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

[Zarozzor]

I read the article again that @Deus Irae linked earlier in this thread and saw that the author said Unitas never had a great postseason game after 1959 so that made me curious.

1964
Lost 27-0
12/20 60.0%
95 Yards
0 TD/2 INT
32.3 Passer Rating

1968
Lost 16-7* (he didn't start, but came in for Morrall)
11/24 45.8%
110 Yards
0 TD/1 INT
42.0 Passer Rating

1970
Won 17-0
6/17 35.3%
145 Yards
2 TD/0 INT
106.2 Passer Rating

Won 27-17
11/30 36.7%
245 Yards
1 TD/0 INT
77.8 Passer Rating

Won 16-13* (started but split snaps with Morrall)
3/9 33.3%
88 Yards
1 TD/2 INT
68.1 Passer Rating

1971
Won 20-3
13/21 61.9%
143 Yards
0 TD/1 INT
62.2 Passer Rating

Lost 21-0
20/36 55.6%
224 Yards
0 TD/3 INT
39.6 Passer Rating

I don't think a formula can really measure these but I thought it was interesting and worth mentioning.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I read the article again that @Deus Irae linked earlier in this thread and saw that the author said Unitas never had a great postseason game after 1959 so that made me curious.

1964
Lost 27-0
12/20 60.0%
95 Yards
0 TD/2 INT
32.3 Passer Rating

1968
Lost 16-7* (he didn't start, but came in for Morrall)
11/24 45.8%
110 Yards
0 TD/1 INT
42.0 Passer Rating

1970
Won 17-0
6/17 35.3%
145 Yards
2 TD/0 INT
106.2 Passer Rating

Won 27-17
11/30 36.7%
245 Yards
1 TD/0 INT
77.8 Passer Rating

Won 16-13* (started but split snaps with Morrall)
3/9 33.3%
88 Yards
1 TD/2 INT
68.1 Passer Rating

1971
Won 20-3
13/21 61.9%
143 Yards
0 TD/1 INT
62.2 Passer Rating

Lost 21-0
20/36 55.6%
224 Yards
0 TD/3 INT
39.6 Passer Rating

I don't think a formula can really measure these but I thought it was interesting and worth mentioning.

Formula can't measure...you're right. Best we can do is reward the other guys who came through in the those moments. I'd rather have Manning, Unitas, etc. leave points on the table than deduct points. I mean, if they'd played as well as thier reputations in the biggest games, consistently, we wouldn't be debating Unitas/Starr or Manning/Young because there would be no question.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Great stuff. I'm learning a lot about 1920-1931.

Do you have a screenshot of the current rankings? I'd be curious to see the scores for the five quarterbacks you mentioned above. It makes sense that Montana, Graham, and Starr would take a hit if looking at monster seasons. Graham is very interesting though. Perhaps I need to take a deeper dive into his career.

I recalibrated the peak score to less extreme...ideally I'd like to calibrate all of these so 50% is the default. Starr is the only issue here, but it's not like anyone in the top 10 isn't also an all-time great.

 

[venecol]

I recalibrated the peak score to less extreme...ideally I'd like to calibrate all of these so 50% is the default. Starr is the only issue here, but it's not like anyone in the top 10 isn't also an all-time great.

View attachment 31653

How can Dutch Clark be #40? Wasn't he basically a tailback?

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

How can Dutch Clark be #40? Wasn't he basically a tailback?

That's a good question...ahead of the curve. You can see that his peak score dropped from an A+ to an F. This is because while his passer rating was great, he threw very few passes. The peak score update has been applied to everyone from every era.

Clark started in 1932, right after the cutoff of the players I just adjusted, in terms of assigning QB points and boiling out the passing QB from the rest of the player's skills. Next up is 1932-1949, so Clark will be addressed more (I've made a few updates to the major guys like Baugh and Luckman but not everyone). From 1932-49, we have pass attempts and passer rating, but we still don't have games started; quarterback responsibility is still in flux before 1950. There's guys like Clark who are really running backs who can throw sometimes...and the key to figuring this out is looking at who throws the passes on his teams. Clark is going to drop a lot and likely won't be top 100 overall.



I haven't rolled out all the updates for every player in the 1932-1949 timeframe yet, but when I do, I expect it to look something like this (below.) His overall passing-QB-adjsuted games played will drop from about 75 to 25, and he'll also stop getting full credit for quarterback awards when he was given an award at another position.

