro, 10 Pro Bowls, Rookie of the Year, 1980s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team
In The New Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football, Paul Zimmerman described “the best defensive play I’ve ever seen,” from November 1983, two months before Washington played in Super Bowl XVIII:
Joe Theismann is back to pass and Taylor is blitzing from the Giants’ right side. Joe Jacoby, the 300-pound All-Pro tackle, slides over to block him . . . Taylor grabs Jacoby by the shoulder pads and throws him. He flushes Theismann out of the pocket, and Theismann’s off and running. George Starke, the 260-pound right tackle, peels back to pick up Taylor, who knocks him to the ground without breaking stride. Taylor catches up with Theismann 15 yards downfield. That’s 560 pounds of linemen he disposed of, and a 4.6 quarterback he’s run down.
Lawrence Taylor is challenging to describe. It is impossible to communicate, through words, his combination of size and power. He wasn’t known as a student of the game; he didn’t study more film than anyone else or anticipate what the other team was doing. He wrecked opposing game plans with sheer freakish athleticism: he was too fast and too strong. “A 245-pound linebacker isn’t supposed to throw 300-pounders aside,” concluded Zimmerman. Taylor himself acknowledged, “I’d get lots of sacks in different ways, but the best came from straight power, driving right into a guy and lifting him, because he didn’t expect it from someone who weighs 245.” Maybe it doesn’t sound impressive; it was stunning. Lawrence Taylor had the most unmistakeable physical talent I’ve ever seen from a defensive player. He was faster and stronger than everyone on the other side of the ball. You can’t understand his impact without seeing it. “He arrived in the NFL like an emissary from another planet,” explained Zimmerman.
Taylor probably changed American football more than any defensive player in history. The “Mel Blount Rule” wasn’t created solely in reaction to Mel Blount. Scoring in the 1970s was low across the league, not just in Steeler games. Deacon Jones wasn’t the only reason the head slap got banned; Night Train Lane wasn’t the only player to use clothesline tackles. And so on.
Even if you want to exaggerate the impact of individual players on rule changes, Taylor changed the strategy of both offensive and defensive football. His success, as Rookie of the Year in 1981, essentially created a new position: rush linebacker. “When God was creating pass-rushing linebackers,” declared Giants coach Bill Parcells, “he had Lawrence Taylor in mind.” In his first season, Taylor was named Defensive Rookie of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Pro Bowler, first-team All-Pro, and Defensive Player of the Year. The Giants’ defense improved from 24th (out of 28) to 3rd, and allowed 65% fewer points than the previous season. “He could disrupt the other team’s offense so that they had to react to him,” wrote Matthew Silverman.
Before Taylor, running backs handled blitzing linebackers, or maybe tight ends would pick them up. Running backs absolutely could not handle Lawrence Taylor, and even the best tight ends would only slow him down on most plays. Washington coach Joe Gibbs replaced his fullback with an H-back [10]A blocker and receiver, usually Don Warren, who might line up in the backfield like a fullback or on the line like a tight end or second TE to limit Taylor’s impact, double-teaming L.T. with a tackle and tight end. “He was the only defensive player I can remember who we had to design our game plan around,” marveled 1983 MVP Joe Theismann. One-back offenses like Washington’s proliferated to match the influx of pass-rushing linebackers inspired by Taylor’s success.
Most offenses eventually reverted to a two-back set, but the fullback position had evolved to fit the skills called for by Gibbs’ offense. “Even as full-time one-back offenses petered out in the late 1980s, the concept of a single feature back prevailed. Fullback became a block-and-catch position, just like H-back. The one-back offense’s legacy endured,” wrote Kevin Lamb in his essay “The Evolution of Strategy.” Lawrence Taylor was indirectly responsible for killing the decades-old two-back offense and re-shaping the fullback as a block-and-catch role player — beginning the trend toward effective extinction of the fullback position in recent seasons. [11]According to Football Outsiders, fullbacks participated in fewer than 10% of offensive snaps last season. Only two FBs, San Francisco’s Kyle Juszczyk and New England’s James Develin, … Continue reading
“Lawrence Taylor, defensively, has had as big an impact as any player I’ve ever seen,” hailed John Madden. “He changed the way defense is played, the way pass-rushing is played, the way linebackers play and the way offenses block linebackers.”
Because he was so devastating a pass rusher, Taylor was seldom used in pass coverage, but he was such an incredible athlete and playmaker that he still pulled in 9 career interceptions, [12]Julius Peppers is the only other player with at least 9 interceptions and at least 100 sacks. including one that he returned 97 yards for a touchdown in 1982. That was the famous Thanksgiving Day game against the Lions that Taylor won almost single-handedly. “There’s only one defensive player that can win a football game and that was you. I thought you won that game,” Madden told L.T.
Only slightly less famous was his 1988 Sunday night game against the Saints. “I think it’s his signature game,” proposed Parcells. Playing in a massive brace due to a torn shoulder muscle, Taylor had 10 tackles, three sacks, and two forced fumbles. The Giants won 13-12. “He won another game,” marveled Madden, “almost all by himself.” In enormous pain, Taylor admitted, “I don’t know how I ever got through that one.”
Taylor had three seasons of 15+ sacks, including a league-leading 20.5 in 1986. That season, Taylor was not only the league’s sack leader, but the Defensive Player of the Year, Most Valuable Player, and a Super Bowl champion. Taylor contributed a 34-yard pick-six against Joe Montana and the 49ers in the playoffs, followed by a shutout of Washington in the NFC Championship Game. In a wonderful feature on The Hogs, Washington’s offensive line in the 1980s, Bill Simmons reported that to a man, they identified Taylor as the greatest defensive player any of them had ever seen. “They discussed him reverentially.”
