Let Them Play

Since Fox won't play the ad...here it is. And that's all I have to say about the NFL for awhile.

Off the Subject: Top Ten Quarterbacks of All Time

With the Super Bowl coming up, I figured I'd finally post this list of the Top 10 Quarterbacks in NFL History list.

I'm doing this in part because I have rarely seen it done correctly. Most lists only consider great quarterbacks of the last 30 years. I wanted to do a list that covered all of NFL history. I pulled some advanced stats fro Pro-Football-Reference.com. If you've seen me use and explain OPS+ in my baseball posts, you'll understand what Rating+ or Comp%+ do...they just help us judge quarterbacks across eras. On with the countdown!

(My cutoff for playing time was 10 full seasons or some equivalent. That's why you don't see a Tom Brady on the list yet (only 8 full seasons) or a guy like Roger Staubach who was great but really only started for a handfull of seasons.)

10. Otto Graham (1946-1955) - I have often thought that Graham was overrated due to the number of championship games that he played in and his numbers from the AAFC (before Cleveland joined the NFL) but his resume is actually quite impressive. He led the league in passer rating 4 times and and in passing yards 5 times during his 10 year career. He has a career 127 Rating+ (higher than Steve Young) and was an NFL MVP 3 times. Still holds the record for Yards per Attempt (9.0). Top passer of the late 40's/early 50's. All this while missing two seasons while he served in the Coast Guard during WWII.

9. Steve Young (1985-1999) - Young just barely qualifies for this list (he only played 9 full seasons but played enough in backup duty that I added him.) Still holds the record for career passer rating (96.8) , passed for more than 30,000 yards and rushed for 4,000 yards. The most exciting running QB until the arrival of Michael Vick. Posted a career Rating+ of 126. Threw 232 touchdowns (still good for top 20 all time) and rushed for a record 43 TDs as a quarterback.

8. John Elway (1983-1998) - Elway was having a very Jake Plummer-like career over the first 10 years of his career. He only had one season with a passer rating over 80 over that span as well as throwing more interceptions than touchdowns in 5 of those seasons. The only thing that redeems his early career is his stellar playoff record, especially 19887-1990 (except for those Super Bowls). He really didn't blossom as a passer until 1993 which hurts him here. His career passer rating is 79.9 even including his playoff record and his Rating+ is only 101. What sets Elway apart from the Dave Kreigs of the world is his career from 1992 forward, his playoff performances and his gaudy numbers (51,000+ passing yards, 300 TDs, 3400+ rushing yards, 33 rushing TDs) that he piled up over his 16 years in the league.

7. Dan Marino (1983-1999) - The best pure passer of his generation. Perhaps the best pure passer ever outside of Peyton Manning. Retired with more passing TDs and more passing yards than any quarterback in history. He led 36 4th quarter comebacks (Elway only had 35...) Led the league in passing 5 times and in passing TDs 3 times. Remarkably quick release, he was rarely sacked even though he was not a mobile QB. The only knock you can make is that he never won a Super Bowl but anyone making that argument doesn't understand that it takes 21 other men to win one.

6. Fran Tarkenton (1961-1978) - Tarkenton tends to get overlooked because he never won a championship but he held the record for career passing touchdowns for over 15 years after his retirement until Dan Marino passed him in the mid-1990's. Tarkenton was one of the great scrambler in NFL history but he scrambled far more behind the line of scrimmage than running for yardage. Still he rushed for 3674 yds and 33 rushing TDs on top of his 47003 passing yards and 342 passing TDs. Tarkenton did all this without any great receivers (ala Montana/Rice or Marino/Clayton) John Gilliam and Homer Jones were probably the best targets he had. Minnesota's Super Bowl futility leads many modern fans to leave Tarkenton off the list of the greats. He was well above average in all facets of the game,he could beat you any way he needed to.

5. Joe Montana (1979-1994) - Montana get the knock of being a "system quarterback" and he was but he ran his system to perfection. No offensive scheme and player have ever been married so well. Montana showed you didn't need the big arm to excel in the NFL and his success spawned imitators around the league as Bill Walsh's disciples earned head coaching jobs throughout the league in the 80's and early 90's. Montana retired with the highest career QB Rating in history, racked up 40,000+ passing yards, 237 TDs and a 63.2 completion percentage (also a record when he retired). He won two NFL MVP's, three Super Bowl MVPs and finished his career with a 95.6 QB rating in the playoffs. The postseason heroics don't hurt the resume either.

