Brad Oremland is a longtime commenter and a fellow football historian. There are few who have given as much thought to the history of pro football as Brad has over the years. 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 fourth article in a twelve-part series profiling the greatest pro football players of all time. You can find the previous installments below:

111-125
101-110
91-100

It’s been a couple weeks since I introduced this series, so I’d like to remind readers of the disclaimers from the introduction: making this list at any point is a much higher standard than the Hall of Fame, and indicates that I have extraordinary regard for that player. I would like to write about the players in exclusively positive terms, but since this series is organized as a ranking, some of the comments will highlight weaknesses by way of explaining why the player isn’t even higher. Please don’t misinterpret these explanations as disrespect for the player’s accomplishments.

Best Players of All Time: 81-90

90. Warren Moon
Quarterback
Houston Oilers, 1984-93; Minnesota Vikings, 1994-96; Seattle Seahawks, 1997-98; Kansas City Chiefs, 1999-2000
49,325 yards, 291 TD, 233 INT, 80.9 rating
1 OPOY, 1 AP All-Pro, 9 Pro Bowls

Warren Moon’s statistics are excellent for when he played. He retired as the third-leading passer in NFL history, fourth in touchdowns. He made nine Pro Bowls, led the NFL in passing yards twice, and had back-to-back 4,000-yard seasons twice, for two different teams — the first player to do so. Moon won Offensive Player of the Year in 1990; compared to Associated Press MVP Joe Montana, Moon was ahead in completions, completion percentage, yards, yards per attempt, net yards per attempt, yards per completion, touchdowns, TD percentage, fewer interceptions, INT percentage, passer rating, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, total yards, and total touchdowns. And Moon wasn’t throwing to Jerry Rice. The statistical gulf between them is enormous; one is forced to conclude that Montana was more valuable either because he played on a better team or because of prejudice against Moon.

Moon was a first-ballot Hall of Famer in 2006, the first undrafted quarterback elected to Canton. He was a successful college player, the MVP of the 1978 Rose Bowl, but was initially prevented from playing in the NFL. He spent six years in the Canadian Football League, winning five straight championships with the Edmonton Eskimos, before joining the Oilers in 1984. When he finally reached the NFL, Moon joined a team that had gone a combined 3-22 the previous two seasons. It took a few years to complete the turnaround — this was before modern free agency — but the Oilers made seven straight playoff appearances from 1987-93. Then Moon went to Minnesota, and the Oilers dropped from 12-4 to 2-14, from 4th in scoring (368) to dead last (226). After seven consecutive playoff seasons with Moon, they missed the playoffs for the next five years.

The Vikings were glad to have him. Moon made the next two Pro Bowls, passed for back-to-back 4,000-yard seasons — at the time, only Dan Fouts, Dan Marino, and Moon himself had ever done so — and facilitated Cris Carter’s single-season receptions record. Moon got hurt in ’96, then went to Seattle and made the Pro Bowl there, too. In February 1998, at age 41, Moon was named Pro Bowl MVP.

Here you’ve got a guy with a 23-year professional career, who could still play at a high level in his 40s. He passed the eye test, ran well and threw maybe the most perfect spiral in history. He has an impressive big-game résumé: Rose Bowl MVP, five Grey Cups, and a higher passer rating in the NFL playoffs (84.9) than in the regular season (80.9). He was the critical player for a team that made seven consecutive postseason appearances, and the team disintegrated without him. Moon didn’t play for the Cowboys or 49ers, but what more do you want from him?

89. Mel Blount
Cornerback
Pittsburgh Steelers, 1970-83
57 INT, 736 yards, 2 TD; 13 FR, 105 yards, 2 TD
1 DPOY, 1 consensus All-Pro, 4 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 75th Anniversary Team

Mel Blount’s legend has grown since his retirement. He is often ranked as the second- or third-best cornerback of all time. Certainly he was a great player. He was one of the tallest players ever at his position, 6-foot-3, and he was fast. Teammate Jon Kolb praised Blount, “A lot of cornerbacks want to be intimidating. They go through all kinds of things to be intimidating. Mel could walk out there, look down on the guy, and then run side-by-side with him. That was intimidating.” Blount was huge for his position, and strong: excellent against the run, physically dominant against the receivers lined up across from him. That dominance inspired the five-yard bump rule, better known as the Mel Blount rule. The change did little to limit Blount’s impact; he remained among the best CBs in the league.

