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.

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This is the eleventh article in a twelve-part series profiling the greatest pro football players of all time. You can find the previous installments 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

If you haven’t read those yet, especially the article introducing the series (111-125), 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. It’s more meaningful, more impressive, and (I believe) ultimately more satisfying when you see how many dominant, mesmerizing, and exceptional players ranked below this. I’m confident you’ll enjoy this article more if you read the rest of the series first.

Best Players of All Time: 11-20

20. Ray Lewis
Inside Linebacker
Baltimore Ravens, 1996-2012
41.5 sacks; 31 INT, 503 yards, 3 TD; 19 FF, 20 FR, 3 yards
2 DPOY, 4 consensus All-Pro, 10 AP All-Pro, 13 Pro Bowls, 2000s All-Decade Team

In his 1997 All-Pro column, Paul Zimmerman (Sports Illustrated‘s peerless Dr. Z) identified Ray Lewis as “a human tackling machine, always around the ball.” In his 1998 All-Pro column, Zimmerman called Lewis “The Incredible Tackling Machine.” In his 1999 All-Pro column, “a guided missile, a tackling machine.” Ray Lewis could really tackle.

Several times in this series I’ve mentioned a problem for some of the players with great longevity: fans, especially younger fans, remember them as average to above-average older players rather than as the dynamic, game-changing monsters they were in their primes. Lewis is one of the players most afflicted, because in the second half of his career, announcers fawned over everything he did — and sometimes didn’t do. Lewis would assist on a tackle, and the announcer would declare, “Tackle made by, guess who, Ray Lewis,” implying that Lewis made all the tackles. One of his teammates would make a tackle, and Lewis would dive onto the pile, prompting the announcer to burble, “Ray Lewis with another tackle!” If Lewis wasn’t in on the play, the announcer wouldn’t mention the tackler at all. When aging legends get hyped this way, ^[1]Here’s an example: Week 13, 2010, Ravens at Steelers. With 3:46 remaining in the third quarter, Brandon McKinney and Lewis combined on a tackle. Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth went into a … Continue reading it’s easy to dismiss them as overrated, with praise that exceeds their play. In the second half of his career, Lewis was overrated, though still a good player. In the first half of his career, he was — have you got this yet? — a tackling machine.

Lewis was instinctive and good at reading offenses, fast and decisive, and a big hitter. He had a non-stop motor, which is an underrated quality — less spectacular than speed, strength, or agility — but allowed Lewis to make plays his peers wouldn’t get to. He covered the field, sideline to sideline, as well as anyone. Lewis was an effective blitzer, with twelve seasons of 2 or more sacks, and he was exceptional in pass coverage, actually underrated in this aspect of his game. Lewis intercepted more than 30 passes, one of only half a dozen LBs to do so, and his 503 INT return yards are the second-most of any LB (Derrick Brooks, 530). As a point of comparison, Champ Bailey had 464 INT return yards. Lewis was a good pass defender and a good returner. Rodney Harrison and Ray Lewis are the only players since 1982, when sacks became an official statistic, with at least 30 sacks and 30 interceptions.

Lewis was the captain of consistently excellent defensive units, and the MVP of Super Bowl XXXV. He played on nine teams that ranked among the NFL’s top three in fewest points allowed and/or fewest yards allowed. The 2001 Baltimore Ravens ranked 4th in scoring defense and 2nd in total defense. The 2003 Ravens ranked 6th and 3rd. In between, the 2002 Ravens’ defense ranked 19th in scoring and 22nd in yardage. Ray Lewis was injured in 2002, missing 11 games.

Lewis had a complete game, strong everywhere you want an inside linebacker to be strong. His best seasons were the Marvin Lewis years, 1996-2001. Ray Lewis led the NFL in tackles in 1997, 1999, and 2001, but never in his final 11 seasons. A shoulder injury cost him most of the 2002 season, and following his 2003 Defensive Player of the Year effort, Lewis was a very good player rather than a great one. If you remember Ray Lewis mostly from the mid-2000s on, you didn’t see him in the seasons that made him a legend: a block-shedding dynamo, a wizard in pass coverage, and a hard-hitting, play-making, league-leading tackling machine.

19. Dick Butkus
Middle Linebacker
Chicago Bears, 1965-73
22 INT, 166 yards
2 DPOY, 4 consensus All-Pro, 6 AP All-Pro, 8 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 1970s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

Dick Butkus was the most ferocious hitter in the history of professional football, and the most feared tackler of all time. “I wanna just let them know that they’ve been hit,” explained Butkus, “and when they get up, they don’t have to look to see who it was that hit them . . . When they come to, they gotta say, ‘It must have been Butkus that got me.’ ” Butkus achieved this goal. On the way to the airport after a game against the Bears in 1965, the Colts’ team bus was involved in a traffic accident. When they felt the impact of the collision, the players looked at each other and said, “Butkus.” He hit like a truck — literally.

“He went after you,” Packers Hall of Famer Paul Hornung recalled, “like he hated you from his old neighborhood.” Pro Bowl RB MacArthur Lane shuddered, “I’d sooner go one-on-one with a grizzly bear.” Historian and author T.J. Troup called Butkus “the most concussive shoulder tackler EVER,” including the capital letters. “Every time he hit you,” declared Deacon Jones, “he tried to put you in the cemetery.” Pro Bowl QB Dan Pastorini called Butkus “the man that you fear most in football.” All-Conference center Ray Mansfield hailed him as “the greatest intimidator ever to play football.”

Okay, so Butkus was the most feared hitter ever. Does that make him a great player? By itself, of course not. Hardy Brown was a devastating tackler, and he’s not on any list of the all-time best players. But Butkus’ impact transcended the violence of his tackling. That’s what he’s remembered for, because it was visceral and unique. But he approached the game thoughtfully and deliberately. “When I’m the key tackler, I won’t go for the ball,” he explained. “If I’m all by myself, I just want to bring the man down. But if he is coming through the middle of the line and he’s already been hit by two or three other guys, I go for the ball.” I’m not aware that Butkus’ forced fumble statistics have survived, but he was famous for stripping ball-carriers. He recovered 27 fumbles, a record upon his retirement and still tied for 5th all-time.

Butkus was also very good in coverage, an area underrated by those who assume he was a mindless brute. He intercepted 22 passes in just 119 games, one every 5.4 games. That’s a higher rate than Ray Lewis (31 INT, 228 games, one every 7.4 games), Brian Urlacher (22 INT, 182 games, INT every 8.3 games), or Derrick Brooks (25 INT, 224 games, 9.0). Interception rates are lower today, but Butkus’ INT rate also compares favorably to peers like Bobby Bell (26, 168, 6.5), Nick Buoniconti (32, 183, 5.7), Willie Lanier (27, 149, 5.5), and Ray Nitschke (25, 190, 7.6). Interceptions are an imprecise proxy for coverage skills, and I’m not claiming Butkus was a better pass defender than all of those guys, but to suggest that he was a liability in coverage is absurd. He couldn’t run down the field shadowing a speedy receiver man-to-man, but he excelled within his role. Butkus capably handled RBs and TEs underneath, and he wreaked absolute havoc on short routes over the middle. Catching the ball in his zone was an invitation to get knocked out of the game.

And if we’re going to compare Butkus to other great LBs, we need to consider the context for Butkus’ valor. He played three seasons for George Halas, during all of which the Bears had a pretty good defense. Then Halas shifted full-time to management, and Butkus played for head coaches Jim Dooley and Abe Gibron. The defensive units were about average, but the team was terrible (27-56-1). During Butkus’ career, he made more Pro Bowls than the rest of the Bears’ defense combined.

Paul Zimmerman, who described Butkus “standing like a tower” among the greatest LBs of his era, dismissed Butkus’ support as “nondescript guys such as Dick Evey and John Johnson and Willie Holman and Frank Cornish,” specifically contrasting Butkus’ lack of help with the 350-pound DTs, Tony Siragusa and Sam Adams, who kept blockers off of Lewis in his best seasons. Most linebackers look good when they have a free path to the ball-carrier. Some of them need a free path in order to look good. Butkus fought like hell to get to the ball. He took perfect angles and he was an expert at shedding blockers. He’s famous, actually, for not engaging blockers: Butkus saved his violence for the man with the ball. He’d get rid of the blocker and fly straight to the ball-carrier, then launch himself, cursing and literally growling the whole time.

Butkus had 49 takeaways in his career, 41% of his games. That’s by far the highest rate in history for a linebacker. So now he’s not only the most feared tackler in history, he’s the best at disengaging blockers, and he’s the best at forcing turnovers. What else do you want a linebacker to do? Butkus didn’t have great straight-ahead speed, but he was quick, and he was the best of his generation anticipating the path of the ball. He was big — 6-3, 245 — but superbly conditioned, and always played at 100%.

