1. Brady
2. Rodgers
Might put him at number one if I was the fan of another team. I don't feel like he needs justification either. Absolutely dominant the last few years.
3. Peyton Manning
I cannot believe how well he's playing. I thought he would decline this year, but he's playing as well as ever.
4. Drew Brees
A lot of people are down on him because the Saints are 2-5. Here's some simple statistics: Saints rushing ypg: 72.6 (32nd in league). Saints defensive ypg: (474.7, last in the league. Next closest is 424). Saints passing ypg: 316.0 (1st in league). You're insane if you think Brees has anything to do with the Saints' troubles. He's still putting up very good numbers, and is on pace for another 5000 yard season.
5. Ben Roethlisberger
He's an excellent quarterback that is more than capable of carrying a team, but I've never really seen him as a guy that dominates a game the same way guys like Brady do. There are never those times when he seems otherworldy and truly unstoppable. On the other hand, there are also hardly ever times when you wish for someone else. I still think he's a tier below the other four however.
Has really put it together this year. Has everything you want: good decision maker, accurate, strong arm, good pocket presence. Why isn't he in the top 5? I don't know, the two typical excuses are that he hasn't done it for as long, and he hasn't had a ton of success in the playoffs. So I'll go with those.
Everyone loves a winner, but as a bitter Pats fan I'm not buying it. Up until the 2007 post season, he looked like a bust. In his first four seasons his highest season long passer rating was 75.9. He played well that post season, and one miracle helmet catch later was a Super Bowl champion. The next year it looked like he improved, until it came playoff time of course, where he managed a poor 40.7 passer rating. The next two years he failed to lead his team to the post season. Then before the 2011 season he declared himself elite, to the laughter of the rest of the NFL. The Giants spent much of the year playing from behind, which led to several celebrated 4th quarter comebacks, as well as a surprisingly large number of failures on potential game-winning drives.
The following post season we all know what happened. He played very well against the Falcons (20th in pass defense) and Packers (32nd in pass defense), moderately well against a tough 49ers defense (16th in pass defense), and very well against a very poor Patriots secondary (31st in pass defense), including a last minute touchdown. At a glance his numbers look impressive, and he beat some very good football teams, but looking back, he was not exactly playing against all-world pass defenses. Nevertheless, with 2 Super Bowls he could finally claim to be elite despite his mostly average statistics and win percentage without being laughed out of the building.
Now it's halfway through 2012, and he's led the Gaints to a mark of 29 ppg (3rd in the league), but nevertheless seems to be allergic to having elite stats. Normally a quarterback in such a situation would be called a "system QB" or something similar, but largely because of a couple of miracle catches in Super Bowls he is instead called "clutch". A couple of weeks ago against the Eagles he was able to show how "clutch" he was by throwing a 77 yard touchdown to a wide open Victor Cruz. He tried to show how clutch he was against the Eagles earlier in the season, but instead went 1/6 passing for 9 yards on the Giants' final drives, with a couple of questionable pass interferences along the way. The Giants somehow managed to get well within field goal range. Eli then did his best to throw an interception to Nnamdi Asomugha, but his receiver thought this was a bad idea and committed offensive pass interference to prevent it, much to the chagrin of kicker Lawrence Tynes. The Giants then lost the game on a missed 54-yard field goal. It was then explained that Eli did his best to put them in field goal range, and as such he did not actually fail at being clutch. Meanwhile, Patriots kicker Stephan Gostowski missed a 42-yard game-winning field goal (he missed by approximately 42 yards to the left) against the Arizona Cardinals and Patriots QB Tom Brady was shortly thereafter declared not-clutch.
Manning supporters claim that he is hands down the most clutch quarterback in the league, pointing to the fact that he leads the league in 4th-quarter comebacks over the last couple of years. Critics point out the fact that it turns out that this is not actually that good of a strategy for winning football games, citing the Giants' 9-7 record last year, a record that is notable for not being good enough to make the playoffs almost ever. Supporters counter by saying that he is in fact a "clutch post season QB." Critics then are then left to wonder why Eli Manning evidently waits until Christmas to study his playbook, and grumble something about "sample size."
Anyway, the point is, no no no no Eli Manning is not an elite QB and he never ever will be. He wasn't elite in 2007, he wasn't elite in 2011, he wasn't elite any other year, and he's not elite now. I don't care if he put up good passing numbers against bad pass defenses last post season, I don't care if some excellent defense and a helmet catch helped him beat the Patriots in 2007, and I certainly don't care that "
Eli Manning’s play recognition set up Victor Cruz’s game-winning TD". The fact of the matter is that he is currently the most overrated player in the NFL, and that's why he's not in my top 5. So Eli, if you want to be break my top 5 (note: Eli probably doesn't care about my top 5) do what every other elite quarterback in the history of the NFL has done and win a higher percentage of your games, and put up some stats that at least vaguely suggest that you might be better than just good.
Well, this accidentally turned into a rant about Eli Manning, but nothing gets me angrier than people claiming Eli Manning is "the best quarterback in the NFL" when he's not even actually as good as advertised at winning close games. First Philly game this year, Steelers, Niners, and Eagles games last year, even his supposed "clutch" Redskin game this year where he threw an absolutely pathetic interception with 5 or so minutes left, was nobody watching any of those?!? Seriously, find me an elite quarterback who has LOST more games in 2-minute drills than Eli Manning in the last couple of years. You know what? I bet you can't, because Eli has lost almost as many games in that situation as most of them have lost at all.
