Personally, I don’t think that McCarron is even the best Alabama QB ever, taking into account Joe Namath and Ken Stabler and that McCarron has such an outstanding team around him. But what do the Dopers sports experts think? Taking into account the college careers and not what they did professionally, who is the best college QB ever? Flutie? Staubach? Kosar? Sammy Baugh? Joe Montana? Steve Young? Peyton Manning? Archie Manning? Eli Manning? That kid at Northern Illinois right now? Who’ve you got?
The trouble is that the pros are really the best engine for determining who’s the “best” at being a quarterback. You have to sort of force yourself into ignorance about more complete information on what a guy’s skillset turned out to be in order to evaluate him purely as a “college” player. If you’re allowed to contextualize and keep a guy in his system and all that, I think it’s Tebow.
I agree… AJ McCarron has great pro potential and is a very good quarterback, but I’m not even convinced he’s the best college quarterback this year, much less all-time for either Alabama or the NCAA.
Someone like Jack Mildren doesn’t even get considered if pro careers count; although called the “Father of the Wishbone” and an All-American quarterback, he played defense in the pros. Same goes for Jamelle Hollieway and any number of other option quarterbacks of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
I disagree with you about saying that how a guy did in the pros is the best measure. For most of football history, college QB’s skills are different than pro quarterbacks. They are expected to run in the colleges, and not in the pros. Tebow was a great QB in college, no matter that he’s appeared to be a washout in the pros. To take an example closer to my Irish heart, Tony Rice was an excellent QB for Notre Dame in the late 1980s, even if he did nothing in the NFL. He was a fine runner on the option play, and when he had to throw he reared back and threw it as far as he could, and Rocket Ishmail caught it. It worked great.
While that is obviously true, it doesn’t answer the OP at all. Some college quarterbacks are clearly better than others at playing the position in college. It should be possible to make an argument as to who was the best.
Clearly, a lot of complicating factors are at play. You have to consider:
Statistics
Relative strength of competition
Winning games, especially bowl games
Success over multiple seasons
Doug Flutie, for instance, never became a great NFL quarterback (he was certainly a great CFL quarterback) but he was objectively a very good college QB. Whatever he did in the NFL, his accomplishments at Boston College were awesome. So were Vince Young’s. Vince Young was probably a better college QB than Tom Brady, though, obviously, Brady’s NFL accomplishments are jaw-dropping.
As for Flutie, sports shows are still showing his BC Hail Mary play. There have been others more recent, even in the NFL (Baltimore? ha ha ha), but his was so spectacular and meaningful.
One throw does not make a career. They also show Kordell Stewart’s hail mary play - doesn’t mean he’s in the mix either.
RickJay, I think Jimmy is saying that the pros has the the best engine for determining the best QB within the NFL, and that there really aren’t any good metrics to use for college (because how do you rate Tommy Frazier against Ty Detmer?).
I didn’t say it made his career. :rolleyes: But, he did have a good college QB career.
I think we won’t be able to reach any one QB conclusion, tho. Different eras, different rules, even different NCAA tiers of competition will all color the possible choices.
I think about FG records. Back in the day, a college team could try a ridiculously long attempt and it would be placed on the 20 yrd line if missed. In junior college play, attempts of 70 yards (or more, maybe) were attempted. Even the rule of using a tee changed which changed real play on the field. Some interesting stats about that
The point of my FG hijack being that the old arguments (in EVERY sport) of comparing different eras will only allow us to have some interesting discussions, but no real answer.
First thing I thought about when the Flutie pass was mentioned is Stewart’s pass. Looks almost exactly like Flutie’s, except it went a bit farther, i believe. I love Flutie’s pass, but without it, who remembers his career except BC faithful?
The best college QB I ever saw in person was Dan Marino. The fact that he never won a National Championship at Pitt is amazing to me, especially considering the talent those Pitt teams had in the early 1980’s. Just for reference, the 1980 Pitt Panthers had 7 first round picks, and 30 players from that team played in the pros, (23 starters). An amazing glut of talent, and a number of players are in the NFL HOF.
But if you want to watch one game to see what Marino was like in college, I’d recommend the Pitt-Georgia Sugar Bowl, 1981. A cannon for an arm, the quickest release possibly ever and two healthy knees.
Marino’s one glaring flaw is the lack of a ring. The same problem he had in the pros. He reminds me of Barry Bonds… A guy who was always better than everyone else around him, but he always came up short when he needed to win that one big game.
Steve Young had a great career at BYU.
John Elway was a stud at Stanford.
Jim Kelly was great at Miami.
Today, I will say that Johnny Manziel is the best going. I think he will have a great pro career, unlike so many other great college QB’s who fizzle majorly in the pros (Tim Tebow and Vince Young come to mind).
If results are how well their teams ended the season, it is hard to argue against Tebow, but I just don’t think “Tebow” when someone says “quarterback”.
It’s hard to say which attributes add up to “the best”, but, based on VY’s performance against a very good USC team, I would certainly put him in the category of “least want to play against in a bowl game”.
Stink Fish Pot, I agree with nearly everything you said, to a tee. I think the above is also spot on - except I can only hope Manziel does what he’s doing now, in the pros. I honestly can’t think of how good he’d be in the NFL if he could mirror that talent over. But I just dread the possibility that the NFL defenses find something that stops him in his tracks that college defenses never picked up on.