But Blount didn’t garner an extraordinary number of honors. He only had one season as a consensus All-Pro, and he didn’t make a lot of Pro Bowls. There were four cornerbacks named to the 1970s All-Decade Team, and he wasn’t one of them, not even on the Second Team. When he retired, he ranked 28th in interception return yardage, and he didn’t score many touchdowns. He was named to the NFL’s 75th Anniversary Team, but so were three of his defensive teammates (which I’ll discuss at greater length later in this series). Few people considered Blount as valuable as Joe Greene or Jack Lambert. Those are quibbles in a great career, but they’re factors which complicate the idea that Blount was a top-three-ever player at his position.

88. Willie Brown
Cornerback
Denver Broncos, 1963-66; Oakland Raiders, 1967-78
54 INT, 472 yards, 2 TD; 4 FR
3 consensus All-League, 7 AP All-League, 9 All-Star Games, AFL All-Time Team, 1970s All-Decade Team, All-Century Team

At Grambling State University, Willie Brown played linebacker. He signed with the Houston Oilers, who converted him to defensive back, but cut him before the season began; according to Oilers QB (and future Raiders teammate) George Blanda, Brown was cut because he couldn’t cover Charley Hennigan in practice. That’s a pretty high standard for a rookie starting a new position.

Brown caught on with the Broncos, though, and he was first-team All-AFL in 1964. He brought unusual size (210-215 lbs.) and aggression to the cornerback position, and remains renowned as an exemplar of the bump-and-run approach to coverage. Paul Zimmerman, who chose Brown to his All-Century Team, declared him “the greatest attacker in the game.” Brown was known for his aggressive style, knocking receivers off balance and disrupting their routes, but he also had great acceleration — not exceptional top speed so much as the ability to reach top speed quickly, to get back in position if he missed his bump or got beat. Brown was not a brilliant returner after the pick, but his most famous moment was a 75-yard TD return against Fran Tarkenton in Super Bowl XI. Old Man Willie!

87. Herb Adderley
Cornerback
Green Bay Packers, 1961-69; Dallas Cowboys, 1970-72
48 INT, 1,046 yards, 7 TD; 14 FR, 65 yards
2 consensus All-Pro, 7 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team

In his Hall of Fame induction speech, Paul Hornung proclaimed of his five-time champion Packers, “There were only two athletes off that team that would have been in the Hall of Fame on [another team]: Herb Adderley and Forrest Gregg.” Adderley was probably the greatest physical talent on the Lombardi Packers, one of the fastest players in football. He had at least 125 INT return yards five times, and he was an excellent kickoff returner (3,080 yds, 25.7 avg, 2 TD). He was an All-Big Ten halfback at Michigan State, and he brought an offensive mentality to defense, not to mention good hands.

I don’t think anyone disputes that Adderley was the outstanding coverage corner of the 1960s. His style was almost the opposite of Blount’s and Brown’s, eschewing bump-and-run coverage. Rather, Adderley relied on his world-class speed. When you read accounts of Adderley’s career, that word, speed, shows up over and over again. Until Bob Hayes came into the league, Adderley was probably the fastest man in football. He could play extremely tight coverage, because if he got beaten he knew he could catch up. George Allen, defensive coordinator of the rival Bears, and later head coach of the Rams and (when Adderley moved to Dallas) HC of another major rival in Washington, marveled, “He was the best in single coverage I ever saw.”

Adderley wasn’t a pure finesse corner, though — he was a nasty hitter. It was his combination of attributes — shutdown coverage corner, dangerous ballhawk, electrifying returner, and merciless tackler — that made Adderley a historic player. Over his 12-year career with the Packers and Cowboys, Adderley’s teams won six championships.

