Aaron Rodgers getting injured last night got me thinking about this topic again. There’s a big gap between the recently retired guys waiting to get in the HOF, like Brady, Peyton Manning, Brees, Rodgers*, and maybe Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, and Rivers, and the next generation of potential HOFers. I’d say the next most likely is Patrick Mahomes. Past that we’ll have to see which of the young guys still getting established ends up having a great career. In between we have possibly (probably?) Russell Wilson and maybe Matthew Stafford and Dak Prescott in the Hall of the Really Good But Not Great. What happened to that generation? Was it just some fluke thing where Hall of Fame level talent skipped a generation?
Yes, not technically retired, but last night was likely a career ender.
Rivers had the misfortune of playing in the same conference as Brady, Peyton Manning and Roethlisberger, whose teams owned the path to the Super Bowl for close to two decades. Had he won a Super Bowl he’d likely be a lock.
But you’re asking about QBs who entered the league after Rodgers, and you’re right – I don’t think any of them until Mahomes are clearly Canton-bound. Wilson will need a career resurgence, Stafford has a losing record, and Prescott has never led his team deep into the playoffs.
Maybe it’s nostalgia, but in my mind the generation before them, guys like Montana, Marino, Aikman, Moon, Favre, and Young, compare pretty well to Brady’s contemporaries. Of course none of them, except maybe Marino in terms of pure talent, match up to Manning and Brady,. But that bunch is still way ahead of the best of the guys currently in their 30s. Even the Really Good but not HOF players from that generation, like Phil Simms, Randall Cunningham, Boomer Esiason, and Bernie Kosar, were better than the guys currently in their 30s.
Phil Simms career QB rating would have tied him for 31st in the league last year. His best every season would have been 13th. Stafford and Russell Wilson are both much better than all of your “very good” guys and better than Favre and Aikman too.
It’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison for QB ratings for players from 30 and 40 years ago, compared to current players. Due to the modern passing game being even more focused on shorter, high-percentage throws (and possibly due to more restrictive rules for defenses), completion rates are substantially higher than they were in Simms’ era (or even for Aikman or Favre), and interception rates are substantially lower* now.
*- Caveat: Favre threw a lot of interceptions, even by his own era’s standards, much less by 2023 standards.
I think so too. I was a huge fan of his and I guess I still am to an extent, but he has taken a nose dive. He broke a number of records (including his rookie year) and one or two years he carried the Seattle offense on his back after the running game vanished. I’m not sure people are going to remember much of that if he keeps looking as bad as he did last year.
Of course Marino and Montana were better than guys like Kosar and Esiason. But I don’t think Wilson and Stafford are as good as Marino and Montana. And the next level down for today’s 30 something’s (after Stafford. Wilson, and Prescott) are mostly retired, on the bench, or free agents hoping to get a call from the Jets.
The comparison is to show that Kosar and Simms were not that good compared to their contemporaries. That is, yes, you do have rose colored glasses when looking back on them. The guys today that you don’t rate that highly are better than you’re giving them credit for because you don’t have that nostalgia.
First of all, Montana, Young, and Marino were head-and-shoulders above the rest of their contemporaries, like those three, so of course the stats for Simms et al aren’t as good. Montana, Young, and Marino were easy selections for the Hall of Fame; Simms, Kosar, and Esaison belong in the Hall of Very Good.
But, beyond that, bear in mind that Montana and Young were playing in the NFL’s first real “West Coast” offense (Bill Walsh’s, and then George Seifert’s, 49ers offense); their passing efficiency was substantially better than that for many of their contemporaries, and that’s reflected in their passing statistics and ratings. They also had the advantage of throwing to the GOAT wide receiver.
In 1989, for example, Montana had a passer rating of 112.4; only two other QBs even had a rating of 90 (Esiason 92.1, Jim Everett 90.6). Montana led the league in completion percentage, by a wide margin, and was #2 in interception percentage.
If you put Montana’s 1989 rating against 2022’s QBs, he’d still be the leader (the highest last year was Tua, at 105.5), but there were 6 QBs with ratings of 100+ last year, and another dozen at 90+.
If some of the intermediate guys like Derek Carr have a late-career renaissance and win a couple of super bowls, they might fill the gap. As a Saints fan, I’m rooting for Carr.
Stafford had the misfortune of playing for the Lions. He had a pretty damn good showing in 2021, and then unfortunately got injured, which is part and parcel of getting older. I don’t know how good he really is, but with anyone who spends a really long time with the Lions and then wins the Super Bowl immediately after leaving, you have to wonder what he would have done on a real team the entire time. He also has a bunch of NFL records for the fastest to a round number of passing yards.
But that’s comparing the second or third tier guys of that generation to the first tier of guys currently in their 30s. The comparison I’m making isn’t Phill Simms vs. Russel Wilson. It’s Dan Marino and Joe Montana vs. Russel Wilson and Matthew Stafford for tier one guys. Then it would be Warren Moon or John Elway vs. Dak Prescott or Derek Carr as tier 2 guys. By the time you get Phil Simms or Boomer Esiason the comparison is someone like Blake Bortles, Colt McCoy, or Carson Wentz.
ETA. And yes, I would take Marino or Montana over Wilson or Stafford. And I’d take Simms or Esiason over Bortles or Wentz.
Once Brady has an entire wing of the Hall dedicated to him, with pictures of Manning, Brees, and Rodgers right outside, plus Eli and Wilson not that far away, then they will become nothing but legend and won’t count in the active NFL picture. Sure, announcers will constantly refer back to them, every time a new guy approaches a record their name will be brought up, but that ends up devaluing them in the current argument. Old coots will keep on talking about the time Brady brought the Pats back from 100 points behind against Atlanta with only 2 minutes left in the game, and then people will get tired of hearing it, just like the way I got tired of hearing how much better DiMaggio was than the newer generation of players. And they were better, 60s baseball mostly sucked, but that was the game I could watch. By the time those new guys had hall of fame careers they made 50s baseball look quaint with starting pitchers finishing games and little parks.
Sure. What I’m getting at is that they will be extra old by the time the next guy is called. Once they hang Aaron Rodgers’ plaque in 5 years (assuming he calls it a career), we’re likely going to be waiting another 15 to 20 years or so after that until the next guy, presumably Patrick Mahomes gets his name called. Nobody else in between those two seems to be wariting in the wings.