The new era changes are designed to address to players like him...he's an all-time great player, but he's maybe 35% pure quarterback and 65% halfback. I'm also going to start changing the Hall of Fame status bar on the left as well, and make it lighter, when it involves players who were inducted but not as a QB (Clark) or for other endeavors too (Lambeau, Conzelman.)

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Okay...so I'm posting the 1920-31 rankings below. And I'll include some interesting stuff I came across while compiling the data...

As with all the rankings, this isn't a final order or anything...it's using paramaters within the norms I've been using for other lists...and hopefull this establishes some player tiers. And I should emphaize here that the rankings are not ranking football players; they're ranking quarterbacks with a heavy emphasis on passing skills. So you might see Red Grange or some other star somewhere down the list; that just means a TD pass qualified him for the list. A lot of these guys are not listed as quarterbacks, including guys at the top. Leading passers who threw a lot might be fullbacks, halfbacks, etc...and quarterbacks might be guys who mainly run, hand off the ball, play cornerback on defense, and punt...which is why the actual passing touchdown stats are so critical. When a player made an all-pro team as a non-QB, I gave them the equivalent of a pro bowl selection; they only got the additoinal all-pro if they were selected as a quarterback.

For championships, I settled on the first place team getting 1.5 total points, the second place team getting .5 points, and the third place team getting .25 points. It sounds strange, but it's mainly because of uncertainty about who was the most deserving team in many years, balanced out by the fact that teams knew they needed to have the best win pct (and ties were thrown out, not counting as wins or losses.) It as a pretty stupid overall system; bexause the league was often so uneven in terms fo competition, scheduling, etc. it would make playoff games all the more important. So, that's the point system I'm using for now.

So, let's start from the top of the list. I've already written quite a bit about Benny Friedman (1) and Red Dunn (2). Currently, just with a quick check of 1920-2020, Friedman is #12 all-time and Dunn is #28. Will they stay there? It depends on how era-adjusted you want it to be...if you want a true era-adjusted comparison, I think Friedman is a top 25 guy depending on the weighting and Dunn is a top 50 guy. I try to size up these guys on what I see as their floor, whatever settings you're using within reason.

Paddy Driscoll (3), Joey Sternaman (17), Jimmy Conzelman (21). I'm going to group these three together because, by accolade, they're usually at or near the top of QB lists from the 1920s. Driscoll was obviously a very good player and also threw his share of TD passes; it's just that as passers, other guys were better. Stripped of his defense, punting, etc. Driscoll is still a good quarterback but not a legendary one. Conzelman began his career as a passing QB and then settled into other roles in the offense like RB and WR. And Sternaman is the most extreme of them; a QB in name only...he barely threw TD passes, though other guys on the team did.

Curly Lambeau (5). Being in the top 5 of your decade is a good place to be, so I won't say Lambeau isn't worthy of a lot of praise. I'd just point out that, while he's often credited for being an innovator of the passing game, there were other players who were also excelling; and while he won championships, they were all after Red Dunn came along and became the team's passer.

Hoge Workman (4), Sonny Winters (9), Elmer Oliphant (10). All three of these guys were one-hit wonders who had monster seasons and then disappeared. Workman was a baseball player who tried football for a season, threw 8 TD passes (5th best peak score of the decade) and led his team to a championship. He's ranked 4th, which seems quite high for a player with one season, but after spending an hour looking for vulnerabilities in the formulas to account for this, I realized it's because he has two "solid" and undisputable sources of points: a championship and a peak score. Both of those stay the same regardless of small sample size adjustments.

Oliphant is a very interesting character. He played for the 1921 Buffalo team that got hosed by George Halas in the Staley Swindle. He had one of the best seasons of any player of the decade and then just stopped playing to do other things, like being a farmer.

Hust Stockton (6) and Ernie Nevers (8). John Stockton's grandfather, so that's cool. There was also a guy named Milt Romney who was Mitt Romney's grandfather. Stockton is maybe the most "normal" guy on the list in terms of what we look for in a quarterback. Played well for a handful of years, was a "francise QB" as the team's consistent leading passer, won a championship as his career highlight. Nevers is pretty similar; a bunch of passing touchdowns and wins, though he's more a Philip Rivers type...a bunch of good seasons but no spectacular ones.

Lou Smyth (7). Appears to be our Brad Johnson. 2X champion with pretty good passing stats but nothing spectacular about him either.

