Greatest QB’s

Posted by BooMan | Feb 7, 2010 | 30 |

Peyton Manning is a very, very good quarterback. But he hasn’t come close to proving himself the best quarterback ever. He hasn’t even proved himself to be better than his contemporary, Tom Brady. Brady had an off season after losing the prior season to injury. But, Brady’s resume is much more impressive than Manning’s.

He has played in four Super Bowls, winning three of them (XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX). He has also won two Super Bowl MVP awards (XXXVI and XXXVIII), has been selected to five Pro Bowls (and invited to six, although he declined the 2006 invitation), and holds the NFL record for most touchdown passes in a single regular season. Brady has the sixth-highest career passer rating of all time (93.3) among quarterbacks with at least 1,500 career passing attempts. He was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year in 2005. He also helped set the record for the longest consecutive win streak in NFL history with 21 straight wins over two seasons (2003-04).

Manning has won four Most Valuable Player awards and was the MVP of the one Super Bowl he has been to before today. His stats are incredible. But the test of a quarterback is in the playoffs. The Colts have won at least 12 games every year since 2003, but this is only their second Super Bowl appearance. Two of those years, it was Tom Brady’s Patriots that knocked the Colts out of the playoffs.

In my opinion, Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game, followed by Tom Brady and John Elway. For Manning to move up the list, he must win today, and then win at least one more Super Bowl.

And Drew Brees ain’t chopped liver. That boy can play.

About The Author

BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

30 Comments

Second Nature on February 7, 2010 at 12:50 pm

In honor of my great Cajun friend, Geaux Saints!
- BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 1:01 pm
  
  His father was one of the biggest jerks in football. But the son is different:
  
  Another title may prompt Irsay to write another poem about his team, the way he did in 2007, or inspire him to record music at John Mellencamp’s studio, as he sometimes does. Or, perhaps Irsay will throw a party like the one in 2008 in New York, which celebrated two of his prize possessions: the Colts’ Vince Lombardi Trophy and the scroll on which Jack Kerouac wrote “On the Road.”
  
  Irsay bought the scroll in 2001 for $2.4 million, a modest fee compared with a franchise worth about $1 billion. His Manhattan party came during the tour of the Kerouac scroll, which was then part of a larger Kerouac display at the New York Public Library. In the foyer of the library, Irsay introduced the musician Patti Smith, who performed a song she wrote about Irsay and the Kerouac scroll…
  
  …Irsay, 50, is in some ways an amalgamation of cultural trends from the Baby Boom generation. His friends have included the musician Stephen Stills and the writer Hunter S. Thompson. He said that Stills and Mellencamp would perform at his private party Saturday night and that he was looking forward to the Who’s performance at halftime Sunday.
  
  “These are my guys,” he said, adding that he had talked with the Who guitarist Pete Townshend a couple of times.
  
  Irsay has battled addiction to painkillers and has spent much of his life making amends for the behavior of his father, Robert, who abused alcohol and made enemies with his temperament. The elder Irsay moved the Colts from Baltimore in 1984.
  
  Irsay spoke this week about “high tolerance” and “a power of love, that kind of transcends everything.” He also discussed what it took to be a gracious winner. “I like to mention in trophy presentations the aspect of giving thanks to God and a power greater than you, whether you’re Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or whatever,” he said.
  
  As to how his gentle personality grew in reaction to the hard edges of his father, who died in 1997, Irsay said: “You try to make things better. You don’t try to fan the flames. You take the higher road.”
  
  Hangs with Stills and Mellancamp and loves Kerouac? Sound countercultural enough for me. Go Colts!
  - nalbar on February 7, 2010 at 1:46 pm
    
    He’ll sign off on the lock out just like the rest of the owners. There is no more despicable group of human beings than NFL owners. There are no exceptions.
    
    When they fart the fumes of hell come out.
    
    nalbar
    - BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 2:10 pm
      
      I’ll support sports unions the second they advocate to slash ticket prices by 80%.
    - BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 2:16 pm
      