Adderley, Brown, Blount. Brown and Blount were big and physical, Adderley a physical tackler but a bolt of lightning in coverage and a much more explosive returner. Adderley played mostly in the ’60s, Blount mostly in the ’70s, Brown significantly in both decades; Brown was a member of both the AFL All-Time Team (1960-69) and the NFL’s 1970s All-Decade Team. Blount was the best against the run, Adderley got beaten deep the most seldom, Brown sustained effectiveness the longest. All three have strengths to recommend them. The back-to-back-to-back ranking acknowledges the difficulty of clearly elevating any of the trio above the others, but my choice is Adderley. The player I’ve seen on film is the type of player I want on my favorite team. He was the best cover corner in the NFL, the most dangerous returner this side of Gale Sayers, and a hard hitter who lit up opponents. He had everything you want in a cornerback, with no obvious weaknesses.

86. Sonny Jurgensen
Quarterback
Philadelphia Eagles, 1957-63; Washington, 1964-74
32,224 yards, 255 TD, 189 INT, 82.6 rating
3 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team

Vince Lombardi coached Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, and together they won five NFL Championships. Lombardi coached against Johnny Unitas every year. Yet it was of Sonny Jurgensen that Lombardi said, “He may be the best the league has ever seen. He is the best I have seen.” Marie Lombardi reported that her husband came out of retirement in 1969 specifically for the opportunity to work with Jurgensen.

People were in awe of Sonny. He was universally hailed as the best pure passer of his generation. In the literature of the sport, that is the phrase you find, over and over again: “best pure passer.” No one really talks about “greatest pure passer” any more, and if they did, I suppose most people would look for someone more recent, maybe Aaron Rodgers or Dan Marino. But the brilliance of Jurgensen’s arm is cited everywhere. I doubt any player in history put more touch on his passes.

Jurgensen led the NFL in passing yards five times, twice setting the single-season record. He led in touchdowns twice, and his career passer rating (82.62) is the highest of his generation, fractions ahead of the AFL’s Len Dawson (82.58), but comfortably in front of Starr (80.5), Fran Tarkenton (80.4), Unitas (78.2), Bob Griese (77.1), Joe Namath (65.5), and George Blanda (60.6). Moreover, Jurgensen, unlike Dawson, didn’t take a lot of sacks, despite playing with some of the worst offensive lines of that era. Jurgensen (1957-74) and Unitas (1956-73) were contemporaries, but Jurgensen’s TD/INT differential (+66) is substantially better than Johnny U’s (+37). Unitas himself said, “If I threw as much as Jurgensen, my arm would fall off. And if I could throw as well, my head would swell up too big to get into a helmet.”

Although he’s largely forgotten today, Jurgensen was highly admired during his career. He was renowned for his calm poise in the face of a pass rush, his quick release, and his touch on the ball. His reaction to defensive pressure was particularly remarkable. Jurgensen threw well off either foot, and if necessary, with either hand — he was 2-for-3 left-handed — when a defender tied up his right arm, Jurgensen grabbed the ball with his left hand and threw it anyway. In his first start in 1961, he completed a pass behind his back. Jurgensen seldom played with an adequate line, and there are almost as many stories about his cool under pressure as there are about his golden arm.

Jurgensen’s playing style was comparable to Dan Marino’s: the greatest passers of their respective eras, both with lightning-quick releases and uncanny touch on both short- and long-range passes. They also shared a propensity for touchdowns. Jurgensen’s 6.0% touchdown percentage is among the highest in history, and he threw the most TD passes (207) of the 1960s. Sonny ranked third in career TD passes until nearly 20 years after his retirement — when Marino surpassed him.

Jurgensen’s stats are exceptional for his era, and his arm inspired outright awe. The only mark against Jurgensen, and the reason he’s seldom remembered among the greatest quarterbacks of all time, is that his teams never won a championship. In 1967, Jurgensen broke his own NFL record for passing yards, also leading the league in pass TDs, TD/INT differential, passer rating, and lowest sack percentage. He also scored 2 of the team’s 13 rushing touchdowns. Washington finished 5-6-3. What more could he have done to produce a winning team?

