NFL Quarterbacks: Examining the All-Time Greats with a Few Simple Numbers

If you’ve read my previous columns, you’ll know I’m not much for lists, where I inform you of “The Greatest or The Worst This or That” and then we’re supposed to argue.

Nothing ever comes of them. It’s like arguing over the greatest song in history; most of our perception of athletes and sports is subjective. We’re not arguing to convince someone else; we’re arguing to hear ourselves talk. Agree to disagree.

So, to make a list of the greatest quarterbacks of the modern era, I wanted to try to lean on statistics and practical thinking instead. Then, rather than tell you why the conclusions are unassailable, just make some observations.

First, I was going to start with Passer Rating—a metric I completely loathe but figured was the tidiest way to look across 30 years—and move from there. But John Elway is a 79.9, making him the 60^th all-time. Sorry, Passer Rating, not only are you a murky statistic that favors the modern quarterback over historical greats, but you’re also disrespectful.

So I decided to be more “raw” with the data and just use pure pass yards. If a quarterback is being given the opportunity to keep throwing the ball enough to make it onto the all-time list, obviously he’s doing something right. I made the floor 30,000 yards.

But the NFL is also wrought with career journeymen that accrue statistics, slowly, but aren’t really winners. So to make my list you had to reach a conference championship at least once in your career. (I made an exception if the guy made the Hall of Fame.)

Lastly, to keep it in a “modernish” era, the quarterback’s career had to start after 1975.

Here is the list.

Overall	Player	Yds	Rd Pick	Rookie Starts	2nd Yr Starts
1	Brett Favre	71,838	2	0	13
2	Dan Marino	61,361	1	9	16
3	Peyton Manning	54,828	1*	16	16
4	John Elway	51,475	1*	10	14
5	Warren Moon	49,325	N/A	16	14
7	Vinny Testaverde	46,233	1*	4	15
8	Drew Bledsoe	44,611	1*	12	16
10	Joe Montana	40,551	3	1	7
11	Kerry Collins	40,441	1*	13	12
13	Dave Krieg	38,147	N/A	0	3
14	Boomer Esiason	37,920	2	4	14
15	Donovan McNabb	36,250	1*	6	16
Overall	Player	Yds	Rd Pick	Rookie Starts	2nd Yr Starts
16	Jim Kelly	35,467	1	16	12
17	Drew Brees	35,266	2	0	16
18	Jim Everett	34,837	1*	5	11
19	Tom Brady	34,744	6	0	14
23	Phil Simms	33,462	1*	11	13
24	Steve Young	33,124	N/A	5	14
26	Troy Aikman	32,942	1*	11	15
28	Kurt Warner	32,344	N/A	0	16
30	Mark Brunell	32,045	5	0	10
32	Steve McNair	31,304	1*	2	4

* Top 5 pick

Some observations:

—I wish Vinny Testaverde, Dave Kreig, Mark Brunell and Chris, I mean Jim Everett were not on this list.

—I watched the guy for each of the turbulent nineteen years of his career, and never knew Brett Favre’s middle name is Lorenzo.

—The average number of rookie starts by these greats is 5.9 (I removed Moon from the calculation because he had played six years in the CFL prior to joining the Oilers). Remove Kelly and Manning, the only members of the list to start all sixteen games, and that number drops to 4.8.

There is something to be said for keeping your stud rookie quarterback on the sidelines for the better half of his first season, if not all of it.

By their second season, this average jumps to 12.7—a number largely buoyed by the still-bench warming McNair, Kreig and Montana. It’s over 14 without them.

—This list makes it clear that teams are not likely to find a diamond in the rough when it comes to a historic quarterback. And if you do find him in the rough, it’s going to be some serious, knee-high, hack-with-a-machete rough.

Warner, Moon and Kreig were all undrafted, and Young was a Supplemental Draft pick (albeit the first overall; by that time someone had noticed a serious oversight). Go big or go bust. Once you’re out of that first round, or past the top of the second (when both Favre and Esiason were selected) you’re throwing up a Hail Mary.

—Strangely, both the Patriots and the 49ers had that call answered with two of the greatest “winners” of all time. Neither Brady nor Montana are the gaudiest of quarterbacks (except for Brady’s insane 2007) but they have that certain “I don’t know what” of an absolute assassin in the last five minutes of a game.

With the game on the line, there are no two players in history I’d rather have under center (Colts fans may want to make a recent case for Manning, but they’d be forgetting about the decade where you could take his fourth quarter, high-pressure choke jobs to the bank).

—Slightly related tangent: You could argue that Mo Lewis is The Most Important Player of the Modern Era That No One Remembers. He’s not hidden on that QB list. He’s the Jets linebacker that knocked Drew Bledsoe out for the 2001 season, allowing a guy named Tom Brady to trade his clipboard for a helmet.

The Pats had just signed Bledsoe to a ten-year, 103 million dollar deal, so the “Well, the Pats would have discovered Brady eventually” argument doesn’t hold a great deal of water. As much as we’d like to rewrite history by saying that “Belichick noticed this great talent out of Michigan deep in the draft,” it didn’t seem like Brady was getting a starting shot any time soon.

And if he had been traded eventually, who knows if he would have found a coach that utilized his talents like Belichick? Certainly makes you wonder how many Hall of Fame-level winners are holding clipboards right now—and will retire that way.

—Back to Passer Rating. Any stat that is supposed to encompass a quarterback's performance in one lonely number and concludes that Tony Romo is the fourth best in history can be flushed away in a toilet that just dealt with a bad hangover. Total garbage. We have to stop using this number. Here was my column on the subject.

Until next week.... 

[Follow Caleb on Twitter or Bleacher Report if you want more musings. He also wrote a book called The St George's Angling Club which you can buy on Amazon.]