Other than the most dedicated football analysts, I think only NFC East fans really understood how dominant Lawrence Taylor was. Everyone knew he was great, of course, but I think you had to see him repeatedly dominate and dictate to his rivals to fully appreciate his impact. In his 10th season, Taylor ran down Randall Cunningham from behind. That was the year Cunningham rushed for 942 yards, and here’s a 31-year-old linebacker who’s too fast for him. “He came on a blitz one time,” remembered Eric Dickerson, “and I was just trying to beat him to the handoff.”
Taylor was chosen to 10 Pro Bowls and 10 Associated Press All-Pro teams, including eight first-team selections, most of any LB. He and J.J. Watt are the only players to win AP‘s Defensive Player of the Year three times, he is one of only two defensive players to be named AP‘s NFL MVP, and he was the only defensive player unanimously chosen to the 1980s All-Decade Team. Taylor was the first of his kind, maybe the only of his kind, a uniquely disruptive force on defense.
5. Tom Brady
Quarterback
New England Patriots, 2000-18
70,514 yards, 517 TD, 171 INT, 97.6 rating
3 MVP, 3 OPOY, 3 consensus All-Pro, 5 AP All-Pro, 14 Pro Bowls, 2000s All-Decade Team
Most postseason passing yards, career:
1. Tom Brady — 11,179
2. Peyton Manning — 7,339
3. Brett Favre — 5,855
4. Joe Montana — 5,772
5. Ben Roethlisberger — 5,256
Most postseason passing touchdowns, career:
1. Tom Brady — 73
2. Joe Montana — 45
3. Brett Favre — 44
4. Peyton Manning — 40
5. Aaron Rodgers — 36
Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, and Joe Montana are the only players with half as many postseason passing yards as Tom Brady. They are the only ones with half as many postseason pass TDs as Brady. The Patriots have made the playoffs in 16 of Brady’s 17 seasons as the starting quarterback. They have won their first playoff game in 14 of those 16 seasons, and reached the Super Bowl nine times. New England has won six Super Bowls with Brady, and he has been named Super Bowl MVP four times. None of them were overwhelming or obvious selections, but he wasn’t named MVP in his best title game of all, Super Bowl LII.
Brady, who has played in a record 40 postseason games, has several other sterling performances on his playoff résumé. In the Patriots’ first playoff appearance following their undefeated 2007 regular season, a 28-26 victory over Jacksonville, Brady went 26-of-28 for 262 yards, 3 TDs, a 141.4 passer rating, and only one sack. A personal favorite was the January 2012 divisional matchup in which, when Brady threw his 6th passing touchdown, Denver QB Tim Tebow had 3 pass completions. The six TDs tied a postseason single-game record.
Perhaps Brady’s best postseason game came against the 2012-13 Houston Texans. The Texans had a top-10 defense and Defensive Player of the Year J.J. Watt. In the previous week’s wild card game, they had held the Bengals to 6 offensive points, under 200 yards of offense, and 0/9 on third downs. The Patriots had topped all of those numbers by halftime, despite losing both Rob Gronkowski and Danny Woodhead to injury on the first offensive series. Brady finished with 335 net passing yards, 3 TDs, and a 115.0 rating. The Patriots scored 41 points and won easily.
Altogether, Brady has sixteen 300-yard passing games in the postseason. Manning is next (9). Brady has 16 games with a passer rating of at least 100. Montana is next (12). Brady also holds the postseason records for games with 2+ TD passes (23), 3+ TD passes (11), and dozens of minor variations. He is the most accomplished postseason player in the history of professional football.
Of course, anyone with 40 postseason games is going to have some clunkers, and Brady is no exception. What’s interesting is that the Patriots have frequently won even when Brady has an off day. There are 11 quarterbacks who have at least five postseason games in which they threw multiple interceptions. Here they are, organized by their team’s record in those games:
1. Joe Montana, 4-1 (.800)
t2. Tom Brady, 6-4 (.600)
t2. Jim Plunkett, 3-2 (.600)
t4. Terry Bradshaw, 4-4 (.500)
t4. Ben Roethlisberger, 4-4 (.500)
6. Jim Kelly, 4-5 (.444)
t7. Roger Staubach, 2-3 (.400)
t7. Fran Tarkenton, 2-3 (.400)
9. Peyton Manning, 2-5 (.286)
10. Brett Favre, 1-8 (.111)
11. Dan Marino, 1-9 (.100)
There are different ways to interpret that list. Some famously “clutch” quarterbacks are listed at the top, and some notorious “chokers” near the bottom. This stat could reaffirm those notions: ice-cold QBs like Montana and Brady overcome their mistakes to succeed anyway, or maybe they “pitch to the score,” as it were, saving their mistakes for times the team can afford it and keeping laser-focused when the stakes are higher.
An alternate view is that all 81 of the games above involved throwing multiple INTs, but some players got bailed out by their teammates, and others didn’t. For “clutch”skeptics, these data confirm that the best way to become known as clutch is to play with excellent coaches and teammates who can help win the game even when you’re not at your best. No matter which interpretation you prefer, this chart can reinforce your belief.
