Qb - who is the top ten, who is unappreciated

[Phicinfan]

Was listening to Mike and Mike in the morning, and they were addressing which players were most underappreciated. NFL wise they brought up Curtis Martin and Fran Tarkington.

So lets address this SO style. First...who is the top ten Qbs?

Lets look at the numbers:
Top 10 career in passing yards:
Favre - 69,329
Marino - 61,361
Elway - 51,475
P. Manning - 50,128
W. Moon - 49,325
F. Tarkington - 47,003
Testeverde - 46,233
Bledsoe - 44,611
Fouts - 43,040
Montana - 40,551

Top 10 career in Completion %:
Pennington - 66.1%
Warner - 65.5%
Schaub - 65.3%
P. Manning - 64.8%
D. Brees - 64.8%
S. Young - 64.3%
A. Rodgers - 63.9%
T. Romo - 63.4%
T. Brady - 63.3%
B. Roethlisberger - 63.3%

Interesting fact here. Only non-active Qbs in top 20 in passing percentage are S.Young, J. Montana, Brian Griese and Brad Johnson. So past Qbs evidently didn't focus on accuracy it would seem.

Top 10 Passer Rating Career:
A. Rodgers - 97.2
S. Young - 96.8
P. Rivers - 95.8
T. Romo - 95.6
P. Manning - 95.2
K. Warner - 93.7
T. Brady - 93.3
J. Montana - 92.3
D. Brees - 91.9
B. Roethlisberger - 91.7

Again, skewed heavily toward active players. Could be due to shorter careers for numbers to settle. Only non-active in top ten are Young and Montana. One surprise to me was Otto Graham at #16 overall at 86.6. That ties him with Bret Favre!

Top 10 in Passing Tds Career:
B. Favre - 497
D. Marino - 420
P. Manning - 366
F. Tarkington - 342
J. Elway - 300
W. Moon - 291
J. Unitis - 290
V. Testeverde - 275
J. Montana - 273
D. Krieg - 261

So, this does not take into accout titles and such. But it does give us some numbers for talking.

So you list your top ten Qbs of all time. And lets compare.....

Mine and this is mostly my opinion -
Brett Favre - due to numbers and durability
Dan Marino - Incredible numbers
Joe Montana - leadership and numbers and titles
Peyton Manning - still going, and has title already
John Elway - rushing, passing and winner
Warren Moon - First really successful black Qb in NFL
Fran Tarkington - the originator of the word - Scrambling
Kurt Warner - he made all his teams better, and won a championship
Johny Unitis - Again, he was a winner, in a non-passing league.
Last, but not least - Bart Starr. The ONLY Qb to win five titles. Not his fault there was no superbowls at the start of his career.

Those on the cusp - Drew Brees(now has a title), Aaron Rodgers(needs more years), T.Brady(needs more years, has titles a plenty).


so, to answer Mike and Mike....yeah I would put Moon and Tarkington in that list of underappreciated.

 

[Coachnorm]

I have to agree with almost everything said above. If you drop just a little farther down the list one of my favorites for undrerated is Jim Kelly. If you look at his entire body of work he deserves a bigger rep.

With the USFL he was a QB with the Houston Gamblers. He threw for almost 10,000 yards in two seasons. He was the USFL MVP in 1984, when he set a league record with 5,219 yards passing and 44 TD passes.

 

[Phicinfan]

I have to agree with almost everything said above. If you drop just a little farther down the list one of my favorites for undrerated is Jim Kelly. If you look at his entire body of work he deserves a bigger rep.

With the USFL he was a QB with the Houston Gamblers. He threw for almost 10,000 yards in two seasons. He was the USFL MVP in 1984, when he set a league record with 5,219 yards passing and 44 TD passes.

:nod: fully agree. Hell folks don't realize who Bart Starr was...and what he was to that team. All you hear about is Lombardi. The man won 5 championships for GB. That is just huge.

 

[Remote Controller]

If I could pick any of these guys in their prime to lead my team it would be Steve Young. He could hurt you with his legs too. Also his stats more mimic those that are currently playing, accuracy and Ratings wise, and he was doing it when that just wasn't happening. He was also the better QB on his own team for two years and didn't get to be the starter. That would have changed many things. Of course this is just my opinion.

 

[Deacon]

In response to your qusetions about why so many modern (current) passers are topping your lists:

Remember prior to 1978 DBs could basically mug a WR all the way down the field. That made route running very difficult and by extention passing (especially accurate passing) very difficult.

Teams also ran the ball more than twice as much as they passed. Heck Terry Bradshaw won a superbowl going 9 for 19 in 1975.

Here is a great article that explains how passing has evolved to show how stats will be dominated by modern players...

Passer's Paradise: The Evolution Of The NFL Aerial Attack - Blogging The Boys

 

[Walter34]

Canadian Football League
Despite his collegiate success, Warren Moon went undrafted in the National Football League. Many pundits believe that it was because Moon was black and refused to switch positions — Moon has stated in interviews that before the draft some scouts advised him to switch to tight end. With no takers in the NFL, he turned to the Canadian Football League. Moon signed with the Edmonton Eskimos, where he and Tom Wilkinson shared signal-calling duties and helped lead the Eskimos to an unprecedented five consecutive Grey Cup victories in 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982.[11] Moon won the offensive Grey Cup Most Valuable Player award in the 1980 and 1982 games. In his final CFL season of 1983, Moon threw for a league record 5,648 yards (5,165 m), and won the CFL's Most Outstanding Player Award. Throughout his CFL career, Moon amassed 1,369 completions on 2,382 attempts (57.4 completion percentage) for 21,228 yards (19,411 m) and 144 touchdown passes. He also led his team to victory in 9 of 10 postseason games. He was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Edmonton Eskimos Wall of Honour. In 2006, he was ranked fifth on a list of the greatest 50 CFL players presented by Canadian sports network TSN.

[edit] CFL statistics
Year Team G Passing
Att.-Comp. Yards Pct. TD Int.
1978 Edmonton 15 173–89 1,112 0.514 5 7
1979 Edmonton 16 274–149 2,382 0.544 20 12
1980 Edmonton 16 331–181 3,127 0.547 25 11
1981 Edmonton 15 378–237 3,959 0.627 27 12
1982 Edmonton 16 562–333 5,000 0.592 36 16
1983 Edmonton 16 664–380 5,648 0.572 31 19
Totals 94 2,382–1,369 21,228 0.575 144 77