Quarterback Tournament: Somewhere in the Finals (Final Eight)
 

You know the drill. One game to win it all. Which quarterback do you pick from each matchup?

My thoughts:

Game 1: Clearly the least strong matchup as I'd rank these guys 6th and 7th of the Final Eight. But hey, that's how the cards shook out, and greatest is part skill, part luck, and part timing. I'm seriously not an enormous fan of Aikman, so I'll go Dawson. Dawson never had a top running back behind him unless you count a couple of years of Mike Garrett. Aikman had Emmitt Smiff his whole career.

Game 2. I hate to vote against Warner because he's one of my all-time favorite non-Chiefs QBs, but what can you say? In one game, you want Montana at the helm.

Game 3. Favre. And I'm not even that crazy about Favre. But Elway's peak years were essentially when he was the second banana handing off to Terrell Owens. In Favre's peak, he was winning Super Bowls with guys like Dorsey Levens lining up behind him.

Game 4. Rings vs. stats. I'll go with rings, even though I'll admit that Manning deserves to be in the top tier of consideration. Brady gets my vote.

He handed off to Terrell Davis a bunch too

Even more powerful of an indictment.

And Joe Montana had the greatest football player of all time to throw to.

So yeah you have to have talent.

What about all those SBs John carried those teams to? Hate that he was a Donk but his skill set makes him the best IMO.

Yep.

I hate to say it but Elway is the GOAT.

The receiver can't be the greatest without a great quarterback. The running back just needs the quarterback to get out of the way.

You people are killing me with this Elway thing. Killing me!

Dawson, Montana, Fav-Ray, and Brady. Puck Failway.

Right. Not saying Montana isn't great himself. To me he's #2.

But Elway is #1. Just my opinion. Is it possible for us not to be biased against him because he was a Bronco?

It was merely my counter to any body that points out that John didn't win it all until he had Davis. I can simply counter with look at all the talent Joe had.

Rice, Craig, Lott (I'm sure several others I'm forgetting). Those teams were absolutely loaded.

This so so frustrating when I hear this, NO HE IS NOT! He played the GOAT on the biggest stage in the world 55-10 55-10 55-10. Did the Broncos have 37 dropped passes? How many possessions did Elway have? How many drives did he fail on? Plus there is another head to head matchup that Elway had at home and Montana still took him to school with a clearly inferior team (really JJ Birden and Willie Davis?). Elway was a slightly better Marino, he a was a loser just like Marino until Bowlen cheated the shit out of the cap and gave him a ridiculous team to carry him. Montana 4-0 in SB, Elway 0-4 until the cheating came in.

Brady is better than Elway and if Eli and Big Ben notch a couple more SB wins they will surpass him also in most peoples eyes.

More importantly, the 3 teams Elway took to the Super Bowl before Shanahan/Davis were NOT loaded.

Elway could just a little better numbers to back him up. I had to go with Favre.

The other thing that no one seems to be able to factor into the equation is how much of those "loaded" 49ers teams were due to Montana himself elevating everyone around him? Will we ever really know if Marvin Harrison was that great of a receiver? No, because he had Manning putting the ball right on his god damn numbers during his entire career. Look at how many no-name receivers Favre and Brady have had over the years that looked spectacular but became nobodies when they wen't somewhere else.

How good were Brent Jones, Roger Craig, and John Taylor? We will never really know as they had the true GOAT feeding them the ball. You could also include Rice in this discussion too, take any receiver in the top ten all time receiving stats and have Montana/Young throwing them the ball their entire careers. No doubt if you had swapped Tim Brown and Rice's teams, we'd be calling Tim Brown the best receiver of all time.

Look at how good Bowe's career numbers have been thus far, imagine if he was drafted by Pats/Indy and didn't have to deal with Huard/Thigpen/Cassel's shit passes.

The same can be said for Elway.

Steve Young helps prove to some extent how good those teams where.