In 1970, following the AFL merger but before the first combined season, the 16 NFL head coaches were asked which five active players they would most want to build a team around. Butkus got nine votes, three more than any other player. There are Butkus skeptics, ^[2]One of the sources that was helpful to me in writing this series was The Pro Football Historical Abstract, by Sean Lahman. If you only know one thing about that book, it’s probably that Lahman … Continue reading most of whom are really fanboys of one of the other all-time great LBs, but players and coaches and sportswriters respected the hell out of him. But hey, how could Hornung and Zimmerman and Vince Lombardi possibly evaluate Butkus as well as a fan who spent 15 minutes looking for stats to cherry-pick?

Lombardi reportedly went to great lengths to try to draft Butkus, already a star at the University of Illinois, and about to enter his senior season. Lombardi traded All-Pro center Jim Ringo for the Eagles’ 1965 first-round draft pick, the Eagles having gone 5-20-3 the previous two seasons. Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Dave Anderson explained, “Vince Lombardi, the Packer coach, had anticipated that the Eagles would finish much lower than the Packers in 1964. If the Eagles did have a poor year, they would have an opportunity to select Butkus at the beginning of the first round.” The Eagles were unexpectedly lively in 1964, however, and the draft pick wasn’t high enough to secure Butkus.

In the NFL, Butkus impressed immediately. “Butkus is everything I’ve heard he is, strong and fast,” reported Jim Brown after facing Butkus for the first time. “I’m glad the game is over.” Hall of Fame guard Jim Parker called Butkus “the best rookie I’ve seen.” The Bears went 9-5 that year, and allowed the second-fewest points in the NFL. Butkus led the team in interceptions (5) and fumble recoveries (7), and he was named first-team All-Pro, ahead of future Hall of Famers Ray Nitschke and Sam Huff.

A knee injury shortened Butkus’ career. After 1970, he was a good player rather than a great one, and people motivated to “prove” that Butkus wasn’t as good as his reputation often lean heavily on his last few seasons — when trainers had to tape his knee in a bent position — ignoring the mountains of evidence, both statistical and testimonial, that he was the greatest middle linebacker of all time. That’s disingenuous; I have no time for it. If you want to believe that Lewis or Nitschke or somebody was greater, I’ll never convince you otherwise, but that’s a religious argument, not an intellectual one.

That’s not to say there aren’t tenable intellectual arguments for other players; it’s just that they should be made honestly, not manipulated to fit a preferred conclusion. There is a very reasonable case, for instance, to rank Lewis ahead of Butkus. Throughout this series, I’ve used back-to-back rankings at the same position to indicate my own uncertainty about which player was really better. Lewis played a lot longer than Butkus, in an era that was harder to dominate, and he was a better athlete than Butkus. But Butkus didn’t play for Marvin Lewis and Mike Singletary and Rex Ryan, didn’t back up Adams and Siragusa and Haloti Ngata, didn’t play next to Terrell Suggs and Ed Reed and Peter Boulware. How would Lewis have fared lining up behind Dick Evey and Willie Holman? Butkus was bigger than Lewis, and more impactful on a game-to-game basis, with his takeaways, knockout hits, and unique intimidation. It’s difficult to compare the best linebacker of the ’60s to the best linebacker of the ’00s, and I can’t claim with any confidence that either one was better. But if I were building a team around a middle linebacker, I’d build it around Dick Butkus.

18. Ed Reed
Safety
Baltimore Ravens, 2002-12; Houston Texans, 2013; New York Jets, 2013
64 INT, 1,590 yards, 7 TD; 11 FF, 10 FR, 153 yards, 2 TD; 6 sacks
1 DPOY, 5 consensus All-Pro, 8 AP All-Pro, 9 Pro Bowls, 2000s All-Decade Team

Ed Reed was the most dynamic, explosive safety in NFL history. His 1,590 interception return yards are the record by over 100. Only seven other players have even two-thirds as many (1,060) INT return yards. Reed scored 80 points in his career: 13 touchdowns and a safety. The TDs came on interceptions (7), fumble returns (2), blocked-punt returns (2), a missed field goal return (1), and a 63-yard punt return in 2007 (1).

Reed led the NFL in interceptions three times and interception return yards twice. He had 5+ INTs in a season seven times, and 100 INT return yards seven times. That doesn’t include the postseason, where he intercepted 9 passes for 168 yards and a touchdown — in only 15 games (including an INT in the Ravens’ Super Bowl XLVII victory). That would be an All-Pro caliber 16-game regular season, but Reed did it in the playoffs, against top-level competition.

He had great speed, but also superior football sense. Reed’s break on the ball was unparalleled, and he had an uncanny knack for slipping out of tackles. He was aggressive when he got the ball, and he had excellent vision. Reed was also smart and studious, able to bait quarterbacks into throwing interceptions, anticipate the path of the ball. “What set him apart was his instincts,” concluded Tom Brady. “You knew there were plays where he had deep-field responsibility and he would make a play in front of a linebacker. On the next play, you say, ‘Let’s throw it deep’ and you drop back and he was 40 yards deep.” “You couldn’t get a tendency on him,” agreed Ben Roethlisberger. “He made the impossible possible.”

Reed was a nonpareil center fielder, so he spent most of his career as a free safety, but in his first few seasons, Reed was an outstanding strong safety, playing many of his snaps in the box. More than half of his sacks and tackles for loss came from 2002-04, and he was among the Ravens’ leading tacklers each season. He was a forearm tackler, but he hit so hard it was effective. Reed was a throwback in some ways, and he would have excelled in any era. I’ve compared Reed many times to Kenny Easley, hard-hitting strong safeties who went after passes like ball-hawking free safeties, but a slightly less obvious comparison would be to Night Train Lane and Jack Butler, the best CBs of the lawless ’50s, ballhawks and knockout artists. I wrote about Lane last week, and most students of league history know about him, but Butler is comparably anonymous. He gained over 100 INT return yards four times, twice tied for the NFL lead in interception return touchdowns, and is one of only four players with three seasons of 9+ interceptions. Legendary Pittsburgh sportswriter Pat Livingston described Butler as having “the face of a choirboy and the heart of an arsonist.” Ed Reed had a little bit of that arsonist’s heart in him, too. He wasn’t a dirty player, but he hit to hurt you.

Reed was also a great punt blocker, flying around the corner. It seemed like there was a magnetism between him and the ball. “Everything he does, he does at an exceptional level,” warned Bill Belichick, who has called Reed “the most complete and the best safety that I’ve ever seen.”

Was Ed Reed better than his longtime teammate Ray Lewis? They’re hard to compare; they did different things. Reed was a more gifted athlete, certainly. Lewis stayed healthier and played longer. Reed joined the Ravens when Lewis had already established himself as a star, and Lewis self-promoted more aggressively and more effectively. Reed was never going to displace Lewis as the team’s most visible defensive star. But on the field, who was a bigger difference-maker? Belichick’s episode of “A Football Life” features an extended scene of Belichick and Brady game-planning for Reed. Lewis was a great linebacker, but he did the same things as other good LBs, just a little better. Reed was unique, a game-wrecking talent who did things no one else was doing. Lewis might make a great tackle and stall a drive, but Reed might intercept a pass out of nowhere and return it deep downfield for a 10- or 14-point swing. Reed was also an impact player on special teams, scoring four touchdowns in fairly limited action. Lewis was great, but Reed was dazzling — he made the impossible possible.

17. Joe Montana
Quarterback
San Francisco 49ers, 1979-92; Kansas City Chiefs, 1993-94
40,551 yards, 273 TD, 139 INT, 92.3 rating
2 MVP, 1 OPOY, 1 consensus All-Pro, 5 AP All-Pro, 8 Pro Bowls, 1980s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

In a sense, Joe Montana was the equal and opposite of Johnny Unitas. Their careers hit a lot of the same high notes — MVP awards, legendary comebacks, multiple championships — and they both played with all-time-great receivers, for Hall of Fame coaches. But Unitas was famous — indeed, revered — for his spit-in-your-face attitude. He growled at opposing pass rushers, yelled at referees, defied his coaches. He was unflappable in close games, but he was fiery and combative, intense. Montana was coachable, friendly, and unassuming. He was cool-headed, serene, almost detached. One of his most famous moments in football was in the huddle during a TV timeout, just before his game-winning two-minute drill in Super Bowl XXIII. Montana pointed to the stands and told his teammates in the huddle, “Hey, there’s John Candy.” Montana and Unitas were both great leaders, but at opposite ends of the spectrum. The bigger the moment, the more Unitas got fired up, but Montana was always ice cold.

