Norm Van Brocklin: The First Quarterback to Win a Championship with Two Teams?
Peyton Manning (even though it was a joke) and Tom Brady are the first two quarterbacks to lead two separate teams to championships...maybe. Norm Van Brocklin has a case for this too, but it comes down to what type of credit we assign to quarterbacks for championships. By today's standards, there's an easy cutoff for win responsibility, and it's the game's official starter.
In the 1950s, there were a few murky situations with shared quarterback responsibilities. However, this wasn't the "quarterback by committee approach" from earlier teams with multiple position players throwing passes; this was more like a rotational planned, rotation situation where the coach might think one guy is good for certain situations and another guy for other situations. One good example of this is the 1950s Giants, who often had a rotation of quarterbacks with Charlie Connerly being the main guy (by the way, I have Connerly as the third biggest Hall QB snub.). In 1956, the Giants won their only championshp of that era sandwhiched in between a whole bunch of brutal losses in the final round. In that season, Don Heinrich started almost everry game for the Giants despite being the clear cut #2 behind Connerly. The Giants coach, Jim Lee Howell, indicated that he liked to have Heinrich start the game as the scout quarterback to figure out the defensive alignments before handing responsibilities to Connerly. On the season, Connerly had almost twice as many passing attempts as Heinrich. In the championship game itself, a 47-7 shellacking of the Bears, Connerly threw 10 passes to Heinrich's 7...a low volume output likely due to the blowout...but Connerly finished the game with a 152.1 QB rating while Heinrich was at 58.3.
The Giants situation is probably pretty clear but...it's a matter of creating a consistent criteria to reward Connerly with the 1956 championship, or at least a majority share of the championship, since he was the team's primary quarterback in both the regular season and the game, even though by today's standards he would not be credited.
And this brings us to Norm Van Brocklin, a more difficult case because the 1951 Rams featured two future Hall of Fame quarterbacks (Van Brocklin and Bob Waterfield) who were really a 1-2 punch in no particular order. I imagine that if the Rams had been in existence now, they would have traded on the these guys for a big haul, but back then, trades were very rare.
*Spoiler* - In 1960, after playing a decade with the Rams, Van Brocklin went to the Eagles and won a championship, which is why the 1951 quarterback share becomes more relevant.
In the 1951 season, Waterfield and Van Brocklin platooned as the quarterback for the championship winning team. They finished #4 and #5 in the league in passing yards despite splitting their attempts. Though Waterfield was the official "starter" in most games, Van Brocklin had more passing attampts (194-176) for the season. Van Brocklin would, in 1952 - the next season - establish himself as primary quarterback, throwing 2X more passes that Waterfield and nudging Waterfield into retirement soon after.
In the 1951 NFL Championship Game against Otto Graham's Browns, Waterfield was the starter and struggled for much of the day, going 9-24 with 2 INTs and a dismal 20.1 passer rating. The Rams did not sub in Van Brocklin for the second half as they typically did, perhaps because they went with the old wisdom that the veteran quarterback gives you experience in big games. The Golden Rankings article below refers to Van Brocklin being in the team's dog house for ignoring a running play the game before. Whatever, the reason, Van Brocklin came in towards the end of the 3rd quarter.
The Browns tied the score early in the 4th quarter, leading to Van Brocklin's dramatic championship winning touchdown pass, a needle threader catch and run to Tom Fears, who ran it in for a 73-yard touchdown. Van Brocklin finished 4-6, 128 yards (more than Waterfield's yard total in three quarters) and a 149.3 rating.
There's a strong argument that can be made that Van Brocklin deserves credit as the quarterback of the 1951 Rams, or at least half credit. Since coaches and players didn't anticipate the idea of "assigned credit" for quarterback win/loss records, mainly because these guys were paid peanuts and there were no resumes to put together for free agency, it would seem like an unfair penalty to give Van Brocklin a ZERO share of the championship. In my rankings for championship shares, I used a formula which combines the snap counts of the regular season games and also the emphasized snap counts of the postseason game...Van Brocklin receives just about 50% credit. Now the question is whether or not you use that 50% and round up, making both Van Brocklin and Watefield championship credit, and bringing both of their total to 2, or giving them 1.5 each.
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