The real goat qb is ...

[markw2856]

Otto was good but I wouldn't put him in the discussion for this at all. I would put Paul Brown in a discussion for coach before I would put Otto Graham in a discussion for QB. You had an elite coach at the time that changed the game and a top defense almost every year during that period.

Of that period you can have that debate but of all time no. Just a different era of football. There was a game in 1950 where Cleveland didn't even throw the ball one time against Philadelphia. Cleveland had 1 first down, Otto had negative rushing yards, no pass attempts, Philly had 4 turnovers and Cleveland won 13-7.

[jwlawrence06]

@Jameis1of1 side note, I always enjoy your debates and arguments, you bring a lot of facts and good points to them...as soon as I saw this post I knew I had to chime in, and there would be a lot of back-and-forth. Respect.

[Jameis1of1]

Otto was good but I wouldn't put him in the discussion for this at all. I would put Paul Brown in a discussion for coach before I would put Otto Graham in a discussion for QB. You had an elite coach at the time that changed the game and a top defense almost every year during that period.

Hahahaha, this reply cracks me up. You do realize that is the EXACT SAME ARGUMENT used against ALL the big-time QB "winners" including Tom Brady (with the GOAT Coach Bellichick), Joe Montana (w/ Bill Walsh who revolutionized the game) and even Terry Bradshaw (w/ Ground Chuck Knoll).

All the great "winners" at QB had great coaches, but Otto has the INDIVIDUAL awards that blow everyone else away, including Brady.

Of that period you can have that debate but of all time no. Just a different era of football. There was a game in 1950 where Cleveland didn't even throw the ball one time against Philadelphia. Cleveland had 1 first down, Otto had negative rushing yards, no pass attempts, Philly had 4 turnovers and Cleveland won 13-7.

Yup, and Big Ben won a SuperBowl while playing like trash and having his passer rating TRIPLED by the opposing team's QB ... by the way, Otto also started at corner back and punt returner ...

[markw2856]

All good just look at the stats man. These are the years Otto played. I like the argument, you could always add a poll onto this as don't think anything will change your mind Not aruging he was good, but no not close too GOAT

AAFC 1946-48 8 total teams
AAFC 1949 7 total teams
NFL 1950 13 total teams
NFL 1951-55 12 total teams


Cleveland defense ranked 1st points against every year but 1950 and 1952(2nd both years)

Just Otto stats in AAFC and NFL

AAFC TD/INT 86-41

NFL TD/INT 88-94

[jplcom]

Okay, I'm putting an end to this debate business once and for all......

though I know many people would also put ... Dan Marino in a BOAT conversation

Those people would also by happenstance be Dolphins fans. The only BOAT Marino is getting on is the slow boat to irrelevancy.

I think most people would probably have Rodgers, Manning and Marino as their top 3 in any order, with guys like Montana, Unitas, Elway, Young, Favre, Brady and Brees filling out the top 10 in any order.

Montana has 3 All-Pros, 2 MVPs, and 4 Super Bowl championships. Marino has 3 All-Pros, HALF as many MVPs, and lost ONE HUNDRED PERCENT OF EVERY SUPER BOWL HE EVER PLAYED IN TO JOE MONTANA!

If accolades for MVPs and championship wins are a key metric of Graham over Brady, then so must the measure be applied to Montana over Marino. If we want to go with adjusted passer ratings from 1950-2018, let's check out this fivethirtyeight.com article which in turn references Pro Football Reference. Scrolling about halfway down is the "A new all-time passer rating hierarchy"

rating.JPG

So Montana wins on winning and on adjusted passer rating. Marino's only got Montana beat with his ability to be an accumulator of stats which I will concede all day long. Even NFL.com, the official mouthpiece of the NFL, says Montana rates higher than Marino.

Must I reference our old debate once again to settle this nonsense of Marino's alleged (and probably illegal) superiority over the clearly better/more handsome/better 80s hair Montana?

[Braves93]

Michael Jordan is still the GOAT on a BOAT.

