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

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

You can see how & where rules effected the game. Arguably some of the biggest came around 1980 when OL'm could start to use their hands/arms in pass pro.

Some of the old timers we're talking about ...
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I love watching Sonny




Very cool to see how far QB's have come with their drops, footwork. Just a different game. These guys were just making it work, trial & error, by any means. Today kids are funneled through elite schools & camps. Have trainers, mentors, former pros help them. Amazing to see how far it's game in a lot of respects.

That’s a great chart of passer rating leaders.

And it demonstrates that each generation has created a new standard by roughly the same ratio as the last one. So while Patrick Mahomes is awesome, what he’s doing is similar to what Sid Luckman, Sonny Jurgensen, Steve Young also did.

One thing I like to take into account is how the all-time leaderboard looked when these guys retired.

Yes, that period around 1980 is huge. The Mel Blount rule changes a lot, in my opinion, and the QB protection rules start to increase. Mel Blount Rule has arguably the biggest impact since 1933 when a forward pass is allowed anywhere behind LOS (previously had to drop back past five yards.)

History of NFL Rules

I watched A Football Life with Sonny Jurgensen after you and someone else in this thread wrote about him. Very informative. An incredible player…seems like another unfortunate victim of coaches thinking they’re more important than star QBs. Sonny should have gotten that nod over Kilmer.

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

That’s a great chart of passer rating leaders.

And it demonstrates that each generation has created a new standard by roughly the same ratio as the last one. So while Patrick Mahomes is awesome, what he’s doing is similar to what Sid Luckman, Sonny Jurgensen, Steve Young also did.

One thing I like to take into account is how the all-time leaderboard looked when these guys retired.

This is also very important to me. Where they were when they left the game matters a lot. Some guys that are afterthoughts today by many were as good as it gets and retired #1 or top 5 by several important measures. I feel the more you follow that out to its conclusion, the more era's matter.

Yes, that period around 1980 is huge. The Mel Blount rule changes a lot, in my opinion, and the QB protection rules start to increase. Mel Blount Rule has arguably the biggest impact since 1933 when a forward pass is allowed anywhere behind LOS (previously had to drop back past five yards.)

History of NFL Rules

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Blount and the rules from 78 might be the two biggest ever. Physicality & technique were directly changed forever.

I watched A Football Life with Sonny Jurgensen after you and someone else in this thread wrote about him. Very informative. An incredible player…seems like another unfortunate victim of coaches thinking they’re more important than star QBs. Sonny should have gotten that nod over Kilmer.

Sonny got a raw deal for sure. One of the purest passers I've seen. I always like to imagine things on different timelines, alt settings and he's one of the guys that might be thought of a lot different given a few changes. Mainly Coaching/FO. I'd like to say things have got better, I guess they have a little but we still see some of that **** today. I'll stop there lol.

 

[Tony2046]

Yesterday was my 84th birthday. As a youngster, I lived near Cleveland and I was a rabid, in fact obsessive Cleveland Browns fan. Graham was a marvel. To this day, I have never seen a quarterback with his "touch." He floated the ball right over the outstretched hands of any defender into the capable hands of Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie, his two best receivers. The Browns were coached by Paul Brown, who was that era's version of Bill Belichik--deadly serious, closed-mouthed, incredibly inventive.

Now I live in New England and have seen the entire career of Tom Brady, and I have been just as obsessed by the Patriots as I was by the Browns. I think I have had the unusual privilege of rooting for two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time--Graham and Brady--and watching them win title after title, dominating the game. As a football fan, I have been incredibly fortunate. My teams almost never lose.

But I would like to warn those reading this note: I am about to move to California, not far from San Francisco. If my luck holds, and I have no reason to think it wont, Trey Lance is going to be a hell of a quarterback.

Happy birthday young man.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I think @Bleedthrough will like this one from 2001.

The greatest quarterback of all time

Overlooked by most polls, the best person to ever take a snap in the NFL is Bart Starr.

www.salon.com

I've found only a little recognition of Steve Grogan's ability and success in all time quarterback analyses. Dreith and Tatum, along with later not being started in Super Bowl XX and in Denver the next season, are the biggest culprits in hiding his effectiveness. He is one of the greatest in adjusting his game after being ravaged by injuries. Game management, leadership and the ability to make the big plays with the game on the line are the criteria for measurement, which translate to wins. I agree Starr belongs right up there, but he only had the chance because of Lombardi and the team surrounding him.

