The NFL has released its list of the 22 finalists for the all-century team at quarterback: Sammy Baugh, Sid Luckman, Otto Graham, Bobby Layne, Norm Van Brocklin, Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Fran Tarkenton, Joe Namath, Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw, Dan Fouts, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, John Elway, Steve Young, Troy Aikman, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers.
Which 10 will make the list? As I wrote yesterday, I think there’s a clear top tier of quarterbacks that must be included. They are, in chronological order:
Sammy Baugh, Otto Graham, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady.
Each of those QBs won multiple championships and multiple MVP awards; in fact, these 6 are the only 6 quarterbacks to do so.
I would then make a 7th tier for one QB. Include him with the first 6 if you like, but whatever you do, you can’t justifiably keep him out of the top ten.
That leaves 15 quarterbacks remaining for just three spots. So who misses — and makes — the cut?
Let’s go in reverse order: I think there are three quarterbacks who have little chance of making the cut: Troy Aikman, Dan Fouts, and Joe Namath. All are great, worthy Hall of Famers, but all have too many obstacles to making a top ten list.
- Aikman didn’t have an extraordinarily high peak or longevity and he was not a statistical superstar. Despite the difference in team success, he was a direct contemporary (and competitor) with Steve Young, and he loses that battle.
- Fouts was very good at the end of the ’70s, but he’s generally lumped in with Montana and Marino as quarterbacks of the ’80s: and he loses those battles every time. He was the best quarterback from ’75 to ’84, but the lack of postseason success haunts (and especially his performances in losses) him in a way that he needed more than just 2 first-team All-Pro honors to overcome. Fouts only ranked 4th all-time in passing touchdowns at the time of his retirement, and never caught Fran Tarkenton for the passing yards crown. An outstanding player, but he does not have a great argument for being one of the 10 best passers of all time.
- Namath is probably the most underrated quarterback in pro football, at least if you listen to those who just look at his raw stats. He was the best of his generation at avoiding sacks and fumbles, and while he threw a lot of interceptions, he also was well ahead of every other quarterback in his era at moving the ball down the field. He won 2 AFL MVP awards and was named the AFL All-Decade QB, but with only one Super Bowl title and an injury-shortened career, he’s not top 10 material.
That leaves 12 quarterbacks with 3 open spots, which we can sort of group into four eras.
The Active Guys: Drew Brees, and Aaron Rodgers.
A big caveat here: much (all?) of the voting was done after the 2018 season, making this really the #NFL98. And the last two years help out Brees a lot more than they help Rodgers. Brees led the NFL in passer rating in 2018 and may do it again in 2019, while setting a new all-time single-season mark in completion percentage both seasons. Rodgers has fallen on relative hard times, by the standards of an all-time great.
At this point, it’s hard to argue for Brees not being in the top 10 all-time. He’s led the NFL in passing yards 7 times, touchdowns 4 times, and completion percentage 6 times. He’s also the all-time leader in both passing yards and passing touchdowns. Brees has also quietly moved into 4th all-time in career wins.
The knocks on Brees are threefold, at least when it comes to being a top-10 QB ever: he’s never won an MVP, he had just 1 All-Pro season, and has won only one title. He’s also 4th all-time in career losses. But the biggest knock is he was clearly not the best or second best QB of his generation, and he might even be the 4th-best QB of his era depending on how you rank Rodgers.
While Brees comes up short with the MVP voting Rodgers has two legendary, MVP seasons. He’s won a Super Bowl and been extraordinarily unlucky in the playoffs.
- In 2016, he staged an epic comeback with two Hail Marys on the final drive to force overtime, and then his team lost before he ever took the field again.
- The year before, his Packers failed to recover an onside kick at the end of the fourth quarter; Seattle scored a touchdown, Rodgers answered with a field goal drive, and then never saw the field in overtime in that game, either.
- In 2013, Rodgers led Green Bay on a field goal drive to tie the game. The 49ers responded by putting together a 14-play drive to take the final 5:06 off the clock and kicked a game-winning field goal on the game’s last play.
- Rodgers lost his first playoff game in one of the greatest passing matchups ever: he threw for 423 yards on 42 passes, produced 5 touchdowns, and the 45 points that produced was only enough to give the Packers a chance to go to overtime.
- The other three postseason losses on Rodgers’ resume came when the Packers allowed 37, 44, and 45 points.
Rodgers has the best passer rating of all time. He also has the best TD/INT ratio of all time. Both of those statistics, of course, are not era-adjusted, although his era-adjusted numbers are still outstanding. At the time of the voting, Rodgers has completed 8 full seasons and two half-seasons, with off-the-charts efficiency numbers. But he was clearly not Brady or Manning, and if you value volume, he wasn’t at Brees’s level yet, either.
