Not so long ago, I posted a silly little series of posts concerning who, in my opinion, was he greatest quarterback in NFL history. One of the QB’s whose career I examined was one John Albert Elway. In my post on him, I took what I thought was a reasonable and rational approach, logically weighing all the pros and cons for his case as he greatest ever. The man certainly has a lot of pros: the wins, two rings, five Super Bowl appearances, the comebacks, and lots of yards and TD’s. The two big cons for him were: (1) overall poor performances in Super Bowls; and (2) finding in the course of researching my piece that when compared to his best contemporaries Elway was the least accurate passer. Based on those two things I concluded that Elway could not be the best ever, which incidentally I do not consider to be an insult to the man. He’s got some stiff competition for the title and he had a great career after all. Yet, as you can see in the comments to my Elway post, two of Past Interference’s untold legions of fans actually took exception to my dispassionate, unbiased findings. And while what they had to say hasn’t changed my ultimate conclusion, those commentors certainly made some very good points on Elway’s behalf.
Here at Past Interference we have no illusions about our role. Past Interference is but a deer tick in the vast ecosystem that is the football blogosphere. But in their fashion the King Kong of the internet’s football world has recently weighed in on the Elway matter. Of course where Past Interference makes its case (as always) with polite, sober, clearheaded precision, The Cold Hard Football Facts, as is their wont, prefers the no-bull, politically incorrect, possibly alcohol-fueled screed. But however you want to wrap up the package, the facts are what matters and the numbers don’t lie.
CHFF picks Elway as one of the Five Most Overrated Quarterbacks Ever. On that specific issue, I’ll abstain. My only point was that Elway wasn’t THE greatest ever. CHFF notes Elway’s relatively low passer rating, his unimpressive TD:INT ratio for the Live-Ball (post-1978) era), and his unimpressive production for at least the first decade of his career. Those numbers are the very types of things I pointed to in my own post and while you might not be able to put any stock in what this website offers it’s always good to be on the side of the Cold Hard Football Facts.
ADDENDUM:
The Cold Hard Football Facts also selected its Five Most Underrated Quarterback Ever. Number three on their list is Earl Morrall, a man with a most curious career that Past Interference has previously written about at length.
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I think that those people are right about Namath and Aikman. But they are barking up the wrong tree with Elway. That was an ignorant post that they wrote about him. Why do people focus on his stats in the 80's too much when they rate him? If those chuckleheads at Cold hard Football facts would have investigated a little further, they would have realized that, in the 80's, Elway played in the antiquated Dallas Reeves system that people knew how to defense by that time. He also didn't have the weapons around him that Montana had. Basically, Cold Hard Football facts is saying that Elway is overrated because he played in a bad system and he couldn't put up great numbers. But, since he was in this system and led them to 3 AFC Championships with average offensive weapons, I think he is underrated. They need to take him off of that list and put Brady or Montana on there.
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