Content Post All-Time QB Rankings / QB Hall of Fame Monitor

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I like those. I was tinkering around with the idea of how many points to give for AAFC and AFL championships. I definitely think at times I made them either too low or too high, but your point values seem good. The MVP/All-Pro/Pro Bowl also seems like a good idea. I have been giving Graham credit for 5 MVP’s, even though a couple came in the AAFC. So with your system they would be counted as an all-pro selection.

I honestly have no idea about the CFL. That’s probably the toughest one. An MVP being worth a pro bowl, and a CFL championship being worth a playoff win sounds like a good start.

Yeah - I think I need to read up on some of these leagues. We have the AAFC triumph stories with Otto Graham, but Frankie Albert was the 49ers quarterback (4x all pro in four AAFC years) who also who also went over to the NFL but wasn't good. With the AFL, we have the storeies about Joe Namath and Len Dawson, but you have backups making all-star teams and career NFL journeymen playing huge roles. At some point the talent levels merged, but I don't know how I feel about giving anthing close to equal credit.

 

[Zarozzor]

Yeah - I think I need to read up on some of these leagues. We have the AAFC triumph stories with Otto Graham, but Frankie Albert was the 49ers quarterback (4x all pro in four AAFC years) who also who also went over to the NFL but wasn't good. With the AFL, we have the storeies about Joe Namath and Len Dawson, but you have backups making all-star teams and career NFL journeymn playing huge roles. At some point the talent levels merged, but I don't know how I feel about giving anthing close to equal credit.

I think the problem with mine was that that NFL/AAFC/AFL winning didn't have enough of a penalty. I didn't want to make it some huge penalty for guys like Starr and Unitas so I dropped it a few ticks. At the same time though I personally value a Super Bowl win more than the other championships even though that may be too harsh. I still want to give a decent amount of credit to the pre-Super Bowl era guys but even with a slight penalty, Graham was always #2 or #3. I also think I may have rewarded longevity too much because Peyton was always #2-#4. Though as someone in this thread has said, he's that player who's designed to break these type of things and always end up very high on the list because it's almost impossible to put some of his playoff failures into a formula. Combine his stats, .702 winning percentage, 12 division titles, 2 Super Bowl wins and 4 appearances and it's tough.

 

[1960Pats]

Are Brees and Elway the only two quarterbacks who are usually in the average fans top 10 where you could say they never had at least one season where they dominated compared to their peers? Elway has an MVP in 1987 but it’s suspicious as hell. Montana was better that year.

Who votes for MVP? I don't see that, or pro bowls, as an accurate way to judge a QB. It's all too political.

 

[1960Pats]

Okay guys...I had a lot of refining stuff to do yesterday so wasn't able to post...but I am going to start right now posting a bunch of lists.

I'll start by just running through some updated stuff with the chart itself.

• You can see that to the left of the big overall score, there's a percentage on some players. This designates that some performance stats are being reduced/normalized due to the controls on the left, "Pre-1960, Pre-Merger Confidence" and "Small Sample Outlier Stats."
• There's also a percentage way to the right in the Championship area; that designates the proportion a player gets for the championship points based on an index (awards, winning pct, clutch). It does not go through each individual championship but rather applies a career score. It's adjustable and doesn't have to be used, though.
• Please note that the Grading system (A/B/C/D) is a work in progress. It's difficult because we're comparing well-known, all-time great and franchise QBs mainly too each other, so I tried to account for what they are compared to the norm, but it isn't perfect and there are some gaps. But also, note that it is a percentile based on the entire population; so if you lookup 1981-1990 and see that Jim McMahon is a C- in a category like Era Rating, that's him compared to everyone all-time. The rank number (first column) is the rank compared to the selected players.
• On the Franchise category, Pure Win % is the major factor, and Postseason & Accolades are two ways of adjusting that number. So you might say "why is this guy 0-4 in the playoffs but has a B+ playoff score"? It's because that player probably has an A+ winning pct to begin with, so geting knocked down to a B+ is a really big deal.