Montana set single-season and career records for passer rating. He was the most efficient passer of his era, maybe the most efficient of all time. He also excelled in areas that don’t show up in the rating formula — he was a productive runner, he didn’t take many sacks, and he seldom fumbled. Montana was the Associated Press NFL MVP in 1989 and ’90. “The 49ers won primarily because of Montana,” declared former Jets personnel director Mike Hickey. “He was the key to their team.”

Montana didn’t look like an athlete. He was tall enough (6′ 2½”), but wiry, under 200 pounds, with remarkably skinny legs. ^[3]Unitas had skinny legs, too. Ted Hendricks recounted that when he joined the Colts, Unitas was thrilled because his legs were skinnier than Johnny’s. He was mobile, an elusive scrambler, but he didn’t have a strong arm. What set him apart were all the things you don’t notice at a doctor’s office. “His measurable qualities have always been underrated: footwork, timing and accuracy,” wrote Sports Illustrated‘s Tim Layden. “His immeasurable qualities are the best in history: leadership, calmness under pressure and instinctive football intelligence.” That calm leadership, more than anything else, made Montana a legend. “When he was behind, he always knew he was going to beat you,” reckoned John Madden. “When the pressure came, we knew he was the guy who wouldn’t overheat,” confirmed Dave Waymer, who played with Montana both at Notre Dame and with the 49ers.

Montana threw two of the most famous and memorable passes in history — The Catch to Dwight Clark in the January 1982 NFC Championship Game and the game-winning touchdown pass to John Taylor in Super Bowl XXIII — but he wasn’t a highlight machine like John Elway or Dan Marino. He won the race slow and steady, one first down at a time. When the stakes weren’t high enough to amplify his effectiveness, he didn’t necessarily look like a great QB, even though he kept moving the chains. Many of his skills were subtle, even invisible. “He just knew more about offensive football than any other player of that era,” wrote Madden. “He enjoyed the chess game, knowing what his team had to do and what the other team was going to try to do.”

“Montana might be the most accurate short passer who ever lived,” wrote Paul Zimmerman. Montana couldn’t fire the ball 50 yards downfield with a flick of the wrist, but he could put it on the receiver at the right place and the right time. He completed a high percentage of passes, with a low interception rate, and didn’t need big plays to drive his team down the field. “Montana’s a lithe, quick, almost sensuous-moving athlete,” gushed head coach Bill Walsh. “He throws on the run while avoiding a pass rush, and he doesn’t have to be totally set. He’s not a moving platform, like some quarterbacks who are mechanical and can only do well when everything’s just right. Joe performs just as well under stress.”

It is for his performance under stress that Montana is most celebrated. His teams went 117-47 (.713) in games he started, not including a 16-7 record in the postseason. Montana directed the 49ers to four Super Bowl wins, without throwing an interception in any of the four games: 83/122, 1142 yards, 11 TDs, no picks — plus 105 yards and 2 TDs on the ground. Projected to a 16-game season, Montana’s Super Bowl performances would yield 4,568 yards, 44 touchdowns, still no interceptions, 420 rushing yards, and 8 rushing TDs.

Montana earned three Super Bowl MVPs for his work, but he was often as effective in the earlier rounds of the playoffs as he was with a ring on the line. Consider the playoffs of the 1989 season. In a 41-13 win over the NFC Central champion Vikings, Montana passed for four touchdowns and a 142.5 rating. The next week, in the NFC Championship Game, he completed 26 of 30 passes, for 262 yards and 2 TDs. In Super Bowl XXIV, 297 yards, 5 TDs, 147.6 rating. Montana also led the Chiefs to two of their few postseason wins under Marty Schottenheimer (2-2 with Montana, 1-5 without him). He still ranks second in postseason TD passes (45).

Montana checks all the boxes. He had a long, productive career, during which he was regularly regarded as the finest QB in the game. He was smart, accurate, versatile, and extraordinarily cool under pressure. His regular-season stats are superb, and he was the greatest quarterback in Super Bowl history.

Comparing the greatest QBs of all time, they all have amazing résumés. You can’t sort them out simply by comparing their accomplishments, because their accomplishments are all so magnificent. It’s like comparing a sunset in the mountains to a sunset over the ocean; which is more beautiful? There’s no right answer, and it’s kind of silly to rank them against each other at all.

So at a certain point, when the players are so great and their accomplishments so outstanding that it becomes measuring the mountains against the oceanside, I don’t compare the accomplishments any more. I examine the circumstances under which they occurred, and attempt to disentangle the player’s contributions from those circumstances. I gauge my confidence that the player would have been equally outstanding under other circumstances, and the players I rate highest are the ones about whose greatness I am least uncertain. Maybe you disagree, but I don’t know how else to approach it. How could anyone have a better career than Joe Montana? The problem is, I can ask that same question about several other QBs.

Montana played for one of the greatest coaches of all time, in an offense that revolutionized modern football. He played with the greatest receiver of all time, Jerry Rice, and two other WRs who made multiple Pro Bowls, Dwight Clark and John Taylor. He threw to two of the great receiving RBs in history, Roger Craig and Marcus Allen. He always had pretty good tight ends, from Charle Young to Russ Francis to Brent Jones. When he got injured, and when he left San Francisco for Kansas City, Steve Young stepped in and broke Montana’s single-season and career records for passer rating. Young had a better winning percentage as 49ers QB (.734) than Montana (.719), and Young’s performance in Super Bowl XXIX was probably the greatest Super Bowl by any quarterback in history, breaking Montana’s Super Bowl XXIV record for TD passes. No one else had a backup the caliber of Steve Young, but he made Montana replaceable.

In 1979, Bill Walsh wanted to draft Phil Simms, and settled for Montana after the Giants chose Simms ahead of San Francisco’s pick. If Montana had played for the Giants, passing to the likes of Lionel Manuel and Bobby Johnson instead of Rice and Clark, would he be in the discussion for the greatest QB of all time? If he had played for anyone but Walsh and the 49ers, would he have reached his full potential?

This will drive some people nuts, and seem obvious to others, but Montana’s fourth-quarter heroics don’t uniformly impress me. Some of them are rightly legendary, but other times, he helped put the team in a hole by not playing well, and I don’t think leading a comeback to preserve the victory is more impressive than playing well all game and winning by double-digits.

NFL Films named “The Catch” the number one Joe Montana game of all time. With under a minute remaining in the 1981 NFC Championship Game, the 49ers trailed the Cowboys 27-21, with the ball at the Dallas six-yard line. Montana rolled right and lofted a prayer into the corner of the end zone. Clark leaped into the air, higher than anyone thought he could jump, and came down with the ball, giving San Francisco a 28-27 lead after the extra point. What few fans remember is that the Cowboys nearly came back; Danny White completed a pass to Drew Pearson, who looked bound for the end zone, and came up short only because of a tackle that would be illegal today. White fumbled on the next play, clinching the game for San Francisco, but if the Cowboys score there, “The Catch” is just a footnote rather than incontrovertible proof of Montana’s greatness. It’s not like Montana was the one who recovered White’s fumble.

Perhaps more to the point, Montana threw three interceptions in that game. If he had played better in the first 55 minutes, San Francisco wouldn’t have needed a miracle. The play Montana is most famous for, the one that emblematizes his greatness, never would have come about if he had played better, and would have been forgotten if not for a save by one of the league’s best defenses. A similar dynamic arises in other celebrated Montana performances, like his Monday night duel against John Elway and the Broncos in 1994.

None of this is to say that Montana wasn’t a great player. He was the most accurate passer of his generation. He went through his progressions as well as anybody, and made fewer mental mistakes than almost anyone. He was an underrated scrambler and runner. He never panicked, and he was a leader who inspired his teammates. He ran a great two-minute drill. He is arguably the greatest postseason QB of all time, and the greatest Super Bowl QB. There are a handful of QBs I’m more confident would have excelled under any circumstances, and independent of good fortune, but I’d hate for anyone to read this profile and doubt that Montana was special.

16. Joe Greene
Defensive Tackle
Pittsburgh Steelers, 1969-81
16 FR, 10 yards; 1 INT, 26 yards
2 DPOY, 3 consensus All-Pro, 6 AP All-Pro, 10 Pro Bowls, 1970s All-Decade Team, Defensive Rookie of the Year, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

In 1969, the Buffalo Bills drafted O.J. Simpson first overall. Whoever had the first draft pick was taking O.J. The Atlanta Falcons chose second, selecting Notre Dame offensive tackle George Kunz, who made eight Pro Bowls with the Falcons and Colts. The Eagles chose third, but whiffed with RB Leroy Keyes. As a rookie he rushed for 361 yards, with an average south of 3.0. He switched to safety and played a little better there, but his NFL career lasted just 48 games.

