Over the next few weeks, before Super Bowl 50, I'm going to Countdown my Top-50 QBs of the Super Bowl era. I hope to end this before the Super Bowl, but let's be real - that's probably unlikely. I should have planned this out and started earlier, but let's carry on.
I'm looking to do columns on all my Top-20, as I think they are all worthy, and start off with three posts over the next week or so with my #50-21. I haven't thought too much about these first 30, but I think they all fit.
Again, this is the Super Bowl era only, but I will consider the pre-Super Bowl of people that crossed over, like Fran Tarkenton or Johnny Unitas. But there's no Red Grange or Sammy Baugh or Otto Graham. Anyway, let's get to #50-41
50.) Andrew Luck
49.) Cam Newton
48.) Russell Wilson
I'm going to have little sections on all the QBs from 47-1, and probably separate posts for my Top-20, but I'll put these three. If you asked me to rank, at this exact moment, the 50 best QBs of all time, they don't make it. But unless they pull a Chris Borland and retire, they will. QB is so hard, so incredibly difficult that if you limit yourself to just the Super Bowl era, it is tough to come up with 50, and these three easily fit the bill. Yes, Andrew Luck is struggling right now, and Cam Newton may never have the weapons that make him as good as he could be, and Russell Wilson honestly hasn't gotten much better over four years, but all three are good enough to easily make this list with just 4-5 more years of any sort of production.
47.) Dave Krieg
My number 48 was a Seahawk. Quick spoiler, but my #46 is a Seahawk, but in between is the forgotten Seahawk. Most people will probably remember Jim Zorn over Krieg, but Dave Krieg, much like another Dave that was famous in the Emerald City, could do a few things really well. One is throw deep and the other is throw TDs. People like the use the black ink test, which is how many times a player led the league in anything, and Krieg has more black ink than you would think. He led the NFL in TD% three times, and led in completion percentage one year. For a guy who had limited team success, he also had limited team embarrassment, going 98-77 for his career as a starter, including 70-49 with Seattle. Krieg is now the third best QB in franchise history, but a franchise that did so little before Mike Holmgren came on board, that's a better position than you would think. Krieg had a really nice 4-5 year peak, and a long tail period that hurts his rate stats, but he's honestly perfectly at home in a Top-50 QB list, and through the period of this paragraph I've started to feel that I've underrated him.
46.) Matt Hasselbeck
Matthew had a really nice 5-year run with Seattle, with some good half-season performances in the two years preceding that, and a two-week renaissance in the 2010 playoffs. He's now doing what a lot of players on this list wouldn't do: live on as a backup, one without real hope of playing unless Andrew Luck gets hurt. Still, what he did in those five seasons, leading the Seahawks to five straight playoff seasons, and putting up nice playoff stats in taking them to their first Super Bowl, gets him his spot on the list. Matthew Hasselbeck passed Mark Brunell as the best ex-Favre backup (non-Rodgers edition) and it was a reunion with Holmgren that made it happen. He was a weird player who played and carried himself like an underdog despite him being one of the league's best and most present QBs for a 5-year period. He threw in a weird way that belied an actual brilliant arm that could throw with incredible touch. He was limited in part by a system that was slowly getting figured out, in part by receivers that could never stay healthy, and mostly in part by receivers that when healthy dropped the ball, a lot. Still, his memory should live on as a true professional. QBs that put up 5-year runs like Matt did from '03-'07 are not that common.
45.) Jim Everett
Life isn't fair, and Everett staying on the Rams after they lost all their good players and collapsing until they would eventually move to St. Louis isn't fair, because it ruined the legacy of a guy who was good enough to lead the NFL in TDs in 1988 and 1989. Now, if Joe Montana was healthy enough to play 16 games, that doesn't happen, but at his best Everett was the standout player on offense for a playoff team. At his best Jim Everett was a really good QB, but one that will be remembered more because he threw a table at Jim Rome. To talk about that for a minute, obviously Everett came across poorly, as the prototypical 'dumb jock' with teh short fuse; but no one came across worse than Jim Rome, who kept on repeating that blindingly dumb 'Chris' line. Of course, the worst part of this whole thing was that Jim Everett should have taken it as a compliment, as Chris Evert is so much more accomplished than he is as a QB (or Rome as a broadcaster), no one should feel more insulted than her.
