http://www.orlandosentinel.com/spor...erbacks-of-alltime-20150202-photogallery.html
I think most of the these you could put in a bowl and pull them out and be ok with the list. Some of the old guys I wonder if they could play today? Out of the top 20 I would still take Marino out of the bunch. I believe he could play in any ERA, and still lift his teams up. He played with some really crappy defenses yet still put up great numbers and wins.
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Dont know how everyone rates Tarkenton so low. He was the unitas/Marino/Manning of the 70's. Completely changed the way they passed in the 70's. Also i hate judging qb's based on superbowls. To give one man the credit for a 53 man team and coaches is just stupid. Maybe im just bitter Marino never won one but to me any professional team sport besides basketball is idiotic to judge a position that maybe controls 30% of the game all the credit. Maybe im biased but did any of those qbs throw the ball better than marino? My answers no...
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Dang... Montana was calm and cool (I liked him because of his size- I was a 6' QB). I will/would take Dan the Man any time, any day tho.
Brady is ridiculous... but my hate of the Patriots blinds me to his abilities.
Wilson reminds me of Tarkengton. Roger Staubach would give you nightmares even if you had the lead.dolphin25 likes this. -
some great QB's on the list no doubt. Would be super cool if there was a way to see what different QB's would do with different teams. I believe Marino would have won with any of the teams those QB's were on. Not sure the other way around. Many of those QB's had teammates go into the HOF with them, Marino had his center :)
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I think the list is mostly fair though. I also put Brady #1 but the difference is his longevity, playing so long at such a high level, which is just amazing. I really don't know how much Brady needed to be coached properly to reach his level though. -
https://www.facebook.com/FranTarkenton10/videos/558853960815011/ -
I cant argue with the choices .For those who point out that some were overated because they didnt have the glowing stats that are commonplace today I would like to point out that the game has changed considerably due to rule changes which favor the passing game and the QB.
Silverphin, RevRick and ToddPhin like this. -
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I respect and enjoy Hyde's work but can't respect any all-time QB list that has Unitas at 5.
The top 4 spots occupied by QBs of the past 30 years [the passing era of football]? C'mon now. A bit of generational bias here? Unitas should forever be locked in at #2, PERIOD. Then from there, argue it out who belongs at 1 and 3. -
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John Elway in the top 5... How? Why? Best prospect of all-time? Sure. Have at it. But he never produced like a top 5 QB at any point in his career, IMO. -
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As much as I hated watching Miami play them, where in the hell is Jim Kelly on this list? He led his team to four...1, 2, 3, 4...FOUR consecutive Super Bowls and he's not even on the list?
Tom Brady? Peyton Manning at the top of this list? Really? Tell you what, take those two quarterbacks and make them play during the 70's and 80's before the NFL put quarterbacks in skirts and heels. As much as I like Manning, not even he would hold Marino's, Elway's or Kelly's jock strap! -
Throwing was less common b/c the rules back then heavily favored the defense, most notably- passing defense. Offensive line blocking was heavily restricted, and Quarterbacks and receivers weren't physically protected like they are today, so those QBs were constantly under pressure and got the living snot beaten out of them. Pass interference was virtually non-existent. Corners could mug receivers throughout their routes and physically reroute them during their stems [which is illegal today]. There was no such thing as a Wes Welker back then b/c he wouldn't have survived a week pre1978 playing between the hashes. Brady's & Manning's efficient timing-based, dink-dunk offenses simply would NOT have existed under the circumstances then. There's a reason the league-wide passer rating AVERAGE in 2015 [88.4] was 31 pts higher than the 1977 avg [57.8] and higher than 1977's single highest rating [87.8]. That's b/c it was hard as s**t to pass back then.
