Now that Favre is officially done, where does he rank all time?

Umm what? Elway had a top ten D 8 times:

1998- 8th
1997- 6th
1996- 7th
1991- 3rd
1989- 1st
1987- 7th
1984- 2nd
1983- 9th

Actually, everyone knows about the offense and during Elway's tenure the average rank of the offense was 9.5. The average rank of the defense was 11.56. Not a whole lot different.

You have more of a point with Marino who had a top ten denfense only 4 times:
1998- 1st
1990- 4th
1984- 7th
1983- 1st

ps- Favre only had a top 10 D 7 times during his career.



That is fairly true, but it's not like Brett had a hall of fame running game either. Marino's sucked for the most part, but Elway won his super bowls when he had a couple AMAZING running game seasons. All his super bowls he had a good running game.

1998- Terrell Davis, 2008 yards, 21 tds, 5.1 ypc (all lead the league)
1997- Terrell Davis, 1750 yards, 15 tds, 4.7 ypc (2nd in yards, 1st in tds, and 6th in ypc)
1989- Bobby Humphry, 1151 yards, 7 tds, all in only 12 starts. (8th in yards, and 7th in tds)
In 87 and 86, Winder was admittedly not impressive, however, the Broncos ranked in the top 10 in rushing td's both years. 87- 3rd, 86- 9th.

So as you can see, the misconception that Elway didn't have a defense or a running game is false.
Elway played 17 years , and his last two years he had T. Davis ,, most of his career , he had little in teamrs of a running game . Most of there running yds were draw plays . I think the Def. numbers looked good , because the AFC was not as strong in the 80's .We witnessed the denver D in the early SB's ; P Simms , 22 of 25 , The Skins 35 pts in one qtr < 600yds > , and the 49ers scored 55 pts .... not a strong defence . True , Favre never had HOF wr's and rb's , I just never saw were Elway and Marino had as much as most of our HOF Qb's . All of these guys were amazing , I would have loved for any of them to be wearing the Burgandy and Gold . Nice work on the stats .

Just out of curiousity, who would be the 3 above him in your opinion?

Unitas
Montanna
Elway

Based mostly on passer rating and Championships. If we based it on records alone then Favre has everyone beat. If we base it on championships alone then we are talking about Montanna, Bradshaw, Brady, and then everyone else. If we are talking about Strictly passer rating and Scrambling ability the it is hands down Steve Young and then everybody else. So with all things considered, there is my list with Young pulling in 5th.

When Favre was drafted I was 18 and a senior in high school. Damn I feel old now. :(

I have felt Favre has been overrated for a while now. He was great from 1995-1998, 1999ish. Since then, in my mind, he hasn't been anything special. I think he gets a lot of hype because he is perceived as being tough, he can be fun to watch, and by all accounts he is a regular guy. People make a big deal of him kicking the vicodin addiction, overcoming his wife's illness, the game he played after his dad passed. He won plenty of games for the Packers, but he was responsible for plenty of Packer losses as well. Relatively speaking he is not as overrated as Cal Ripken, but might be the Ripken of football.

As compared to guys I saw, I do not put him ahead of Elway, Montana, Aikman, Young, Brady, Peyton Manning, or Marino. Maybe even a few others who I can't think of right now. I do not remember guys like Fouts, barely remember guys like Theismann or Plunkett, so I won't include them in my list.

Elway played 17 years , and his last two years he had T. Davis ,, most of his career , he had little in teamrs of a running game . Most of there running yds were draw plays . I think the Def. numbers looked good , because the AFC was not as strong in the 80's .We witnessed the denver D in the early SB's ; P Simms , 22 of 25 , The Skins 35 pts in one qtr < 600yds > , and the 49ers scored 55 pts .... not a strong defence . True , Favre never had HOF wr's and rb's , I just never saw were Elway and Marino had as much as most of our HOF Qb's . All of these guys were amazing , I would have loved for any of them to be wearing the Burgandy and Gold . Nice work on the stats .

I was at football camp in the summer of 91 and 92. A bunch of NFL'ers there such as Lott, Cornelius Bennet, Bruce Smith, LT (real LT), Leonard Marshall, Jim Lachey. In the evenings they gave speeches and did Q & A's. They all said Elway was the best QB in the NFL. I will qualify that by saying that Lott was asked, "If you can't choose Montana, who would say is the best QB in the league?"

I guess it depends. You have to stand on one side of the era adjustments or the other:

1) All player statistics are already representitive of the competition they faced and the weapons they had, and era adjustments are not necessary.

2) The game has changed in a way that has put past performances at a decisive disadvantage. We must adjust their accomplishments accordingly to some benefits the new rules would have given then.

I think saying that Sammy Baugh in his prime would throw for 6,000 yards every year in today's game is pretty ridiculous, but there have been enough rule changes over time that he didn't benefit from that I would say he would rank among the top 3 passers of the 90's with that sort of assistance. It's a tough thing, the toughest thing about all-time QB rankings.

I think it would be a totally reasonable argument for someone to say that Sammy Baugh's skill set (mental and physical) would produce a below average NFL QB today (and a sub-Jurgensen level QB in the 60s) because a lot of QBs today are just better than he ever was. I just tend to think that he was too great for that to be the case.

I appreciate your earlier feedback, and I think this is one of the great debates in all of sport...how to you objectively quantify players of different eras? Because we have no consistent imperical evidence against which to base our opinions, any arguement has to be heard frankly. You can make a strong case that the players of the past were slower, smaller, and played weaker competition (lack of full integration in league sports). On the other hand you can argue that with the benefit of modern coaching, training, and rules, some past players would be even better than their modern bretheren.

