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Originally Posted by Vegas Vic
Interesting comments on both sides of the argument. For some, it seems that championships or lack thereof are one of the primary factors. Fair enough, but a significant portion of winning championships is dependent on talent level of your teammates. How many championships would Tom Brady have won with the Cleveland Browns?
As for Rivers, the guy is a eight-time Pro Bowler, was consistently among the league leaders in production, and never missed a start in 252 games. He tore his ACL in the 2007 playoffs, still beat Peyton Manning and started next week in a loss to the Patriots. In fact, the guy never missed a game due to injury or illness since the eighth grade (and yes, I understand that fact isn't germane to his HOF qualifications).
He was never the best in any given year, but the numbers he put up in his career (5th all-time in passing yards, passing TD's and completions) should be more than sufficient to secure his inclusion in the HOF.
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Agreed with all this.
I just don’t like the “never the best at their position” argument. I think it would be ridiculous for any single writer to not vote for Drew Brees and he was long among the best, but if we were doing a championship belt for best NFL QBs from the 80s to present, I would think it would go something like: Montana - Young - Favre/Elway - Warner - Manning - Brady/Manning - (maybe Brees somewhere in here?) -Brady/Rodgers - Mahomes. All of those QBs have MVPs except Brees and there are also some random MVPs sprinkled in between (Boomer, Newton, Gannon, McNair, Ryan, Jackson).
I think any QB of this era, even Rodgers and Brees (who are easily top 10 and good arguments to be closer to the top than bottom), fall well short of Brady and Manning.