I'm going to start posting some lists now, really more to show the functions of this. I'm not going to re-calibrate each list/era, unless it's because Excel crashed or there's a technical problem or glaring mistake. But for now, I'll leave Joe Theismann and Jim McMahon above Warren Moon and there will be some other issues like that. Obviously we will find some issues and calibrate from there. Some of the issues might be due to preferences and values that you select and others just glaringly bad.

Feel free to request a certain player or era....I'm trying to remember some of the specifics about eras, players, etc. and what has already been requested.

@Bleedthrough @venecol @BaconGrundleCandy @robertweathers @chris_in_sunnyvale @sean10mm @1960Pats @Deus Irae @betterthanthealternative @Tony2046 @DarrylS @stinkypete

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(Post-Merger version)

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This is one of those cases where it's good to be old. I've seen all but 8 of the QBs play on the first list and all of them on the second.

One of my problems is my bias for or against certain players, for various reasons. I remember being anti-Giants because of TV force feeding us their games when I wanted to see the Browns and Jim Brown. That made me downgrade YA Tittle.

Another of my biases works against Manning. He's such a scumbag that I can't really give him his due and look for any reason to discount his accomplishments. I also have problems with a few players, past and present, because the media fawns over them so much. Favre, Rodgers, Brees and Mahomes fall into that category.

On the plus side, I was always a big fan of Unitas but became an even bigger one when he came to my HS in the 60's. I also always liked Staubach, Len Dawson, Marino, Bradshaw, Russell Wilson and even Phillip Rivers.

All in all I commend you on your attempt to come up with a truly accurate QB ranking. Keep up the good work.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I think the problem with mine was that that NFL/AAFC/AFL winning didn't have enough of a penalty. I didn't want to make it some huge penalty for guys like Starr and Unitas so I dropped it a few ticks. At the same time though I personally value a Super Bowl win more than the other championships even though that may be too harsh. I still want to give a decent amount of credit to the pre-Super Bowl era guys but even with a slight penalty, Graham was always #2 or #3. I also think I may have rewarded longevity too much because Peyton was always #2-#4. Though as someone in this thread has said, he's that player who's designed to break these type of things and always end up very high on the list because it's almost impossible to put some of his playoff failures into a formula. Combine his stats, .702 winning percentage, 12 division titles, 2 Super Bowl wins and 4 appearances and it's tough.

I think maybe your friends are right and a pre-merger AFL Championship should be half credit. Look at the guys who came in 2nd in the NFL from 1960-65. Starr, Tittle (x3), Unitas. These guys get a fat zero...I don't think George Blanda deserves credit for two championships during this timeframe while YA Tittle deserves 0.

For Dawson, I think he deserves a conference championship in 1966, since they did lose to the Packers in what would later be known as Super Bowl 1. The credit in 1962 (AFL Championship) and 1966 (AFL Championship, followed by loss in SB) is different, I think. You coud argue the 1962 team never had a chance to earn the extra points so therefore get half credit, wheras the 1966 team was not the last team standing.

 

[chris_in_sunnyvale]

With 3 downs instead of 4, WRs allowed a head start before the snap and the wider field, the CFL is a pass-happy league. An NFL-caliber QB _should_ be able to tear it up and win titles there, especially against minor league defenses.

Regards,
Chris

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I keep coming back to championship points. I think that's the most difficult point system to figure out. Here's what I'm trying to adjust right now, which I think causes some problems...

Championships are not overrated. They deserve to weigh heavily. But they are overated when the quarterback isn't really so great in getting them there. There's just no way that Ben Roethlisberger should be top-20 all-time when he isn't a top-5 QB of his own era. I'm using a multiplier option on championship points, but I think it needs to be more powerful. Example: the best QBs like Brady or Graham would get 1.25X championship points while the worst would get 0.75X. That seems reasonable, no?

I also think YA Title at around #40 is still way too low and same with Jim Kelly around the same spot. I think once again championship appearances are being overlooked; it's not that guys need a big reward for it; it's that they're getting passed by much lesser players.