My suspicion, as you may have inferred from last week’s Dan Marino profile, was that the latter view, the “bailed out by teammates” explanation, would make more sense, but I didn’t know if the data would confirm that idea when I looked more closely. Since passing efficiency has changed so much over time, I’ll try to compare contemporaries as much as possible. Let’s start with the most recent players: Brady, Roethlisberger, and Manning. Here are their passing lines from those multi-INT postseason games:
TB: 255/442, 2,816 yds, 16 TD, 23 INT, 67.1 rating, 15 sacks, -76 yards, 6.0 NY/A
BB: 148/239, 1,794 yds, 10 TD, 18 INT, 67.5 rating, 18 sacks, -119 yards, 6.5 NY/A
PM: 177/286, 1,784 yds, 9 TD, 17 INT, 65.4 rating, 11 sacks, -74 yards, 5.8 NY/A
I don’t see a difference there to explain .600, .400, and .286 records, but this is too small a sample to draw any conclusions from. Next up, the ’80s and ’90s, with Montana, Kelly, Favre, and Marino:
JM: 95/161, 1,225 yds, 10 TD, 12 INT, 72.6 rating, 12 sacks, -72 yards, 6.7 NY/A
JK: 153/284, 1,822 yds,13 TD, 23 INT, 55.2 rating, 16 sacks, -104 yards, 5.7 NY/A
BF: 199/347, 2,410 yds, 15 TD, 24 INT, 64.4 rating, 17 sacks, -105 yards, 6.3 NY/A
DM: 217/420, 2,513 yds, 15 TD, 21 INT, 61.1 rating, 16 sacks, -108 yards, 5.5 NY/A
Montana’s line is a positive outlier supporting traditional “clutch” theory, but Kelly’s average (4-5) record with poor efficiency simultaneously casts doubt. It’s not obvious that Kelly (55.2 rating, 5.7 NY/A) outplayed Marino (61.1 rating, 5.5 NY/A), whose teams went 1-9.
Last group: Plunkett, Bradshaw, Staubach, and Tarkenton. Sack data is not available for these games.
JP: 90/151, 1,199 yds, 3 TD, 11 INT, 61.1 rating
TB: 112/189, 1,576 yds, 11 TD, 20 INT, 66.0 rating
RS: 61/123, 749 yds, 6 TD, 14 INT, 45.5 rating
FT: 71/142, 865 yds, 7 TD, 11 INT, 53.3 rating
Plunkett’s and Bradshaw’s higher ratings match their superior records (combined 7-6), compared to 4-6 for Staubach and Tarkenton.
Maybe you see compelling evidence there that the QBs whose teams were most successful in their multi-INT games won those games because the quarterback was clutch during the rest of the game. To me, it looks more like noise, random variation — and not all that much variation.
Tom Brady has played some excellent games in the postseason, and he deserves substantial credit for his team’s unprecedented consistency. It seems to me that he has also benefitted from good teammates and good fortune, winning more than any other QB in history in postseason games when he threw multiple interceptions. If the Patriots had lost all of those games (which isn’t realistic) he’d be 3-2 in Super Bowls instead of 6-3. I’m not saying Brady didn’t deserve his Super Bowl victories; I just don’t think it makes sense to evaluate individual players exclusively by the success of their teams.
Of course, Brady’s legacy is much deeper than his postseason records and Super Bowl rings. He has led the NFL in passing yards three times and ranks fourth all-time. He has led in TDs four times, and ranks third in history. His +346 TD/INT differential is by far the best of all time. He has led in passer rating twice and in net yards per attempt once. Brady has led in QB-TSP three times and his career rank is third all-time.
Brady has made 14 Pro Bowls, tied for the most of any player at any position. He has won three NFL MVP awards from major organizations, four if you include the Sporting News “NFL Player of the Year” award in 2017. His excellence transcends team success and postseason opportunities. When you add Brady’s singular postseason résumé to his extraordinary regular-season résumé, that’s one of the very greatest players in the history of the sport.
4. Reggie White
Defensive End
Philadelphia Eagles, 1985-92; Green Bay Packers, 1993-98; Carolina Panthers, 2000
198 sacks; 33 FF, 20 FR, 137 yards, 2 TD; 3 INT, 79 yards
3 DPOY, 8 consensus All-Pro, 13 AP All-Pro, 13 Pro Bowls, 1980s All-Decade Team, 1990s All-Decade Team, All-Century Team
The USFL was a major league. The United States Football League operated from 1983-85, and competed with the NFL for talent, signing many NFL-quality players, including Heisman Trophy winners Herschel Walker, Mike Rozier, and Doug Flutie. Seven hundred USFL players appeared in an NFL regular-season game. That includes many who were only active as replacement players during the 1987 strike, but it also includes Pro Football Hall of Famers Jim Kelly, Reggie White, Steve Young, and Gary Zimmerman.
It includes 1980 MVP Brian Sipe, 1989 Defensive Player of the Year Keith Millard, and Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams.
It includes former Pro Bowlers Coy Bacon, Tom Banks, Gary Barbaro, Eddie Brown, Raymond Chester, Frank Corral, Joe Cribbs, Glen Edwards, Toni Fritsch, Mel Gray (WR), Bob Grupp, Wally Henry, Bruce Laird, Greg Landry, Jim LeClair, Mike Livingston, Terdell Middleton, Nick Mike-Mayer, Tommy Myers, and Dan Ross.
It includes future Pro Bowlers Gary Anderson (RB), Anthony Carter, Gary Clark, Doug Flutie, William Fuller, Mel Gray (KR), Bobby Hebert, Kent Hull, Craig James, Mike Johnson, Vaughan Johnson, Sean Landeta, Kevin Mack, Gerald McNeil, Sam Mills, Frank Minnifield, Nate Newton, Scott Norwood, Bart Oates, Mike Rozier, Luis Sharpe, Clarence Verdin, Herschel Walker, and Lee Williams. Clark, Flutie, Gray, Hull, Mills, Newton, Oates, and Walker all have plausible Hall of Fame arguments. [13]If it were up to me, Flutie, Gray, Mills, and Walker would all be in.
