Daily Beast:
Aaron Rodgers: the NFL’s Best Quarterback of All Time
Professional football is a sport that dominates America, the forward pass dominates football, and Rodgers dominates the pass. Or rather, he dominates opposing defenses, and he does it like no passer in football history. Just by snapping his right wrist, he can zip a football 60 yards downfield with a spiral tighter than the plot to Casablanca and with a trajectory so flat he could throw the ball down the aisle of an Airbus 380 from one end to the other without hitting the ceiling. And he can put it in the hands of any of six talented receivers with precision—on the run and at almost any spot on a football field.
Rodgers has just completed his fourth spectacular season in a row with the Green Bay Packers. He is 28 years old and at his physical peak; though he has never been the league’s most valuable player—he is the odds-on favorite to win the award this season—he has had a four-year run unlike any quarterback who has ever played the game.
Based on the evidence so far, he is the greatest to play the game. I know, you’re probably not much into football statistics, you only want to watch the big games, but bear with me for a moment. After four full seasons and parts of three others, Rodgers is the highest-rated QB ever by the NFL’s method (a Byzantine formula that rates quarterbacks by a combination of statistics, including pass completion percentage, touchdowns, and passes-to-interceptions ratio), 7.7 points ahead of the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady and 9.2 ahead of the Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning. His QB rating of 122 this year is the highest by any passer of all time.
Stick with me for another moment: Rodgers has thrown 132 career touchdown passes against just 38 interceptions, a ratio of 3.5 touchdowns per pick; his idol, Joe Montana, averaged just under two TDs for every interception (273/139). Rodgers did not throw for the most yards of any passer in the league this year: that was New Orleans’s Drew Brees, but that’s only because Rodgers was able to put away most of the Green Bay Packers’ opponents with fewer passes. (The Packers are 15-1 this season and play the New York Giants in the second round of the playoffs today.)
Not only is Rodgers the greatest ever, he may just be getting started. He has now won four straight games in the postseason, including a 31–25 victory over Pittsburgh in last year’s Super Bowl, and it seems highly unlikely that anyone is going to stop him this year. Face it: even if you don’t follow the sport all season, he’s the main reason you’re going to be watching for the next couple of Sundays.
Horseshit.
The best quarterback ever was Joe Montana.
He wasn’t the biggest. He wasn’t the fastest. He didn’t have the best arm. But he had the most important thing – he won.
Montana started his NFL career in 1979 with the San Francisco 49ers, where he played for the next 14 seasons.[3] He spent the 1993 and 1994 seasons, his final two years in the NFL, with the Kansas City Chiefs. While a member of the 49ers, Montana started in four Super Bowl games and won all of them. In 2000, Montana was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.[4]
In 1989, and again in 1990, the Associated Press named Montana the NFL Most Valuable Player (MVP), and Sports Illustrated magazine named Montana the 1990 “Sportsman of the Year”.[5] Four years earlier, in 1986, Montana won the AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year Award.[6] Montana was elected to eight Pro Bowls, as well as being voted 1st team All-Pro by the AP in 1987, 1989, and 1990. Montana had the highest passer rating in the National Football Conference (NFC) five times (1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, and 1989); and, in both 1987 and 1989, Montana had the highest passer rating in the entire NFL.[7]
Noted for his ability to remain calm under pressure, Montana helped his teams to 31 fourth quarter come-from-behind wins.[3] In the closing moments of the 1981 NFC Championship Game and Super Bowl XXIII, Montana threw game-winning touchdown passes. The touchdown at the end of the championship game was so memorable that sports journalists, fans, and many others, refer to the play simply as “The Catch”. The touchdown in the closing moments of Super Bowl XXIII came at the end of a 92-yard drive.
Montana’s comeback heroics started at Notre Dame, where he led the Fighting Irish to a victory over the University of Houston in the 1979 Cotton Bowl. Notre Dame scored 23 points in the final 7:30 of the game.
But his greatest comeback ever was in Super Bowl XXIII
BTW: I hate the SF 49ers and I lost more money than I want to think about because of Joe Montana.
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