4. Sammy Baugh (1937-1952) - Any top quarterback list without Sammy Baugh and Johnny Unitas in the top 5 is instantly null and void. Let me repeat that. If you see a list of top NFL quarterbacks without Baugh and Unitas in the top 5, that's a writer you never have to pay attention to again. Baugh was a revolutionary passer, an innovator and the perfector of the forward pass. Baugh arrived in the league and as a rookie led the league in passing. He led the league in passing 6 times, finished with a 122 Rating+ and completed an unheard of 56.5% of his passes (Comp%+ of 132). He did much of this while running the "single wing" offense, a formation that does not lend itself well to the passing game. The Redskins switched to a more modern "T" formation in 1944...when Baugh was already 30. He retired with all major passing records in his possession. He also played defense (he was a defensive back) and served as the team's punter. He still holds the career record for average punting distance. He is still the greatest quarterback in the history of the Washington Redskins and was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

3. Brett Favre (1991-present) - Favre has shattered the career passing yards and passing TD records. If he comes back for 2011, he will become the first QB in NFL history to throw for 500 TDs and 70,000 yards. A classic gunslinger, Favre is almost as well know for his dramatic mistakes as he is his dramatic heroics but, for now, He is the most prolific passer in league history. A three-time NFL MVP.

2. Johnny Unitas (1956-1973) - Unitas was the prototypical quarterback of the modern era. He was the first quarterback to throw for 40,000 yards and finished his career with 290 TDs. He set the record for consecutive games with a TD pass at 47 games. He engineered 36 4ht quarter comebacks in only 211 career games. He was a four-time NFL MVP. Coming off that last MVP season in 1967, he suffered torn muscles in his throwing arm after he was hit in the last preseason game of 1968 and played sparingly during the Colts march to the Super Bowl. He was never quite the same after that and only showed flashes of his former brilliance. Thus, some of his career rate states look a bit more pedestrian than they should (Rating+ of 112, basically an average quarterback after the injury) but he was considered the greatest quarterback of the late 50's/60's.

1. Peyton Manning (1998-present)- Still just 33, Manning is perhaps the best passer to ever ut on cleats. He's closing in on 2nd place in the major passing categories and if Favre ever hangs them up, he may just pass him too. He combines the passing acumen of Marion, the field general qualities of Unitas and the late-game heroics of Elway (35 4th quarter comebacks) in one package. If he could run, the Colts might never lose. A four-time MVP, Manning has led the league in passing twice, TD's and QB rating three times and is a 10-time Pro Bowl selection. This weekend he may add his 2nd Super Bowl title.

Why Christine Brennan Is Undeserving of Your Attention

I have been a fan of Christine Brennan's writing for as long as I can remember. She and Tony Kornheiser are the first two sports writers that I can recall reading on a regular basis. When The Washington Post would turn up at my house, looking for the latest column by Brennan or Kornheiser was my first order of business.

With that preface, I was very disappointed to hear Brennan's take on bloggers and the internet. Last month, Brennan was on an ESPN podcast called "Play Ball! with Amanda & Melissa". She was asked a general question to her thoughts on sports blogs and sports bloggers (the Raul Ibanez blogger controversy was in the news at the time) and here was her response:

"What I try to do with blogs, is I try to read the ones that come from newspapers, come from legitimate trained journalists and I would encourage anyone who listens to us or anyone who cares about this issue to do that. The guy or woman in their pajamas in a basement in Seattle or Tupelo or Bangor, Maine...they who will never be seen, who will never go to a practice or a game, they will never meet the coach, why should we listen to them? Why, why should we pay any attention to what they're saying about a pro or college team or whatever.