With the next pick, the Pittsburgh Steelers drafted Charles Edward Greene fourth overall, out of North Texas. “Who’s Joe Greene?” read the headline in the next day’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Greene’s mother always called him Joe, but it was the North Texas athletics teams, the Mean Green, that inspired his “Mean Joe Greene” nickname. Greene hated the moniker, but he did plenty on the field to earn it, even beyond his relentless play. He was ejected from two games as a rookie. In a November game against the Bears, a 38-7 loss that could have been worse, he spit on Dick Butkus. A couple years later, he spit in the face of Pittsburgh sportswriter Pat Livingston. In the 1974 AFC Championship Game, Greene kicked Jim Otto in the groin. There is extensive video evidence of him kicking and punching opponents. “He didn’t like the name,” conceded teammate Rocky Bleier, “but he kinda lived up to it.” Greene later softened his image with the famous Thanks, Mean Joe! Coca-Cola ad, maybe the most famous Super Bowl commercial of all time.

As a rookie at training camp, Greene “proved too strong to be overpowered, too elusive to be hobbled and too smart to be fooled. Nobody had seen a player so quick and strong at once,” wrote Roy Blount Jr. for Sports Illustrated. Greene was All-Conference and Defensive Rookie of the Year on a 1-13 team. Three years later, when Greene was named Defensive Player of the Year, Don Shula gaped, “It’s hard to believe he isn’t offside on every play.” Paul Zimmerman described Greene as “the quickest off the ball, a flash of lightning from the inside.”

Greene was so quick that blockers would sometimes miss him entirely, just whiff and hit air. Raider guard George Buehler, of whom HOF general manager Ron Wolf said, “No one ever handled Joe Greene better than Buehler did,” remembered a play from the 1974 AFC Championship Game: “I knew I had to get to Joe quickly because he was my assignment. But Joe leaped back and I went falling on my face.” Greene smashed into ball-carrier Marv Hubbard, who told Buehler, “I’ve never been hit so hard.” Greene supplemented his extraordinary quickness with serious power.

Greene was famous for using an innovative alignment, between the center and guard at a sharp angle. It disrupted opponents’ blocking schemes, creating opportunities for both Greene and his teammates. The tactic was especially effective in Super Bowl IX. Ernie Holmes lined up directly across from Vikings center Mick Tingelhoff, with Greene in the gap between guard and center. Tingelhoff never figured out which side he was going to be hit from, and both Pittsburgh DTs repeatedly gained entry into Minnesota’s backfield. Greene had an interception and a fumble recovery in that game, which the Steelers won 16-6, holding Minnesota to nine first downs and 119 yards of offense. The Vikings’ lone touchdown came from recovering a blocked punt in the end zone; Greene’s defense pitched a shutout, even scoring on a safety, not to mention setting up the offense with four takeaways.

Greene was an unselfish teammate who played his responsibilities and took on double-teams, though he resented the limits imposed on him: “The kind of role I play is like an offensive lineman—doing a good job but not being noticed.” Greene got noticed plenty, of course, but it’s true he would have made more tackles and more sacks in a scheme that allowed him more freedom, like Alan Page in Minnesota. Often, Greene would disrupt the play without making the stop himself. “Joe Greene was great at grabbing and consuming two guys,” recounted Zimmerman.

Greene was probably the best run-stuffing DT of all time, but he was also an excellent pass rusher — he had 11 sacks in 1972, 78.5 in his career. Teammate Andy Russell, in Andy Russell: A Steeler Odyssey, called Greene “unquestionably the NFL’s best player in the seventies.” Along with Jack Lambert, Greene was the heart of Pittsburgh’s Steel Curtain defense.

While Greene was an intense competitor who always gave 100% on the field, he was immature and emotional. “I’m subject to do some wild things any minute,” he admitted. Greene almost quit the Steelers multiple times before they won their first Super Bowl, and I’m not sure how his career would have played out if the Falcons or Eagles had realized what they were passing up in that 1969 draft. There’s a strong case to be made that Joe Greene was the greatest defensive tackle in history, but that uncertainty I mentioned in the Joe Montana section lands him just slightly short on my list.

15. Deacon Jones
Defensive End
Los Angeles Rams, 1961-71; San Diego Chargers, 1972-73; Washington, 1974
15 FR, 10 yards; 2 INT, 50 yards
2 DPOY, 5 consensus All-Pro, 6 AP All-Pro, 8 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

“No one would remember a player called David Jones. There are a thousand David Joneses in the phonebook,” reasoned the one who chose to go by Deacon. He had a gift for nomenclature, also credited with coining the term “sack” to replace the then-official term “tackled, attempting pass.” Deacon’s term evoked the capture and pillage of a city. For instance, the sacking of Rome, or Carthage, or Andy Dalton. ^[4]This is a paraphrase of the wonderful Dr. Z, from his indispensible New Thinking Man’s Guide to Pro Football. “Sacking the quarterback,” explained Deacon, “is just like you devastate a city, or you cream a multitude of people. I mean, it’s just like you put all the offensive players in one bag, and I just take a baseball bat and beat on the bag.”

The “Deacon” nickname originally came from South Carolina State, where Jones would lead the team in prayer before games. “What’s he praying for?” an opponent wondered aloud. “That he doesn’t kill anybody,” came the answer. Deacon looked intimidating, and his play was no less ferocious. He was famous for gaining entry into opposing backfields with the head slap. He slammed his hand into the side of the blocker’s helmet, and flew past while his man was seeing stars. The move is no longer legal, but Jones used it to full advantage. “I like to slap the guys’ helmets,” he confided to Paul Zimmerman. “It shakes them up. When I get to the man with the ball, I hit him as hard as I can.”

In an interview for A Football Life‘s episode on the Rams’ Fearsome Foursome of Rosey Grier, Lamar Lundy, Merlin Olsen, and Jones, Deacon complained about Fran Tarkenton‘s elusive scrambling, “We hated him. We actually hated this …” he trailed off before he described the quarterback in terms too colorful to broadcast. “He doesn’t really mean that,” Grier assured the interviewer. “Yes, I do,” countered Deacon, turning the other way. This was more than 50 years after his last game against Tarkenton. Jones played with passion and fury — in case you didn’t get that from the “devastate a city” and “beat on the bag” analogies earlier.

There have been plenty of ferocious, motivated hitters in NFL history, but Deacon Jones was an athletic marvel. He was 6-foot-5, and he played between 250-290 pounds, about 255 in his best seasons (though also loaded down with anything that increased the impact of his hits). Deacon was big and powerful, but he was also the fastest defensive lineman of his generation. He ran a 9.8-second 100-yard dash, and a 4.6-second 40-yard dash. I’ve never seen this play, and I’m skeptical that it really happened, but there’s a story that in 1963, Jones went to tackle Hall of Fame WR Bobby Mitchell, a former sprinter who was one of the fastest players in the NFL. Instead of hitting him immediately, Jones ran side-by-side with Mitchell for several yards before knocking him out of bounds. “What were you doing?” demanded head coach Harland Svare. “Sorry about that, Coach,” Deacon answered. “But I just had to find out if I was as fast as Mitchell. And I was.” I doubt the story’s veracity, but its mere existence demonstrates that Jones was regarded as extraordinarily fast. “I doubt if there has ever been a quicker big man in all of professional sports,” averred Olsen.

He wasn’t a one-dimensional speed rusher, of course. Jones “had power, speed, and a superhuman ability to keep turning it on long after he should have given up,” lauded Zimmerman. “The main thing is to keep going,” Jones confirmed. “If I get blocked, I’ll claw my way in, even if I have to crawl.” That wasn’t exaggeration: “I think Deacon made more crawling sacks than any player who ever lived,” Zimmerman corroborated.

Historian John Turney, who has devoted untold hours to establishing defensive sack totals prior to 1982 (when the statistic finally became official), credits Jones with 173.5, third-most in history, despite that Jones played 14-game seasons. Bruce Smith (200 sacks) played 279 regular-season games. Reggie White (198) played 232. Jones compiled 173.5 sacks in just 191 games, one every 1.10 games, compared to 1.17 for White and 1.40 for Smith.

Skeptics may wonder whether Jones had an easy ride playing next to fellow Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen. On some level, of course he did, but Jones drew plenty of double-teams. Teammate Richie Petitbon, later a three-time Super Bowl-winning defensive coordinator with Washington, lauded Jones, “Who throws to their tight ends against us? The tight ends are always busy helping the tackle block Deacon.” Jones dictated strategies and limited the opposing offense.