It includes Albert Bentley, Kelvin Bryant, Maurice Carthon, Irv Eatman, Aubrey Matthews, Gary Plummer, Ricky Sanders, Jo-Jo Townsell, Stan White, and Gizmo Williams.
The USFL featured Hall of Fame coaches George Allen and Marv Levy, Super Bowl XII coach Red Miller, and NFL 100-game winner Jim Mora.
The USFL was a major league.
Reggie White played two seasons with the USFL’s Memphis Showboats, recording 23.5 sacks. Philadelphia sportswriter Ray Didinger described White’s debut with the Eagles: “In his first game, White had 10 tackles and two and a half sacks against the New York Giants. He also tipped a pass that cornerback Herman Edwards intercepted and returned for a touchdown. By the fourth quarter, the Veterans Stadium crowd was chanting his name: ‘Reg-gie, Reg-gie.’ ”
White was a standout in the USFL and an immediate star in the NFL. He was a great player in a major league before his NFL career began, but usually receives no credit for that. As great as White’s NFL career was, what might he have done if he had gone directly to the established league? If the NFL honored USFL stats, White would hold the all-time sack record (221.5), and it would be unbreakable.
White was a dominant pass rusher. He led the NFL twice, including 21 in the strike-shortened 1987 season, playing only 12 games. The 16-game record is 22.5, so White almost certainly would have the record if not for the strike.
He wasn’t a one-dimensional player, though; Reggie was renowned for his run-stuffing. “He played the run as well as the pass,” averred Didinger. “Most people think of Reggie as a pass rusher . . . but some of his biggest plays have been against the run,” pronounced John Madden. “He plays the run, he rushes the passer, and in his early days with the Eagles, he occasionally lined up over the ball. His game is complete,” hailed Paul Zimmerman.
White lined up in multiple positions, all over the line, really. In 1986 he got 18 sacks playing primarily as a defensive tackle, and he was All-Pro at that position. His versatility made his teams unpredictable and gave opponents nightmares. “What makes Reggie the best,” Madden suggested, “is that he can play anywhere. He can line up over the tight end, over the offensive tackle, over the offensive guard, over the center . . . As good a pass rusher as [Bruce Smith] is, he doesn’t line up in as many different places as Reggie does and I don’t think he has Reggie’s strength.”
White’s strength was unbelievable. “His moves are built on power,” noted Zimmerman. “He’s amazingly strong.” Historian John Turney concurred, writing that White “performed his signature move with exceedingly more power than others.” What made White so devastating was that he complemented that extraordinary power with impossible speed, a 4.6-second forty-yard dash. He could dispose of whoever was blocking him and immediately close on the quarterback or ball-carrier. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a better defensive lineman,” marveled Super Bowl-winning coach Dick Vermeil. “He was the total package. Explosive power and quickness equaled by no one who has ever played.”
“The best player I’ve ever played with, or against,” Hall of Fame QB Brett Favre called White. When White moved from Philadelphia to Green Bay in 1993, the Eagles’ fell from 6th in total defense to 17th, while the Packers improved from 23rd to 2nd, with no other major personnel moves. When White retired following the 1998 season, the Packers defense dropped from 4th to 19th.
“He is probably the most unselfish team player I’ve ever been around,” praised Packers defensive coordinator Fritz Shurmur. “He made Sean Jones special, he made Santana Dotson special, Gilbert Brown special,” agreed Packers coach Mike Holmgren. White is one of those players about whom coaches and teammates say that he was an even better man than a football player. Reggie was well-liked, and a great team player, but I don’t think he should be praised as a better man than a football player. In 1998, White made some of the most prejudiced and offensive comments ever given in public by a professional athlete.
“Most people invited to speak to the Wisconsin Legislature give five minutes of pleasantries, get a few moments of applause and go home. Lawmakers weren’t expecting the earful Reggie White had in store for them Wednesday. They thought the Green Bay Packers star and ordained minister came to talk about his community work and a recent trip to Israel. White did, but his nearly hour-long speech also included remarks on homosexuality, race and slavery that turned the Assembly’s applause to stunned silence.”
In addition to railing against homosexuality, White applied harmful stereotypes to every racial group he could think of. I don’t doubt that his intentions were good, but his judgement was awful. Reggie White was one of those self-righteous people who presents his own prejudice as God’s will, and I have no patience for that. He was a nice guy in person, and he was the greatest defensive player of all time, but we can remember the positive aspects of his life without adding praise for things he did wrong, and that speech to the Wisconsin Legislature was wrong. It was just as offensive as John Rocker‘s comments around the same time, for which Rocker was widely demonized. Rocker was a jerk, and Reggie wasn’t; Rocker was a middling star for a year or two and Reggie was a superstar for a decade — so the media gave Rocker a roasting and Reggie a pass, but that’s politics, not morality. I’m not saying White was a bad person, but someone who says the virtue of Hispanics is that “they can put 20, 30 people in one home,” and the best thing about white people is that they “know how to tap into money,” I don’t think that’s someone about whom we should go out of our ways to say that he was a great human being.
What made Reggie great, from my perspective, was his play on the field. Didinger called him “the cornerstone around which Buddy Ryan built one of the NFL’s most feared defenses.” Ryan himself agreed, “Reggie is the most gifted defensive player I’ve ever been around.” White was equally impactful in Green Bay, and that’s what separates him, ever so slightly, from Lawrence Taylor. L.T. was a better, more impactful player in his prime, but White was an elite player for substantially longer. He had as many All-Pro seasons as Taylor had seasons. They were both primarily pass rushers, but White had 56 more sacks — not including those 23.5 in the USFL. He was the most complete defensive end of all time, and a dominant force for a decade and a half.
