I’d like to thank everyone for the feedback of our Greatest QB of All Time Preview article. A lot of votes came in for Otto Graham, Johnny Unites, Joe Montana, Dan Marino and Joe Namath. As we discussed in the preview article, we selected 14 Quarterbacks, and performed a statistical analysis to try to determine who the Greatest Quarterback of all time is. As we stated, the passing craze that began in the 1970’s eliminated many great QB’s from earlier times when the ball wasn’t thrown every down. Greats like Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Otto Graham, Norm Van Brocklin and others of that era just couldn’t compare statistically, which doesn’t take away from them in any way as all time greats of the game. We will do a second study that would include just QB’s prior to 1970. We have selected the following as our Top 14 in alphabetical order:
- Troy Aikman
- Drew Brees
- Terry Bradshaw
- Tom Brady
- John Elway
- Brett Favre
- Dan Fouts
- Jim Kelly
- Peyton Manning
- Dan Marino
- Joe Montana
- Ben Roethlisberger
- Roger Staubach
- Steve Young
Each of these QB’s are have either been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame or won a Super Bowl or have won a Super Bowl.
We selected eight regular season statistical categories that we felt would put all of the players on a level playing field without showing bias to a QB that played longer than the rest (Brett Favre), and holds many of the career QB records. What we did was break it down by how they performed in the categories by percentage across their career.
If a player did not play in at least half of his teams games in a season, that seasons numbers were not included. For example, Tom Brady played in just one game in 2008 due to injury. Also, one of the hardest guys to include in this was Steve Young. There are several seasons in which Young missed games, mainly because he was backing up Joe Montana when he was in San Francisco, but he also split time early in his career in Tampa Bay. With that said here are the 8 regular season categories: (more…)
Tags: ben roethlisberger, brett favre, dan fouts, Drew Brees, Greatest QB of all time, Jim Kelly, joe montana, John Elway, peyton manning, Roger Staubach, Steve Young, terry bradshaw, Tom Brady, Troy Aikman
