50.) Andrew Luck
He may never play again, but even if he doesn't (probably a very low probability outcome), you can argue he deserves this spot. Luck was that good through his first five seasons, even if injuries and team decay hurt the Colts in 2015-16. This is still a guy who took over a 2-14 team with as large a hole to fill as humanly possible, and turned them into an 11-5 team three years running. That third year, in 2014, he was brilliant, throwing for 40 TDs, and 4,700 yards behind a sieve o-line and with only one true weapon in TY Hilton. Hopefully Luck can return and make his way slowly up and up this list.
49.) 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.
48.) 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.
47.) 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.
46.) 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.
45.) 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.
44.) Cam Newton
\
Cam can go way up this list. Honestly, he already probably could be, it is somewhat anti-recency-bias hurting him. Cam is the most unique QB of the modern era, someone indestrible but still efficient. He has such a brilliant arm. He put up an epic season in 2015 that culminated with a 15-1 season and 500 points despite losing his best WR in the preseason. Newton somewhat came back in 2017, and should hopefully have a long fruitful end to his career. His eventual place will likely be 10-15 steps up, but the talent is always there to go even higher. Cam is a truly unique talent, the first QB who could actually last as a runner for a number of years. Newton runs one of the more unique offenses ever, because he is a truly unique player.
43.) 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.
42.) Russell Wilson
Russell Wilson is following a very Ben Roethlisberger like career, even if those two players are as different physically as possible. Like Big Ben, Wilson was thrust into a perfect situation, with a great running game, incredible defense, and it led to a Super Bowl title in Year 2. Following that, Wilson slowly graduated from system player to incredible QB. Wilson's 2015 season was something special, ending with 34 TDs, and an NFL leading 110.1 passer rating. I don't think anyone thought Wilson had that in him. Last year was similar to Ben's mid career (2009 or 2012-2013) when he dragged weakened teams to respectable seasons based on his brilliance. If Wilson can continue that, he can also rise way up these rankings. To be honest, I'm probably underrating both Newton and Wilson at this point.
41.) Randall Cunningham
Cunningham's career was defined by his amazing athleticism, the first truly transcendant running QB, one good enough to fundamentally change the way defenses tried to stop him. But behind that athleticism was a really good player who was surrounded for most of his career by awful O-Lines and marginal offensive talent in Philadelphia. For a 6-year run from 1987-1992, Cunningham was one of the best QBs in the NFL playing with no one but a coked-up Cris Carter. Randall's career rennaissance in Minnesota was more due to having Randy Moss and a non-coked-up Cris Carter who had reformed his life, but that showed what Cunningham was capable of with better talent. He had limitations like his propensity to take sacks and he melted down in a few playoff games, but Cunningham started an offensive revolution that now a few guys have taken over.