Sonny played for Philadelphia and Washington when those franchises were highly unstable, with eight head coaches in 18 seasons. Hugh Devore and Buck Shaw coached the Eagles while Jurgensen was a young backup, but Shaw retired following the 1960 season, leaving Jurgensen with Nick Skorich (1961-63). In Washington, he played for Bill McPeak (1964-65), Otto Graham (1966-68), Vince Lombardi (1969), Bill Austin (1970), and George Allen (1971-74). Lombardi, in perfect sync with Jurgensen, led Washington to its first winning record in 15 years, but died of cancer after only one season. Allen dramatically improved the team, but clashed with Sonny philosophically, and the aging Jurgensen had trouble staying healthy. He doesn’t have the winning résumé of the greatest QBs in history, and his effective career is relatively short because he backed up a Hall of Famer at the beginning of his career and couldn’t stay on the field at the end of it. But every season he was healthy — without fail — Jurgensen was a top QB, and he may have been the greatest pure thrower of the ball ever to play.

85. Jim Otto
Center
Oakland Raiders, 1960-74
8 consensus All-League, 12 AP All-League, 12 All-Star Games, AFL All-Time Team

From 1960-66, the American Football League named an official All-League team at the conclusion of each season. In his rookie season out of the University of Miami, Jim Otto was named first-team All-AFL. He also received first-team All-League recognition from the Associated Press, and the United Press named him second-team All-AFL.

That rookie campaign was one of only three seasons in which Otto was not a consensus choice as first-team All-AFL center. In 1966, the AFL, United Press, Newspaper Enterprise Association, and New York Times all named Otto first-team All-AFL, but AP had him second-team, behind the Patriots’ Jon Morris. In ’68 NYT had him second-team All-AFL, behind a New York player, John Schmitt, but everyone else had him first-team. In 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1967, and 1969, every major organization declared Otto the premier center in the league.

In 1970, Otto was a consensus All-AFC selection, but split All-Pro honors with Minnesota’s Mick Tingelhoff. In ’71, NEA chose Otto, the only major organization to snub San Francisco center Forrest Blue. In ’72, Otto was first-team All-AFC and AP chose him second-team All-Pro. That’s twelve consecutive seasons with meaningful All-League recognition. The AFL was a weaker league than the NFL, but Otto’s dominance was unshakeable. He overcame the poor performance of his team — Oakland went a combined 3-25 from 1961-62, years in which Otto was unchallenged as the All-League center — to win personal acclaim for his excellence and consistency. He spent seven seasons lining up across from the Chiefs’ Hall of Fame nose tackle, Curley Culp, twice a year, and fared much better than Tingelhoff.

Otto, who couldn’t stay healthy at the University of Miami, was an iron man in the pros, one of only two players to appear in all 140 regular-season games in the AFL. He started his career light, barely over 200 pounds, but he was listed at 255 by the time he retired. He was equally skilled as a run blocker and pass protector, carving paths for the likes of Clem Daniels and protecting Daryle Lamonica and Ken Stabler. In 1980, Jim Otto was inducted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

84. Mike Ditka
Tight End
Chicago Bears, 1961-66; Philadelphia Eagles, 1967-68; Dallas Cowboys, 1969-72
427 receptions, 5,812 yards, 43 TD
2 consensus All-Pro, 5 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, Rookie of the Year, 50th Anniversary Team, 75th Anniversary Team

Prior to Iron Mike, the term tight end is hard to define. Most teams used the position primarily as a third tackle, though some bigger ends flirted with the WR/TE border. Ron Kramer and Ditka were the players who revolutionized the position. As a rookie in 1961, Ditka ranked 5th in receiving yards and tied for 2nd in receiving TDs, unheard-of accomplishments for a 230-lb. player who could block linebackers and trample tacklers. Ditka was Rookie of the Year and second-team All-Pro as an end. The following season, 1962, the major press organizations officially began naming tight ends as a distinct position. Few players in history can lay claim to that kind of impact.

From 1961-64, Ditka consistently ranked among the NFL’s receiving leaders, averaging 918 yards and 8 TDs per season, with lows of 794 and 5, respectively. After those first four years, his impact as a receiver was limited, with highs of 454 yards and 3 TDs, but he remained a valued player for his toughness and leadership. Ditka was highly respected with the Cowboys, despite under 1,000 total yards in four seasons as a starter, and regarded as an important player on the team that won Super Bowl VI.