      In an era when most pro sports franchises treated fans like human ATMs, available for cash withdrawal 24 hours a day, the Giants were different. They operated like an old-fashioned family business, one that valued their customers’ loyalty over the size of their bank accounts.
      That’s gone now. Maybe your first reaction to the news that the Giants would charge up to $20,000 for personal seat licenses was outrage. Without question, PSLs are one of the great rip-offs in sports, a one-time fee for the privilege to cough up more cash to buy tickets.
      But for me, the feeling was sadness. The Giants are selling off a large part of what made them unique. For decades, they were a mom-and-pop shop that just happened to be part of the richest sports league on the planet.
      Now, if you’ve had four seats near the goal line since Giants Stadium opened in 1976, that shop will soon charge you $40,000 for the PSLs and $5,600 for the season tickets to keep them. There’s another option: Move to the upper deck and “only” shell out $4,000 for the PSLs and $3,400 for the tickets.
      The team blames the current financial crisis and soaring construction costs in the new $1.6 billion stadium. But will the bells and whistles of the new building really be worth a second mortgage to the average fan?
      “This is no way to treat the fans,” Dick Freyland said Thursday. The Bergen County resident has had his tickets since the team played in the Yale Bowl in the early ’70s, and plans to pay the $1,000 fee to keep them. Still, he feels betrayed. “This isn’t the way the Giants used to do business.”
      The proof was on display before every game. Walk around the Meadowlands parking lot, visit the first tailgate you see, and you might find a fan like Jerry Foley. He signed up for the soon-to-be-irrelevant season-ticket waiting list in the early 1990s, and after barely moving an inch for years, realized he’d be an old man before he actually got tickets.
      So he sent team patriarch Wellington Mara a three-page letter explaining how he bled Giants blue, how every game day he would tailgate in Lot 13-A with a bullhorn to lead fans in cheers. He closed with this kicker: “All I want in life are healthy kids and Giants tickets.”
      A few weeks later, he got a call from Mara’s office — he was getting his season tickets. Writing a letter won’t work anymore. Now, fans will have to sign a check, one with a lot of zeros, maybe to one of the ticket brokers that will gobble up all the PSLs they can find in search of a profit.
      Wellington Mara is gone now, but his memory lives on with fans — and in angry letters to his son. John Mara called the decision to sell PSLs “the hardest one — by far” of his career running the Giants, made most difficult by the letters that tell him his father would never have done this.
      “That phrase gets to me,” Mara, the team’s CEO, said in a phone interview Thursday. “They know where my sore point is. And they’re probably right. But he didn’t have to face this size of debt, either. … As the costs went up, there was no other way of doing this.”
      Mara did not want to do this. He was about as fair as you can be when asking fans to subsidize your billion-dollar business. He could have charged much more — just take a look at what the Dallas Cowboys are doing at their new stadium, where the most expensive PSLs are $150,000.
      
      They can all kiss my ass, but I don’t give one crap about NFL players making as much money as they do. Or baseball players.
shergald on February 7, 2010 at 1:11 pm

Press hype, nothing more. So if Indy loses, will that mean that Manning is a second-rater? It still takes eleven players on each side to win a game, and on any Sunday, and so forth and so on, the right team can make any quarterback look great.

Saints will win anyway.
- BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 1:21 pm
  
  True, but when Trent Dilfer won the Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens, no one misunderstand that to mean that he was even a good or adequate quarterback. No one thought Jim McMahon was great just because he quarterbacked for one of the greatest teams of all-time. If a team is great defensively, people recognize why they won. Being the greatest quarterback of all time requires carrying your team repeatedly to the championship, and largely on your own back. Who is in that category? Bradshaw, Staubach, Montana, Elway, and Brady. You can go back and look at Starr and Unitas, too.
  - BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 1:22 pm
    
    Can’t forget Aikman, either, as much as I would like to. But Aikman’s teams were centered on the running game.
  - shergald on February 7, 2010 at 4:52 pm
    
    They were all great quarterbacks. So how do we decide which one is the greatest? I think the notion of a “great quarterback” is sufficient, in which case all of those mentioned deserve recognition.
Oscar In Dallas on February 7, 2010 at 1:26 pm

In my opinion, Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback to ever play the game, followed by Tom Brady and John Elway.

If the test of a quarterback is in the playoffs then you’re list is missing the greatest quarterback out of the bayou and his 4 Super Bowl wins (2 Super Bowl MVPs)…
- BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 2:02 pm
  
  Bradshaw was great, but look at his team. How many of them are in the Hall of Fame?
  
  Do you remember the running backs for the Patriot teams? How about the wide receivers (other than Moss)?
  
  How many members of the Patriots defense are going to be in the Hall of Fame? Maybe two. Compare that to this:
  
  Mel Blount (1970-1983)
  Joe Greene (1969-1981)
  Jack Ham (1971-1982)
  Jack Lambert (1974-1984)
  
  And how many members of Brady’s offense will wind up in the Hall of Fame (other than Moss). Compare that Bradshaw’s offense.
  
  Franco Harris (1972-1983)
  John Stallworth (1974-1987)
  Lynn Swann (1974-1982)
  Mike Webster (1974-1988)
  
  When all your skill players are in the Hall of Fame along with you, and your defense is loaded with Hall of Famers, you don’t have to do as much as a quarterback.
  
  Montana had Rice and Taylor, but he rarely had a great running game (no disrespect to Roger Craig). Elway never had a dominating defense. Brady had to rely on guys like Deion Branch, Antowain Smith, and Troy Brown, not Swann, Stallworth, and Franco Harris. For me, it’s no contest. Brady is greater than Bradshaw.
  - Oscar In Dallas on February 7, 2010 at 2:50 pm
    
    Brady may or may not be greater than Bradshaw, but I’m just saying that Bradshaw has to be in the conversation.
    - BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 2:56 pm
      
      well, yeah, anyone who wins four championships has to be in the conversation.
      
