One of our local TV newsies, who has a reasoned interest in sports, just tweeted a link to this Life magazine photo and an accompanying article. It’s a photo from 1961, with all 14 NFL teams’ quarterbacks – six of those guys are HOFers.
Could anything like this happen today, even discounting the fact that there are more than twice as many teams now? Will 43 percent of today’s starting QBs be in the Hall of Fame? Would half of them feel comfortable tossing a spiral underhand?
Anyway, neat photo – always good to see a new image of Y.A. Tittle.
Going by their accomplishments as of today, I’m only seeing 5, maybe 6 HOFmers among the QBs who have started a game this year: Rodgers, Peyton, Brady, Brees, Roethlisberger, possibly Eli.
I only see Brady, Peyton, and Rodgers as sure things.
Brees and others could make it, but haven’t put enough trophies in the case yet. Which makes me wonder: How many of the QB’s in the picture were thought of as HOF’ers at the time?
Longevity as the leader making his team a perennial title contender, mainly. Lots of teams have had flashes of goodness with mediocre QB’s, but I think you have to be the driving force behind a championship-caliber team to have them count. Rodgers has done it more than Brees, but I wouldn’t protest Brees making it too. It’s close.
Also, fair or not, Rodgers has a higher public profile (Discount double-check!). It does affect voters.
Brees has thrown for a lot of yardage in his career, but so did Drew Bledsoe.
I think he’s going to get in easily. How many two-time Super Bowl (starting) winning quarterbacks are not in the Hall? One, Jim Plunkett, and that’s because the rest of his career he was not a good quarterback. Ben plays to the same high level every year.
Tell me, who would you take over him? Brady, Brees, Peyton Manning, Rodgers? Who else?
Super Bowl MVP
2 time NFC MVP
Comeback Player of the Year in 2004
Offensive Player of the Year in 2008 & 2011
NFL single-season record for most passing yards in a season, with 5,476 yards
Fastest player in NFL history to reach 40,000 yards passing
All-time NFL leader in career passing yards per game
Only player in NFL history with multiple 5,000 yard passing seasons
Highest career post-season completion percentage in NFL history – 66.8%
Record for most consecutive games with at least 1 touchdown pass (54)
He will pass at least one of the 4 other qbs listed. Marino (no Super Bowl rings) and Elway are already in the hall. Manning is a sure thing, probably Favre too.
Only a scandal (betting or PEDs) can keep him out.
I can’t think of anyone else in the current crop of QBs I’d take over Roethlisberger. I don’t think that means he’s a HOFer though. I think Brady, Brees and Peyton are shoe-ins for the HOF. I don’t think Rodgers has done enough yet to guarantee his inclusion.
Counting his first Super Bowl victory as a point in his favor is a bit sketchy, given that he had the lowest passer rating in Super Bowl history; that game was won by the defense and by a single run by Willie Parker (which probably hurt the Steelers in the long run because it took them longer to accept that Willie Parker sucked).
He certainly played much better in the second Super Bowl win, but you could also argue that James Harrison was as big an offensive factor in that game as Roethlisberger was. Sure, he had the clutch play at the end of the game to win it, but that was as good a reception on Santonio Holmes’ part as it was a good throw on Roethlisberger’s.
The third Super Bowl appearance was his best performance in my opinion. Which goes to show that Super Bowl success (especially for the Steelers) doesn’t necessarily hinge on the play of the QB. Their two recent wins belong more to fantastic defensive play than to the offense.
Roethsliberger has also had his struggles with inconsistency, though I’d be more than willing to attribute the majority of that to injuries. Last year he was on a league MVP pace until he got injured. Afterwards, he was far from stellar.
I don’t think it’s impossible for him to play his way into the HOF; if the Steelers make the playoffs this year somehow, I’d say that’s a much larger credit to Roethlisberger’s favor than the first Super Bowl win.
As a final note, I’m not positive I’d take Brady, Brees, or Peyton to play on the Steelers’ current roster. I think Roethsliberger has been the best fit for the poor offensive line play they’ve had for the past few years; however, if I were starting a new team from scratch, I’d take everyone you mentioned before him.
[poignant note about the historical photograph] Two quarterbacks that related to my formative years as a Washington Redskins fan, growing up in Arlington VA, Sonny Jurgensen and Norm Snead. Sonny went to be a HOF, Norm just a quarterback.
Washington, the second worst team in the NFL in most of the 1950’s, thus drafted with the 2nd pick in 1961, Norman Snead. Snead was not bad, but the Redskins traded him to the Philadelphia Eagles for an aging, hurt Jurgensen. Bad deal Eagles.[/poignant story]
added: QB passer rating Jurgensen 82.62* Highest ever pre 1978. * pre-1978=dead ball era
Otto Graham played his career before 1978 and has a career passer rating of 86.6. Not sure if that includes AAFC, but I think he beats Jurgensen anyway.
Ben is going to get into the HOF, maybe not on the first ballot, but he has two rings and I just don’t see that being ignored. Plus, he IS an excellent QB, regardless of what people say about him. You give Holmes all the credit for catching that pass in the SB, but you forget that the play right before, he put one right in Santonio’s hands and he dropped it. Holmes was the worst choice for MVP for that SB, it should have been Ben, or IMO Harrison. But not Holmes. But anyway, Ben engineered an epic final drive to win that game, and you can’t minimize that.
The other thing that will help him is that Eli will probably get in. (I wouldn’t trade Ben for Eli).