44.) Jim Plunkett
This is controversial as Plunkett was a plainly bad QB for a 5-6 year stretch with New England, even if you use 1970's passing adjustments. He was just bad, posting a passer rating just under 60. However, with Oakland, it all turned around. Still, his overall stats aren't great in totality, but Oakland didn't play a passer-rating friendly style with deep throws in a league that was becoming more addicted to teh Walsh-ian way. However, Plunkett does have those Super Bowl runs. I'm not in the mindset that Super Bowl and/or Playoff stats should completely outweight what one does in the regular season, but it does matter that Plunkett was great in the Raiders two Super Bowl runs, including a deserved Super Bowl MVP in 1980. The Raiders post Plunkett were mired in the QB wasteland until another outcast came and rescued them 15 years later (he's still to come), but the man who saw out the great Raiders era of dominance deserves a spot on this last, if only as the 1980's slightly less good Eli Manning.
43.) Joe Flacco
Pro-Football-Reference has a stat called Rating+, which normalizes passer rating by Era, much like OPS+ and ERA+ in baseball. There's some flaws with it since passer rating itself is an inherently flawed metric, but I like that Joe Flacco is a perfect 100 for his career. That is not great, obviously. There are caveats. For years, because of the high price of keeping Lewis/Reed/Suggs/Ngata/et. al., around, he was never surrounded with top flight talent, and because there are two outlier seasons pulling that down (he's above 100 in four of his six full seasons). But here's where playoffs come in again. Flacco is somewhat overrated in the playoffs, as he was largely awful in his first five playoff games (he went 3-2), especially the hilarous line of 4-10, 36 yards and an INT in a win (by 19 pounts!) on the road. But since the 2010 season, he has been a great playoff QB in really every way. He's had an incredible Super Bowl run, nearly beat the Patriots two other times, nearly outplaying Tm Brady each time, and has generally done all of this on the road. Regular Season weighs more heavily as we go up the list, but back here when there are so many players with checkered regular seasons, a few dominant postseason runs are helpful.
42.) Roman Gabriel
He's the first of a handful of QBs who have a large chunk of their career that played out before the Super Bowl era. I am counting those stats and team results as legitimate if it came in the NFL (and not AFL), so that helps Gabriel a lot here. His stats weren't as good as his contemporaries, and his early career instructions were basically to not screw up and allow the Fearsome Foursome to do their thing. There were so many more storied teams in the NFL/NFC at the time in Green Bay, Dallas, Minnesota, and the Colts for the beginning bit, that Gabriel's mad-bomber exploits are somewhat forgotten. But all that should change by his two great seasons. In 1969, he had a INT% of 1.8%, which is a number that would be great in 2015, let alone 1969. Then, in 1973, for a bad Eagles team, he led the league in everything, putting up one of the best dead-ball (1969-1979) era QB seasons. Gabriel is easily the best Rams QB before Warner, and still has enough of that mythic status to make up for a bad tail end.
41.) Phil Simms
Phil Simms is a strange player who's memory is enhanced by the talent that was on his teams (mostly on defense), and that incredible 22-25 performance in the Super Bowl. He was mostly useless in all his other playoff seasons, but his 1986 set of games, including that Super Bowl, was Flacco in 2012-level. Then again, Simms was largely a better regular season QB than people remember. With limited offensive talent, he was a consistently good player for a long time. From 1984 through his retirement in 1993, his lowest passer rating was 74.6, after that was 78.1. He had a passer rating+ above 100 every year but his first two seasons. The only things to take away are that he was asked to do basically nothing, and he took a lot of sacks (something not reflected in that passer rating stat). Phil Simms is a better QB than people think, but let's not also overstate the 22-25 game. He wasn't a mediocre player with one great game, but he wasn't a truly great player either. That's an important distinction to make some times.