How about this:

Every championship is worth 2.0 points
A pre-merger division/conference championship is worth 0.5 points
A post-merger conference championship is worth 1.0 points

Applications:

Joe Montana gets 3.0 points for winning SB 19 (championship plus conference title)
Dan Marino gets 1.0 points for making it to SB 19 (conference title)
Johnny Unitas gets 2.5 points for winning the 1958 NFL Championship (championship plus pre-merger conference title)
Y.A. Tittle gets 0.5 points for making it to the 1958 NFL Championship

For AFL stuff...you could give an AFL Champion both of the awards: a pre-merger conference championship and post-mergery conference championship, totaling 1.5 points. It is sort of a murky, in-the-middle type of league until it merges.

 

[Zarozzor]

Going through some old books yesterday and came across this from a 2007 book called The Paolantonio Report: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Teams, Coaches & Moments in NFL History. I googled the chapter so I could copy it to here and it looks like he updated the info back in 2019 hence why you see Wilson’s name and him say Brady has the most championships.

With his close-cropped hair and gentlemanly manners, Bart Starr will always be remembered as a player from another age, a poster boy, if you will, of the silent majority -- the quarterback who dutifully executed the orders of the game's greatest field general, Vince Lombardi.

In the 1960s, he played John Glenn to Joe Namath's John Lennon.


But in one of the most memorable games in NFL history, on the 1-foot line of the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field in Green Bay, in what history will forever remember as the Ice Bowl, Starr ignored the orders of his commander. That's right. Starr went to the line of scrimmage, saw the conditions, and changed the play. One of the most iconic plays in football history went off the script.

Starr called an audible.

It was the 1967 NFL Championship Game. The Green Bay Packers trailed the Dallas Cowboys 17-14. The heating coils that Lombardi had installed below the field had frozen in the arctic conditions. Starr had just gone to the sideline for his marching orders. Lombardi said to him, "Let's run it and get the hell out of here." The playcall was simple enough: Starr was to hand the football to Chuck Mercein, his 225-pound fullback; it was a simple dive play.

But Starr had other ideas. He knew he could not risk turning, planting and handing the ball to Mercein, who also would have to push off to get to the line of scrimmage and slice through the Cowboys' vaunted defensive line. So, he changed the play and didn't tell a soul.

Center Ken Bowman snapped the ball. Starr kept it, dove behind Jerry Kramer's block, and the rest is history.

That's Bart Starr -- misunderstood, underrated, and too often unappreciated. You're probably thinking, well, he's in Canton, so he can't be that underappreciated. Yes, Starr is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But he never truly got the recognition he deserved. Starr finished his career with more NFL titles (five) than Pro Bowl appearances (four). That's just crazy. To me, he's easily among the top 10 quarterbacks of all time and is arguably the greatest of his generation.

Stats don't even begin to tell the story of his career, but let's look at some.

Before there was Tom Brady, Starr won more NFL championships than any other quarterback.

But in the 1960s, Starr always took a backseat to Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath in star power. Starr was dismissed as simply a caretaker of the great Packers teams that made an annual habit of winning NFL titles. The argument went that he played for Lombardi on a team that had 12 Hall of Famers.

He never passed for 2,500 yards in a season, never threw more than 16 touchdowns in a season. He averaged 19.5 pass attempts per game in his 14 years as a starter. But as a starter, Starr won five NFL titles -- as many as Unitas, Brett Favre, Joe Namath, Steve Young and Dan Marino combined.

And Starr is the only quarterback in pro football history to win three titles in a row. He lost just one of 10 playoff starts -- the first one, in 1960, when the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Packers in the title game at Franklin Field. Starr's .900 playoff winning percentage is the best in NFL history.

Look at Starr next to Unitas. The great Colts quarterback played in three NFL championship games and two Super Bowls. He completed just 57 percent of his passes in those games, with four touchdown passes and six picks.

In his four appearances in championship games and two Super Bowls, Starr completed 58 percent of his passes, with eight touchdown passes and two interceptions.