Al Mahrt (11). He was actually coming into the NFL on the tail end of his career, playing in the Ohio league during the 1910s and winning the city championship 3 times. He'll probably move up when he gets some credit for seaosns played in an alternative league. In 1920, the first season, he threw 7 TD passes to lead the league, but he was finished a couple of years later.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

 

[Zarozzor]

Okay...so I'm posting the 1920-31 rankings below. And I'll include some interesting stuff I came across while compiling the data...

As with all the rankings, this isn't a final order or anything...it's using paramaters within the norms I've been using for other lists...and hopefull this establishes some player tiers. And I should emphaize here that the rankings are not ranking football players; they're ranking quarterbacks with a heavy emphasis on passing skills. So you might see Red Grange or some other star somewhere down the list; that just means a TD pass qualified him for the list. A lot of these guys are not listed as quarterbacks, including guys at the top. Leading passers who threw a lot might be fullbacks, halfbacks, etc...and quarterbacks might be guys who mainly run, hand off the ball, play cornerback on defense, and punt...which is why the actual passing touchdown stats are so critical. When a player made an all-pro team as a non-QB, I gave them the equivalent of a pro bowl selection; they only got the additoinal all-pro if they were selected as a quarterback.

For championships, I settled on the first place team getting 1.5 total points, the second place team getting .5 points, and the third place team getting .25 points. It sounds strange, but it's mainly because of uncertainty about who was the most deserving team in many years, balanced out by the fact that teams knew they needed to have the best win pct (and ties were thrown out, not counting as wins or losses.) It as a pretty stupid overall system; bexause the league was often so uneven in terms fo competition, scheduling, etc. it would make playoff games all the more important. So, that's the point system I'm using for now.

So, let's start from the top of the list. I've already written quite a bit about Benny Friedman (1) and Red Dunn (2). Currently, just with a quick check of 1920-2020, Friedman is #12 all-time and Dunn is #28. Will they stay there? It depends on how era-adjusted you want it to be...if you want a true era-adjusted comparison, I think Friedman is a top 25 guy depending on the weighting and Dunn is a top 50 guy. I try to size up these guys on what I see as their floor, whatever settings you're using within reason.

Paddy Driscoll (3), Joey Sternaman (17), Jimmy Conzelman (21). I'm going to group these three together because, by accolade, they're usually at or near the top of QB lists from the 1920s. Driscoll was obviously a very good player and also threw his share of TD passes; it's just that as passers, other guys were better. Stripped of his defense, punting, etc. Driscoll is still a good quarterback but not a legendary one. Conzelman began his career as a passing QB and then settled into other roles in the offense like RB and WR. And Sternaman is the most extreme of them; a QB in name only...he barely threw TD passes, though other guys on the team did.

Curly Lambeau (5). Being in the top 5 of your decade is a good place to be, so I won't say Lambeau isn't worthy of a lot of praise. I'd just point out that, while he's often credited for being an innovator of the passing game, there were other players who were also excelling; and while he won championships, they were all after Red Dunn came along and became the team's passer.

Hoge Workman (4), Sonny Winters (9), Elmer Oliphant (10). All three of these guys were one-hit wonders who had monster seasons and then disappeared. Workman was a baseball player who tried football for a season, threw 8 TD passes (5th best peak score of the decade) and led his team to a championship. He's ranked 4th, which seems quite high for a player with one season, but after spending an hour looking for vulnerabilities in the formulas to account for this, I realized it's because he has two "solid" and undisputable sources of points: a championship and a peak score. Both of those stay the same regardless of small sample size adjustments.

Oliphant is a very interesting character. He played for the 1921 Buffalo team that got hosed by George Halas in the Staley Swindle. He had one of the best seasons of any player of the decade and then just stopped playing to do other things, like being a farmer.

Hust Stockton (6) and Ernie Nevers (8). John Stockton's grandfather, so that's cool. There was also a guy named Milt Romney who was Mitt Romney's grandfather. Stockton is maybe the most "normal" guy on the list in terms of what we look for in a quarterback. Played well for a handful of years, was a "francise QB" as the team's consistent leading passer, won a championship as his career highlight. Nevers is pretty similar; a bunch of passing touchdowns and wins, though he's more a Philip Rivers type...a bunch of good seasons but no spectacular ones.

Lou Smyth (7). Appears to be our Brad Johnson. 2X champion with pretty good passing stats but nothing spectacular about him either.