Next up, numbers 40 through 31.
I'm looking to do columns on all my Top-20, as I think they are all worthy, and start off with three posts over the next week or so with my #50-21. I haven't thought too much about these first 30, but I think they all fit.
Again, this is the Super Bowl era only, but I will consider the pre-Super Bowl of people that crossed over, like Fran Tarkenton or Johnny Unitas. But there's no Red Grange or Sammy Baugh or Otto Graham. Anyway, let's get to #50-41
50.) Andrew Luck
49.) Cam Newton
48.) Russell Wilson
I'm going to have little sections on all the QBs from 47-1, and probably separate posts for my Top-20, but I'll put these three. If you asked me to rank, at this exact moment, the 50 best QBs of all time, they don't make it. But unless they pull a Chris Borland and retire, they will. QB is so hard, so incredibly difficult that if you limit yourself to just the Super Bowl era, it is tough to come up with 50, and these three easily fit the bill. Yes, Andrew Luck is struggling right now, and Cam Newton may never have the weapons that make him as good as he could be, and Russell Wilson honestly hasn't gotten much better over four years, but all three are good enough to easily make this list with just 4-5 more years of any sort of production.
47.) Dave Krieg
My number 48 was a Seahawk. Quick spoiler, but my #46 is a Seahawk, but in between is the forgotten Seahawk. Most people will probably remember Jim Zorn over Krieg, but Dave Krieg, much like another Dave that was famous in the Emerald City, could do a few things really well. One is throw deep and the other is throw TDs. People like the use the black ink test, which is how many times a player led the league in anything, and Krieg has more black ink than you would think. He led the NFL in TD% three times, and led in completion percentage one year. For a guy who had limited team success, he also had limited team embarrassment, going 98-77 for his career as a starter, including 70-49 with Seattle. Krieg is now the third best QB in franchise history, but a franchise that did so little before Mike Holmgren came on board, that's a better position than you would think. Krieg had a really nice 4-5 year peak, and a long tail period that hurts his rate stats, but he's honestly perfectly at home in a Top-50 QB list, and through the period of this paragraph I've started to feel that I've underrated him.
46.) Matt Hasselbeck
Matthew had a really nice 5-year run with Seattle, with some good half-season performances in the two years preceding that, and a two-week renaissance in the 2010 playoffs. He's now doing what a lot of players on this list wouldn't do: live on as a backup, one without real hope of playing unless Andrew Luck gets hurt. Still, what he did in those five seasons, leading the Seahawks to five straight playoff seasons, and putting up nice playoff stats in taking them to their first Super Bowl, gets him his spot on the list. Matthew Hasselbeck passed Mark Brunell as the best ex-Favre backup (non-Rodgers edition) and it was a reunion with Holmgren that made it happen. He was a weird player who played and carried himself like an underdog despite him being one of the league's best and most present QBs for a 5-year period. He threw in a weird way that belied an actual brilliant arm that could throw with incredible touch. He was limited in part by a system that was slowly getting figured out, in part by receivers that could never stay healthy, and mostly in part by receivers that when healthy dropped the ball, a lot. Still, his memory should live on as a true professional. QBs that put up 5-year runs like Matt did from '03-'07 are not that common.
45.) Jim Everett
Life isn't fair, and Everett staying on the Rams after they lost all their good players and collapsing until they would eventually move to St. Louis isn't fair, because it ruined the legacy of a guy who was good enough to lead the NFL in TDs in 1988 and 1989. Now, if Joe Montana was healthy enough to play 16 games, that doesn't happen, but at his best Everett was the standout player on offense for a playoff team. At his best Jim Everett was a really good QB, but one that will be remembered more because he threw a table at Jim Rome. To talk about that for a minute, obviously Everett came across poorly, as the prototypical 'dumb jock' with teh short fuse; but no one came across worse than Jim Rome, who kept on repeating that blindingly dumb 'Chris' line. Of course, the worst part of this whole thing was that Jim Everett should have taken it as a compliment, as Chris Evert is so much more accomplished than he is as a QB (or Rome as a broadcaster), no one should feel more insulted than her.