Personally, I think there is a little of both. I'll take your example:
Sammy Baugh played when the rules were squarely set against the forward pass, yet he succeeded at doing just that. With a rounder ball, no personal foul rules, and with D-backs mugging the receiver, he accomplished stats that would be impressive even in the modern era. This is while he was on the field for every snap of the game, mind you, with no TV timeouts to catch his breath. Now, would that traslate to 6000 yards in the modern era...impossible to tell, but one has to believe an athlete that gifted could succeed under any conditions, but even Sammy didn't have Peyton's mind or body.

For others on this board looking at the gaudy stats of the modern "live ball" era, you are missing some of the true greats. Yes, Steve Young took the WCO to levels never seen, even under Montana. He had a great arm and was as efficient as any quarterback could be in that system and more. That said, Young only had one championship and benefited from having Jerry Rice and one of the best offensive minds ever. How can you overlook guys like Star who had 5 NFL championships, more than Bradshaw, more than Brady, more than Montana?

I appreciate your earlier feedback, and I think this is one of the great debates in all of sport...how to you objectively quantify players of different eras?I think the best way to do so is to compare how they dominated when they played. Works best with baseball. I'll always say Babe Ruth was the best player ever even though I never saw him play. He hit more homeruns in a season than entire teams. A few years he hit more than EVERY team in the American League. On top of that won 90 games as a pitcher. For someone to argue that Arod for example is the best ever, he'd have to hit over 150 homeruns in a year. A little harder to use stats in football as the stats do not always tell the whole story. For example, Eli this play-off. Noone will argue, at least succesfully, that he didnt play great in the 4 games, but his stats were nothing impressive or off the charts.

Unitas
Montanna
Elway

Based mostly on passer rating and Championships. If we based it on records alone then Favre has everyone beat. If we base it on championships alone then we are talking about Montanna, Bradshaw, Brady, and then everyone else. If we are talking about Strictly passer rating and Scrambling ability the it is hands down Steve Young and then everybody else. So with all things considered, there is my list with Young pulling in 5th.

I respect your opinion, and can get on board with Montana and Unitas, but elway???? No. Let's compare:

Keep in Mind, Elway played 16 years for the Broncos and Favre played 16 years for the Packers. Favre did play 2 games for the Falcons, but had only 4 attempts and made 0 completions. So there is no such thing as inflated stats here since the comparison is using the exact same amount of years.

Passer Rating - 85.7% Favre / 79.9% Elway
Championships - 2 Elway / 1 Favre
Records - 100 Favre / 0 Elway j/k :D
Favre threw 145 go ahead tds / Elway threw 103
Elway threw 30 game tying tds / Favre threw 27 tying tds
Favre threw 39 playoff tds / Elway threw 27
Competion % - 61.4% Favre / 56.9% Elway
Seasons 60.0%+ - 11 times Favre / 3 times Elway
Passing Yards - 61,655 Favre / 51,475 Elway
4000+ passing yard seasons - 5 times Favre / 1 time Elway
Passing TDs- 442 Favre / 300 Elway
Total Tds - 455 Favre / 334 Elway (* 1- receiving)
Avg TD per start - 1.80 Favre / 1.44 Elway
Longest TD - 99 yards Favre / 80 yards Elway
Average Passing yards per start - 243.7 Favre / 222.8 Elway
Pro Bowls - 9 Favre / 9 Elway
All Pro - 7 Favre / 5 Elway
MVP's - 3 Favre / 1 Elway

Of course, a lot of these are stat based, but the ONLY argument that can be made for Elway over Favre is more Super Bowls. Everything else, including MVPS goes to Favre. It's a slam dunk that Favre was better.

And the Broncos were over the cap when they won both SBs, which is against league rules.

Think how many SBs Brunell would have won here if the team could have blatently ignored the cap free of charge.

I respect your opinion, and can get on board with Montana and Unitas, but elway???? No. Let's compare:

Keep in Mind, Elway played 16 years for the Broncos and Favre played 16 years for the Packers. Favre did play 2 games for the Falcons, but had only 4 attempts and made 0 completions. So there is no such thing as inflated stats here since the comparison is using the exact same amount of years.

Passer Rating - 85.7% Favre / 79.9% Elway
Championships - 2 Elway / 1 Favre
Records - 100 Favre / 0 Elway j/k :D
Favre threw 145 go ahead tds / Elway threw 103
Elway threw 30 game tying tds / Favre threw 27 tying tds
Favre threw 39 playoff tds / Elway threw 27
Competion % - 61.4% Favre / 56.9% Elway
Seasons 60.0%+ - 11 times Favre / 3 times Elway
Passing Yards - 61,655 Favre / 51,475 Elway
4000+ passing yard seasons - 5 times Favre / 1 time Elway
Passing TDs- 442 Favre / 300 Elway
Total Tds - 455 Favre / 334 Elway (* 1- receiving)
Avg TD per start - 1.80 Favre / 1.44 Elway
Longest TD - 99 yards Favre / 80 yards Elway
Average Passing yards per start - 243.7 Favre / 222.8 Elway
Pro Bowls - 9 Favre / 9 Elway
All Pro - 7 Favre / 5 Elway
MVP's - 3 Favre / 1 Elway

Of course, a lot of these are stat based, but the ONLY argument that can be made for Elway over Favre is more Super Bowls. Everything else, including MVPS goes to Favre. It's a slam dunk that Favre was better.

Point taken, but everyone has an opinion.