Al Mahrt (11). He was actually coming into the NFL on the tail end of his career, playing in the Ohio league during the 1910s and winning the city championship 3 times. He'll probably move up when he gets some credit for seaosns played in an alternative league. In 1920, the first season, he threw 7 TD passes to lead the league, but he was finished a couple of years later.


View attachment 31672
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The gap between Friedman and #2 is insane. It shows how much he dominated his era. You could actually say Dunn is also above everyone else in terms of dominance. I can definitely see why they'd be high in the all-time rankings if not doing major era-adjustments.

 

[Zarozzor]

@Ice_Ice_Brady right now I have 1st Place and Top 10 offenses listed in my spreadsheet. What do you think of using PPG compared to league average? So every game in which a quarterback started, I'd take the average PPG they scored throughout their career and compare it to the league average during that time. I know it probably doesn't seem like a huge deal but it's one of the things I look at when looking at a quarterbacks career. Consistently leading your team to points is something I value.

The problem I'm having with 1st/Top 10 is that prior to the merger, a quarterback was all but guaranteed a top 10 offense just by starting half of their teams games since there were only 10-16 teams total.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

@Ice_Ice_Brady right now I have 1st Place and Top 10 offenses listed in my spreadsheet. What do you think of using PPG compared to league average? So every game in which a quarterback started, I'd take the average PPG they scored throughout their career and compare it to the league average during that time. I know it probably doesn't seem like a huge deal but it's one of the things I look at when looking at a quarterbacks career. Consistently leading your team to points is something I value.

The problem I'm having with 1st/Top 10 is that prior to the merger, a quarterback was all but guaranteed a top 10 offense just by starting half of their teams games since there were only 10-16 teams total.

I think that's the better way to go. You could either adjust the PPG based on league average, or you could adjust the top-10 to the precentage of teams. So if there's 16 teams, it could require a top-5 offense, 12 teams could require a top 3/4 offense, etc.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

1932-1949

This era is next, and here are some of the things I'm looking at...

• QB win share/championship responsibility. We do have more precise ways to measure the QB's passing skills, as passer rating emerges in 32. And with that, passing attempts give us a more precise measure of who the quarterback is during a season. How many points should quarterbacks be awarded for championships if they're the QB 60% of the time? I will probably use the same system esablished for the previous era, which has to do with a 50% threshhold of attempts...but the key difference here is the player also must have played in the championship game, and there may be some cases where it's debatable who the primary QB of that game was.

• Accolades. This is a tricky one because, in 20-31, a lot of the best QBs would get an all-pro selection at a different posiiton, so the awards worked out to some degree. This time, it's more challenging. There's an official, centralized awards committee and they hand out all-pro but pro bowl/all star only for a few years before the pro bowl is abandoned again iuntil 1950. Basing these awards on stats is kind of double dipping, so I'd like to avoid that. The awards index is going to be challanging. All-star/All-pro is actually the more important basis for a player's value, in my opinion, as it looks at the consistency of high level play. All pros and MVPs are helpful in the formula, but without those baselines all pro awards, it's hard to establish an accolade level.

• World War II. The rankings are about football accomplishments, but leagues outside the NFL are given credit seasons. The actual stats and wins don't carry over to the NFL, but additional experience tacked on to avoid small sample deductions. Based on the league's own decisions and nods, I believe WWII service must also qualify for those seasons played, even though the players miss opportunities for championship points and peak score points. So, they're not getting too much, but it can make a difference. Ace Parker is a player who was clearly recognized as a emerging star/future HoF whose career was cut short by the war and still made the Hall. Finally, there's the idea that the league is watered down during the war, with many would-be players being gone, and the guys remaining having an advantage...but I don't know if I'm going to actually go there with any point percentages.

• Luckman and Baugh. Baugh is the first quarterback who becomes a 100% passing QB qualifyer, as he racks up 10+ total seasons of total passing responsibility, as well as the league's best ever adjusted passer rating. Luckman is close, too, around 7.5 seasons and also an insane era rating. The question is: are they getting too many peer-adjusted points for passring performance? Are they actual top 5/top 10 all-time QBs? And top 5 vs top 10 are different things, too. In the 1920 and 1921 season, I had to esablish a league minimum for average passing touchdowns per season because it was at 2.5 or so, and a guy throwing 7 TDs should not be given the same peak score as a guy who throws for 75 TDs today, so I adjusted the number a bit to increase the floor. So, I'm going to look at the league passer rating too and see if Baugh and Luckman are benefitting from deflated ratings from sub-par teams that cause the league to lose its overall standard. Are we better off comparing passer rating to the median passer rating than the mean one? We don't want amateur-esque teams skewing the stats and I'll be looking into that.