Like his hero, Gino Marchetti, Jones was a victim of prejudice. “Marchetti was beautiful,” raved Deacon. “He was the only perfect defensive end. Perfect, perfect.” As I mentioned in Marchetti’s summary, his parents were incarcerated during World War II on the basis of their ethnicity and immigration status, having come to the United States from Italy. In 1942, federal agents appeared at the house of Marchetti’s father with an eviction notice, giving the family one week to move to a Federal Security Center. They hadn’t done anything wrong, but tracing one’s heritage to certain countries, especially being an immigrant from those countries, carried a guilty-until-proven-innocent stigma in those dark times.

Jones grew up in Florida in the segregated 1950s. “I didn’t just hear about riding on the back of the bus, I rode on the back of the bus,” he remembered. “I was put in jail for trying to sit down and eat a meal. I almost got hung myself, down there, when I was in school. I stood in front of that water hose.” The latter occurred as a result of Deacon’s participation in the Lunch Counter March. “They turned the hose loose right up in that alley on me, pinned me up against the wall, and it ripped the back of my (suit), right down the back. I almost drowned, man. I almost drowned, and I was a well-conditioned athlete. I couldn’t move a muscle. It had me pinned up against that wall, and I couldn’t move.” Deacon’s social justice activism also got his South Carolina State football scholarship revoked, and he transferred to Mississippi Vocational, where he and his black teammates spent road trips sleeping on cots in the opposing team’s gym, since the motels were whites-only.

Coming out of an unheralded school, Jones was a 14th-round draft pick. He volunteered to play offensive line because the Rams had great DEs, and he thought he had a better chance of making the team on offense. He briefly started at left tackle before an injury allowed him to flip to defense. Jones was named to the 1969 All-Time Team with five years left in his career, and he was a unanimous selection to the 1994 NFL All-Time Team. Jones was an excellent run defender, as fine a pass rusher as anyone who ever lived, and a pretty extraordinary person in every facet of his life.

14. Dan Marino
Quarterback
Miami Dolphins, 1983-99
61,361 yards, 420 TD, 252 INT, 86.4 rating
1 MVP, 1 OPOY, 1 consensus All-Pro, 6 AP All-Pro, 9 Pro Bowls, Rookie of the Year

When Dan Marino retired, he held the career records for pass completions, yards, and touchdowns, all of them by a huge margin. He retired with nearly 10,000 more yards than 2nd-place John Elway (51,475) and nearly 25% more TDs than second-place Fran Tarkenton (342). Marino also held dozens of records for things like 300-yard passing games and 4,000-yard seasons, plus significant single-season records for passing yards (5,084) and TDs (48).

It isn’t just that Marino set the records; he put them far out of reach, and they stood for decades. No one came within 200 yards of Marino’s single-season record for 24 years. When Drew Brees finally broke it more than a quarter-century later (2011), he threw almost 100 more passes than Marino, and he did so with the benefit of new rules that make passing easier. The TD record was even more impressive: when Marino threw 48 TDs, he broke the existing record … of 36. Two years later, he threw 44. Until the new illegal contact policy in 2004, Marino still had more 40-TD seasons than every other player in history combined, including the top two of all time.

It’s rare that players truly redefine their positions, but Marino’s records were unthinkable. He not only shattered records with apparent ease, he dramatically outdistanced peers like Jim Kelly, Joe Montana, Warren Moon, and Elway. Statistically, Marino was 15-20 years ahead of his time, which is an eternity in the evolution of the pro passing game. Head coach Don Shula credited Marino with inspiring modern pass-first offenses: “Everybody realized that if you have a great talent at the quarterback position, it means so much as to opening the game up . . . with Dan and his great ability to put points up on the board, people began to see how important that was . . . he turned things around as far as offensive thinking is concerned.”

Marino’s 1984 season, when he set the yardage and TD records, might be the greatest in NFL history, by any player at any position. Only one player (Neil Lomax) came within 1,000 passing yards of him, and Marino had 50% more TDs (48) than second-place Dave Krieg (32). Marino led the league in passer rating (108.9), the highest since 1960, and he had the lowest sack percentage in the league (2.3%), less than half of second-place Montana (4.8%). Marino’s +31 TD/INT differential led the league by 72% and broke the record (+22, set by Y.A. Tittle in 1963) by 41%. He didn’t just set new records, he defied our previous understanding of what was humanly possible.

The Dolphins went 14-2 that season, and Marino won NFL MVP (ahead of Eric Dickerson, who rushed for 2,105 yards). Marino threw 3 TDs in a playoff win over the Seahawks and Defensive Player of the Year Kenny Easley, then 421 yards and 4 TDs in a 45-28 AFC Championship victory over the Steelers. The Dolphins lost Super Bowl XIX, but everyone in football knew that Marino, just 23, would win multiple championships.

It didn’t work out that way. The Dolphins, dynastic in the ’70s and early ’80s, failed to restock their roster when stars like Dwight Stephenson and Doug Betters retired, and Hall of Fame coach Don Shula (now 30 years into his coaching career) finally lost his edge.

There are people who will feel I’ve lost my mind ranking Marino here, since his teams never won a Super Bowl. Throughout this series, I’ve emphasized players’ contributions to their teams. That’s what makes players great, at any position: helping their teams win games. Individual honors, ideally, are indicative of helping the team, and not especially meaningful outside of that context. Joe Montana outplayed Dan Marino in Super Bowl XIX, no doubt, but if Marino had played for the 49ers that day, and Montana for the Dolphins, the Niners still would have won. 49ers backup QB Matt Cavanaugh threw 4 TDs and no interceptions that season, with a 99.7 passer rating, and won his only start. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Marino was a lot better than Matt Cavanaugh. That San Francisco team allowed just 227 points all season, the fewest in the NFL, and ranked 3rd in rushing, with Wendell Tyler and Roger Craig. The Dolphins had a pretty good defense, but they allowed 4.71 yards per rush attempt, worst in the NFL. Their leading rushers were Woody Bennett, Tony Nathan, and Joe Carter — not exactly Tyler and Craig.

Judging quarterbacks by team results is not a new idea, ^[5]“People ask me about the great quarterbacks, and I’ll start with Otto Graham. He won a lot of championships . . . That’s what a championship quarterback does—wins … Continue reading but football is a team sport, and you can’t judge individual players exclusively by team results. The player’s contribution to team results can and should be part of the assessment, but team results do not constitute the player assessment itself.

In his Pro Football Historical Abstract, Sean Lahman wrote a lengthy defense against the idea that Marino wasn’t a winner. Lahman noted that the Dolphins ranked in the bottom half of NFL teams in rushing yards in 15 out of Marino’s 17 seasons. They never ranked better than 13th, and only once had a running back reach the 1,000-yard mark. In the 1983 playoffs, for instance, the Seahawks used seven defensive backs against Miami. The Dolphins’ leading rushers in that game were David Overstreet and Woody Bennett. Marino played well against this extreme pass defense (he threw two INTs, but created enough positive plays to make up for them), but Overstreet lost a fumble and kickoff returner Fulton Walker lost two fumbles. Seattle won 27-20. If Miami’s ground game had been adequate to keep the defense honest, or Marino’s teammates had any success holding onto the ball, the Dolphins likely would have won. Marino could have played better, even against a supercharged pass defense, but it’s funny how the great “clutch” quarterbacks seldom had to overcome such pitiful support from their teammates.

Miami also had a subpar defense in those years; in Marino’s 10 playoff losses, the Dolphins gave up an average of 34.5 points. How can you expect to win when your defense allows five touchdowns? ^[6]Joe Montana’s teams went 0-3 in the postseason when they allowed at least 30 points. No one blames him for those losses, and no one should. But it’s inconsistent and illogical not to … Continue reading “He’s had some good receivers on the Dolphins, but they’ve never had a good enough defense,” explained John Madden. “The Miami defense was so shaky that there was pressure on the offense to score every time it had the ball,” Paul Zimmerman sympathized in 1986. The Dolphins’ defense ranked 26th (out of 28) in yards, points, and takeaways that season. The ’86 Dolphins led the NFL in scoring but finished 8-8. If you think the Dolphins would have won the Super Bowl that year with a different quarterback, that Marino was holding them back, please see a neurologist, because something is wrong with your brain.

Lahman concluded, and I agree, that Marino “helped a team that wasn’t very good—and at times was downright lousy—to remain competitive. He led them to the AFC Championship Game in 1985, for example, with a 22nd ranked defense [out of 28] and the 18th ranked rushing offense. That team finished 12-4, and rather than blaming Marino for not taking them further, I think we ought to commend him for even getting them into the playoffs.”