44.) Jim Plunkett
This is controversial as Plunkett was a plainly bad QB for a 5-6 year stretch with New England, even if you use 1970's passing adjustments. He was just bad, posting a passer rating just under 60. However, with Oakland, it all turned around. Still, his overall stats aren't great in totality, but Oakland didn't play a passer-rating friendly style with deep throws in a league that was becoming more addicted to teh Walsh-ian way. However, Plunkett does have those Super Bowl runs. I'm not in the mindset that Super Bowl and/or Playoff stats should completely outweight what one does in the regular season, but it does matter that Plunkett was great in the Raiders two Super Bowl runs, including a deserved Super Bowl MVP in 1980. The Raiders post Plunkett were mired in the QB wasteland until another outcast came and rescued them 15 years later (he's still to come), but the man who saw out the great Raiders era of dominance deserves a spot on this last, if only as the 1980's slightly less good Eli Manning.
43.) Joe Flacco
Pro-Football-Reference has a stat called Rating+, which normalizes passer rating by Era, much like OPS+ and ERA+ in baseball. There's some flaws with it since passer rating itself is an inherently flawed metric, but I like that Joe Flacco is a perfect 100 for his career. That is not great, obviously. There are caveats. For years, because of the high price of keeping Lewis/Reed/Suggs/Ngata/et. al., around, he was never surrounded with top flight talent, and because there are two outlier seasons pulling that down (he's above 100 in four of his six full seasons). But here's where playoffs come in again. Flacco is somewhat overrated in the playoffs, as he was largely awful in his first five playoff games (he went 3-2), especially the hilarous line of 4-10, 36 yards and an INT in a win (by 19 pounts!) on the road. But since the 2010 season, he has been a great playoff QB in really every way. He's had an incredible Super Bowl run, nearly beat the Patriots two other times, nearly outplaying Tm Brady each time, and has generally done all of this on the road. Regular Season weighs more heavily as we go up the list, but back here when there are so many players with checkered regular seasons, a few dominant postseason runs are helpful.
42.) Roman Gabriel
He's the first of a handful of QBs who have a large chunk of their career that played out before the Super Bowl era. I am counting those stats and team results as legitimate if it came in the NFL (and not AFL), so that helps Gabriel a lot here. His stats weren't as good as his contemporaries, and his early career instructions were basically to not screw up and allow the Fearsome Foursome to do their thing. There were so many more storied teams in the NFL/NFC at the time in Green Bay, Dallas, Minnesota, and the Colts for the beginning bit, that Gabriel's mad-bomber exploits are somewhat forgotten. But all that should change by his two great seasons. In 1969, he had a INT% of 1.8%, which is a number that would be great in 2015, let alone 1969. Then, in 1973, for a bad Eagles team, he led the league in everything, putting up one of the best dead-ball (1969-1979) era QB seasons. Gabriel is easily the best Rams QB before Warner, and still has enough of that mythic status to make up for a bad tail end.
41.) Phil Simms
Phil Simms is a strange player who's memory is enhanced by the talent that was on his teams (mostly on defense), and that incredible 22-25 performance in the Super Bowl. He was mostly useless in all his other playoff seasons, but his 1986 set of games, including that Super Bowl, was Flacco in 2012-level. Then again, Simms was largely a better regular season QB than people remember. With limited offensive talent, he was a consistently good player for a long time. From 1984 through his retirement in 1993, his lowest passer rating was 74.6, after that was 78.1. He had a passer rating+ above 100 every year but his first two seasons. The only things to take away are that he was asked to do basically nothing, and he took a lot of sacks (something not reflected in that passer rating stat). Phil Simms is a better QB than people think, but let's not also overstate the 22-25 game. He wasn't a mediocre player with one great game, but he wasn't a truly great player either. That's an important distinction to make some times.
Next up, numbers 40 through 31.