 

[Zarozzor]

1932-1949

This era is next, and here are some of the things I'm looking at...

• QB win share/championship responsibility. We do have more precise ways to measure the QB's passing skills, as passer rating emerges in 32. And with that, passing attempts give us a more precise measure of who the quarterback is during a season. How many points should quarterbacks be awarded for championships if they're the QB 60% of the time? I will probably use the same system esablished for the previous era, which has to do with a 50% threshhold of attempts...but the key difference here is the player also must have played in the championship game, and there may be some cases where it's debatable who the primary QB of that game was.

• Accolades. This is a tricky one because, in 20-31, a lot of the best QBs would get an all-pro selection at a different posiiton, so the awards worked out to some degree. This time, it's more challenging. There's an official, centralized awards committee and they hand out all-pro but pro bowl/all star only for a few years before the pro bowl is abandoned again iuntil 1950. Basing these awards on stats is kind of double dipping, so I'd like to avoid that. The awards index is going to be challanging.

• World War II. The rankings are about football accomplishments, but leagues outside the NFL are given credit seasons. The actual stats and wins don't carry over to the NFL, but additional experience tacked on to avoid small sample deductions. Based on the league's own decisions and nods, I believe WWII service must also qualify for those seasons played, even though the players miss opportunities for championship points and peak score points. So, they're not getting too much, but it can make a difference. Ace Parker is a player who was clearly recognized as a emerging star/future HoF whose career was cut short by the war and still made the Hall. Finally, there's the idea that the league is watered down during the war, with many would-be players being gone, and the guys remaining having an advantage...but I don't know if I'm going to actually go there with any point percentages.

• Luckman and Baugh. Baugh is the first quarterback who becomes a 100% passing QB qualifyer, as he racks up 10+ total seasons of total passing responsibility, as well as the league's best ever adjusted passer rating. Luckman is close, too, around 7.5 seasons and also an insane era rating. The question is: are they getting too many peer-adjusted points for passring performance? Are they actual top 5/top 10 all-time QBs? And top 5 vs top 10 are different things, too. In the 1920 and 1921 season, I had to esablish a league minimum for average passing touchdowns per season because it was at 2.5 or so, and a guy throwing 7 TDs should not be given the same peak score as a guy who throws for 75 TDs today, so I adjusted the number a bit as the floor. So, I'm going to look at the league passer rating too and see if Baugh and Luckman are benefitting from deflated ratings from sub-par teams that cause the league to lose its overall standard. Are we better off comparing passer rating to the median passer rating than the mean one? We don't want amateur-esque teams skewing the stats and I'll be looking into that.

Can’t wait for a deeper look at Luckman and Baugh. I really struggle on where to rank them.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

If your favorite team has a few top-50 all-time quarterbacks, that's a good thing. This is what the Packers have (a rough estimate, based on where I've seen their floor):

Starr - 10
Rodgers - 15
Favre - 25
Herber - 35
Dunn - 50
Isbell - 60
Lambeau - 75

They also have a championship winning QB in Irv Comp, who wasn't great but was a little above average, Tobin Rote, who wasn't very good but won two championships with the Lions and Chargers (both times coming in as a backup on stacked teams), and a decent long-term starter in Lynn ****ey.

 

[sieglo]

One way to move Peyton down the list might be to create a negative weighting for QBs whose performances in playoff losses deviated the most significantly from their average game performance. Call it the “choke rating” or the “lets his team down rating”, or simply the “forehead rating”.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I think Manning is a top 10 all-time QB, and in the 5-8 range; part of the reason is that the system is impartial if nothing else, and I don't ever recall seeing Manning outside the top 10, even with very aggressive parameters. I've made some pretty big adjustments to account for his shortcomings. He's 14-13 in the postseason, and if you weigh that into his overall win pct., it hurts his overall winning % as much as any player ever. It's hard to see this because you're not going to see him drop to #15 overall; if he drops that low, the rankings are broken. Manning's postseason failures punish him against the very best of the best like Montana, Staubach, Starr, etc. They don't make a difference against 98% of the QBs - and that's probably the way it should be. And even if I removed his last Super Bowl win (Denver) altogether, it really wouldn't make a huge difference...he would still be in that 5-8 range...maybe just a little closer to 8.