The Patriots of the 80's were highly talented with some legendary veterans from the 70's. Grogan, and later Flutie, made them cohesive and winners. Eason could throw it and that's about it. The team picked up on every level to win with him in there in '85 and '86. Passing stats alone do not reflect a quarterback's importance.

But that Starr stat does reflect how good he was. Bravo. He's one of the handful you want starting if you want to win a game.

 

[Tony2046]

Curious to see the oldest known footage of an NFL QB throwing a TD pass.



I don’t see any TD passes here but some great footage of 1934 championship…Ed Danowski is #22 on Giants (white helmets. ). This is the famous sneakers game (though the actual impact of the sneakers is probably BS.)

That is some cool stuff. Wow

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

Yesterday was my 84th birthday.

Happy Birthday. I hope I make it.

As a youngster, I lived near Cleveland and I was a rabid, in fact obsessive Cleveland Browns fan. Graham was a marvel. To this day, I have never seen a quarterback with his "touch." He floated the ball right over the outstretched hands of any defender into the capable hands of Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie, his two best receivers. The Browns were coached by Paul Brown, who was that era's version of Bill Belichik--deadly serious, closed-mouthed, incredibly inventive.

Now I live in New England and have seen the entire career of Tom Brady, and I have been just as obsessed by the Patriots as I was by the Browns. I think I have had the unusual privilege of rooting for two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time--Graham and Brady--and watching them win title after title, dominating the game. As a football fan, I have been incredibly fortunate. My teams almost never lose.

Brady & Otto really are similar is many - different regards. Both really lifted up and brought their teams to new heights. Faces are synonymous with certain places but both those guys really put their stamp on Cleveland & New England. Privilege is the right word.

But I would like to warn those reading this note: I am about to move to California, not far from San Francisco. If my luck holds, and I have no reason to think it wont, Trey Lance is going to be a hell of a quarterback.

I love Lance. He should be a good one.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Quarterbacks with the most paradoxical careers and strangest Hall cases:

• Eli Manning (2X Champ and mediocre QB)
• Tobin Rote (NFL and AFL Champion QB)
• Earl Morrall (Backup most of career / MVP in 68 / took 72 Dolphins to SB)

2X Champion Quarterbacks Not in Canton

• Rote (AFL and NFL)
• Jim Plunkett
• Tommy Thompson
• Ed Danowski
• Jack Kemp (AFL Championships)

Morrall was very good. But he was no Unitas. Just as Young was no Montana.

I've always despised the Giants, but I always appreciated - and yup was apprehensive about leading up to both Super Bowls - Tom Coughlin. Tom was different. What he did to get that BC team on track was purely brilliant.

And I also always appreciated Eli Manning's efforts and accomplishments. He did grow up in his brother's shadow. But he made a career for himself in his own right. He did step up both times, and got his team in position to benefit from our near misses and the officials' bad judgement. He made plays.

Jim Plunkett was clearly, obviously a very special player, a tremendous quarterback and a total winner, from college to the Patriots to the 49ers to the Raiders. He made great plays to win games, but really impressed with the 6-1 start in '74. I flatly believed at that time he had two Super Bowls in him; I certainly didn't think of him as inferior to Starr or Griese or anyone for that matter. I hoped those titles would be won right here with us. But he got killed with injuries. He willed San Francisco to that 6-1 start they had before fading. That he was a former Patriot contributed to him being a total afterthought to the league and media by 1980.

But never to me. Or Al Davis, either. Pastorini was clearly past it, but one thing Jim always had was personal character and determination. No surprise to me at all when he succeeded there.

To me, our greatest advantage in that huge, historic game in the Mausoleum in January of '86 was that Plunkett stood helpless on the sidelines. I knew he would have been fired up to beat his old team.

To me Jim will always be a bonified, worthy Hall of Famer. I'd take him over several quarterbacks who are already in there. No coincidence at all to me that he, like so many others including Henry Ellard, just happened to play for the Patriots.

 

[Deus Irae]

Yesterday was my 84th birthday. As a youngster, I lived near Cleveland and I was a rabid, in fact obsessive Cleveland Browns fan. Graham was a marvel. To this day, I have never seen a quarterback with his "touch." He floated the ball right over the outstretched hands of any defender into the capable hands of Dante Lavelli and Mac Speedie, his two best receivers. And accurate? I have a vivid memory of Lavelli running into the end zone, facing squarely away from Graham, holding two hands just above his shoulders without looking back. Graham threw the ball and it arched toward Lavelli and came down right between his hands as if drawn by magnetic attraction. Touchdown. Only then did Lavelli look backward toward Graham and both men raised their fists.