Roger Staubach was every bit as good as Aaron Rodgers and was much better than Rodgers in the clutch, but that period of time heavily restricted his production compared to Rodgers. Watch the games, not the stats. The statistical difference between that era and today's favorable passing one [thanks to drastic rule changes specifically implemented to assist the passing game and increase offensive production] would be like comparing the stats of Mickey Mantle to a hypothetical MLB league where the fences of each stadium are mandatorily pulled in 40 feet, pitcher mounds are reduced by 6 inches in height, and the distance from home to first and home to mound are increased by 6 ft and 4 ft. -
Wow Kurt Warner is high. He wouldn't even be in my top 20. Maybe not even in my top 40.
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IMO, it's unfair to try to say that someone couldn't play in another era. If any of the older, all time greats, had been playing today they too would have been bigger, stronger, faster, etc.
The best way to compare greatness from different eras is to see how an individual fared against their competition. Was any player(s) doing something that no one else in his era did? This, IMO, is how you get an all-time great list.
Players like Otto Graham, Johnny U., Fran Tarkenton, Dan Marino, and P. Manning did things that no other QB in their times did. These guys changed the game. There are a few other QB's that I haven't mentioned here that fall into that category.
QB's like Brady, Brees, Favre, Elway, etc are HoF QB's, but they never changed the game. Sure, we'd love to have them on our team, but they never did anything that someone else playing at the same time didn't do. These guys are greats, but not all-time greats.dgfred likes this. -
In boxing compare Ali to Sugar Ray Robinson. Most say Robinson was the greatest ever, but Ali probably redefined how a heavyweight can fight more than anything Robinson ever did. Robinson was just a complete fighter that was utterly dominant, especially in the lower weight classes. In MMA you have Anderson Silva who was just magic in the octagon (not sure anyone can copy his style) while George St. Pierre is the guy that was just utterly dominant in his class (both are top 5 all-time on practically everyone's list).
Anyway, Brady is an all-time great because he's such a clinician and has played at a very high level for such a long time. If I had to choose (only if I had to), yeah I'd pick him as #1. -
However, what has Brady "dominated"? He's played on great teams and those teams dominated. He hasn't dominated the field. He hasn't dominated the record books. He hasn't dominated the position. These things define, along with changing the game, all time greatness. As I wrote before, Brady is HoF worthy, but nothing he's done, including his longevity, is anything new to the sport of football.
Silva, GSP, Ali, and Sugar all changed their respective sport. They were dominate. They hold all-time records. -
As far as what Brady has done, I don't think you could put most QB's on that team and have them perform in such clinical fashion year in year out like Brady does. Just my opinion but NE without Brady doesn't win 4 SB's, maybe not even 1. No other player is or has been that important to NE during its history. -
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He wouldn't have experienced the same level of success in generations past where the unfavorable rules would've restricted his cerebral ability, taken away his spread out dink-dunk timing based offense, and prohibited him from operating uptempo like he enjoys today, but that doesn't require us to discount what he's accomplished in this current generation. Being the best QB of the passing era puts him firmly in the top 5 all time.
Miami fans like to boast about how great Marino would be if he played today under modern rules that favor the passing game. Yes, he'd crush the stat column.... but he'd still have no rings b/c he was arrogantly confident in his arm to a fault, and that's the difference between he and Brady. Brady would selflessly audible every snap to a run if that's what the defense dictated b/c he places winning above all else, whereas Marino selfishly disliked taking the ball out of his own hands [even in years when Miami's O-line was strong in run blocking], and it created a perennially one-dimensional offense. For instance, in 1986, the Dolphins ground game ranked 4th best in YPC yet unforgivably ranked DEAD LAST in rush attempts. The defense was bad that year, so it would've made tremendous sense to run the ball more in order to keep opposing offenses off the field. But no, Miami ran it just 349 times, 28% less than the NFL avg [482]..... with the passing game committing at least 30 total turnovers compared to less than 10 from the run game. 1987 was similar, ranking 10th in rushing YPC and 7th in rushing TDs yet ranked 5th last in rushing attempts. This essentially acted like a self-fulfilling prophecy- "treat the ground game like you're bad at it and eventually you will be". -
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