Unitas had a passer rating of 68.9 in his postseason career. Starr's career postseason passer rating was a gaudy 104.8, the highest in NFL history, safely ahead of the No. 2, Kurt Warner (102.8 career postseason rating).

Imagine this for mind-blowing accuracy and proficiency: In 10 postseason games, Starr threw the football 213 times -- and he had just three interceptions.

He is one of only five quarterbacks to win more than one Super Bowl MVP, and his average of 9.6 yards per attempt is the third-highest in Super Bowl history, behind only Terry Bradshaw and Russell Wilson. Comparing passing stats over generations is often a fool's errand given how much the game has changed, but even then, Starr manages to find a way into the conversation as a great playoff passer. And the winning speaks for itself.

Starr may not be the greatest quarterback in NFL history, but he's the most underrated. And he's not to be forgotten.

 

[Zarozzor]

I keep coming back to championship points. I think that's the most difficult point system to figure out. Here's what I'm trying to adjust right now, which I think causes some problems...

Championships are not overrated. They deserve to weigh heavily. But they are overated when the quarterback isn't really so great in getting them there. There's just no way that Ben Roethlisberger should be top-20 all-time when he isn't a top-5 QB of his own era. I'm using a multiplier option on championship points, but I think it needs to be more powerful. Example: the best QBs like Brady or Graham would get 1.25X championship points while the worst would get 0.75X. That seems reasonable, no?

I also think YA Title at around #40 is still way too low and same with Jim Kelly around the same spot. I think once again championship appearances are being overlooked; it's not that guys need a big reward for it; it's that they're getting passed by much lesser players.

How about this:

Every championship is worth 2.0 points
A pre-merger division/conference championship is worth 0.5 points
A post-merger conference championship is worth 1.0 points

Applications:

Joe Montana gets 3.0 points for winning SB 19 (championship plus conference title)
Dan Marino gets 1.0 points for making it to SB 19 (conference title)
Johnny Unitas gets 2.5 points for winning the 1958 NFL Championship (championship plus pre-merger conference title)
Y.A. Tittle gets 0.5 points for making it to the 1958 NFL Championship

For AFL stuff...you could give an AFL Champion both of the awards: a pre-merger conference championship and post-mergery conference championship, totaling 1.5 points. It is sort of a murky, in-the-middle type of league until it merges.

That looks good. I like the idea of having a multiplier and giving a boost to quarterbacks who actually played well instead of just getting dragged there. We know someone like Brady in 2014 did way more to help his team win a ring than 2000 Trent Dilfer or 2015 Peyton Manning.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Going through some old books yesterday and came across this from a 2007 book called The Paolantonio Report: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Teams, Coaches & Moments in NFL History. I googled the chapter so I could copy it to here and it looks like he updated the info back in 2019 hence why you see Wilson’s name and him say Brady has the most championships.

Good stuff. I really like hearing about old football and the QBs. The 1960s is such an interesting period of time.

I'm glad that Sal Pal at least stood up for Starr, but I still think it's kind of a tepid endorsement, almost like he's apologizing for saying Starr is a top 10 QB. The dumb "system QB" narrative still exists, in almost the exact same form as Manning vs Brady. The idea that Starr was any more reliant on his coach is laughable and not rooted in reality; Starr very often called his own plays, just like any other quarterback. This is as old as the game itself. I remember in 2001 ish when the media was trying so, so desperately to shove a narrative down our throats that Manning was "changing the game" by calling his own plays, audibles, etc, even though I had witnessed Jim Kelly running an actual no-huddle every game just 5 years earlier. Lmfao. Years later, it was revealed that the Colts had the simplest playbook in the NFL, ad it was actually just a variation of one single concept

» One-Trick Pony

grantland.com

Which is fine...I don't denigrate Manning for that, or Unitas, who also wasn't truly a guy who "changed the game" while Star/Brady were programmed with some old, low-risk, fundamentally sound screen passes. The fact is that Unitas's teams were STACKED too, and in particular, with two all-time greats in Raymond Berry and Lenny Moore, made it a lot easier to throw downfield. Unitas was so bogged down with a terrible coach named Don Shula, who I think faded into obscurity after Unitas carried him.

