The QB can be the most important player on a team and winning still be a team result that nullifies the “he’s just a winner” sort of argument.
Yes, in general better QBs win more games. If you take every QB that won a SB they would be better, on average than every QB that didn’t win a SB. And multiple SB winning QBs, on average, would be better than single SB winning QBs (probably… Eli Manning, Jim Plunkett and several pretty mediocre others).
But to say that someone is better because they’ve won more has the causation backward. They’ve won more through some combination of being better, being on better teams, luck, and potentially, cheating. QBs more so because they’re better and punters more so because of their teammates, but both apply.
In Super Bowl 48, Malcolm Smith, a linebacker, was the MVP of the game. There was so much dominance from the Seahawks in that game from every group (offense, defense, special teams) that it was difficult to single out any individual. Even the QB couldn’t be called the MVP in that game because while Wilson did well he didn’t really have to.
Meanwhile, Malcolm Smith scored on a pick-six, recovered a fumble, had 10 tackles, and had a pass deflected; he was a beast. Here are some of his highlights.
And after that game he faded into obscurity, more-or-less. The year after being SB MVP he was a backup/reserve role and mostly played special teams, and he did play in SB 49, but didn’t even have any stats in that game. He was then let go and went to the Raiders, and also played for 4 other teams, and he’s still playing but again mostly as a backup.
I will note that what is probably the most memorable and critical play in Seahawks history, called “the tip” which happened toward the end of the NFC Champtionship Game vs the 49ers which led to the Seahawks getting to SB 48, was made possible by Malcolm Smith. Richard Sherman is credited with tipping the ball away from Michael Crabtree in the end zone on a touchdown pass attempt from Colin Kaepernick, but what is often forgotten is the guy who actually got the interception off the tip to seal the game was Malcolm Smith. I wonder if that factored at all into the decision to make Smith MVP for the SB, because without his overlooked role in that critical play it’s possible they wouldn’t have even made it to the SB in the first place.
In some Super Bowls it’s really hard to find one individual player to give credit to. Malcolm Smith had what was probably the best day of his entire career in what was the biggest game in football. In this most recent Super Bowl, I don’t know if anyone can point to any one person. I don’t mind Brady getting the MVP myself, because I can’t think of any one person who I could point to on the Bucs who deserved it more. If it was possible to give credit to the O-line and D-line overall, those groups were the real reason the Bucs won in my opinion. But no specific person.
As great as Brady is - and he’s exceptional - it’s hard to vote against Jordan or other NBA greats like Bill Russell, if only because they impact all phases of their game. Brady can only control the offense. He’s more analogous to a great starting baseball pitcher in that regard: he probably doesn’t win 7 championships unless he’s damn good and championship caliber teams think he’s damn good enough to start on their squads. But even if he’s exceptional, he can’t win titles by himself.
My own hypothesis is that QBs are more responsible now for their teams’ successes than they were, say, a generation or two ago. It’s getting harder and harder to win with a ‘game manager’ type QB, which isn’t to say that the Mark Rypiens of the football world are extinct, but it’s just harder now. Offenses have to score points. Defenses have more football film, more data, more sophisticated coaching schemed, which I’d argue has, out of necessity, requires players with higher football IQ. QBs have to make better decisions with the ball now. Have to spread the ball. Have to check receivers a little faster.
Speaking of records that may never get broken, it’s my understanding that if you look at the years when Sammy Baugh led the league in passer rating (still, AFAICT, the record) and notice how many of them overlap the years when he led the league in yards per punt (still, AFAICT, the record), you’ll also see that one is a year when he led the league in intercepting passes thrown by other quarterbacks, which is when he set the still-standing record of four touchdown passes on offense and four interceptions on defense in a single game, which seems even less breakable than the guy’s still-standing single-season yards-per-punt record…
Only in the sense of interest in Bryn “I’m too fucking indolent and myopic to use google” Swartz’s pandering to American exceptionalism by blithely ignoring any other exceptions.
In his article I noticed the following bon mot of incomprehension.
Russell is the greatest winner sports has ever known.
Well, yes Bill certainly wasn’t bad around the hoops but his record pales against many others of whom my nomination would be Heather McKay in the sport of squash.
Sixteen consecutive British (World) titles (1962-77), the inaugural World Championship title (1976) and the World Championship again in 1979. She lost two matches in her career, one in 1960 the year she started playing, the other in 1962.
It’s a shame, but until now, I’d never heard of Heather McKay. What a career!
However, the OP stated team sports. This rules out squash and tennis players.
Well yes, the OP did, but @Galactus and Bryn Swartz did not.
GREATEST.WINNER.EVA. was the claim
No qualification, no limit to America, or only professional, or which sports, or gender.
I reckon there’d be any number of “foreign” dopers who could offer candidates to rival Heather’s success. As Plan B I’d nominate Walter Lindrum who held the World Professional Billiards Championship from 1933 until his retirement in 1950.
Edwin Moses racked up, what, 122 consecutive wins as a hurdler, adding to his Olympic gold medal collection and breaking his own world records along the way?
Lionel Conacher (1901-54) was voted Canada’a top athlete for the first half of the 20th century. He played pro hockey and Canadian football, minor league baseball, US college football, lacrosse, and wrestling - winning championships in all of them. In addition, he served as a member in the Ontario and Canadian Parliaments.
Unfortunately, he died shortly after collapsing during an inter-Parliamentary baseball game, after getting hit in the head by a pitch.
It’s hard for me to call Brady the GOAT when arguably at every point in his career he wasn’t even the best QB in the league at the time. He’s certainly good-to-great, and impressively has sustained that level of play for a very very long time, but who would trade Mahomes for Brady? Does anyone seriously argue that if Rodgers had been traded for Brady at the beginning of their careers, Rodgers wouldn’t have had about the same level of success? If at Peyton Manning’s peak, someone had suggested a Brady-Manning swap, which team laughs and which one wonders whether they could throw something else in to make it happen?
And championships are a remarkably bad way of declaring the GOAT in a team sport. If you really think that, then Robert Horry and Steve Kerr are the two greatest basketball players since 1970.
Does anyone think that if Brady and Mahomes switched teams a week ago, the Chiefs would have won? Or if the Bucs defense moved to the Chiefs and vice versa that Brady would still have won?
In his 2007 season he was clearly the best and you could make a case that it was the all-time greatest season by a quarterback. In the end it was overshadowed by the failure to wrap up the perfect season.
