It doesn't take much to trigger thoughts of football's past. I've been thinking about the game's greatest players since my Induction weekend visit to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Those thoughts were focused on the quarterbacks when I started reading Keith Dunnavant's biography of Joe Montana. Here's a Flea Flicker ranking of the 20 best quarterbacks to fling the pigskin.
1. Johnny Unitas
2. Tom Brady
3. Otto Graham
4. Joe Montana
5. Sammy Baugh
6. Aaron Rodgers
7. Peyton Manning
8. Dan Marino
9. John Elway
10. Drew Brees
11. Steve Young
12. Roger Staubach
13. Brett Favre
14. Bart Starr
15. Troy Aikman
16. Fran Tarkenton
17. Norm Van Brocklin
18. Terry Bradshaw
19. Sid Luckman
20. Y.A. Tittle
I've been feeling very Johnny Unitas lately. Honestly, any one of the top five could be ranked #1. Some might even say the top eight. For me, it's nearly always between Unitas, Brady, and Graham. It just depends on the day.
Bart Starr and Terry Bradshaw are the toughest for me to rank. If someone knew nothing of these 20 quarterbacks but the titles that they won, Starr (5) and Bradshaw (4) would top this list with Brady and Graham. History hasn’t been fair as Starr and Bradshaw are often afterthoughts. The Packers of the 1960s and the Steelers of the 1970s were such great football teams that it never seemed like they needed their quarterback to win a big game. It’s as if the quarterbacks were merely along for the ride. Just because the Packers and Steelers didn't need great games from their quarterbacks doesn't mean that the quarterbacks weren't needed for their teams to be great. Maybe the Packers and Steelers made it look so easy because their quarterbacks were great. Despite all that, Starr’s five titles and Bradshaw’s four titles get them spots in the second half of my top 20. That’s just one of the difficulties in attempting to quantify greatness.
Some of the quarterbacks that I wanted to fit into this list but I couldn't find a way to fit more than 20 into 20:
Warren Moon
Sonny Jurgensen
Bobby Layne
Dan Fouts
Len Dawson
This is just one opinion. And quite frankly, it's an opinion that fluctuates like the wind. I've considered each of the top five to be the best to have ever played at various times. My rankings of players depend more on what I've seem from them than the stats that they accumulated. For the players that played before my time I lean more on what their peers said about them than the stats that they accumulated. Again, and this can not be emphasized enough, it's just one opinion.
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