"That's the kind of thing that we need to discern and it's harder and harder for people to figure out what's legit and what isn't, understandably, we've all had this because you click on a website and then you click on a link and you're just clicking on those little blue lines and off you're going to another world and pretty soon you are reading the person who's sitting in their pajamas in their basement, you know, in Omaha, Nebraska. and that person who really has no training and no idea what they are talking about. And when I say that, they certainly can have an opinion but do we want to waste one moment of our time on Earth reading those opinions? I want to read the opinion of people who are there, are trained observers, whether they went to journalism school or whatever, they've invested in this career and they are trained in it and therefore they are worthy of our attention.

"But the problem is, as you've said, you know, I might be able to figure it out, you guys can figure out, OK this person is, you know, a trained working journalist there at the event. The lines blur so much, how do you start to know? and for the average casual reader, someone who's wandering around the internet, just doing what a lot of people do, trying to figure out where they are and what they're doing, those lines are blurred to the point where, you know, when you're holding a newspaper in your hand, you know who's produced it. That is the nice little real estate, the demarcation of the territory that you happen to be looking at. So a newspaper's simple. It was produced by USA Today or The Washington Post or The New York Times, that's who gave us that and it's crystal clear. And the internet, of course is completely blurred, the opposite of crystal clear and it's gonna, I think, create many more issues like this and how does the mainstream media, not that we're always right, not at all, but at least we are trained journalists, by and large, how do we react to these kinds of things?

"Another huge issue about these stories and how they catch fire and do you put out the fire or do you let it keep going? Really something and it certainly, books will be written on this topic so a couple moments don't really give it justice but I just think the best thing is go with the trained journalists who are there, who have to see the coach day in, day out, it's not hit and run kind of reporting or journalism or blogging. It's hit and stay."

A few things here...

First, I was soooo disappointed that Brennan went with the old "blogging from his basement" line. So cliche, so tired and I would expect that if Christine was going for a putdown that she would have something more original and clever than that.

Second, if you live in Seattle, Tupelo, Bangor or Omaha, you should be doubly insulted. The disdain in her voice when those cities rolled off her tongue was glaring. If you live in a small town, you are marginal in Brennan's mind.

Third, your opinion does not matter if you are not working for a newspaper or trained as a journalist. Pro sports writers have the informed opinions and if it doesn't come from them, it means nothing. Now, if Brennan wants to take a shot at a rinky-dink hobby blog like mine, fine. I see the value that blogs like mine hold, at least as a collective, but why put down the good work done by Shysterball, The Hardball Times, FanGraphs, Beyond the Boxscore and such? Those guys are doing fantastic work, covering aspects of baseball that the mainstream media doesn't touch . I once conversed with a "professional journalist" who covered baseball and sent him a player's slash line. He had to ask me what it was. I'm not putting the guy down but if you cover baseball shouldn't you have a rudimentary knowledge of modern baseball stats? But no matter. To Brennan, the work doesn't count unless it comes through official sources.

Fourth, I don't think anyone is going to click on a link at The Baltimore Sun (who has linked to my site) , come to my site and believe that they are still reading something written by a writer in their employ. Look at this place. My layout is amateurish. My writing is certainly not up to snuff. Brennan thinks people who use the internet for their news are bumbling idiots, "wandering" around aimlessly, consuming information without discretion. Brennan seems to think the public is some great unwashed who can't be trusted to read anything that does not come from a newspaper. One they can hold in their hands. That's silly and ridiculously outdated.

But none of this on the surface is a big deal. I toyed with posting about it last month and never did because I find the whole "the big bad journalist is picking on us bloggers" theme kind of tired and I truly don't care that much. But it sets a tone. A tone from Brennan that says, if you don't meet my standards of education, professionalism, geography or living quarters, you don't matter. Period.

This week, Brennan has a tweet about Erin Andrews and the voyeur who spied on her in her hotel room.

There are hundreds of women covering sports in this country who haven’t had this happen to them. I wish it didn’t happen to Erin, but I also would suggest to her if she asked (and she hasn’t) that she rely on her talent and brains and not succumb to the lowest common denominator in sports media by playing to the frat house....

Women sports journalists need to be smart and not play to the frat house. There are tons of nuts out there.

So because Erin Andrews is a very attractive young woman, the kind of reporting she does "succumbs to the lowest common denominator"...what? What does this have to with the subject you're talking about? Nothing...unless you're suggesting she brought this on herself.

