Brad Oremland is a sportswriter and football historian. You can follow him on Twitter @bradoremland.

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Like many of you, I’ve been following the release of the NFL’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team with interest. American football is a team sport, and great players, by definition, are those who make their teams better. I was curious how the NFL 100 team relates to the greatest dynasties in pro football history, and what follows is an examination of that subject.

This will be very similar to an article I wrote last year, Top 30 NFL Dynasties and the Hall of Fame. If you’ve read that, you can skip this introduction on how I rate and define dynasties. The usual definition of a “dynasty” is something to the effect of a succession of rulers. To me, sports dynasties are measuring sticks. If you wanted to win a World Series in the 1940s, you had to beat the Yankees. In today’s NFL, someone has to beat the Patriots. And so on. And to be the measuring stick, to establish a legacy that might merit that word, dynasty, you have to sustain greatness: you need a series of great teams — a succession of rulers. [continue reading…]

The NFL has announced its final All Century team. The full list below, but a few notes first.

1) The player with the shortest career was Gale Sayers (6 years, 68 games).

2) The player with the longest career was Adam Vinatieri (24 years, 365 games).

3) The Lombardi Packers had 12 or 13 Hall of Fame players (in addition to a Hall of Fame coach, of course), depending on whether you want to include Emlen Tunnell.  The great safety played with the Giants from ’48 to ’58, but finished his career with 3 years in Green Bay.  The last game of his career came, as a backup, in the first championship victory for Green Bay.  Tunnell made the #NFL100 team, but he’s not thought of as a Lombardi Packer.

In fact, other than the coach, Forrest Gregg was the only of the 12 Hall of Fame players on those great Packers teams to make the All-Century team.  That’s…. interesting, to say the least.

4) What do Ronnie Lott, Brett Favre, and Ed Reed have in common?  They are the only players on the team to play for the Jets.  Lott was there in  ’93 and ’94, Favre in ’08, and Reed in ’13.  Joe Namath, Don Maynard, Joe Klecko, and Curtis Martin are probably the best four Jets in history, but I don’t think any were all that close to making this team.  Martin and Klecko weren’t even finalists at their position.

5) The Jets were the least-represented team on the #NFL100, at least among teams that have been around for awhile.

• The Jaguars and Panthers entered the NFL in 1995.  Combined, the teams have only one player-season — Reggie White in 2000 with Carolina.
• The Jets began playing pro football in 1960, but have only the four player-seasons mentioned above.
• The Saints have only five player-seasons: three from Doug Atkins and two from Earl Campbell, in both cases at the end of those players’ careers.
• The Texans have six, with Reed playing there in 2013 and Shane Lechler there from ’13 to ’17.
• The Bengals have 13, all coming from Anthony Munoz.  Every other team has at least 20.

6) The 1963-1966 Colts had 6 players make the All-Century team: QB Johnny Unitas, RB (and receiver) Lenny Moore, WR Raymond Berry, TE John Mackey, OG (and tackle) Jim Parker on offense, and DE Gino Marchetti on defense.  All six were on the Colts all four years other than Marchetti, who retired in ’65 and then returned for a final season in ’66.  In addition, those Colts teams also had Bob Vogel at LT, who was at the start of his 5-time Pro Bowl career.  And while Mackey entered the league in ’63, the Colts also had another Hall of Fame in Art Donovan until ’61, when Unitas, Moore, Berry, Parker, and Marchetti were still with Baltimore.

Those ’56 to ’63 Colts had a ridiculous amount of talent.

7) 1967 (Willie Lanier and Jan Stenerud in Kansas City, Ken Houston in Houston, Alan Page in Minnesota, and Gene Upshaw in Oakland) and 1983 (Eric Dickerson in Los Angeles, John Elway and Dan Marino in Denver and Miami, Bruce Matthews in Houston, and Darrell Green in Washington) each brought 5 top 100 players into pro football. That’s the most of any season. A lot of seasons had zero players, but 1992 and 1993 were the rare back-to-back seasons with zero players. The 1992 draft, in particular, was devoid of top-level talent.

The graph below shows how many of the All-Century players were active in each season.  The peak was 1971, with 28. [continue reading…]

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.

Dan Marino.

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. [continue reading…]

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.

We know that the final team will have 10 quarterbacks on it. Who will make it? I think there are 6 (or 7) locks that are guaranteed to make the team. The real debate is who are the last three to join them. So today, let’s review the 7 quarterbacks who seem to be assured a place on the final team.

When the NFL unveiled its 50th anniversary team in 1969, Johnny Unitas was the first-string QB, Sammy Baugh was the backup, and Norm Van Brocklin was the third string choice.

When the NFL named its 75th anniversary team, Unitas and Baugh remained, and were joined by Joe Montana and Otto Graham, whose legend grew over the previous 25-year period.

With the NFL set to name its 100th anniversary team, there’s little reason to think that Unitas, Baugh, Montana, and Graham won’t make this team, too. There are, after all, 10 spots, and there won’t be 7 QBs from the last 25 years and there’s not much justification to switch out any of Unitas/Baugh/Montana/Graham. [continue reading…]

The NFL released the 22 finalists at the quarterback position for the #NFL100 all-century team.  The list was relatively unsurprising: 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.

The list also had a somewhat modern tilt to it, effectively ignoring the first 15 years of the NFL’s history, and with little representation of passers before World War II.  It also dips in 1980, as Namath, Tarkenton, and Staubach all retired in the late ’70s, and Montana was the only Hall of Fame QB to enter the league in the nine-year period fro 1974 to 1982.  Finally, it dips at the end, in part because those players are still building their Hall of Fame careers.

[continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs; Defensive Ends; Defensive Tackles

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 12 outside linebackers ^[1]There are three players with labeling issues to discuss here: Chuck Bednarik, Clarke Hinkle, and Junior Seau (who isn’t on the above list). We will get to them at the end of this article. as finalists, and with the exception of the lone active player (Von Miller), every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 6 outside linebackers were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team: [continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs; Defensive Ends

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 17 defensive ends as finalists, and with the exception of three non-eligible players (Peppers, Watt, Ware) every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 7 defensive ends were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team:

The Great Decade

Is it really possible that the 4 best defensive tackles in history were all in their primes at the start of the 1970s?

Bob Lilly entered the NFL in 1961. Merlin Olsen joined a year later. Alan Page was drafted in 1967, and Joe Greene was picked two years later.

When Brad Oremland did his series on the greatest defensive tackles in history, he ranked these four as the top four ever: he ranked Page at 30, and put Greene at 16, Olsen at 13, and Lilly at 12. As Brad noted:

Associated Press first-team All-NFL defensive tackles, 1964-75: (1964) Bob Lilly and Henry Jordan, (1965) Bob Lilly and Alex Karras, (1966) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1967) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1968) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1969) Bob Lilly and Merlin Olsen, (1970) Merlin Olsen and Alan Page, (1971) Bob Lilly and Alan Page, (1972) Joe Greene and Mike Reid, (1973) Joe Greene and Alan Page, (1974) Joe Greene and Alan Page, (1975) Curley Culp and Alan Page. That’s seven selections for Lilly, five for Olsen, five for Page, three for Greene (he added a fourth in 1977), and four for everyone else combined.

That’s a mean vertical leap.

Lilly, Olsen, Page, and Greene were more or less contemporary, competing with one another for honors — Lilly, Olsen, and Page especially, since they all played in the NFC. Lilly, for instance, almost certainly would have been first-team All-Pro in 1970 if Olsen and Page hadn’t both been in their primes at the same time. The All-Pro and Pro Bowl honors showered upon these players actually undersell how dominant they were. I tend to be skeptical about claims that all the greatest players were from the same era, especially when that era is the ’60s and early ’70s — but Lilly, Olsen, Page, and Greene really were the most outstanding defensive tackles in the history of professional football. Until Aaron Donald logs a couple more seasons, only Randy White is really even close.

In Sean Lahman’s Pro Football Historical Abstract, he ranks Olsen was the best defensive tackle ever, Lilly as the second-best, Green as his third-best, and Page as his fifth-best. Only Randy White — who, yes, has a very strong claim to being a top-5 DT ever — breaks the chain, as Lahman ranks White (drafted by the Cowboys in ’75 months after Lilly retired) fourth.

John Turney ranked the top 4-3 DTs ever last summer. Turney ranked Lilly as the best ever, followed by Greene, Olsen, and Page, and then White a tier below but in fifth place.

Bryan Frye put Page, Lilly, Greene, and Olsen on his personal DT Mt. Rushmore. At this point, I’d like to remind you that Page is typically ranked 4th among this group, and Frye noted that Page was the best DT in the league for 4 different seasons, with the other three all active those years.  In ’73, Page was the Defensive Player of the Year according to both the Professional Football Writers of America and the Newspaper Enterprise Association (Dolphins safety Dick Anderson, who led the NFL in interceptions and pick sixes, won the AP award). In 1971, Page won the AP MVP award — not the Defensive Player of the Year award, but the MVP award.  In 1970, Page was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Year (in a conference featuring Lilly and Olsen) by the NEA, and easily being named a consensus first-team All-Pro.  He was better that year than a 2nd-year Greene (who lost out on the AP’s All-AFC team to Jets DT John Elliott).  And in 1969, Page was one of the stars of arguably the greatest defense of all time.  He also was the NFC Defensive Player of the Year in 1974, although Greene was the AFC DPOY and overall DPOY.  So Page, playing in the most star-studded DT of all time, was the best defensive tackle in the league 3 or 4 times, and is typically the least-heralded of the bunch.  When the #NFL100 committee put together this list, only two defensive tackles were unanimous selections: Lilly and Page. Greene and Olsen should have been, too.

So yes, it really is possible that the four best defensive tackles all played in the same era.  Strange, but true. [continue reading…]

Previously: Running Backs

As you know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of the league’s 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 17 defensive ends as finalists, and with the exception of three non-eligible players (Peppers, Watt, Ware) every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 7 defensive ends were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team:

For years, the defensive end position was a perfect place for a Mount Rushmore designation. While historians rarely agree on everything, many agreed that there were four defensive ends who separated themselves from every other player to play the position.

We begin with Colts great Gino Marchetti, who was a first-team All-Pro selection in 9 straight seasons from 1956 to 1964. He is one of the most decorated defensive players in league history, and had the ultimate respect of opposing coaches and players. Those who saw him had no question that he was the best defensive end of his time.

In 1969, a recently-retired Marchetti was named as the defensive end on the century on the NFL’s 50th anniversary team. In 1994, Marchetti was joined by Reggie White and Deacon Jones as the three defensive ends on the 75th anniversary team. Marchetti was the first true pass rusher in NFL history, coming to age in the 1950s as the passing game was becoming more specialized. He was a sack artist who was great against the run, making him about as perfect as it gets at defensive end. Marchetti was the rare first ballot Hall of Fame choice at the position, one of just five to earn that honor (the others being the other three members of DE Mt. Rushmore, and Jason Taylor, who was ignored by the 100th anniversary committee). [continue reading…]

As you probably know, the NFL is announcing its top 100 players in league history as part of its 100-year anniversary. The nominating committee selected 24 running backs as finalists, and with the exception of active RB Adrian Peterson, every player is in the Hall of Fame. For the final team, 12 running backs were chosen. The table below shows the finalists and those selected for the official team:

[continue reading…]