Of course, the Browns were coached by Paul Brown, who was that era's version of Bill Belichik--deadly serious, closed-mouthed, incredibly inventive.

Now I live in New England and have seen the entire career of Tom Brady, and I have been just as obsessed by the Patriots as I was by the Browns. I think I have had the unusual privilege of rooting for two of the greatest quarterbacks of all time--Graham and Brady--and watching them win title after title, dominating the game. As a football fan, I have been incredibly fortunate. My teams almost never lose.

But I would like to warn those reading this note: I am about to move to California, not far from San Francisco. If my luck holds, and I have no reason to think it wont, Trey Lance is going to be a hell of a quarterback.

A belated happy 84th, and may you be around for many more.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Morrall was very good. But he was no Unitas. Just as Young was no Montana.

I've always despised the Giants, but I always appreciated - and yup was apprehensive about leading up to both Super Bowls - Tom Coughlin. Tom was different. What he did to get that BC team on track was purely brilliant.

And I also always appreciated Eli Manning's efforts and accomplishments. He did grow up in his brother's shadow. But he made a career for himself in his own right. He did step up both times, and got his team in position to benefit from our near misses and the officials' bad judgement. He made plays.

Jim Plunkett was clearly, obviously a very special player, a tremendous quarterback and a total winner, from college to the Patriots to the 49ers to the Raiders. He made great plays to win games, but really impressed with the 6-1 start in '74. I flatly believed at that time he had two Super Bowls in him; I certainly didn't think of him as inferior to Starr or Griese or anyone for that matter. I hoped those titles would be won right here with us. But he got killed with injuries. He willed San Francisco to that 6-1 start they had before fading. That he was a former Patriot contributed to him being a total afterthought to the league and media by 1980.

But never to me. Or Al Davis, either. Pastorini was clearly past it, but one thing Jim always had was personal character and determination. No surprise to me at all when he succeeded there.

To me, our greatest advantage in that huge, historic game in the Mausoleum in January of '86 was that Plunkett stood helpless on the sidelines. I knew he would have been fired up to beat his old team.

To me Jim will always be a bonified, worthy Hall of Famer. I'd take him over several quarterbacks who are already in there. No coincidence at all to me that he, like so many others including Henry Ellard, just happened to play for the Patriots.

Great stuff, APF. I appreciate your perspective. I don't go back far enough to have seen these guys lives, and watching games/YouTube doesn't give me the full experience, so it's great to get viewpoints from people who saw it all go down. And the context is also imporant...players who look great on paper were not always perceived as great during their time, and vice versa, so it's good to get perspective.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Eli Manning stacks up a lot better when using ANY/A than passer rating. I'll be the first to get angry at the very existence of Eli and his destruction of the rational universe, and I've argued that he should not be a Hall of Fame inductee. However, using the normal formulations in the rankings, and changing the performance stats to include sacks, he goes from the 60-70 range to the 45-55 range, which is a little below Hall of Fame territory but not way below it.

I think Sack % is the missng piece when it comes to bird's eye QB stats...really the only category where Eli was often among the league leaders. He did get rid of the ball quickly and avoided negative plays.



Let's look at it like this:

Aaron Rodgers has that 1.4% interception rate, which we know he tries very hard to uphold.
Eli Manning had a 3.0% interception rate, which isn't good, and we're well aware of his mistakes.

But...

Aaron Rodgers has a 6.6% sack rate because he would rather take a sack than hurt his precious QB rating.
Eli Manning had a 4.8% sack rate, which is quite good.

Overall, Rodgers is certainly better. Interceptions are much worse than sacks, but sacks also hurt more than we give them credit for, and they're perhaps as much as a QB responsibility as interceptions.

But, the overall results are:

Rodgers - 8.0% negative play rate (sacks + INTs)
E Manning - 7.8% negative play rate (sacks + INTs)

Again, this is not saying Eli is better than Rodgers...the INTs are weighted a lot more heavily, but it's also something to note because it's suprising. Rodgers gets credit for all of the positives and the negatives are blamed on the team; Manning gets blamed for all the negatives and the positives (pass protection) is credited to the team.


---

And looking at the missing sack piece of the formula when stacking up Brady and Rodgers (aka the passer rating prince.)

Brady - 6.5% negative play rate
Rodgers - 8.0% negative play rate

In this case, I would bet that Brady is overall better, in terms of value, despite throwing 0.3% more INTs. If they each drop back 1000 times (roughly two seasons), Brady throws 3 more interceptions, but Rodgers takes 19 more sacks.

