I agree-you forgot to add all the passes Elgay got away with throwing well beyond the line of scrimmage, the Cheatin Donks cheatin the cap during the SB years, and his Oline being greased up on game day.

Elgay was always so overrated-pretty much like Pampered Peeton today.

Now that the NFL has handed him the SB and SB MVP on a silver platter-maybe they will start calling a hold on his line once in awhile and quit letting his receivers push off down field.

To me this question is, if you had to pick one of these guys to draft as a rookie as your franchise QB, who would you choose.

I think I would pick Manning. He'll own all the passing records by the time he retires. You can't pin the "can't win a big game" on him anymore. He's only missed one snap in his career. I think the extent to which he calls plays and directs the offense gives him the field general title. You never hear of teammates who dislike him or getting in trouble off the field.

Other guys have more rings, and no disrespect to Montana, he's #2 on my list, but no QB ever played with more talent around him than he did. When the Colts' defense finally sacked up this year, Manning got his ring.

I think I would choose him, because he merges pure ability at the position with longevity, durability, and his ability to act as a sort of coach/offensive coordinator while under center.

Montana

But you could easily attack Manning's accomplishments by pointing out the way the PI rules have changed, the way his gyrations don't seem to get called, the way QB pressure rules have changed, as well as his receivers aren't chopped liver by any mesure. Manning is real, real good, no doubt about that but I'd still rather have Montana.

If people look at rings as the measuring stick, why don't more people mention Bradshaw?

despite being a total dumbfuck, he won as many rings, and had similar hall-o-fame talent around as Montana

My only argument is that Terry Bradshaw played with more talent around him, IMO. I doubt we will ever see as many Hall of Fame Players from those 49er teams than we do with the Steelers. Actually I should ask the questions since several folks believe this:

Tell me the players on the 49ers that were so speacial other Jerry and Joe: Dwight had a very mediocre career, Roger Craig wasn't hot, and maybe they had 1 CB, plus Ronnie Lott of course, and he wasn't there for the whole ride. Joe won his first Super Bowl with nobody on his team, they fought very hard to win that thing. In the Dallas Championship game, they basically lost, except for "the catch" Dwight made.

Anyway, I just a few reasons I wanted to point out.


You have a good point about Peyton, but his offensive talent also exceeds what Joe had for the first part of his great career, as well.

Bradshaw seems to be such a jerk-off I'm not sure I could put up with him on my team no matter how good he was. And I still like Montana over him.

Joe had a badass defense, plus maybe the best and dirtiest offensive line in football. Which shouldn't diminish his accomplishments...

Steve Young holds the title when it comes to stats I think.

You guys should stop with the cheating thing. It makes you look stupid.

Oh, and the greatest is Elway. Second place is about a mile lower, if you'll forgive the pun. Anyone who can't see this is stupid.

That's unbiased, folks. I would never, ever let homerism influence such an important argument.

That's too funny.

There's great debate for about 5 QBs over the history of the NFL to be tagged as the best ever. But, the bottom line is that I feel it's really tough to compare QBs that span 20 years... much harder to compare QBs from the 40's to the 90s.

The nut of it is, take the consensus best 5 ever and there are always 2 names at the top... Elway & Montana, either order.

It's fun bar talk though.