the best quaterback of all time ?

Question

i choose #7. john elway. thru out his carrer he did more with less. 2 time bowl winner and 3 other bowl appearences. most wins and most 4th quarter come from behind victories

Answer 1

I'm with ya, man! Every possible angle or argument Elway is king. He lost three SBs with crap teams, even Montana couldn't have beaten '86 NYG or '87 Skins! Name one receiver of his in HOF...can't do it! Montana had Rice, Francis, Jones, Solomon and JT. Elway had Nattiel, Johnson, Jackson, and in the end Rod Smith and Sharpe. Imagine if Elway had those kind of guys....WOW. Marino, Unitas, guys like that are arguable, but Ol' # 7 is the best ever.

Answer 2

Well first, the position of quarterback can easily be divided into three very distinct eras, the first being from the formation of the NFL(in 1920) to the end of the two way player in the late 1940's. The best quarterback of this era is obviously Sammy Baugh, who set about every passing record and is essentially the first modern quarterback. The second era would be from the late 1940's to the late 1970's, when the league began to altar the rules to make the passing game more prominent(such as outlawing the bump and run). The best quarterback of this era is Johnny Unitas, a brilliant passer who set passing records while leading his team to championships. Then finally there is the "modern era" of the late 1970's to the present. It becomes more difficult to pick a great quarterback from this era because there have been so many and every great team of the era was lead by a great quarterback. However, I'd have to say that the best modern quarterback is Joe Montana. He(with alot of help from Bill Walsh and later Jerry Rice) revolutionized the position with his precision passing, decision making, and clutch play. He turned the quarterback into a cerebral position rather than merely a player with a strong arm.

Answer 3

Elway was a bit overrated. He had some terrible, terrible Super Bowls. Favre was overrated too, wins one Super Bowl in his 30 year career, against a lousy Patriot team.

Yeah, I know all about Elway and "The Drive", but it was against the Cleveland Browns, fer cryin' out loud! Who COULDN'T move the ball 98 yards against Cleveland if they had to?

Montana and Unitas were the best QBs ever. Bradshaw was the most underrated, and was much better in big games than either Elway or Favre.

Re: come from behind victories, you can't really blame Bradshaw's for the fact that a lot of Steelers games were over by halftime during his career, in no small part thanks to his own efforts.

But Bradshaw was 4-0 in the Super Bowl, including two wins over Cowboy teams that were easily among the best teams ever to lose a Super Bowl, and were better than a whole lot of teams that have won the S.B. But, since we're talking about come from behind efforts, 3 of the 4 Bradshaw S.B. wins were of the come-from-behind variety, and in two of those, the Steelers trailed going into the 4th quarter.

In SB X, the Steelers trailed the Cowboys 10-7 after 3 periods... Bradshaw led them to 4 scores in 8 minutes, and left the game with a concussion, with the Steelers ahead 21-10, and only 3 minutes left.

In SB XIII, the Steelers trailed 14-7 in the first half, but led 21-14 at halftime, and never trailed in the 2nd half. Bradshaw was the MVP.

In SB XIV, the game featured 7 lead changes, and the Rams led the Steelers after every quarter, except the 4th. The Rams led 7-3 after 1, 13-10 at halftime, 19-17 after 3, but lost 31-19. Bradshaw again was the MVP.

Super Bowl IX, against the Vikings, was the only game that the Steelers never trailed.

"Come from behind" stats can be misleading anyway... they make no distinction between coming from 10 points behind vs. coming from 3 points behind.... so you can't just look at the raw # of come from behind victories and say that this guy or that guy was the best ever because of it.

I remember reading an analysis of "come from behind" victories posted by Montana, Elway and Marino...it turned out that Elway's C.F.B. victories were less impressive, according to that particular analyst, because the average margin from which he came from behind was lower than Montana's and Marino's in their C.F.B. victories.. (basically saying that Elway was coming back from FG deficits, while M&M were coming back from TD deficits... )... I don't remember the exact numbers, but you get the idea.

Nothing wrong with Elway...just that I think he was overrated... his super bowl wins were against Favre, who himself has never been that great in big games, and against an Atlanta team that had no business being there, and played like it.

Answer 4

Johnny Unitas, nowadays his numbers are still among the best playing in an era when the season were 12 and then 14 games. The rules did not protect the QB as much as today, there were no "roughing the passer" penalties.

If he played 16 games seasons with all the nice rules, we would not be talking about Marino, Favre and future Manning passing records.

His 47 games throwing a TD is the equivalent to Joe Dimaggio's.

Answer 5

It is hard to pick one, considering the different eras. For me, the ring is the thing. The quarterback position become more important in the 1940's with the advent of the T-Formation. My choices, by decade:

1940's--Sid Luckman
1950's--Otto Graham (early), Bobby Layne (mid) Johnny Unitas (late)
1960's--Bart Starr (NFL), Len Dawson (AFL)
1970's--Terry Bradshaw
1980's--Joe Montana
1990's--Troy Aikman
2000's--Tom Brady

Some other greats--Slingin Sammy Baugh (1930's-40's), Norm Van Brocklin, YA Tittle, Sonny Jurgenson, Roger Staubach, Dan Fouts, Fran Tarkenton, Dan Marino, Steve Young, John Elway, Jim Kelly, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning

Answer 6

ok this is an old debate but I like this slant.. lemme add one more.. how many 2 yard up the gut or over the top dives did the rest (Marino, Montana etc) have? not a 10th of what Elway did. he'd take the hit to defenders.. usually because he played behind a crap O-Line.. and won.. he played with less talent and won just as much.. when asked players point to Marino and say that you could feel his presence in a game and he took control from the opening kick.. but I go with more what Safeties say and that was "Elway is scrappy he'll run up and pop you like a RB would"

Answer 7

Joe Montana is a good choice and so is John Elway. If you want to talk about doing more with less what about Dan Marino? The Dolphins never had a decent running game when he was there.

Answer 8

There are dozens of truly great QBs, but I would choose Dan Marino. He either has, or has had all the major QB records in the NFL. He never had a running game or much of a defense to help him out, so he never managed to win a Super Bowl. That is the only argument people really have against him.

Elway, Montana, Favre (who I am surprised hasn't got a lot of mention in this topic), Aikman, & Young just to name a few of the guys from that generation were all great QBs. You really couldn't go wrong with picking any of those guys.

Answer 9

Joe Montana, the guy was just a winner. Just watch some of the super bowls of his. His comebacks. Boy that monday night game between elway and montana, where both teams kept coming back.

Answer 10

John Elway.