3. Jim Brown
Running Back
Cleveland Browns, 1957-65
12,312 rush yards, 5.22 average, 106 TD; 262 rec, 2,499 yards, 20 TD
4 MVP, 8 consensus All-Pro, 8 AP All-Pro, 9 Pro Bowls, Rookie of the Year, 1960s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team
This series has been running for six weeks, and well over a hundred players. I don’t know how much attention readers pay to the biographical info — stats and honors and such — under each player’s name. In nine NFL seasons, Jim Brown made nine Pro Bowls. He was a consensus first-team All-Pro eight times. He won a major NFL MVP award four times. Four times in nine seasons, for a non-quarterback.
Brown was the best pure ball-carrier in the history of football. There were a handful of other RBs who were more complete players when you consider elements like blocking and receiving, but for running with the football, Brown was all alone. He had everything. He was fast, and when he got behind the defense he was gone. He was agile, a great open-field runner who sidestepped tacklers and made them miss. He was huge for his era, 230 pounds. His Hall of Fame guard, Gene Hickerson, was listed at 250. The best center of that era, Green Bay’s Jim Ringo, was 235. The Giants’ HOF tackle Rosey Brown was 255. No one was too big for Jim Brown, but he was faster and nimbler than all of them.
Brown wasn’t a power runner in the same vein as John Henry Johnson or Earl Campbell, who ran into defenders head-on and bowled over them. Brown took angles from which it was difficult to tackle him, and he was so big and strong that tacklers appeared to simply bounce off. Perhaps his greatest attribute was his exceptional balance. If you didn’t wrap him up and drag him down, he kept going.
Brown was a four-sport athlete at Syracuse University. He was the second-leading scorer on the basketball team, a nationally-ranked decathlete in track and field, and he was perhaps the greatest lacrosse player in NCAA history. His combination of size, skills, and intelligence made him an unstoppable force in the NFL, a perennial All-Pro and MVP candidate. “Jim Brown was the perfect combination of grace, power and speed,” admired Paul Zimmerman. “The power and grace of a lion on the hunt, all instinct and moves and strength.”
As a rookie, Brown broke the single-game rushing record and led the NFL in rushing yardage. The following season he broke the single-season rushing record, rushing for 1,527 yards and scoring 17 TDs in 12 games. As a point of comparison, when Barry Sanders was the consensus Rookie of the Year in 1989, a 16-game season, he rushed for 1,470 yards and scored 14 TDs. That’s in a season 33% longer. Brown wasn’t just the best running back in the league, he was a miracle, so impossibly dominant that he seemed to be playing a different game than everyone else.
Brown has two different seasons which arguably could be the greatest ever. In 1958, Brown rushed for almost twice as many yards (1,527) as second-place Alan Ameche (791), averaged 5.94 yards a carry, and tied the single-season touchdown record. He broke the single-season rushing record by over 400 yards, more than 35%. This was his age-22 season.
In 1963, Brown broke his own record for rushing yardage — by over 300 yards, 1,863. That total led the NFL by an incredible 845 yards, 83% (Jim Taylor, 1018). Brown’s average of 133.1 rushing yards per game is the second-best in history, trailing only O.J. Simpson in 1973. He also set the single-season record — which still stands — for rushing average: 6.40. Brown led the NFL in TDs (15) and became the first player in history with six 150-yard rushing games in a season. Keep in mind that these are 12- and 14-game seasons.
Keep in mind also that those are only two of Brown’s four MVP seasons. In his rookie season of 1957, Brown led the NFL in rushing by over 20 yards per game and led the league in rushing TDs. In his final season, 1965, he scored 21 TDs and rushed for 80% more yards (1,544) than second-best Gale Sayers (867). He came into the pro game as its best and most valuable player, and he left the same way.
Thoughtful analysts have pointed out, especially in recent years, that Brown played with exceptional offensive lines, including Hall of Famers Lou Groza, Gene Hickerson, and Mike McCormack. This is absolutely true, and there is no question that Brown benefitted, both statistically and in perceptions of his play, from his blocking units. At the same time, film of Brown shows very clearly that he would have excelled with any blockers. He gained more yards after contact than any runner of his era. If the tackler didn’t have a good angle, perfect form and technique, and some size and strength, Brown would often stay on his feet and keep going. He was also an elusive runner who could make tacklers miss altogether. The blocking helped, but it didn’t create Brown’s legend.
More significantly, Jason Lisk noted an intriguing difference between the quality of the NFL’s Eastern and Western Divisions during Brown’s career; the Eastern Division, where Brown played, was the weaker of the two, and Brown’s rushing stats were more impressive when facing those teams rather than the superior Western Division. There are any number of variables that might be relevant to Lisk’s findings, which he doesn’t posit as definitive, but I’ve written about confidence in player greatness, and the schedule Brown faced does lessen my confidence in his otherworldly dominance.
As a counter to that idea, however, no one else from the Eastern Division produced anything close to Brown’s rushing dominance. Most of the great runners of that era played in the Western Division, including Lenny Moore, Jim Taylor, and Paul Hornung. In Brown’s record-setting 1958 season, for instance, six of the eight leading rushers played in the West. Brown played in an environment that showcased his excellence and emphasized his dominance, but he wasn’t just a B+ runner in A+ circumstances. He did things no one else was doing, or coming close to.
Brown retired with the single-game rushing record, the single-season rushing record, and the career rushing record. He held all-time records for rushing touchdowns, total touchdowns, and all-purpose yardage. He still holds the all-time record for rushing yards per game (104.3).