[bakemeister52]

I too like BOAT over GOAT, GOAT to most people is negative more than a positive thinking! The problem is how can you compare 60 years of playing went there were fewer games and different rules and etc.

[Jameis1of1]

To address your 'firstly', I think passer rating in general is useless, thus I would think any interpretation of passer rating is useless...an opinion that would most likely be shared by a lot of true NFL fans, we can agree to disagree. On top of that, trying to translate statistics from decades prior is very weak support for an argument. Again, I'm sure we will agree to disagree on this.

Why do you believe passer rating as a stat is useless? I personally view QBR as far more relevant but passer rating is a decent stat and the only one that really goes back through all the eras. Please explain why you don't like it as I'm curious.

To address your secondly: This leaves a lot for interpretation. How would you know that all 11 other QBs in the entire league would be MVP-quality QBs? How do you know that, with the little popularity the league had back then (this can be assumed since there were only 12 teams) the players playing the game were competent and elite? I would say that the 'watered down league' today is actually breeding far more elite players than were playing back in Otto Graham's day simply by the fact that it is more popular. More popularity means more competition and less 'scrubs' coming into the professional leagues. You simply can't know whether or not Ryan Tannehill and Geno Smith would have in fact been elite back in the 1950s. Thus, my conclusion here is we can agree to disagree but your point is based on too many hypotheticals.

I don't think you understood what I was saying. I wasn't saying the QBs back then would have been "better" then the QBs today in regards to "talent", as in every succeeding era players are more advanced. What I was saying, which I believe is close to "fact" than merely being "hypothetical" is that as there were only (12) teams, each starting QB would be one of the best (12) QBs on earth, whereas in today's NFL all you have to be is one of the (32) best QBs on earth to start in the NFL. Just imagine if the NFL said there would only be 12 teams ... Flacco and Keenum and Mariota and Brissett and the like are all instantly being relegated to 2nd or 3rd string at best, and out of the league entirely at worst.

To address your thirdly: Of course I'm making the case, this is common sense! Based on the fact that I just dismissed your notion of 'garbage qbs' simply by the fact that we can't possibly know if these 'garbage qbs' would've in fact been 'garbage qbs' back in the day, I am pointing strictly to the fact that the more chances you have, the more likely you are to eventually fail.

I don't even know what to say this, as your line of reasoning seems absurd to me. You are saying that had Otto not played every game of his career against one of the 12 best QBs on earth, but instead played many games against a #13-32nd ranked QB, his stats and win percentage would have been worse? I mean, seriously, I don't even know how to respond to that as it's just absurd.

Maybe I can help you understand by saying the following. In Otto's day teams had backup QBs ... THOSE were the #13-36th ranked QBs on earth and they were on the bench because they were NOT AS GOOD as the starters. Yet you are literally saying if the league in Otto's day would have "expanded" from 12 teams to 32 teams and given all those backup QBs, backup RBs, backup WRs, etc., etc.,starting jobs on new teams and then let those teams made up of back-up scrubs, play against Otto and his team, Otto would have had worse stats and a worse win percentage? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He would have completely dominated such scrub teams and seen his already insanely impressive win percentage sky-rocket even higher.

Imagine if the NFL only had (12) teams right now...you can't, because there are too many unknown variables.

Sure you can. It's not hard to imagine at all. The (12) best QBs would start, the (12) best RBs would start, the (24) best CB's would start, etc.