Erin Andrews does not meet Christine Brennan's standards of journalism. Thus, she is not worthy of Brennan's empathy.

And with that, there's a sport columnist you never have to read again.

Later, Christine.

(posted from an office where I can see the sun...)

Steve Phillips is Not A GM For A Reason...

Waaaayyy off topic but I couldn't let this go. From yesterday's ESPN chat with Steve Phillips:

Beltran Stays (New York): Steve, while I respect your work, I disagree with your statements about Carlos Beltran on Sunday Night Baseball. The guy has done nothing but produce, and name me a CF who's better in the game right now.

Steve Phillips: If the Mets don't make the playoffs, I firmly believe they need to reconfigure the core of this team. While Beltran does have talent, I just don't see him as a winning player. Even after my comments on Sunday night, Beltran let a fly ball drop in between himself and Angel Pagan in the Dodger game. I see him putting up numbers but not making plays to win games. I would take Torii Hunter, Grady Sizemore, Curtis Granderson, and Nate McLouth over Beltran, and use the financial difference to improve the team in other ways. Beltran isn't a $17 million dollar a year player. He just doesn't have the kind of impact for that kind of money.

Wow. Lets's take this point by point.

Torii Hunter is over the hill and will actually make more than Beltran so no cost savings.

Grady Sizemore is awesome...but he's unavailable. I don't think Cleveland is parting with him.

Curtis Granderson...see above.

Nate McLouth: Good hitter, TERRIBLE centerfielder (Gold Glove notwithstanding)

So sure, Sizemore and Granderson are younger and arguably just as good...but they aren't coming to the Mets.

So now that we have eliminated these four, who is coming to play center field for the Mets who is better than Beltran?

The next comment speaks for itself:

Steve Phillips: Many people think that Alex Rodriguez is the best player in the game, but he's never won anything. I look at Beltran in a similar fashion as Rodriguez--a great talent that just doesn't seem to have what it takes to win championships. Maybe the Mets can keep him and add pieces to the core around him and still win. But when you're dealing with a budget and the screams of immediacy in New York, I'm not sure the Mets can wait to piece it together around him. I know there are a lot of people who disagree with me, but it's just the way I see it. Beltran is a very good person and a solid citizen, in addition to being a guy who puts up numbers. I like him, I just don't think they can win with him.

First, a list of Hall of Famers who weren't "winners":

Ernie Banks
Harmon Killebrew
Carlton Fisk
Rod Carew
Nellie Fox

I could go on...

Funny how it's Beltran's fault and not the fault of GM Omar Minaya who has flanked him in the outfield with Ryan Church and Fernando Tatis.

OK, resume party...

Dempsey's Army is Moving On...But Not Really

Hello everybody. I have been offered a chance to host Dempsey's Army over at MVN, the network that Oriole Magic and, now, Ben Frazier's Oriole Central now reside.

But I'm not willing to relinquish this space yet, not now that I am finally comfortable with my surroundings. So I will be cross-posting most of my entries here and at MVN for the near future with 3 or 4 exclusive posts for MVN a month and some exclusive posts here that I feel don't fit into a strict Oriole-centric format. So for the foreseeable future, check both sites for new material.

One of the reasons I'm keeping both blogs for now is that I don't like the formatting or look of most blogs at MVN (no offense to them, just my personal preference) and even though my blog is very basic, I like the layout and the function of it. It's mine, dammit! But even today I've already figured out how to turn off the (to me) annoying default "truncated" view of the posts at MVN which is a big improvement. I think there's a lot of potential there but I'm really going to have to brush up on my HTML to get it where I want it. So it's possible in the future, when the new site looks and feels the way I want it, that I will leave this site to the internet wasteland and blog only at MVN but I think that's months away. What can I say, I can't let go of my blanky yet.

Thanks to everyone who reads this, the suggestions many of you have made and give me some feedback on the new site if you care to. It's here...

MVN: Dempsey's Army

OK, resume party...

Rudy Ray Moore (1927-2008)

R.I.P. Dolemite.

Keep pimpin'...