Man, how differnet the narratives would be if you switched the performances in the biggest games. I've pointed out a few times that Luckman-Baugh had three championship showdowns; Luckman won two. Luckman was 4-1, Baugh was 2-3 in championships. Switch those around and the numbers show Baugh far ahead. You can do the same thing Unitas-Starr. You can do the same thing with Manning-Brady or Rodgers-Brady, too. It's amazing how narratives are shaped through the lens of "well he won, so his team must have been great." This was the 1960s and there were like 12 teams; it wasn't uncommon to have a lot of Hall of Famers. But Starr was the most responsible for the dynasty; not Lombardi; not anyone else.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Thoughts on this one, @Bleedthrough ?

 

[Zarozzor]

Thoughts on this one, @Bleedthrough ?

View attachment 31453

Looks good. I think the values are fair. Gives a little bonus to quarterbacks who won in the Super Bowl era since it’s tougher.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Wow - what an article. If you're interested in the history of the posiiton, this is awesome reading. Now that is a well-thought out, well-reserached ranking list.

The Top Quarterbacks—Pre-WWII

By Chris Willis, NFL Films Editor's Note; Chris Willis is head of the Research Library at NFL Films and is the author of the upcoming R...

nflfootballjournal.blogspot.com

 

[Biffins]

I've been working on a QB ranking project, which assigns value to various data points to create a ranking. Please note - this is an adjustable system where you can change the weight of various accomplishments. Personally, I'd have Montana over Manning to begin with and Eli/Rivers would be much lower than 30. This default setting below, though, is as a Hall of Fame measure, as it's able to go through the first 52 players before it finds a player who fails the Hall of Fame yes/no test (Joe Namath, of course.) Every player before that is either active, not eligible, or correctly placed above or below the threshhold, as you can see by the gold Hall of Fame designations. It's difficult to do this because if you change one setting or value, it effects every player, so getting all of the Hall of Famers above 10.00 and non Hall of Famers below 10.00 has consquences up the list, especially where you'd like to see some "tiebreakers" come out another way based on common sense.

So, here are the data points that I put in:

• WinDEX: League Championships, Championships Appearances, Playoff Wins & Franchise (a formula using winning percentage). The first three are self-explanatory, but I should mention that Playoff Wins are ideal because they bridge pre-merger and post-merger. They give the modern QBs more opportunity to rack up points because it's harder to win it all. Franchise is a stat I created which is based on winning percentage and years played; it gives some points just for playing (winning at .60 like most QBs) but really rewards guys for long-term dominance. Franchise awards points for winning percentage with regard to seasons played and how far over .500.
• TrophyDEX: MVP, All-Pro, All-Star, All-NFL (that's all-decade or NFL100 team.) These are self-explanatory and just weighted. All of the rankings here are based on the idea that they're connected, so an MVP isn't worth more than an All-Pro because if you win an MVP, you're also winning an All-Pro and and All-Star, so all together that's a lot of points (same with championships, appearances, and playoffs.) Moon Score is something I added when Warren Moon and Georga Blanda kept coming up 20 slots below Hall of Fame and looks for undervalued career consistency that hasn't gotten enough accolade weight.
• RateDEX: I used a simple passer rating for every player on this one. There are definitely better measures of QB skills, but this isn't looking to be precise but just to get a general level of play. It's important to note, for example, a major difference in passer rating between two guys playing in the same era (Young/Aikman, Staubach/Bradshaw.) I created a formula which does two things with passer rating...first, it assigns points for pure passer rating, in a vaccuum, so basically you're just saying how is this guy compared to the most average QB in NFL history playing in 1963 with a passer rating of 72.3. That leads to recency bias, so the other half of it, the heavier weighted half, is to compare passer rating to the average of that era, or an era passer rating. It was pretty easy to calculate this (on average, passer rating goes up about 0.5 per year). I've also tried to create some incentive for long-term success and some disincentive for short term success (Mahomes, Jackson, etc.), but efficiency itself is weighed more heavily than longivity. Both of these categories are adjustable for fine tuning. But please note that by adjustments, I mean must apply to all, so there's no selective changes.

