I just heard Boomer Esaison claim Tom Brady.
I agree, with Joe Montana a close second.
Probably with Unitas second.
I’d say Montana then Brady. Idk exactly why in that order. Maybe because Montana played in a era when QBs weren’t quite as protected as Brady, and receivers weren’t quite as open.
Funny that Boomer said that because I always thought he had the makings of greatness and with a better team behind him he could have been in the conversation.
Brady is the best I have ever seen. I love watching Manning, but I think Brady is more versatile and creative. He is one of the rare athletes where it is a privilege to watch him play.
Montana
I think Montana is wildly overrated.
Brady is my vote. Elway was the best of that generation in my book.
Comparing QB’s is tough because the game has changed so much. That being said, watching Brady operate I have to think that he would have been hugely successful in the days when the QB called the plays.
Montana. Let him play in today’s NFL where DB’s aren’t allowed to breathe on WR’s and he’d have even more championships.
Otto Graham.
You’re kidding, right? His first ten years in the league stunk (at least as compared to contemporaries), 54.7% completion percentage, only 1 more TD than INT, 73.8 QB rating. Sure, he picked that up over his last several years, but no way is he comparable to Montana or Marino. He got excessive credit for some playoff comebacks, simple as that, which pretty much makes him the NFL equivalent of Jack Morris.
He was a one man show for the first 10+ years of his career. He carried shitty teams year-in-year out. If he’d have been on the 49ers under Walsh with all that supporting talent he’d still hold about every single NFL record. In other words, he’d have done what Young did.
That’s who Peter King ranks first, followed by Sammy Baugh, Montana, Unitas, and Favre for a top 5. Personally, I think that Favre shouldn’t be ranked nearly that high.
Brady is a wonderful player, does throw downfield better than Montana I would say, but Joe had better feet, could buy a bit of time. Could Brady have made the play that ended in “The Catch”? Probably not. Of course, Montana benefits from who he was throwing to, while Brady has had mostly a patchwork corps around him, with the exceptions, Moss and Welker, playing after the SB wins.
There is still only one with 4 Super Bowl wins and that is Terry Bradshaw.
Rating athletes is just like rating the top 250 movies at IMDB. Noone ever gives sufficient recognition to players thay have not scene. How many people have you heard say that there is no way that Babe Ruth could be that good or that Tiger is the best of all time? Saying that Tom Brady is the best is like saying that The Shawshank Redemption is the best movie ever.
I must admit that had Brady not performed so poorly today, but rather gone on to win the Super Bowl I would rate him number one.
Joe Montana has 4 Super Bowl wins.
That’s the way I see it. Look at who they played with. Joe Montana had Jerry Rice, Dwight Clark, Earl Cooper, Roger Craig, and Freddie Solomon. Elway played sixteen seasons with the Broncos and there was only one other hall of famer (Shannon Sharpe) who played for the Broncos during those years. (Technically, Tony Dorsett and Gary Zimmerman also played for the Broncos during Elway’s time. But both of them played the best years on other teams and were at the end of their careers when they signed with Denver.)
When Brady was out for the season in 2008 (how well I remember; I took him with my first round pick that year, and got all of 12 minutes worth of playing time…), his team still went 11-5 and almost made the playoffs…
And yet, it’s not like Brady has ever had a ton of talent around him; I think he’s just been fortunate to play with the best head couch in the league on a team that has a knack for getting the absolute most out of every part. I mean, Brady had a great Randy Moss for one year (the 16-0 season, they still lost in SB). Welker’s great, Gronk is great…but other than Moss and Brady I can’t think of any other player from the offense side of the ball from the Patriots over the last few years that should get into the HoF…I mean, who would even be close? Welker doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell if Chris effin’ Carter and Andre Reed can’t even get in.
Montana was the best I’ve personally seen, but obviously it helps when you’re throwing to Jerry Rice. Elway is second, Brady is third. Haven’t really thought about my list more than those top 3, except that Favre probably wouldn’t be anywhere near my top five…
markdash
Quote:
Originally Posted by denquixote
There is still only one with 4 Super Bowl wins and that is Terry Bradshaw.
Joe Montana has 4 Super Bowl wins.
You did not let me finish. There is still only one with 4 Super Bowl wins in 6 years and that is Terry Bradshaw. LOL. (I don’t know why I always repress that stat about Joe.)
I think Brady’s the best of all time, though I personally can’t stand him…mainly because he’s the best of all time and he plays for the Patriots. Montana, of course, has to be in the conversation. Of the non-tons-o-super-bowl-winning QBs, Marino and Manning are right up there, along with Favre primarily for his longevity.
Well, that was the ultimate hand-waving post; you can, if you want to play that game, carry that reductio ad absurdum to its final limit and claim that almost anybody was the best ever “if he only had the supporting cast”. And, if you do, you have to address why Marino was still much better than Elway even tho his teammates were rather underwhelming too.
And it works both ways-I could just as easily claim that Denver was a great team during those years, if they only had had a decent QB.
Sorry, on this board we demand evidence (and I have to spell this out to a veteran poster why?), and the evidence is that Elway stunk for the first ten seasons of his career.
If championships are the criteria, then it’s Otto Graham. He went to 10 league championships in a row (every year during his career) and won 7 of them. Now 4 of those were AAFC, which is a legitimate knock. But the NFL thought the AAFC was a weaker league, just like they thought of the AFL.
The Browns had dominated the AAFC for its entire existance, but when the NFL absorbed the Browns, Colts, and 49ers from it, they thought that they were going to welcome them to the big leagues now and show them how the real men played football. So they put up the 1949 AAFC champion Cleveland Browns against the 1949 NFL Champion Philadelphia Eagles fully expecting the Eagles to blow the Browns out, like an NFL team facing an XFL team or something.
The Browns kicked the shit out of the Eagles to stun the rest of the league, and then proceeded to kick the shit out of the rest of the league and win the 1950 NFL championship. As far as I’m aware, nothing like that has ever happened before or after in sports history - a major league absorbs a more minor league and one of the minor league teams dominates the major league.
So then it’s true that Otto’s first 4 championships weren’t NFL championships, but based on how much the 50s Browns kicked the shit out of the rest of the league, it’s likely they would’ve been had they been in the NFL in that time period. So after 4 straight AAFC championships and an nfl championship, he went to the NFL championship 5 more times in a row, winning twice more.
It’s a record that’s unlikely ever to be matched. In addition, he was a revolutionary quarterback, essentially the first quarterback of a modern passing offense which was being invented by him and Paul Brown. His career 86.6 rating compares favorably for the next 50 years - it isn’t until the last decade or so of ridiculous lax pass defense rules that players are routinely doing better.
So if you could calculate some sort of adjustment factor - considering that Graham played in an era where there was no protection for quarterbacks and receivers could be absolutely mugged on every play - he’d probably have the highest career rating ever. He was way ahead of his contemporaries.