Twice a First Team All-Pro, and twice the AP NFL MVP, neither Ben nor Eli have made the All-Pro team even once, if profootball reference is to be believed. Ben only has 800 more yds passing despite starting 22 more games. Football doesn’t have anything like OPS+ or ERA+ that I know of, but if it did, Warner’s days with the Greatest Show on Turf have to be much better compared to his peers than any of Ben’s seasons. (I’m ignoring Eli because he isn’t the equal of Ben by pretty much any statistical metric you want to use other than sack rate: Y/A, Adj Y/A, QB Rating, %Intercepted, etc…)
Anyway, returning to Warner, I’m just not getting the journeyman label. For the 1999 and 2001period, he was pretty much the best QB in the NFL. Peyton was close in '99, if you believe Football Outsiders. When has Ben ever been the best QB in the NFL? I agree with you that Warner probably won’t get in before Ben, or even Eli, but it’s ridiculous that’s going to be the case.
See, I don’t think Eli Manning gets in to the HoF at all (which pains me as a Giants fan). His struggles this year (he’s 32) suggest he’s not going to have a Rich Gannon-like late career stat boom. Assuming that’s true (and assuming no 3rd Super Bowl win, which would of course punch his ticket), voters will have a tough time with him.
He’s got the two Super Bowls wins going for him – both of which came at the end of fantastic postseasons in which he came up huge – and a deserved reputation for playing well in close & late situations (oh ok, fine: a reputation for being “clutch”). But OTOH, he’s never been a guy with elite stats, topping out as a “Top 10” kind of QB in his better years, and he’s got a serious strike against him: too many interceptions. There’s an excellent chance he’s going to lead the league in picks thrown for the third time this year, to go along with two 2nds, a 3rd, and a 4th. He’s also got a couple years in the Top 3 for fumbling. He just turns the ball over entirely too often, and while his other stats are quite good, they’re not so great that they overshadow the turnovers.
I think that, at the end of the day, HoF voters are going to want to put Eli in because of the playoff greatness, but they’re going to have to compare him to his peers in this, the golden age of NFL passing statistics. Taken as a whole, his career in numbers is just going to look so ordinary compared to that of Rodgers, Brees, Brady, and Peyton. Furthermore, and perhaps just as damning, there’s going to be a whole raft of 2nd tier guys who are demonstrably ahead of him in regular season stats (like Rivers, Roethlisberger, etc.). I think he suffers too much in the comparison to get in, ultimately.
I don’t disagree with any of that. And I agree that he probably deserves to enter the HOF before Ben and Eli.
Here’s what I’m seeing is hurting Kurt Warner’s case:
[ul]
[li]A third of his career he was not the full-time starter. Part of that is due to injury, part of it due to shitty play.[/li][li]He’s had a bunch of horrifically bad years. Was at least some of that due to playing on horrifically bad teams? For sure. But it can’t be overlooked.[/li][li]Almost half the seasons he played, he got benched in favor of arguably lesser players (one of whom was Eli Manning). Notable that Warner was 5-4 at the time, and Manning went 1-6, but OTOH he got benched in favor of Josh McCown, and several times he got benched in favor of Matt Leinart :eek:. Again, many of those were due to injury, but he still wasn’t playing well enough in those seasons to automatically regain his starting job once healthy.[/li][/ul]
Now, is all of that fair? Absolutely not. But it still happened.
Crazy - a coworker of mine brought in that very issue a couple weeks back and I snapped some pics of it. We’re both Vikings fans, and it was cool to see the article on young Fran Tarkenton. I also took some pics of the Mad Men-era advertisements - one was a full page ad for canned Chef Boy-ar-dee pasta.
Layne and Unitas were definite. Tittle was close, but his last few years put him over the top. Starr was already a pro bowler, but too young. Jurgenson had his first great season in 1961, and Tarkenton was a rookie.
There may be one or two more unexpected names among current QBs who will make it to the hall. Having the right supporting cast can make a big difference.
Which QB would you want from these stat lines in their playoff career?
(No cheating by looking)
Att. Comp Comp % Yards TD Int Passer Rating
A 460 734 62.67% 5772 45 21 95.6
B 481 761 63.21% 5679 32 21 88.4
C 553 887 62.34% 5949 42 22 87.4
D 248 409 60.64% 3150 20 17 83.7
E 261 456 57.24% 3833 30 26 83.0
F 120 226 53.10% 1663 7 10 68.9
Here’s who they are:
A = Joe Montana
B = Peyton “Choke in Big Games” Manning
C = Tom “Mr. Clutch” Brady
D = Ben “Better than Manning” Rothlisberger
E = Terry “4 Super Bowl Rings” Bradshaw
F = Johnny Unitas
Right, a long career of nearly uniformly exceptional performance is what will get you in, and the rings are only clinchers. That will leave Eli out, btw - he’s had a couple of pretty good years with a good team around him, and just as many like, well, the current one.
Dilfer is only one example of a solid *team *with only an average QB being able to win it all. Marino never had a good enough team around him after his rookie year, by that token.
Part of the problem is that the Super Bowl is one game. You can have “average” NFL QB’s who, for one game (or a few including playoffs) have a special game.
I would consider guys like Ken Stabler, Doug Williams, Jim Plunkett, Jeff Hostetler, Brad Johnson, Bob Griese, Jim McMahon, and Joe Flacco to be no better than average NFL quarterbacks who have won it all. And Joe Namath may have been worse than any of those listed, including Dilfer.
I’d put Flacco in his company. Flacco put up tremendous numbers last post-season, but they were pretty unusual for him. And don’t forget Brad Johnson - never was there a more average QB with a ring than him.
Almost no chance that Ben gets in, Eli is a real long shot. Now in the QB era the grading scale for QBs will change dramatically. Neither Ben or Eli could ever claim they were the best QB in any year they played and it’s a stretch to say they were top 3. The goal posts have been moved, leading a well rounded team, which was essentially built before they arrived, to two SB titles just doesn’t mean that much any more.
Back to the OP, there are probably 4 HOFers in Brady, Manning, Brees and Rodgers right now (Rodgers needs to keep going a while longer, but it’s a safe bet). Then I’d bet there are 2-3 more starting in the league today, we just don’t know who they are yet. Maybe Luck, RG3 and Wilson, maybe Luck, Kaepernick and Newton, maybe Romo, Cutler and Rivers, maybe Ryan, Foles and Stafford, maybe Ben and Eli have Elway-like finishes to their careers…who knows, but I think the odds are good that there will be 6 or more starters from this years starting class in the Hall.