With only three spots remaining, and two of the first 7 going to contemporaries, I think neither make the team.
Verdict: Neither.
The 1970s Guys: Fran Tarkenton, Roger Staubach, Terry Bradshaw
You would think at least one of these guys makes the cut. The question is, which one? And that is a tougher question that you might think.
Bradshaw ran away with the voting for the All-Decade spot at quarterback: he received 13 of 25 possible votes, with Staubach and Ken Stabler each picking up 3 votes. Bradshaw was by far the best postseason quarterback of the bunch, which is reflected in both the stats and the championships. The Steelers twice defeating the Cowboys in the Super Bowl to become team of the decade surely helped Bradshaw run away with the All-Decade voting at QB.
Like Troy Aikman, Bradshaw struggled significantly early in his career. He didn’t have a sustained peak of top seasons or even two or three really dominant seasons that you typically need to land on a list like this. In addition to fighting with Staubach and Tarkenton for a spot on this list, he should be fighting Ben Roethlisberger and splitting the Steelers vote and also fighting with Bart Starr and splitting the #Ringzz vote. With Roethlisberger not making the final cut, that may help Bradshaw’s chances here. He was an underrated runner and an NFL MVP in 1978, but I think he lacks the high end passing efficiency and success to make the list.
Tarkenton, of course, has the opposite problem: he has all the stats but none of the postseason success. Tarkenton retired as the all-time leader in passing yards and passing touchdowns. He was also a very effective rusher: to this day, Tarkenton has the most rushing yards among the 22 QBs with 40,000 passing yards, and until Rodgers (28) passes him, Tarkenton has the most rushing TDs (32) among quarterbacks with 325+ passing touchdowns.
Tarkenton has always been the most underrated of the group in large part because of his supporting cast. He was throwing to John Gilliam, FB Chuck Foreman, and Paul Flatley in Minnesota; those were the three Vikings who gained the most receiving yards with Tarkenton. One of the most remarkable Tarkenton stats I’ve seen is that he threw 342 touchdown passes, and no one player caught more than 25 of them! Bradshaw threw 212, and Lynn Swann and John Stallworth combined for 93 of them. Staubach threw 153, and he had two receivers top 25 touchdown catches (Drew Pearson and Billy Joe DuPree). Tarkenton made 9 Pro Bowls, but he was only an All-Pro once (in ’75, when he won MVP). In that regard, he was a lot like Brees: Tarkenton had a number of very good years, but he was probably the best QB in the league for 3-year stretches rather than the best in any one season. Still, I don’t expect him to make this team, because I don’t think these are the sorts of things voters will be looking at. But his statistical dominance over Bradshaw may make voters opt for ….
Staubach is the middle of the road choice among these three greats. In terms of efficiency, he leads the group. In terms of longevity, well, he ranks last. In terms of postseason success, he’s in the middle. And in terms of awards, well Staubach is the only Hall of Fame quarterback to never be named first-team All-Pro. That is a bit misleading, however, as he had a good argument to be the All-Pro QB in at least four different seasons: 1971 (topped by Bob Griese), 1977 (Griese again), 1978 (Bradshaw), and 1979 (Dan Fouts). Staubach was extremely efficient for his era, but I think that’s been glorified more since he retired than during his actual era. In 1971, he lost out on the AP MVP to Alan Page, in part because Staubach only threw 211 passes (and started just 10 games).
If voters want records and longevity, they go to Tarkenton. If they want postseason success, they’d value Bradshaw. If they want to highlight efficiency with a good deal of postseason success, they go to Staubach. It is easy to make arguments for all three of these players. One problem for Staubach is Steve Young, who can play the “efficient for 8 years” card but even better.
Verdict: None of these players make it. But if one of them does, I’d say Staubach is the frontrunner.
The ’80s and ’90s: John Elway, Steve Young, and Brett Favre
This is where things get difficult. In Elway and Favre, you have two players who most fans would automatically assume make the cut. How do they know? They’re John Elway and Brett Favre! John Elway retired as the winningest quarterback in pro football history, and also with 5 Super Bowl appearances and an MVP (even if a controversial one). He was legendary for his 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives, even if Marino and Unitas had more. Elway took two different teams to the Super Bowl, if you think about it in any realistic sense. There was only one player on the 1986 Broncos and 1998 Broncos, and that was Elway. It’s true that Mike Shanahan was the offensive coordinator in 1986-87 and the head coach in ’97-98, but when Elway’s Broncos made the Super Bowl in ’89, it was with Dan Reeves as head coach and Chan Gailey as offensive coordinator. The only players on the ’89 Broncos and the ’98 Broncos were Elway, Tyrone Braxton, and Steve Atwater.