With a less-than-stellar supporting cast for most of his career, Marino shouldered the load. He led the NFL in completions six times, yardage five times, and TDs three times. He retired with the 2nd-most wins as starting quarterback, leading the Dolphins to 10 playoff appearances, five AFC East titles, three AFC Championship Games, and a Super Bowl. Marino set the postseason record for consecutive games with a touchdown pass, and retired with more postseason TDs than anyone but Montana. Marino played exactly zero games of his career with running backs, receivers, or tight ends who are in the Hall of Fame. Assuming Adrian Peterson is an HOF lock, Marino is the only Hall of Fame QB never to throw a regular-season pass to a player who is in the PFHOF. Mark Clayton and Mark Duper were nice players, but I don’t think anyone would claim they were as good as, say, Jerry Rice and Dwight Clark.

Joe Montana was the perfect quarterback for what Bill Walsh was doing in San Francisco, and Marino’s volume stats probably benefitted from playing with mediocre defenses and underpowered running games. I suspect that if they had switched places — Montana to the Dolphins and Marino to the Niners — both teams would have been worse.

The argument over these two players is often defined as a regular-season vs. postseason distinction: Marino set the records, Montana won the rings. That’s a lazy approach to a complex question. You can’t define Montana solely by his four Super Bowls. He was an eight-time Pro Bowler, two-time regular-season MVP, and his stats are sensational. Labeling Marino as the guy with the stats and no titles ignores that American football is the ultimate team sport. Marino played on two teams that had a legit shot at a championship, in 1984 and ’85, and those only because he was the best QB in the league. For the rest of his career, Marino dragged mediocre teams kicking and screaming into the postseason.

I also think that, out of respect for a legend, people tend to gloss over Don Shula’s reputation as a choker. Shula’s Colts were favored to win the 1964 NFL Championship Game against Cleveland. They got shut out, 27-0. They were huge favorites to win Super Bowl III, a team that was already regarded by many as the greatest in history. They lost to Joe Namath and the Jets. Shula went to Miami, and the ’71 Dolphins became the first team in Super Bowl history not to score a touchdown. The undefeated ’72 Dolphins were underdogs in Super Bowl VII, partly because of Shula’s reputation.

Shula’s failure to win a title in 20 seasons with John Unitas and Dan Marino is astonishing, and it’s preposterous to suggest that the quarterbacks were primarily to blame for that drought. Unitas won NFL Championships in 1958 and 1959 with head coach Weeb Ewbank, and in 1970 with head coach Don McCafferty. In between, he spent seven years with Shula and didn’t win a title. Did Unitas turn from the greatest clutch quarterback in the game into a choker, just for the ’60s? It seems more likely to me that the shortcoming was Shula’s — rather than a bizarre variation in Unitas’ career — and more likely still that the Colts could have won a championship in the ’60s but didn’t because football is an unpredictable game and the best team doesn’t always win. ^[7]One of my favorite quotes about football comes from Hall of Fame coach Bud Grant: “There are coaches who spend eighteen hours a day coaching the perfect game, and they lose because the ball is … Continue reading

In evaluating player greatness, I care deeply about individual contributions to team success, but I just don’t know how you look at the Marino-era Dolphins and conclude that there is any point at which Dan Marino should have done something different to help them win a Super Bowl. Absent his extraordinary contributions in 1984 and ’85, they never had a Super Bowl-caliber team.

The QB Winz argument has always broken down for me because the logical extension of the argument is that the best quarterbacks of the Super Bowl era have been, more or less in order: Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Troy Aikman, Bart Starr, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Roger Staubach, Ben Roethlisberger, Bob Griese, Eli Manning, Jim Plunkett, Phil Simms, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Joe Theismann, Russell Wilson, Johnny Unitas, Drew Brees, Steve Young, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Namath, Len Dawson, Ken Stabler, Mark Rypien, Jim McMahon, Brad Johnson, Joe Flacco, Trent Dilfer, Doug Williams, Jeff Hostetler, and Nick Foles, with everyone else pretty much tied for 33rd. The list starts off okay, but it gets weird pretty quickly.

If Super Bowl wins are the definitive measure of a QB, then Rypien and Dilfer and Foles rank ahead of Marino and Tarkenton and Moon. And if there’s wiggle room, if we’re allowed to dismiss Dilfer or Hostetler as flukes and admit that they’re not in the top 100, never mind the top 32, if we’re allowed to rank Tarkenton ahead of Plunkett, or Elway ahead of Bradshaw, or whatever, then team success isn’t definitive — it’s one of many factors. You can’t make it definitive when you choose (“Montana won more than Marino, end of story”) and flexible when you choose that instead (“Everyone knows Stabler was better than Plunkett”). If you pick and choose different arguments to support the ranking you know in your heart is right, please don’t proselytize to the rest of us to adopt your faith. ^[8]Lest I be accused of hypocrisy, I don’t really care if you think Dan Marino stunk because his teams never won a Super Bowl. I think you’re wrong and that justification is illogical, but … Continue reading

Marino played just eight seasons with a Hall of Fame teammate, five at the beginning of his career with Dwight Stephenson and three with Jason Taylor when Marino was past his prime. Montana had more than eight seasons just with Ronnie Lott, while they were both in their primes, never mind Jerry Rice, Charles Haley, Fred Dean, Derrick Thomas, Marcus Allen, Will Shields, and a cup of coffee with O.J. Simpson. Jim Kelly played a combined 35 seasons with Bruce Smith, Andre Reed, Thurman Thomas, and James Lofton. Warren Moon had 41 seasons with HOF teammates, though many of those were at the end of his career, with the Seahawks (1997-98) and Chiefs (for whom he played two seasons and attempted a total of 37 passes). John Elway had a total of 19 seasons with Shannon Sharpe, Gary Zimmerman, Terrell Davis, and Tony Dorsett. Troy Aikman got 39 seasons from HOF teammates, including Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin, Larry Allen, Deion Sanders, and Charles Haley. Steve Young, in his eight seasons as the 49ers’ starter, played 22 combined seasons with Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens, Charles Haley, Deion Sanders, Rod Woodson, Kevin Greene, Rickey Jackson, Chris Doleman, and Richard Dent. Several of those QBs never won a game without a Hall of Fame teammate; Marino won more than 80. This is a quick-and-dirty gauge of team support, terribly imprecise, but the gap is so significant that it illustrates vividly how much less Marino had to work with than his most celebrated contemporaries. ^[9]I would love to see someone examine this more thoroughly.

I’ve written a lot about Marino’s statistics and the short-comings of his team support, but not much about how he played. He was awesome to watch. Marino had the quickest release I’ve ever seen, “like an explosion,” Shula described it. I’ve seen Joe Namath and Sonny Jurgensen, and Philip Rivers and Peyton Manning, but none of them got the ball out like Marino. “I’ve never seen anything like it as far as that release,” Manning marveled. I’m not sure we ever will.” Marino was the best flea-flicker QB ever, partly because if the defense bit for even one step, he could get the ball to his receiver before the defender had a chance to recover.

Marino was decisive, which is a quality QBs need. He didn’t stand in the pocket patting the ball and waiting for his primary receiver to come wide open. He anticipated the route and rifled the ball, and he completed a lot of passes to receivers who weren’t open. Marino was accurate at any range, and he put rare touch on his passes. He had an unusual ability to throw darts that were easy to catch. “The best pure passer that’s ever played the game,” Shula called him.

Marino is also the best passer in history at avoiding sacks. Famously slow, he had great pocket awareness and that incredibly quick release. His 3.13% sack percentage is tied with Peyton Manning, but Marino played in an era when QBs took more sacks. Drew Brees (3.88%) is somewhat close to Manning, but none of Marino’s contemporaries are anywhere near his mark. Brett Favre (4.9%) took over 50% more sacks per attempt, but his number is better than Troy Aikman (5.2), Dan Fouts (5.4), Joe Montana (5.5), Warren Moon (6.29), Jim Kelly (6.33), John Elway (6.6), Steve Young (7.9), et al. Phil Simms (9.3) and Randall Cunningham (10.1) took three times as many sacks as Marino. He led the NFL in lowest sack percentage 10 times, and saved his team hundreds of critical yards by getting rid of the ball rather than taking the sack.