I'll probably post my actual QB rankings (opnion) later on, which doesn't depend on Hall of Fame status/consistency but is scored based on what I see as important, personally.

View attachment 30847

This is absolutely amazing work. Well done!

 

[Zarozzor]

Wow - what an article. If you're interested in the history of the posiiton, this is awesome reading. Now that is a well-thought out, well-reserached ranking list.

The Top Quarterbacks—Pre-WWII

By Chris Willis, NFL Films Editor's Note; Chris Willis is head of the Research Library at NFL Films and is the author of the upcoming R...

nflfootballjournal.blogspot.com

I read this a few weeks back and I agree that it’s a terrific article. Learned quite a bit! Pro Football Journal is a great site.

 

[Zarozzor]

They also have a post ranking the greatest quarterbacks. I don’t agree with the order, but you can’t deny the effort and research put into it.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

They also have a post ranking the greatest quarterbacks. I don’t agree with the order, but you can’t deny the effort and research put into it.

I just looked it up.

There are definitley worse lists...the author is basically acknowledging he's kind of shooting from the hip. But Aikman above Starr, and then a comment about how Aikman had the tools that Starr didn't...just straight up baffling.

I think the list is pretty good up until about 25-30 and then it really starts to break down and you realize there's nothing holding it together. A bunch of the players he lists are below average quarterbacks who just happened to play for a long time; by all metics, stats, win %, their success and performance doesn't match their reputation. Also, like so many of those lists, it starts to lean heavily towards recency bias after the big names are gone.

I think the list is decent based on the perception of the QBs but is really just capturing public opinion about these guys, right or wrong.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I really like the research on these guys...and figuring out a fair system to distribute points. As others like @venecol have pointed out, the QB position has changed so much. A few of these teams had a quarterback-by-committee approach, but it really isn't as blended as you'd think; there's usually a clear starter who takes the snaps and throws the touchdown passes, even though it's often 5-10 passes per game, in the early 30s and then progressively increasing.

The Bears in the early-mid 30s (pre-Luckman) had this guy, Carl Braumbaugh, who was kind of a Taysom Hill type (sharing snaps) which is a pain in the ass to quantify. The Bears were really the QB by committee team, with even guys like Red Grange, but even they had some clear QB lines beginning in 1930. Sternaman > Molesworth > Masterson > Luckman.

And then you have Dutch Clark, who was a running back/quarterback hybrid...but I still think he'd be regarded as a quarterback. The NFL100 committe gave him All-Decade QB and All-Century HB nods. He has the passing numbers. He's just more like a Randall Cunningham or maybe even Steve Young. Most of the guys in the 1920s were run first until you get to Friedman, Clark, Baugh, and Luckman, and it starts becoming defined that the quarterback passes the ball and the halfback runs the ball.

When it comes to passer rating, though, I've actually found it does it's job remarkably well in quantifying performance. In particular, if you look at the Era Rating and Peak Score for the top 3 on this list Luckman, Baugh, and Friedman are all responsible for the development of the modern quarterback. Friedman is considered the first great forward passer....so his passer rating does exactly what it should do and give him ample credit.

In fact, the top 4 players of all-time in era adjusted passer rating? Luckman, Baugh, Graham, Friedman. After that, you get into the guys who took what was there and perfected it, guys like Young and Staubach...but I think the era-adjusted passer rating tells the story and assigns value the correct way: the top 4 actually pushed the ceiling higher than anyone else.

This is what I love about completely geeking out, though, with some of these formulas. Sometimes they tell you something that isn't obvious in other lists and rankings. When I first ran the numbers, I though there must be some kind of system error wihen some guys I hadn't heard of (Clark, Friedman) came up so high...but after accounting for small sample sizes and reading about these guys, I think the numbers provide some wisdom after all.