My favorite Jim Brown story concerns his toughness. You probably know that Brown never missed a game. [14]The one season he didn’t make All-Pro, 1962, Brown played through a severe wrist injury. But Brown also said, after he retired, that he always got up slowly following a tackle. That way, if he was hurt and had to get up slowly, the opponent never knew. Thus, the hardest hit never seemed to affect him, and the legend of his toughness grew with every shot. Hall of Fame LB Chuck Bednarik admitted the demoralizing effect of Brown’s tactics: “You gang-tackled him, gave him extracurriculars. He’d get up slow, look at you, and walk back to that huddle and wouldn’t say a word . . . just come at you again, and again. You’d just say, ‘What the hell, what’s wrong with this guy? For heaven’s sake, when is he going to stop carrying the ball? How much more can he take?’ ” Brown actively and deliberately intimidated defenders.
2. Peyton Manning
Quarterback
Indianapolis Colts, 1998-2011; Denver Broncos, 2012-15
71,940 yards, 539 TD, 251 INT, 96.5 rating
5 MVP, 4 OPOY, 4 consensus All-Pro, 10 AP All-Pro, 14 Pro Bowls, 2000s All-Decade Team
Peyton Manning made 14 Pro Bowls, the record for a quarterback. [15]Tied with Tom Brady. He was All-Pro 10 times, which is also the record for a quarterback, and AP‘s first-team All-Pro seven times: another record. He was NFL MVP five times, which is the record. He is — by far — the most decorated quarterback of all time.
Manning retired as the career record-holder in passing yards and passing touchdowns. He led the NFL in passing yards and rating three times each, in TDs and NY/A four times each. He holds the single-season records for yardage (5,477), touchdowns (55), and TD/INT +/- (+45). He is — by far — the best statistical quarterback of all time.
Manning played for five head coaches, and went to the playoffs with all five. He is the only player to reach the Super Bowl with four different HCs, and the only starting QB to win a Super Bowl with two different teams. He was successful with Edgerrin James, and he was successful when his leading rusher gained under 500 yards. He won MVP and went to the Super Bowl with Indianapolis, and he won MVP and went to the Super Bowl with Denver. He had an All-Pro, division-title season with the Colts in 1999, and he had an All-Pro, division-title season with the Colts in 2009, teams with no starter in common besides Manning.
“If you take him out [of] the game, no disrespect to nobody else on the Colts, but you make them a very below average ballclub,” foresaw Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis. When Manning missed the 2011 season, the Colts dropped from the 4th-ranked offense and a 10-6 record to the 30th-ranked offense and a 2-14 record. When he joined the Broncos in 2012, they improved from an 8-8 record and the 23rd-ranked offense to 13-3 and the 4th-ranked offense, increasing their points scored by 56%. The following season, they broke the single-season record for points scored. The idea that Manning’s success was a product of his supporting cast, or the dome in Indianapolis, is not supported by evidence. [16]There is a persistent rumor, popular almost exclusively among people motivated to discredit Manning’s greatness, that the Colts went 2-14 on purpose in 2011, tanking in pursuit of the next … Continue reading
Confronted with Manning’s singular accomplishments, his detractors and skeptics often propose that this legacy is tainted by a middling postseason record. Manning was not a great postseason quarterback; he doesn’t have the same résumé as Tom Brady or Otto Graham. But the idea that he fell apart in the postseason is absurd. Manning has some of the greatest performances in postseason history. There have only been four perfect passer ratings in NFL playoff history, and in two of them, the passer had only half as many attempts (13) as Manning did against the 2003 Broncos, a 41-10 win for the Colts. Manning was 22-of-26 for 377 yards, 5 TDs, and no INTs or sacks, against the fourth-ranked defense in the NFL. It’s arguably the best performance in playoff history.
The following week, Manning went 22-of-30 for 304 yards, 3 TDs, and 0 INTs, powering a 38-31 shootout victory at Arrowhead Stadium. He passed for 458 yards, 4 TDs, and a 145.7 rating in a playoff game the next year. He led the biggest comeback in Conference Championship Game history (18 points against the Patriots) and won a Super Bowl MVP Award against one of the best defenses of his era (the 2006 Chicago Bears). He dominated the exceptional 2009 Jets defense in the AFC Championship Game (377 yds, 3 TD, 123.6 rating), another double-digit comeback. Manning was the only player all season — 19 games altogether — to throw 3 TD passes against the Jets, and the Colts’ 461 yards were the most the Jets allowed all season. In Denver, Manning helped the Broncos earn a Super Bowl appearance with his 400-yard, 2-TD, no-INT AFC Championship Game against the Patriots. He had some bad games in the postseason, but he also had some excellent games.
Only two QBs have started more playoff wins than Manning, he won multiple Super Bowl rings and a Super Bowl MVP, and he has some of the finest performances in playoff history. Playing poorly in the postseason is not some defining characteristic of his career, because it’s a perception that is not based in reality.
Manning played in 266 regular-season games, 293 games including the postseason. The idea that his record-setting career, his years leading the league, his unmatched tally of All-Pro and MVP honors, and his significant postseason success, could all be undone by the 13 games — out of 293, that’s 4% — that his team lost in the playoffs … well, that’s silly. You don’t judge a player with a 17-year, 300-game career by a dozen games. Manning, like Dan Marino, often coaxed mediocre teams into the postseason, and he deserves credit for reaching the playoffs at all, not criticism for failing to perform miracles when he got there. Ironically, Manning’s detractors would have less ammunition if a few of his teams had finished 9-7 and out of the playoffs instead of 10-6 and in the tournament.