If you remove postseason and championships altogether, Manning is battling for the #1 position. When you had them in, he's battling for top 5. That's a big deal...I think there's some overcorrection beyond that. Just my .02.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

1932-49

Frank Filchock

He was a backup to Sammy Baugh on those champion Washington teams and is an interesting player to look at, for the purpose of ranking, because of the question of his responsibility. He was also 2x pro bowl, though not at the QB position....another guy where here's a hybrid player, so figuring out his passing attempts to help to distill his QB purity.

Filchock is also interesting because in the crazy days of the pre-modern sports world...he played in the 1945 championship game despite being involved at the time in a scandal to fix games...and his role is disputed.



But imagine playing this game to save your reputation (like Brady in SB49) and throwing 6 INTs?

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Some good stuff here on Slingin' Sammy.

Sammy Baugh & TCU | The Pop History Dig

Magazine-styled website about contemporary culture, politics, and business history, crafted to engage readers on topics ranging from civil rights history to the power of the entertainment industry, environmental politics, sports history, music, film, and the media.

www.pophistorydig.com

Call this crazy, but somehow I think the title "best football player ever" somehow serves to undersell his quarterbacking skills. Yes, I agree, he is the greatest football player ever. When they make those lists of the best overall, there's no way in hell that anyone was better...it really isn't close. But if you look at him just as a passer, well, there's a good argument he's the best ever there as well. Sure, Brady is the greatest, but Baugh is essentially perfect...such other-level dominance. And that also speaks to how great Luckman was too. As quarterbacks, they are neck in neck.




Imagine some guy today doing something like this right in the middle of his playing career? Lol...

 

[venecol]

Some good stuff here on Slingin' Sammy.

Sammy Baugh & TCU | The Pop History Dig

Magazine-styled website about contemporary culture, politics, and business history, crafted to engage readers on topics ranging from civil rights history to the power of the entertainment industry, environmental politics, sports history, music, film, and the media.

www.pophistorydig.com

Call this crazy, but somehow I think the title "best football player ever" somehow serves to undersell his quarterbacking skills. Yes, I agree, he is the greatest football player ever. When they make those lists of the best overall, there's no way in hell that anyone was better...it really isn't close. But if you look at him just as a passer, well, there's a good argument he's the best ever there as well. Sure, Brady is the greatest, but Baugh is essentially perfect...such other-level dominance. And that also speaks to how great Luckman was too. As quarterbacks, they are neck in neck.

View attachment 31704


Imagine some guy today doing something like this right in the middle of his playing career? Lol...

View attachment 31702

LMAO

On your effort to rank the modern guys with guys playing with leather helmets, no pads, in the mud, where 2 of their guys weighed less than today's NT, it seems impossible.

Imagine how controversial it is to rank QBs today, and that's with being able to watch the games and having all sorts of available data and analytics. How can we make judgments on these old timers w/o having watched them play. You miss so much context.

Good effort though.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

LMAO

On your effort to rank the modern guys with guys playing with leather helmets, no pads, in the mud, where 2 of their guys weighed less than today's NT, it seems impossible.

Imagine how controversial it is to rank QBs today, and that's with being able to watch the games and having all sorts of available data and analytics. How can we make judgments on these old timers w/o having watched them play. You miss so much context.

Good effort though.

The all-time era rankings are like trying to do pound-for-pound in boxing. Not many people are going to agree with the value system and in the end, most people just want to know the intra-tier rankings for weight divisions. The all-time, era-adjusted list has the most volatility; you can move a few emphasis settings, and you're going to see some pretty big movements. Within those eras, it's a lot harder to change the tiers, no matter how hard you try.

I personally like era-adjusted stuff...I've been hearing a lot about how LeBron > Jordan because look at the physical differences in the players then versus now. You could say the same thing about Jordan versus Russell. Differences in speed, size, athleticism, etc. don't change that each guy is trying to perform and win, within the norms of his own era.

In 20 years, NFL players will probably have a 20 game season, and people will scoff at the idea Brady "only" threw for 20-30 TD passes most years and "only" won 15+ games once. 75% completiion won't be so difficult, and 70% will be average; they'll probably change the passer rating formula to account for the bigger numbers. Guys will be bigger, faster, etc. and they'll probably expand the field a bit.

Everything gets larger and larger...it's like inflation.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

...