That's all post-1930. The problem with pre-1930 is that you no longer even have the passer rating stats. You do have some game logs and some season scoring summaries (each scoring play for the season) but it's tough to quantify at that point. You can lean more heavily on things like the award index and championship index, win/loss record, to try to estimate the era adjusted passer rating. As of right now, I just have zeros where there's no reliable stats. Red Dunn is an interesting player who isn't in the Hall of Fame despite 4 championships with the Packers during the 1920s as their passing quarterback, much more responsible for the passing game than Curly Lambeau.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

This is one of those cases where it's good to be old. I've seen all but 8 of the QBs play on the first list and all of them on the second.

One of my problems is my bias for or against certain players, for various reasons. I remember being anti-Giants because of TV force feeding us their games when I wanted to see the Browns and Jim Brown. That made me downgrade YA Tittle.

Another of my biases works against Manning. He's such a scumbag that I can't really give him his due and look for any reason to discount his accomplishments. I also have problems with a few players, past and present, because the media fawns over them so much. Favre, Rodgers, Brees and Mahomes fall into that category.

On the plus side, I was always a big fan of Unitas but became an even bigger one when he came to my HS in the 60's. I also always liked Staubach, Len Dawson, Marino, Bradshaw, Russell Wilson and even Phillip Rivers.

All in all I commend you on your attempt to come up with a truly accurate QB ranking. Keep up the good work.

That's awesome that you've gotten a chance to see a lot of these guys play. I'm only 39, so I'm more limited to YouTube, Wikipedia, etc. But one of the problems is that I miss out on "the word on the street" that was happening during a lot of this stuff.

In terms of some of the stuff you've brought up, about these guys, it's very helpful, because the numbers don't tell the whole story...but when someone is really knowledgable about the position, such as yourself, and you have opinions about where players should rank, then to me, it often tells me that there's something I'm not thinking of, and that the data is probably there to support what you're seeing, but perhaps the way it's interpreted needs some adjustments.

We can look at some of the playes who referenced: Favre, Manning, Rodgers, Brees, Manning. To some extent, I think I've been able to account for their flaws/overratedness and what's causing it...and the thing is, I haven't had to bring in advanced stats to bring them down the list. With Manning, there's nothing really flawed about him, but if you peel back his longevity and bring into focus "how great was he?" he is still a top 10 QB but only borderline top 5. Unitas and Young were better. The same can apply to Brees and Favre. They mainly rely on the big counting stats. Counting stats that are largely empty without championships. It's like those two ramped up their cars to 80 MPH (while the best ever were going 100) and then coasted for longer than anyone else until they eventually passed the real blazers.

Also, regarding your comment about the awards like MVPs, I agree they're not so important...in some ways. Like, if Manning has 5 MVPs and Young has 2 MVPs, that's not a really big thing; for one, Young earned his 2 MVPs in about half the amount of time. And All-Pros are basically as good as MVPs. I don't see these awards as "earned points" because they're not actual accomplishments. Instead, I've used them to create a parallel index to winning pct. So, I take the awards won from guys like Manning, Brady, etc. and assign points for each one, and then divide it by seasons played. Brady's awards index winning pct comes out very close to his actual winning pct, somewhere around .750-.800. Same with many of these guys. Now, if Manning is at .850 and Montana is at .825, will that make a difference in their rankings? No - extremely unlikely.

But - here's where the awards become important...they also recognize when some players do have the awards but not the winning pct or passer rating, so a guy like Warren Moon, with his 9 pro bowls, will be able to make up some of the large cap. Or on the flip side, a guy like Ben Roethlisberger has 4 pro bowls, while Dan Marino has 8 all pros. So now Roethlisberger's winning pct is .650 but his awards-adjusted winning pct is around .500. And Marino's winning pct is .600 but his awards-adjusted winning pct is around .750. That's the type of situation where the awards are important, to show there's more to the story. Most of the time, the guys who excel in passer rating and win % are going to have the awards to show for it, and the guys who don't excel in these, won't have the awards. But that's not always the case. But in the end, Manning winning 5 MVPs when he should have won perhaps 3, may give him some very small advantages but doesn't move the needle that much. His winning pct and passer rating already confirm his awards index should be up there.