[quote]However, let's examine your argument a bit. Your claim of 'imagine if the NFL had (12) teams is support for a stance of "if Brady was playing the best of the best all the time his winning wouldn't be as consistent". This is false because no matter how you slice it, Brady's winning is very consistent. Regular season percentage: 77.5%, postseason: 75%, Super Bowl: 66%. It's not like he has a ridiculous winning percentage in the regular season then sucks in the playoffs. The playoffs are essentially a 'season' of 12 teams, 3-4 games. Brady has just as high a winning percentage here as he does in the regular season. Thus, I would say this could support an argument to say that if Brady played in a league with 12 teams the results would be the same.[quote]

I appreciate those stats, however (a) 66.7% is a lot lower than 77.5% ... and ... your argument ignores the fact that even in many modern playoff games Brady was NOT facing off against a top-12 QB. Heck, even in Brady's Super Bowls, one could make a case that in FIVE of his 9 Super Bowls he wasn't even playing against a team with a top 12 QB (Delhomme, Manning 2x, Foles, Goff)!!!!!!!!!

Also, every season we see teams with non top-12 QBs make the playoffs in the modern NFL ... that would NEVER happen in a mere 12 team league. This said, I stand by my statement that Brady's win percentage would suffer if he had to face a top-12 QB every single game and I think the logic behind such a statement is irrefutable.

To address your Fourthly: I'll give you this, your perspective actually makes more sense than the way I presented it.

Thank you for your honesty. I enjoy debating with you as you're an honest debater, which is rare these days.

Finally, based on the numerous hypotheticals and assumptions, I'll go back to my stance that the 'GOAT' discussion is, and will always remain, a discussion.

I certainly agree with that. I'm just saying it "should not be" a discussion, even if it always will be. To me debating Otto vs Brady would be like debating Kobe Bryant vs Dwyane Wade ... sure one can argue it for fun but Kobe wins hands-down and it's not actually close.

Two less MVPs? Graham won those with far fewer players in the league, thus he had a higher chance by nature of being the best.

That means Graham faced tougher competition in a non-watered down league. Regardless, he has two more MVPs and we can't take those away from him to make Brady look better.

1st team all-pros? Really? This is the way you want to support a 'GOAT' debate?

YES, ABSOLUTELY, first team all-pros are extremely important in a GOAT debate ... extremely important. If you can't even be the best QB in your era during a single year you have no business being in a GOAT debate and if one guy has been such SEVEN times and the other only three times, the one who has only done it three times doesn't deserve to be in the debate with the guy who did it SEVEN times ... then when you consider the guy who did it 7 times did such in 70% of his seasons while the other guy (i.e. Brady) did it in just 17% of his seasons, the gap becomes even wider.

Again, in a league with far fewer QBs, it would be a higher chance for someone to be named to the all-pro at their position.

I disagree as the guys ranked 13th-32nd never had any shot at winning the MVP anyways, so it makes no difference if they're in the league or not. If one is playing the card game war and has an ACE and their opponents have some Kings and Queens, the chance that the ACE will not win MVP is not going to lessen if a bunch of non-face cards are thrown into the game.

Once again, you can 'think' that it isn't a close contest, but there are a LOTTTTTTTTT of folks that would completely disagree. No one is 'lapping' anyone in this debate, it will remain a debate whether we want to believe it or not.

I understand that people will always debate the GOAT argument and even that obviously unworthy players will enter it from time to time, in every sport, at every position ... however to me, the QB GOAT is not a debate, it's Otto Graham and there is not even a close 2nd. It makes no difference to me if the every "talking head" on earth disagrees with me, as Gandi said:

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

and as W. Clement Stone said:

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

@Jameis1of1 side note, I always enjoy your debates and arguments, you bring a lot of facts and good points to them...as soon as I saw this post I knew I had to chime in, and there would be a lot of back-and-forth. Respect.

Thank you for the kind words, I truly appreciate it. I enjoy debating with you as well ... you're one of the "good guys" in my book!

[Jameis1of1]

JPLCom,

You misunderstood me ... I would NEVER rank Marino higher on a GOAT list than Montana, but MANY, MANY people would rate Marino higher than Montana on a BOAT list ... including me.

GOAT debates include TEAM success ... BOAT debates are about INDIVIDUAL players independent of TEAM. Basically, a BOAT debate is about which player would be better if both players were surrounded by mere "league average" players at every position and coaches & GMs ... in that scenario I would take Marino over Montana, as would many.