Statistically, Elway’s numbers pale in comparison to some of the other star quarterbacks in NFL history, at least when it comes to efficiency. But (1) I don’t know how much the voters will focus on that, and (2) I think most of the poor efficiency numbers speak to Elway’s supporting cast rather than Elway himself.
The problem that these three quarterbacks will face is a version of the problem Brees and Rodgers face: neither were Marino or Montana. For Favre, that’s less of an issue, but Elway was a direct competitor to both (Favre was really in his own era, but Elway faced both Montana and Favre in a Super Bowl).
Was Elway the 3rd best QB of the ’80s? Dan Fouts may have something to say about that, too. For Elway, it’s really about longevity and fame: and while Elway was of course drafted with Marino in ’83, Elway was the first-team All-Decade quarterback of the ’90s, beating out not just Marino and Favre, but Young and Aikman.
The anti-Elway case would be that he was never an Associated Press first-team All-Pro quarterback and made “only” 9 Pro Bowls. Bob Griese won 2 Super Bowls, too, and made 8 Pro Bowls and was twice an AP first-team All-Pro. Elway didn’t have the single-season dominance — frankly, none of his seasons are legendary — but he was very good for 16 years.
Young is 5th all-time in era-adjusted passer rating. He was absurdly dominant for 8 seasons, similar to Staubach or Otto Graham or Aaron Rodgers. Had Young and the 49ers went 3-0 in the NFCCG against the Cowboys instead of 1-2, I’ve got no doubt that Young would be a 3-time Super Bowl champ (in addition to the two he earned as a backup) and regarded as a no-brainer, top-10 quarterback ever. Maybe top-5. Young was the AP first-team All-Pro in ’92, ’93, and ’94, and was the second-team choice in ’95, ’97, and ’98. His ’94 season is legendary — he set a new single-season passer rating record, was miles ahead of the rest of the league, and finished the year as Super Bowl MVP — but his ’98 season isn’t far behind. That year, in only 15 games, Young led the league in passing touchdowns and passing yards per game, and also rushed for 454 yards and 6 touchdowns.
Young at his peak was in the discussion for best ever. He nearly won three straight AP MVP awards: he won in ’92 and ’94, and then received 21 votes to Emmitt Smith‘s 26 votes in 1993. But nearly all of Young’s success came in the ’90s, and he didn’t beat out Elway or Favre for the all-decade quarterback honors. Young’s career overlapped with Montana and Marino, along with Elway, Aikman, and Favre. Young wasn’t able to unseat Montana at the 49ers starting quarterback until injury, he didn’t have the longevity of Marino or Elway, and his 49ers went 2-7 against Aikman’s Cowboys and Favre’s Packers in the postseason. I think the voters will have enough reason to not consider Young a top-3 quarterback of his era to keep him off the list.
Favre lasted so longer that he kind of lives in his own space in NFL history. He spent a decade fighting Elway, Young, and Marino, and also a decade fighting Manning, Brady, and Brees. Young won three straight AP 1APs from ’92 to 94, and then Favre won three straight from ’95 to ’97. Manning won three straight from ’03 to ’05, but in between Randall Cunningham won it in 1998, and then Kurt Warner and Rich Gannon alternated in ’99-’00’-01-’02. Let’s not pretend that ’98 Cunningham or Warner’s Rams weren’t outstanding, but that was a small gap in the inner circle Hall of Fame chain where Favre had a chance to set himself apart. Instead, during his age 29 through 33 seasons, Favre had a bit of a slump (other than ’01). In fact, he was never a first-team All-Pro QB again after ’97.
That said, this is Brett Favre we are talking about. The man retired as the all-time king in wins, passing yards, and passing touchdowns. He took four different head coaches to the playoffs. Like Tarkenton, he did it with a revolving door at receiver. I think Faver has a better chance of making this team than Elway in part because he’s in a slightly different era. You probably should consider Elway as part of the Marino/Montana era, but Favre really isn’t in that group.
We have all-decade teams, but some folks also look at All-Decade teams that start in the middle of the decade. And in that regard, Favre is far and away the best QB of the ’95 to ’04 era. He won 109 games; he is 51% ahead of runner up Steve McNair (72 wins). He threw 306 passing touchdowns; that’s 42% more than Peyton Manning, who is second with 216. He threw for 20% more yards than every other quarterback: he had 39,322, while Drew Bledsoe had 32,759.
It’s fair to say that the ’95 to ’04 era was a gap in all-time great quarterback play, and this probably overrates Favre. It was a lot easier to stand out from ’95 to ’04 than from ’05 to ’14. But Favre also had 5 Pro Bowl seasons <em>outside</em> of this period, and a few legitimately great seasons (’94, ’07, ’09).
Verdict: Favre and Elway make it; Young does not.
The Pre-1970s
This leaves one spot left, assuming the 1970s guys split the vote. There are four to consider here.