Shula had Marino call many of his own plays, rather than sending them in from the sideline. “I felt that by a coach calling the plays, he was just going to assume that the play was going to come in to him. And I wanted him to work hard in the practices and in the meetings to have all of the knowledge that you need to call your own plays.” The result was a quarterback who was not merely an exceptionally gifted passer, but a confident and capable field general, renowned for his two-minute drills. “Marino had the two-minute magic,” admitted San Francisco sportswriter Michael Silver, “that rates right with the great Montana and Elway.” According to the definition crafted by Scott Kacsmar and used at the indispensible Pro-Football-Reference.com, a game-winning drive is “an offensive scoring drive in the fourth quarter or overtime that puts the winning team ahead for the last time.” Dan Marino had 47 game-winning drives in the regular season, seven more than Elway and 19 more than Montana, a record that stood for 14 seasons and still ranks third all-time. “He is one of those players who believes he’s never out of it,” affirmed fellow Hall of Fame QB Len Dawson. “A hungry, greedy, nasty type of quarterback who’s always trying to beat you downfield,” Zimmerman called Marino. “The high-percentage dink passers look like so many paper dolls after you’ve seen Marino in action.”

“Anybody who’s ever played the QB position, they hold Dan Marino in the highest regard,” praised Jason Garrett, Aikman’s longtime backup and the current head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. “He’s on Mount Olympus.” Marino was a perennial all-star and he repeatedly got otherwise mediocre teams into the postseason. He had arguably the greatest single season in history, and he set every career passing record, far out of reach of his contemporaries. Whether you judge players by their peaks or their careers, Marino rates among the very best in history.

13. Merlin Olsen
Defensive Tackle
Los Angeles Rams, 1962-76
9 FR, 68 yards; 1 INT, 20 yards, TD
5 consensus All-Pro, 9 AP All-Pro, 14 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 1970s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

“Even if the quarterback is going to get the pass away, you have to bloody him up a little, to remind him you were there. You have to punish him to discourage him. He begins to listen for your footsteps. He begins to hurry. As he loses his rhythm and timing, you’ve got him.”

I love the rhythm of that quote, reading it slowly, with full stops at each period. It’s such a thoughtful approach to violence, and Merlin Olsen was a thoughtful guy. He was Phi Beta Kappa and Academic All-American at Utah State, and earned a master’s degree in economics in 1971, while he was still an elite defensive tackle. After his playing career, he was a successful actor and broadcaster, known for his role in Little House on the Prairie.

Olsen’s eloquence and intelligence belied his impact on the field. He was huge for that era, 6-5 and usually around 280 pounds. “For a guy that weighed close to 300 pounds, he had great agility,” recalled Hall of Fame guard Jerry Kramer. “A good defensive lineman must be part charging buffalo and part ballet dancer,” Olsen explained. “And he must know when to be which.” Ultimately, though, it wasn’t agility or ballet dancing that set Olsen apart, it was strength. He was strong as a bull, strong as an ox, a bear, a charging buffalo — whichever one is strongest. “The greatest bull-rush tackle ever,” Paul Zimmerman called him. Olsen was a classic wrap-up tackler, grabbing ball-carriers and then twisting so they couldn’t fall forward to gain yardage.

Size notwithstanding, Olsen had a non-stop motor. No DT has ever been more celebrated for his consistent pressure and relentless hustle. “He never quit, he never slowed down, he never gave you an inch,” remembered Kramer. “He did it play after play without letup, collapsing the pocket, piling up the run, breaking down the inside of the line while his teammate, Deacon Jones, mopped up outside,” hailed Zimmerman.

“Deac had very limited responsibility, because Merlin backed him up and took care of everything he didn’t do,” Kramer explained. “Olsen’s unselfish play at tackle allowed Deacon to go after the passer play after play and the scheme didn’t suffer because Olsen was covering the sucker plays,” agreed historian John Turney. Jones, the sack master, captured the public imagination, with his fearsome scowl, violent language, and devastating play-making. But Olsen’s reliable excellence facilitated Deacon’s freelancing.

As mentioned previously, Olsen was also very smart, and that translated to the football field. “He know what was going on at all times,” declared head coach George Allen, “and took advantage of every weakness the opposition had and every mistake that was made.” Olsen would dissect plays ahead of time and shut them down. While Olsen wasn’t averse to borrowing his teammate Jones’ head slap technique, he was renowned as a clean player. “Merlin was the classiest guy I ever played against,” lauded Bart Starr, “and the most consistent.”

Kramer, in his famous book Instant Replay, writes at some length about Merlin Olsen. “Merlin has tremendous hustle; he never quits . . . there’s never any holding or kicking or clipping, just straight, clean, hard football.” Before a game against the Rams, Kramer tells the media, “Merlin Olsen is very big, very strong, has great speed and great agility, is a very smart ballplayer, gives at least 110 percent on every play, and these are his weak points.” One of my favorite passages is the prelude to the battle, two days before the Packers are due to play Los Angeles. “Given the choice between going up against [Johnny] Unitas and going up against Los Angeles’ defensive Fearsome Foursome, the consensus is: Bring on Unitas.” The book is very good.

Olsen is the only player in history to make the Pro Bowl in each of his first 14 seasons, missing only in the final year of his career. Those 14 Pro Bowls are tied for the most by any player at any position, and almost twice as many as his celebrated teammate Jones (8). Olsen was part of a defensive dynasty with the Fearsome Foursome in the ’60s, and another with the likes of Jack Youngblood and Isiah Robertson in the ’70s. He played on six teams that finished .750 or better, all without a Hall of Fame quarterback or running back. In nine postseason games, Olsen contributed 6 sacks and a fumble recovery. He was too big and strong for blockers to move off the line, too agile to evade once he penetrated the backfield, too smart to fall for screens and draws, and too gentlemanly for opponents to play dirty against him. He was a bright, warm, generous man, who cared about other people and honored his commitments, and he was one of the very best football players of all time. Merlin Olsen died in 2010, just 69 years old.

12. Bob Lilly
Defensive Tackle
Dallas Cowboys, 1961-74
15 FR, 109 yards, 3 TD; 1 INT, 17 yards, TD
7 consensus All-Pro, 8 AP All-Pro, 11 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 1970s All-Decade Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

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.

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.

“Bob Lilly was the greatest defensive lineman I ever saw,” reported Hall of Fame tackle Dan Dierdorf. During his career, Dierdorf played against eight Hall of Fame DTs: Lilly, Olsen, Page, Greene, White, Culp, Buck Buchanan, and Dan Hampton, to say nothing of DEs like Deacon Jones and Jack Youngblood.

Head coach Tom Landry couldn’t praise his star DT enough: “Lilly always broke through his first block. Always. And sometimes through the second and third blocks. There is no one man in football who can contain Lilly.” Cowboys teammate and Super Bowl head coach Dan Reeves confirmed, “They triple-teamed Bob Lilly and still couldn’t block him. Nobody could beat him off the ball.” Bruce Smith and Bob Lilly are probably the players most famous for confronting constant double- and triple-teams. Landry used to send game films to the league office marked, “Holding fouls against Bob Lilly.”

“Lilly’s game,” wrote Paul Zimmerman, “represented near-perfect technique. ” Comparing Lilly to Greene and Olsen, he declared, “Lilly was the most technically sound.” Hall of Fame guard Jerry Kramer anticipated the critical play in the Ice Bowl, the most famous block thrown in NFL history. Studying film before the game, he told Vince Lombardi, “[Jethro Pugh] doesn’t bury himself the way Bob Lilly does. If we’re gonna wedge, we should wedge Pugh.”

Lilly had an all-around game. He was 6-5, 260, and strong. He didn’t look like an All-Pro tough guy, but he tackled like one. “He hits hard,” reflected Jim Brown. “He’s more like a thorn.” Lilly had sensational hands, grabbing blockers and throwing them off-balance or out of the way to clear paths to the ball-carrier. He was quick, exploding through the line at the snap and mirroring ball-carriers who tried to elude him. He famously chased down Bob Griese for a record 29-yard sack in Super Bowl VI. Griese kept retreating, and Lilly was always there. He was aggressive going after the ball, great at recovering fumbles, and scored 4 TDs, as many as Alan Page and more than Joe Greene and Merlin Olsen combined. Lilly unofficially tallied 94 sacks, according to John Turney, peaking with 15 in 1966, an extraordinary number for an interior rusher in a 14-game season. He was a big-play defensive tackle who was always sound against the less flashy plays, too.

A native Texan who played at TCU, Lilly was the Dallas Cowboys’ first-ever draft pick, first Pro Bowler, first Ring of Honor inductee, and first Hall of Famer. He was nicknamed “Mr. Cowboy,” and in this series, I have him rated as the greatest Cowboy of all time. I can’t say enough good things about NFL Films, and I made a long argument on Michael Irvin’s behalf at the beginning of this series, but it is outrageous that NFL Films ranked Irvin ahead of Lilly in their Top 10 Cowboys of All Time. Irvin was a great receiver, but no one believes he was the best WR of all time; he’s borderline top ten. Lilly, if he wasn’t the greatest defensive tackle in history, missed by a micron. Rating Irvin ahead of Lilly defies credibility, a shameful selection pandering to an audience they presume to be ignorant.