---

This all begs the question: how many sacks does it take to equal an interception?

 

[patsfanincleveland]

No guarantee; but I believe he gave that team the better chance to win. My (minority) opinion.

Montana's huge advantage those last years was experience. Exactly what Brady enjoys and utilizes today.


Anderson's Bengals and Marino's Dolphins were very good teams. I wouldn't call them also rans, nor the (another MVP! not on list) Boomer Bengals in '88 [I believe Pats were better than them. Beat them. Stephens > Woods, Flutie(if Berry hadn't insanely benched him) > Esiason, Fryar/Morgan > whatever Cincy WR's etc.]. Elway was the only tomato can Joe faced in the big one. Montana was clutch in all of them.

Young had one great Super Bowl. So did Mark Rypien.


Peyton, Elway, Kelly, Bledsoe say hello


The 49ers of the early 90's were an all-time great team. Period.


Exceptional, yes.

Other worldly? For some reason my mind is telling me Jeff Garcia...

Many other quarterbacks would have thrived on that team. Yes, few would achieve or surpass the production Steve Young did. Flutie is one of them.

Kenny Anderson would absolutely flat out ball in today's NFL.

Had he played his career in Foxboro under BB, he is a multi Super Bowl winner.

 

[BaconGrundleCandy]

 

[Deus Irae]

View attachment 33017

Sacks are, even at their least harmful, basically equivalent to penalties that include loss of down.

 

[sean10mm]

This all begs the question: how many sacks does it take to equal an interception?

Every 45 sack yards is a pick basically if I'm reading the formula right since a pick is treated as a -45 yard play.

ANY/A - adjusted net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown) - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks). See AY/A. Note that we are now using 20 yards per TD instead of 10, because of research by Chase Stuart at the p-f-r blog.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

View attachment 33017

That is ****ing nuts, man. I never would have thought that.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

I don't go back far enough to have seen these guys live

Context, background and stakes are critical to any event or performance, including in sports.

Imagine looking at that Super Bowl in Arizona without all the DefameGate nonsense, going a decade without a title and the fact the entire nonlocal press box was cheering against the Patriots.

When the Niners got the ball back as the game wound down and Montana pointed out John Candy on the sidelines during the TV timeout, I said to my Dad, "OK, if you could have anybody ever for your quarterback in this situation, who would you pick?" He simply answered, "San Francisco's got him." And you know the rest. Of course today I rue Berry's insane benching of Flutie and maintain we could have ruined Walsh's last game if Doug was kept in there.

I too was too young to understand or appreciate the Ice Bowl, or the Celtics' early titles, but got to hear lots and lots of stories from my Dad and older brother. I know we hate the Jets but that game in the Orange Bowl was the closest thing to poetic justice there'd ever be for the NFL's sick corruption in their war against the AFL.

Anybody who never read Bill Russell's Second Wind, I recommend reading it as soon as you can. Priceless stories, history, tears and laughs.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

That is ****ing nuts, man. I never would have thought that.

Makes sense but within that small percentage are some classic game winning drives. One factor is that a defense that is able to get to the quarterback isn't used to seeing him come right back and keep driving down the field anyway.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

In roughly a ten year period after graduating high school, Otto Graham...

• Set a ton of records at Northwestern as great collegiate athlete
• Served in World War II
• Won a professional basketball championship in the NBL (precursor to the NBA), as a role player for the Rochester Royals.
• Joined the newly formed AAFC and won four championships, along with every accolade.
• Was a major cause for the Browns and 49ers to get picked up by the NFL.
• Won his first NFL Championship (of three)

Not a bad decade...

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

In roughly a ten year period after graduating high school, Otto Graham...

• Set a ton of records at Northwestern as great collegiate athlete
• Served in World War II
• Won a professional basketball championship in the NBL (precursor to the NBA), as a role player for the Rochester Royals.
• Joined the newly formed AAFC and won four championships, along with every accolade.
• Was a major cause for the Browns and 49ers to get picked up by the NFL.
• Won his first NFL Championship (of three)

Not a bad decade...

Legend

 

[Tony2046]

Every 45 sack yards is a pick basically if I'm reading the formula right since a pick is treated as a -45 yard play.

ANY/A - adjusted net yards per passing attempt: (pass yards + 20*(pass TD) - 45*(interceptions thrown) - sack yards)/(passing attempts + sacks). See AY/A. Note that we are now using 20 yards per TD instead of 10, because of research by Chase Stuart at the p-f-r blog.

Less than that if the sack yards are divided by passing attempts + sacks

Or not. Haha