I also wouldn’t take Peyton over Ben. Regardless of fantastic regular season numbers, he only has one ring. That is not going to keep him out of the HOF, of course, but i wouldn’t trade all of his wins and TD passes for one less ring.
Brady, Brees, Roethlisberger, both Mannings and possibly Rodgers will be HOFers. It’s way too soon to say that about Rodgers, but he’s on his way. I don’t think Ben and Eli will be first ballot HOFers. (I personally don’t think Eli should get into the hall, but he will because of his last name and the east coast bias.)
This is kinda nitpicking, but that’s not precisely true. The '70s were the dead ball era, but that was really an aberration, rather than the end of one kind of football and the start of another. The '50s and '60s were offense-dominated. For instance, not counting 2013, seven of the eight highest scoring years in NFL history fell between 1948 and 1965. Link.
That said, the modern era of gaudy passing stats, specifically, really is unprecedented. (Though aside from the last half dozen years or so, that can be overstated as well. For instance, 1962 had more passing yards per game than 1992, which is definitely not how most of us tend to think about those years.)
I know this is a very common fight, but: Really? It would be one thing to use a 2-1 championship advantage to break a tie or give one player who’s been very slightly worse the nod, but, as excellent as Roethlisberger has been over his career, he’s not even close to Manning. Hell, Manning even has the edge in postseason statistics. The only edge that Roethlisberger has is in playoff W-L record and Super Bowl rings, but one can’t just ignore the other 52 players on the roster when counting rings. Specifically, the Steelers have had arguably the best defense in the NFL, on average, during Roethlisberger’s tenure, while with just a few exceptions Manning’s defenses have been middling to poor.
Pittsburgh scoring defense ranks, 2004-2012: 1st, 3rd, 11th, 2nd, 1st, 12th, 1st, 1st, 6th. Average: 4.2. Above average every year, and two-thirds of the time they’ve been in the Top 3, which isn’t a bad shorthand definition of “elite.”
Indy scoring defense ranks, 1998-2010: 29th, 17th, 15th, 31st, 7th, 20th, 19th, 2nd, 23rd, 1st, 7th, 8th, 23rd. Average: 15.5. That’s really pedestrian. That a franchise with that defense won almost 11 games per season in that span is incredible.
“Roethlisberger” hasn’t won two rings: the Pittsburgh Steelers have.
Yes, really. And it’s not just because i’m a fan of Ben’s. He did help win that second super bowl, like it or not, although I do agree that he was there for the ride in the SB against Seattle.
But, if O’Donnell had just “gone along for the ride” in 1995 and not made those huge mistakes against the Cowboys, the Steelers might have won SB XXX.
Here’s my reasoning on Peyton. He’s just one of those guys who i believe thinks too much and lets the pressure of the big game get to him. There is no question he is the best statistical QB of his era, and he’s been amazingly consistent in the regular season. But I wouldn’t choose him over Brady, Brees or even Ben if i had to win one game.
I think a bigger case can be made for Eli Manning riding the Giant’s defense to two SB wins, and that 4th down pass against the Patriots was pure freakin’ luck. I don’t think Eli is better than Peyton even though he has 2 rings to Peyton’s 1. Ben was the best QB to come out of that draft.
Peyton had the team at Tennessee to win a Nat’l Championship, but lost the big game his senior year. The next year, Tennessee won it all with Tee Martin at QB. THAT’s more than a coincidence.m that’s a guy who seems to unravel at the wrong time.
Just last week, he blew a 24 pt lead to the Patriots, a team that is good, but not nearly as good as the Broncos. Hell, the Broncos rushed for over 200 yards, and still lost the game. That’s something that has happened way too often in Peyton’s career… Not winning the big game, not putting a team away. Sorry, but there is something to winning, and it’s not just riding defenses. Roethisberger never had the kind of receivers Manning had, nor the offensive line. So even if the Steeler defense was better than the Colts, their offensive deficiencies were big… Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne, vs. Hines Ward and whoever?
Sorry. I put weight on winning those big games, and Manning, despite all the talent and the world, can’t help who he is… He gets happy feet in the pocket when he gets nervous, and he loses more than he wins in the playoffs. Last year is another example of him having home field through the playoffs and blowing it in the first round. Again.
First, the Patriots are not vastly inferior to the Broncos, as you imply. They’re one of the best teams in the league, and they were playing at home. In fact, by kickoff, the Patriots were a slight favorite to win the game outright according to most sports books.
But, more to the point, this is actually what I’m talking about: The *Broncos *blew a 24 point lead to the Patriots, not just Manning. Manning had a rough day against a very good defense – which is going to happen frequently to even the best QBs – but he’s not responsible for a defense that let Brady have the 2nd or 3rd best game of his season, nor for botched punt that led directly to the Patriots’ game winning FG, both of which I’d point to as “blew the game” culprits *long *before I got to the quarterback who led a 10-play, 80-yard drive to tie the game late in the fourth quarter as things were looking their most dire. Drew Brees had a day that was just about as underwhelming as Manning’s when he played against the Patriots in Foxborough earlier this season, but we don’t take that as evidence that Brees can’t win big games, right?
For that matter, Brees, like Manning, had that one championship season, but outside of that he’s just 2-4 in the postseason. Where’s the ‘Drew Brees is a choker’ meme?
Assuming you’re serious, I think Warner makes it in, but probably not before Ben or Eli. Possibly in the same class, but certainly not before.
He won a Superbowl, and though a bit of a journeyman, he won everywhere he played. He even took the Cardinals to the Superbowl; everyone knows Arizona is where players go to die. He should get into the HOF just for that.