In a further irony, perhaps the most vivid illustration of the distinction between mediocre QB performance and positive team results comes from Manning himself. In his final season, 2015, Manning was a below-average quarterback surrounded by excellent teammates, especially on defense. That team won Super Bowl 50 not because Manning was the best QB in the league, or even because he had a great postseason — he wasn’t the best QB that year, and he didn’t have a great postseason — but because there are 52 other guys on the roster, and you can’t win or lose without their help. The quarterback isn’t solely responsible for the team’s success.
What most distinguishes Manning for me isn’t his statistical dominance, or his singular list of honors, or his two Super Bowl rings. It’s his command at the line of scrimmage. “I think he knows what’s going on, on defense, better than any quarterback I’ve ever seen,” complimented Hall of Fame QB Roger Staubach. Manning was the best ever at reading and adjusting to defenses, and the best QBs of his generation, and ever since, were forced to emulate his expertise. Everything Tom Brady and Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers do well, Manning did first. “He set the standard for how to play the quarterback position,” Brady confirmed. “Peyton Manning revolutionized the game,” lauded John Elway. “We used to think the no-huddle was fast-paced—get to the line of scrimmage and get people off balance. Peyton revolutionized it—get to the line of scrimmage, take our time, find out what the defense is doing and then I’m going to pick you apart.”
Manning had a lightning-quick release, and his sack percentage is the lowest of all time. That sack avoidance helped him keep the chains moving, and he led the NFL in first down percentage five times. His 45.5 first down percentage in 2004 is the highest on record. Here are the top ten seasons in first down percentage, with a minimum of 250 attempts, since 1991 (when first down data became official):
1. Peyton Manning, 2004 — 45.5%
2. Peyton Manning, 2013 — 42.7%
3. Peyton Manning, 2006 — 42.2%
4. Peyton Manning, 2005 — 41.9%
5. Matt Ryan, 2016 — 41.7%
6. Carson Palmer, 2015 — 41.1%
7. Drew Brees, 2011 — 40.82%
8. Peyton Manning, 2009 — 40.79%
9. Philip Rivers, 2009 — 40.7%
10. Tony Romo, 2014 — 40.6%
Sack avoidance and first down percentage don’t get a lot of media attention, but they critically help the team. I think Peyton Manning did as much to help his teams as anyone who’s ever played.
1. Jerry Rice
Wide Receiver
San Francisco 49ers, 1985-2000; Oakland Raiders, 2001-04; Seattle Seahawks, 2004
1,549 receptions, 22,895 yards, 197 TD
2 MVP, 3 OPOY, 9 consensus All-Pro, 11 AP All-Pro, 13 Pro Bowls, 1980s All-Decade Team, 1990s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team
Most receiving yards, career:
1. Jerry Rice, 22,895
2. Larry Fitzgerald, 16,279
Most receiving touchdowns, career:
1. Jerry Rice, 197
2. Randy Moss, 156
First downs didn’t become an official statistic until half a dozen years into Rice’s career, but I estimate that he produced 1,092 first downs. Second place is Tony Gonzalez, 864. Rice leads these categories, the three most important statistics for receivers, by 41%, 26%, and 26%. He is degrees of magnitude ahead of his closest competition, even though rule changes and the evolution of strategy have facilitated more passing since his retirement than during Rice’s career.
Jerry Rice wasn’t an overwhelming physical presence, like Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson. He had good size, at 6-2, 200 pounds, but he wasn’t regarded as fast, he didn’t fake guys out of their shoes, and he couldn’t jump out of the stadium. With the ball in his hands, though, Rice was fast. He was the best player in history running after the catch, which he would invariably make without breaking stride. He was the greatest ever at catching the ball while moving full speed, which allowed him to maintain his advantage on the defender. Other receivers slow down to make sure they catch the ball, and they get caught, the defender catches up. Rice stayed at 100 percent. His slow 40-yard dash out of college worried scouts, but Rice is the all-time leader in 40-yard TDs (59).
Rice didn’t make flashy cuts to evade tacklers, but as a route-runner his breaks bedeviled defenders. “Most wide receivers, when they break in or out, they’ll drop their shoulders or bend at the waist or bend at the knees,” reported Pro Bowl cornerback Eric Davis. “With Jerry, you couldn’t tell whether he was going to run fifty yards, or five yards and stop.” Rice was also excellent at utilizing his blockers, weaving around traffic to get downfield after the catch.
Paul Zimmerman wrote about Rice’s mastery:
Two of the prettiest sights in the game were [Lance] Alworth running the deep post and Jerry Rice running the shallow cross, splitting the field like someone cutting a piece of pie, turning a five-yarder into plus-50. Bill Walsh called it “athletic arrogance.” Rice called it confidence in a quarterback who would always put the ball exactly where it had to be, in front of him.
“I was blessed by having two Hall of Famers, Joe Montana and Steve Young, throwing me the ball,” he said. “The whole idea when you’re running any route, but especially the short crossing pattern, is to know that you’re not going to have to break stride or reach behind you for the ball. If I’m watching a game and I see something like that, I have to turn away. You see a guy hitching up or turning back for the ball and you know something terrible’s going to happen, with those DBs cruising back there like sharks. I was lucky. Joe was a quarterback who’d never hang you out to dry, maybe the best who every lived, leading you on the short cross. Steve came pretty close to that level.”
Rice was the best route-runner who ever played, quick out of his breaks, and the best after the catch who ever played. He was also the greatest in history making receptions in coverage. His faith in his quarterbacks not to get him killed led him to play fearlessly, and he had an intuitive sense of positioning and placement.