Sid Luckman was the best statistical passer of his generation. He was a 4-time champion and a 5-time All-Pro. But I think the voters will rightly conclude that Baugh was the better player, and decide to take the 3rd best QB from a more recent era than the 2nd-best quarterback from one of the earliest eras of pro football. The NFL doesn’t remember its old-timers the way baseball does. If it did, Luckman would be remembered as the Montana or Brady or Graham of his generation. As it stands, there’s another highly efficient winner with better odds.
Bobby Layne is a 6-time Pro Bowler who had both great stats and great team success. He won three NFL titles, although the third came with Tobin Rote actually leading the Lions to the title after Layne broke his leg in a Carson Wentz/Nick Foles 2017 Eagles situation. As of 1961, Layne was the all-time leader in passing yards and in he was also the all-time passing TD king in 1962. Layne was pretty much exclusively a star of the ’50s, but he was also very likely the third best quarterback of that decade. The all-decade team named three quarterbacks without a first or second team — Otto Graham, Layne, and the next man on our list.
Norm Van Brocklin is probably the second best quarterback of his era, or maybe even the best. Until Peyton Manning won a Super Bowl with the Broncos, Van Brockling was the only quarterback to lead two different NFL teams to a title. He is most remembered for that and two other things: some truly outstanding efficiency seasons. This was not in the 1940s, either. Van Brocklin was competing with some legitimate passers, and he stood out as extremely efficient in five seasons in a way that maybe no other passer has matched.
The other thing Van Brocklin is remembered for is setting the single-game passing yardage record, which he still holds to this day.
Even without adjusting for era, Van Brocklin has the single-best average gain per pass play in NFL history. It’s hard to find flaws in the Dutchman’s game, but he was overshadowed by both Otto Graham early in his career and Johnny Unitas later on. For whatever reason — perhaps because he played for the Los Angeles Rams, a team that wasn’t well covered during his era, moved to Anaheim in 1980, and then St. Louis in 1995, so the Los Angeles sportswriters fell a bit out of the NFL discourse. It was Van Brocklin, not Graham who was the third QB chosen to the 50th anniversary team; on the other hand, for whatever reason, it took until 1971 for him to make the Hall of Fame.
He was a much better quarterback than he is remembered as, and was well-regarded during his era. He was a 2-time MVP (’54, ’60) and led the NFL in yards per attempt in ’50, ’51, and ’52. Unfortunately, underrated quarterbacks tend to not make top-10 lists, and it will be easy for voters to think of Graham as the star from ’46 to ’55, Unitas the star from ’56 to ’70, and to then move on.
Well, with maybe one exception. That brings us to Bart Starr, who won five titles with the Packers and is also perhaps the greatest postseason passer ever. Starr and Van Brocklin have wildly different sack rates: Starr took a ton of sacks, while Van Brocklin was one of the best ever at avoiding sacks. Unfortunately, that sort of things gets lost in the narrative of the two players.
You can compare Starr to Bob Griese or Troy Aikman as game managers who were efficient and led their teams to titles; the difference is Starr won as many as those two did combined. Starr also won an MVP award in 1966, and is the rare quarterback to win a Super Bowl and an MVP in the same season. Starr, Unitas, and Jurgensen were all named as the quarterbacks on the All-Decade team, although Unitas was also named that same season as the best quarterback of the first 50 years of pro football. It’s safe to say that the voters preferred Unitas to Starr.
So who will be our 10th player? To recap, we are assuming Baugh, Graham, Unitas, Montana, Marino, Elway, Favre, Manning, and Brady. Here’s how many of those guys were active each year:
The 1970s stick out as a place where you add a guy, but the trouble is picking which one. You could maybe argue for Rodgers or Brees here, but once again: which one? It’s hard to argue for Young when you have four other quarterbacks from his general era. For the 20-year period from ’56 to ’75, Unitas is the only quarterback represented. That feels like the biggest hole to fill. And while you might think Van Brocklin was better, I think Starr gets the vote. He has the 5-4 #ringzz tiebreaker over Bradshaw, too, has great efficiency like Staubach but added longevity, and has the same number of MVPs but more postseason success than Tarkenton.
As an aside, I think Packers fans have a chance to be extremely happy, extremely upset, or both with the results of this list. If the committee here did a full ranking of the top 22 quarterbacks, I could see Favre-Starr-Rodgers finishing 8-9-10 (perhaps dropping Elway), or have them ranking 11-12-13 (Elway topping Favre, selecting a quarterback from the ’70s, and choosing Brees). And either would be justifiable, but you could end this with anywhere from 0 to 3 Packers quarterbacks in your top 10.
Verdict: Starr.
What do you think?
My final prediction: Baugh, Graham, Unitas, Starr, Montana, Marino, Elway, Favre, Manning, and Brady.