After learning from George Halas and Tom Landry as a player, Ditka went on to his own successful coaching career. He’s a caricature today, but Ditka was a highly esteemed assistant coach for the Cowboys during their dynasty period, which led to his hiring as head coach of the Bears. He went 112-68 as head coach in Chicago — that’s more wins and a higher winning percentage than Bill Walsh in San Francisco during the same period — with seven seasons of double-digit wins, two Coach of the Year selections, and a Super Bowl victory as the head coach of a team frequently rated the greatest of all time, the 1985 Chicago Bears. Ditka also won championships as a player with both the Bears (1963) and Cowboys (1971).

Ditka wasn’t fast, but he was powerful and a hard worker, with toughness for days. “When I was 23 or 24, guys used to warn me that I’d begin to feel the beating I was taking,” Ditka told Paul Zimmerman. “I just laughed at them. I never missed a game in Chicago—84 straight. By the time I was 28 I felt like an old man, a physical wreck.”

83. John Mackey
Tight End
Baltimore Colts, 1963-71; San Diego Chargers, 1972
331 receptions, 5,236 yards, 38 TD
2 consensus All-Pro, 3 AP All-Pro, 5 Pro Bowls, 1960s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team

John Mackey was outrageously fast for a tight end, faster than most defensive backs. As a downfield threat, he averaged nearly 16 yards per reception — one yard more than teammate and HOF WR Raymond Berry. Mackey wasn’t just a blazer, though. He was powerful and determined; he may have broken more tackles than any tight end in history. Mackey’s statistics aren’t overwhelming, even for his era, but his highlight reel is the most impressive of any player in the history of the position. “Traditional defenses were inadequate for a player like Mackey,” wrote Sean Lahman in The Pro Football Historical Abstract, “because linebackers were too slow to keep up with him and defensive backs often weren’t strong enough to tackle him without help.” Mackey was also a good teammate and a leader: co-captain of Colts, plus head of NFLPA.

When the Pro Football Hall of Fame named its All-Time NFL Team in 1969, it declared Mackey the all-time TE, and that was before his 75-yard TD in Super Bowl V. Coach Don Shula raved, “He was such a powerful, explosive football player, both as a receiver and a blocker. He had great speed [and] as a blocker, he would explode out of his stance and get into the linebacker’s face, and just overwhelm him.” As a kid getting interested in football, Mackey’s legendary run against the Lions was one of the first plays to really capture my imagination.

Almost fifty years later, smart analysts still argue about whether Ditka or Mackey was the premier TE of the ’60s. I’ve ranked them back-to-back in recognition of that difficulty, but Mackey was slightly more celebrated by contemporaries and his film reel is more impressive. Ditka was selected to the PFHOF earlier, but that was partly due to his high profile as a Super Bowl-winning head coach. I’m sympathetic to arguments that Mackey should rank significantly higher than this.

82. Chuck Bednarik
Center-Linebacker
Philadelphia Eagles, 1949-62
21 FR, 15 yards; 20 INT, 268 yards, TD
2 consensus All-Pro, 9 AP All-Pro, 8 Pro Bowls, 1950s All-Decade Team, 50th Anniversary Team

In 1969, Chuck Bednarik was named the all-time center on the NFL’s 50th Anniversary Team, but he was even more celebrated as a linebacker. Bednarik was the last of the 60-minute men, a full-time player on both offense and defense as late as 1960 (although not consistently throughout his career). That season, Bednarik played 694 minutes out of a possible 720. He left the field only on kickoffs. If the defense forced a punt, 21 players walked off the field, and Bednarik waited for his offensive teammates. If the offense turned the ball over, 21 men walked off and Bednarik stood alone, waiting for the defensive players to join him.