Rice led the NFL in receptions twice, in receiving yards six times, in receiving TDs six times. In 1987, Rice gained 1,078 yards, only 39 behind J.T. Smith for the NFL lead. Smith, who scabbed during the strike, had played three more games than Rice. Jerry also scored 23 touchdowns that year, in only 12 games. Most major press organizations named him as the NFL MVP, the only wide receiver ever so honored.
The following season, Rice was named MVP of Super Bowl XXIII. He caught a then-record 11 passes for a still-record 215 yards, and scored a touchdown in San Francisco’s 20-16 victory. Rice holds Super Bowl records for receptions (33), receiving yards (589), and receiving TDs (8), all by massive margins. No one is within 200 yards of his lead, and no one else has even half as many Super Bowl TD receptions.
Rice’s postseason excellence wasn’t limited to the game’s biggest stage. He holds similar advantages for postseason receptions (151, compared to second-place Julian Edelman‘s 115), yards (2,245, over Edelman’s 1,412), and TDs (22, almost double the next-best 12 shared by Rob Gronkowski and John Stallworth).
Part of Rice’s greatness was his non-stop work ethic. His workouts were legendary, and translated to game day. John Madden praised Rice, “Whatever the play, he goes full speed . . . If it’s a pass to him, he catches the ball, runs full speed downfield, then runs back to the huddle. If it’s a pass to another receiver or a running play, he runs his assignment full speed, then runs back to the huddle. Not just most plays. Every play.”
“He’s a good blocker,” Madden continued. “He’ll make big blocks downfield to spring a teammate. When you see a wide receiver blocking, it’s 99 percent hustle. He doesn’t have to be devastating. He doesn’t have to level tacklers. He just has to get downfield and get in the way. Not every wide receiver does it. Jerry Rice does it.”
Jerry Rice was the most dominant player of the Modern Era, at any position. He routinely led the league in major statistical categories, and 15 years after his retirement, when all his contemporaries have been knocked off the all-time leaderboards, he still holds every significant career receiving record. He was the greatest postseason receiver of all time, the greatest Super Bowl receiver of all time. He made more Pro Bowls and more All-Pro teams than any other receiver, he was a three-time Offensive Player of the Year and a two-time MVP. He contributed in ways that don’t show up on the stat sheet, and he played for three Super Bowl winners. Rice had a drop problem as a rookie, and has admitted applying Stickum to his gloves, but unless you dock him for that, Jerry Rice was not only the greatest receiver in pro football history, but the most outstanding player of all time.
References
| ↑1 | Earl Campbell in 1980, Eric Dickerson in 1984, and Terrell Davis in 1998. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | The record is now Emmitt Smith‘s, 78. |
| ↑3 | Projecting his postseason career to a 16-game season yields 479 rushing yards and 8 rushing touchdowns. |
| ↑4 | Graham’s 86.6 career rating is higher than those of Dan Marino (86.4), Brett Favre (86.0), Jim Kelly (84.4), Troy Aikman (81.6), Warren Moon (80.9), and John Elway (79.9). Special context for my most stat-inclined readers: Graham’s career passer rating is higher than Trent Green‘s. |
| ↑5 | Hornsby signed Baugh to a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, but Baugh’s MLB dreams were derailed when he ended up on the depth chart behind Marty Marion, a future eight-time All-Star who was National League MVP in 1944. “Anyway, I had problems with the curveball,” Baugh contented himself. |
| ↑6 | Steve Young and Baugh are tied. |
| ↑7 | This rule was the 1945 equivalent of today’s fumble-out-the-end zone is a safety. It’s also similar to the Tuck Rule: a rule that most people never knew existed until it changed who won the championship. |
| ↑8 | The other charter HOFer sometimes identified as a QB is Dutch Clark, who retired with 1,507 passing yards, 11 pass TDs, and a 40.3 rating. He was an excellent player, but he wasn’t a quarterback in any modern understanding of the word. You can read more about Clark in my summary of him for this series. |
| ↑9 | Baugh himself argued, “When all the teams started using blacks, I think that’s when football picked up a great deal.” |
| ↑10 | A blocker and receiver, usually Don Warren, who might line up in the backfield like a fullback or on the line like a tight end |
| ↑11 | According to Football Outsiders, fullbacks participated in fewer than 10% of offensive snaps last season. Only two FBs, San Francisco’s Kyle Juszczyk and New England’s James Develin, participated in even one-quarter of their team’s offensive plays. |
| ↑12 | Julius Peppers is the only other player with at least 9 interceptions and at least 100 sacks. |
| ↑13 | If it were up to me, Flutie, Gray, Mills, and Walker would all be in. |
| ↑14 | The one season he didn’t make All-Pro, 1962, Brown played through a severe wrist injury. |
| ↑15 | Tied with Tom Brady. |
| ↑16 | There is a persistent rumor, popular almost exclusively among people motivated to discredit Manning’s greatness, that the Colts went 2-14 on purpose in 2011, tanking in pursuit of the next year’s top draft pick. That would have been an extraordinary and risky plan, since presumptive first pick Andrew Luck still had to make it through his final year at Stanford [1] healthy, and [2] looking like a historic prospect, and deliver on that promise in the NFL in a way that recent number-one picks like Sam Bradford and JaMarcus Russell had failed to. Furthermore, the team would have looked stupid for deliberately jettisoning Manning if he came back with a different team to win the next two first-team All-Pro awards, an NFL MVP, and a Super Bowl.
Such a strategy would have simultaneously required great foresight, since Manning wasn’t ruled out until well into the season, and the Colts didn’t win a game until Week 15, and extremely poor foresight, since both the general manager and the entire coaching staff were fired following the season. If they were losing on purpose, they weren’t rewarded for it. This conspiracy theory is totally implausible, and thinking about it long enough to type this rebuttal has probably made me dumber. |