Lilly began his career as a defensive end, making the Pro Bowl at that position in 1962, but he was better suited to defensive tackle, quickly establishing himself as the greatest interior lineman in football. I can’t remember the source for my favorite quote about Bob Lilly, but it’s from somewhere in the NFL Films archives, and elegant in its simplicity, a lineman confiding to his teammate in despair, “I can’t block Bob Lilly.” At the end of the day, isn’t that what defines a great defensive tackle?

11. Don Hutson
End (Pre-Modern)
Green Bay Packers, 1935-45
488 receptions, 7,991 yards, 99 TD
2 MVP, 6 consensus All-Pro, 10 All-Pro, 4 Pro Bowls, 1930s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team, 75th Anniversary Team, All-Century Team

Sports Illustrated‘s Peter King has argued that Don Hutson is the greatest player in NFL history. I’m glad he’s beaten the drum for Hutson, who otherwise might be remembered only by historians and Packer fans.

Hutson was the most dominant receiver of all time. In an 11-year career, he led the NFL in receiving yards seven times, in receptions eight times, and in receiving touchdowns nine times. Despite playing 10-12-game seasons, his record for receiving TDs stood almost 50 years.

Hutson was named NFL MVP in 1941 and 1942. In ’41, he caught 58 passes — more than any two other players combined — for 738 yards, also more than any two other players combined, and 10 TDs, equal to the next two players combined. In ’42, Hutson’s 74 receptions were as many as the next three players combined. His 1,211 yards were more than double second-place Ray McLean (571). His single-season record of 17 TDs, set in an 11-game season, stood until 1984, a 16-game season with wildly liberalized rules that opened up the passing game. “I just concede him two touchdowns,” moaned Bears coach George Halas, “and hope we can score more.”

When Hutson retired following the 1945 season, he had 488 receptions, compared to 190 for second-place Jim Benton. Hutson had 7,991 yards, as opposed to 3,309 for second-place Benton. Hutson’s 99 receiving TDs were almost three times as many as second-place Johnny Blood, 37. Hutson was an otherworldly receiver, in another stratosphere of production than his peers. It is easy to understand why King regards him as the best player of all time.

Hutson played end, the position that evolved into modern wide receivers, in an era when that was primarily a blocking position. He was an unorthodox but adequate blocker. Playing in the limited substitution, two-way era, Hutson was not a good defensive end. He eventually switched to defensive back and had far more success there. Interceptions became an official statistic in 1940, halfway through Hutson’s career, but he recorded 30 INTs in only six seasons. He led the league, at various times, in interceptions, INT return yards, and INT return TDs. Hutson was also a competent kicker. He led the NFL three times in extra points, and he went 7/17 on field goals, tying for the league lead one year. ^[10]In the 1940s you could lead the NFL by making three field goals in a season.

It is for his receiving that Hutson is most celebrated, of course. He was, without question, the most dominant receiver of all time, dramatically outdistancing his peers. He was one of the fastest players in football, timed at 9.7 seconds in the 100-yard dash. He had good leaping ability, good moves, good hands, and an instinct for the ball.

Hall of Fame coach Greasy Neale called Hutson “the only man I ever saw who could feint in three different directions at the same time.” Hall of Fame teammate Clarke Hinkle recalled, “I saw him fake Beattie Feathers of the Bears out of his shoes, literally fake him out of his shoes. They had to call time out so he could put them back on.”

Recognizing Hutson’s unique athletic gifts and singular accomplishments, how can my rating differ from King’s? Surely an excellent defensive back who was also the most dominant receiver of all time rates as the greatest player in history. But Hutson, as I noted above, played end when it was primarily a blocking position. ^[11]The closest modern comparison would be blocking tight ends. No one else in the league was trying to do the things Hutson did. “The distance between him and his peers,” wrote Sean Lahman, “was as much about a new style of play as it was about superior skill.” Hutson himself deferred much of the credit to a coach ahead of his time: “I was fortunate in having a creative coach like Curly Lambeau, one who really saw the merits of the passing game at a time when just about no one else did.”

In 1936, for instance, Hutson led the NFL in receptions (34), receiving yards (536), and receiving TDs (8), playing for a Packers team that went 10-1-1 and won the NFL Championship. The Bears’ Bill Hewitt was a consensus All-Pro end that year, with the other All-Pro spot split between Hutson and teammate Milt Gantenbein. Hewitt caught 15 passes for 358 yards and 6 TDs, excellent totals for that era but far short of Hutson. Gantenbein checked in with 15 catches for 221 yards and 1 TD. They were better blockers than Hutson, when that was a critically important skill, and both were much better defensive players that season. Hutson was extremely valuable, but not as exceptional as receiving stats alone might lead a modern fan to believe. The Pre-Modern “end” position evolved into the modern “wide receiver” position, but it was not, in Hutson’s time, defined primarily by receiving.

Furthermore, Hutson played with two great passers, Arnie Herber and Cecil Isbell, at a time when many “quarterbacks” were still run-first tailbacks with limited passing acumen. In 1934, the year before Hutson joined the Packers, they led the NFL in completions by almost 20%, with twice as many (74) as the Cardinals (34) or Redskins (35). Hutson’s skill as a receiver was mind-blowing, but his potential was maximized by coaching strategy and passing skill, and his numbers would have been considerably lower playing in, say, Detroit.

Hutson was not drafted to serve in World War II, which many great players of that era were. He competed against considerably diluted talent during the war, and he played in all-white leagues, never facing the full range of football talent the country had to offer. Facing standard, rather than wartime, competition, Hutson still would have been the greatest receiver of his time, but his records wouldn’t be quite so far out of reach.

Hutson grew up in Arkansas, where he was the first Eagle Scout in state history. He played his college ball at Alabama, where he earned the nickname “The Alabama Antelope.” I miss colorful nicknames. Here’s Mel Hein‘s All-Pro team of players he faced, from What A Game They Played, by Richard Whittington:

Guards: Iron Mike Michalske and Danny Fortmann
Tackles: Cal Hubbard “and either Turk Edwards or Joe Stydahar”
Center: Bulldog Turner
Ends: Don Hutson and Bill Hewitt
Quarterback: Sammy Baugh
Fullback: Bronko Nagurski
Halfbacks: Cliff Battles and George McAfee
Honorable Mentions: Ace Parker and Dutch Clark

Iron Mike, Turk, Bulldog, Bronko, Ace, Dutch. Most of the others have diminutive nicknames with some familiarity and personality: Danny, Joe, Cal, Bill, Sammy. As a fan, players you can call “Danny” or “Bill” feel more like yours than “Daniel” and “William.” Sports teams seldom have that kind of connection to the community any more. If you made up an all-star list of the best players from the past 15 years or so, how many would have interesting nicknames? Today a player named Donald Montgomery Hutson would probably go by Donald Hutson. You wouldn’t call him Don, never mind The Alabama Antelope. I don’t mourn the passing of ethnic nicknames, but we could do with a Bulldog and an Ace in today’s NFL, and I’d sit through a New Year’s Eve game in Buffalo for another Crazy Legs Hirsch, who got his nickname from running “like a demented duck. His crazy legs were gyrating in six different directions.” ^[12]We owe these words, and Hirsch’s wonderful nickname, to sportswriter Francis Powers.

Returning to The Alabama Antelope — in 1942, Don Hutson became the first player with three 40-yard TDs in the same game: he scored on receptions of 40, 73, and 65 yards. His career records for receptions and receiving yards, set in an era when no one threw the ball much and the seasons were 12 games or fewer, endured until the ’60s (Billy Howton). So did his all-time TD record (Jim Brown). His record of 99 receiving TDs lasted until Steve Largent, more than 40 years after Hutson’s retirement, and following dramatic expansions of the schedule and liberalization of passing offense. Similarly, Hutson’s single-season record for receiving TDs, set in an 11-game season, lasted 42 years and was broken in a 16-game season.

Fans should not judge Hutson as a player exclusively by his receiving, and especially not in comparison to peers who contributed in different ways. But at the same time, we should recognize him as a gifted and explosive receiver and defensive back, a historic and truly game-changing superstar, and the best player on a team that won three championships (1936, 1939, and 1944). Hutson was the greatest receiver of the NFL’s first 65 years, and one of the most impactful football players of all time.

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In a slight change of plans, I’ll be supplementing this series on Thursday, and it will conclude next Tuesday, with the top 10 players of all time. If you enjoyed this piece, please follow me on Twitter (@bradoremland). You may also want to check out my column archive here at FP and at Sports Central, as well as the all-time pro football roster that inspired this project.