Three things separate Bednarik from more recent two-way players like Roy Green, Deion Sanders, and Troy Brown. One is that Bednarik really played the whole game; he didn’t come in for spot duty on key plays and nickel situations. ^[1]Green came pretty close in 1981. He wasn’t a Hall of Fame-caliber player, but Roy Green is one of the really underappreciated players in history. You can read my profile of him in the Best WRs … Continue reading Another is that Bednarik played extremely physical positions on both sides of the ball, though he himself made too big a deal about that sometimes. Most importantly, Bednarik was a standout both offensively and defensively. Green was a defensive back who converted to wide receiver; Brown was a wide receiver who filled in ably at defensive back; Sanders was a corner who made some plays at WR. Bednarik was a great center and a great linebacker, an All-Pro at both positions.

He was a bulldozer on the offensive line, but most impactful on defense. Jim Brown called him “as great as any linebacker who ever lived.” Bednarik was a devastatingly effective tackler, known for two of the most famous hits in NFL history. Both came in 1960, when a 35-year-old Bednarik was putting in a full day as a center on offense and a linebacker on defense. Near the end of a critical game against the Giants, Bednarik hit Frank Gifford so hard that Gifford’s teammates thought Bednarik had killed him. It was a clean hit, but Gifford missed the rest of the season and all of the next one. In the 1960 Championship Game, Bednarik made the game-saving tackle, stopping Hall of Famer Jim Taylor and securing a victory for the underdog Eagles. This rank could be regarded as conservative.

81. Johnny Blood
Wingback (Pre-Modern)
Milwaukee Badgers, 1925-26; Duluth Eskimos, 1926-27; Pottsville Maroons, 1928; Green Bay Packers, 1929-33, 1935-36; Pittsburgh Pirates, 1934, 1937-38
4 pass TD; 5 rush TD; 37 rec TD; 5 INT TD; 1 KR TD, 1 PR TD
3 All-Pro, 1930s All-Decade Team

Today’s encyclopedias call him John McNally, but during his playing career, he was Johnny Blood. McNally still had one year of college eligibility remaining when he joined the Badgers, so he used an alias taken from the film Blood and Sand to protect his amateur status. Passing a theater marquee advertising the film, McNally exclaimed to a friend with the same predicament, “That’s it! I’ll be Blood and you be Sand.” Both newspapers and team publications called him Blood, and he embraced the name even after his career. Calling him McNally is like saying “George Ruth” instead of Babe, or “Vincent Jackson” instead of Bo.

Blood was a good passer and punter, and an excellent defensive player. He scored 5 interception return touchdowns, easily the most of his generation, and a record that stood for nearly three decades after his retirement. But he was most dangerous on offense: he was probably the fastest football player of his generation, and he was certainly the most outstanding receiver. Red Badgro, a Hall of Fame end from the same era, caught 7 TD passes in his career — 30 fewer than Blood. Contemporary end and Hall of Fame coach Ray Flaherty remembered, “Johnny Blood was probably as good a receiver as anyone in football until Don Hutson came along [in 1935].”

Blood won four championships with the Packers, but his greatest season was 1931, which Chris Willis, Head of NFL Films’ Research Library, described as “a weekly display of Herculean effort . . . an easy choice for 1931 MVP.” Blood scored a record 14 TDs: 2 rushing, 11 receiving, and 1 on an interception return. The record stood for over a decade, until the immortal Hutson finally broke it, following rule changes that revolutionized passing. When the Hall of Fame opened, the inaugural 1963 class included five players usually classified as running backs: Red Grange and Jim Thorpe, plus Bronko Nagurski, Ernie Nevers, and Blood. He’s known mostly among Packer fans and history buffs, but Johnny Blood was one of the most outstanding players of pro football’s first two decades. A little like Bednarik, he was truly outstanding on both offense and defense. He was also a good punter and returner.

Blood also was a legend off the field: a drinker, a daredevil, and a rebel. You really ought to look him up if you don’t know the stories. His wife Marguerite explained, “Even when Johnny does the expected, he does it in an unexpected way.”

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This series will continue here every Tuesday and Thursday for the next four weeks. I welcome your comments and questions below, but I hope to avoid spoilers in the comments, so please don’t take it amiss if I avoid questions that address the rankings of players not yet listed. If you follow me on Twitter (@bradoremland), though, I’ll drop some sneak peeks there into who did and didn’t make the list. Next article: Best Players in History, 71-80.