      And stats mean something, too. I mean, Dan Marino was a great quarterback. Put Marino on those Steeler teams, and they probably win six super bowls. Put Bradshaw on Brady’s Patriots? They probably don’t win any. That’s all I’m saying.
      - Oscar In Dallas on February 7, 2010 at 5:53 pm
        
        I wouldn’t be so sure about that – the sysem and the coach have a lot to do with that. Bledsoe was doing fairly well when h was injured and Brady stepped in, and Matt Cassel did fairly well when Brady got hurt – neither were too terribly remarkable away from Belicheck. Being coachd by Rasputin has to be factored in as well…
      - BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 6:49 pm
        
        True, Brady does play for the best coach in the game.
Alice on February 7, 2010 at 1:27 pm

I don’t watch football anymore, but when I did Doug Williams was the one I watched. Just for surviving the Bucs, he’s still my hero.
- BooMan on February 7, 2010 at 1:34 pm
  
  The NFL network did a show yesterday on the ten best performances in a Super Bowl ever. Doug Williams was number one. The Skins scored 35 points in the second quarter after getting down 10-0. They won 42-10. It was the most brilliant quarter of football ever played on the big stage, but it was only a quarter. I wouldn’t have ranked it the best performance in a Super Bowl.
  
  I’m partial to Phil Simm’s performance, but I think Jerry Rice (XXIII) and Montana (XXIV) were probably more dominating. And Steve Young threw 6 TD’s in his Super Bowl. Those would all get my vote before Williams. Still, Williams was a very good QB.
nalbar on February 7, 2010 at 1:42 pm

Joe Montana is the greatest QB to ever play the game.

nalbar
- chocolate ink on February 7, 2010 at 3:43 pm
  
  Joe Montana is to football as Fred Astaire was to dance. Montana at times made it look effortless.
  - nalbar on February 8, 2010 at 1:37 am
    
    I like that analogy. Astaire could flat out move.
    
    There will be a better QB than Montana. There will never be another Astaire.
    
    nalbar
dannie22 on February 7, 2010 at 2:45 pm

I’m rooting for the Saints. But seeing as how Manning’s daddy was the qb for the saints back in the day, I’m sure the announcers will spend most of the game talking about Manning and his daddy. Manning and his roots in NO. Manning and how it must be difficult for his father to root against the saints. Just the idea makes me want to purge
Hopeful in NJ on February 7, 2010 at 4:06 pm

But I’d say in regards to the quote

1. If Brady gets to put a 21-game win streak on the table, surely Manning’s breaking that record at 23 games gets to count.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_longest_winning_streak_in_NFL_history

Me, I vote for Montana too. Everyone’s receiving stats are inflated nowadays by the rules changes.
The Farmer on February 7, 2010 at 4:24 pm

You all are just too young to remember Johnny Unitas. He and Raymond Berry invented the timing pass to the sidelines. When he was in the game, the Colts (the real Colts, not the ersatz Indiana kind) could be two touchdowns down with two minutes to go and still win.

That was back when quarterbacks were smart enough to call their own plays.
sherifffruitfly on February 7, 2010 at 4:44 pm

Despite all you mentioned, if I was putting together a team from scratch, I’d pick Manning long before I’d pick Brady.

I suspect you would too.
robertdsc on February 7, 2010 at 9:46 pm

Manning is crap. Never speak of him as a “great” again.

/Peyton hater.
Chief on February 8, 2010 at 6:50 am

Two names that I did not see in the preceding comments were:

Dan Marino

Bret Farve

I think that Marino belongs in the conversation with Montana and Elway.

Farve and, maybe, Brady are the best ever.
Andrew Longman on February 8, 2010 at 12:45 pm

Sorry Boo, but Elway doesn’t make my top three.

Unitas, Starr, Dawson, Bradshaw, Staubach, Otto Graham are ahead. Even Anderson, Fauts, Marino and Hadl were better though they didn’t win championships. I’d even take Simms over Elway to lead a mediocre team. When Elway was younger and could still run like a deer he was more of a threat but he could cost games too. He should have won championships early in his career too. Young was better too, especially on awful teams.

Elway didn’t suck and did win two SBs late, but don’t minimize the strength of the rest of his later teams.
- BooMan on February 8, 2010 at 1:18 pm
  
  I’m surprised to see you put Bart Starr over John Elway. Granted, my only experience watching Starr is on old NFL Films shows. But it seems to me that he just had to hand the ball to Jim Taylor and Paul Hornung. Trent Dilfer could have done that.
  - Andrew Longman on February 8, 2010 at 4:58 pm
    
    Its what Starr did in the huddle and on the practice field, in the film room and in the weight room that Dilfer really couldn’t do.
    
    Same for Unitas and Simms
rochrist on February 8, 2010 at 12:47 pm

And right on cue, Manning throws the game sealing interception.

Greatest QB’s

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