http://theangryt.com/?p=561

Elway threw a LOT more than McNabb ever will. And for the first seven years of Elway's career he had absolutely no one around him, but still made multiple Super Bowls. It wasn't until Shannon Sharpe, Rod Smith and eventually Terrel Davis came along that Elway the Broncos could put together a team strong enough offensively to win.

And yes, part of it is more than stats. The Drive (I think he still leads the league in 4th quarter come-from-behind wins), that famous Cal/Stanford game, that helicopter twirl.

And he won more games than anyone until Favre passed him this year. And has 9 pro bowl selections, and 12 seasons of 3000 yards or more, etc. etc.

Elways was guaranteed Hall of Fame, McNabb is fun to watch and a good player but I seriously doubt he will ever be inducted.

I hate both of them.

It's like choosing between a douche and a turd sammich. Ill take the week leftovers of that before either of these fags. God I can't stand either, especially Elway. He's like a junior Dan Marino, which is the absolute worst thing anyone could be.

1. The Eagles teams McNabb has played for have always relied heavily on the pass. Especially the Super Bowl year, when they didn't have a good run-blocking line so they threw a lot of screens to Westbrook. Also, not really...McNabb has played for 9 years. In the first 9 years of their careers, the differential of pass attempts is 291 more passes by Elway. Factor in the McNabb has missed 32 games thus far in his career due to injuries, not getting the start right away as a rookie, etc. and that gap isn't all that impressive. Even if we take the 9 seasons that Elway had the most attempts, the differential is only 905 passes, which seems like a lot until you again factor out the 32 games McNabb hasn't played.

2. The Super Bowl is only mentioned once in the entire article. The point is to compare the quarterbacks and the quarterbacks alone. Aside from TO, McNabb has never exactly had any world-beaters at receiver, either...his biggest threat is Westbrook out of the backfield.

3. Nobody is suggesting that McNabb be inducted into the Hall of Fame. This is merely pointing out that he's scrutinized intensely and always seems to be in trouble of losing the starting job despite what has been a pretty successful career.

It hasn't been a successful career. Well, not entirely. Stats are fine to judge by I guess, but the only thing people ever care about are the rings. Until McNabb gets one, stats are all that we can judge him by, and it is insufficient data to make a statement like McNabb > Elway on.

Stats are not the whole story and every sports fan knows this.

Stats ARE the whole story for individual performance. A single player does not win a Super Bowl...if that were true, Peyton Manning would have won several instead of just the one. Brett Favre would have a ring for every finger. Individually, McNabb's stats are better than Elway's.

If all you judge a QB's performance on is Super Bowl rings, Terry Bradshaw is the best ever. Nevermind that he threw for more INTs than TDs 5 times in his career, including his rookie year when he threw a Ryan Leaf-esque season's worth of 24 INTs to 6 TDs, the fucker's got 4 rings! He's the best!

Stats aren't insufficient data...they're the ONLY data. The rest is just folklore.

Jesus christ...go suck Ænima's cock already...you're both fucking idiots.

Stats aren't even close to being the whole story about a person. You could earn 400 yards against the best teams in the league...or against the worst...and it looks exactly the same in the stat book. There is much more to a players ability than what is shown in the stats.

Truly great players can make their entire team better.

You sound like the old baseball scouts that said Billy Beane was fucking stupid for looking at stats. Or just Joe Morgan. And who the hell wants to sound like Joe Morgan?

No one is saying stats don't matter, we are saying that they aren't the end-all way to compare players. I honestly doubt you've ever played a team sport besides juggling a dude's balls in your mouth, otherwise you'd know that usually the best teammates to have in football or baseball or what have you are often times not the guys who are the best athletically on the field; but the guys who are truly the best TEAM players.

And yeah you can compare Elway to McNabb by lining up the numbers all you want but no one outside of a handful of hyper-critical pseudo sportsfans will agree with you that McNabb is a better QB.

Honestly, stats do tell the entire story about an athlete. Granted, in football as in every other sport, they're far more obscure stats than the common ones such as QB rating, completion percent, etc. And in those categories, yeah, Elway dominates McNabb. But the whole argument about stats is really beside the point that McNabb has for his entire career been unfairly scrutinized when in reality he's easily one of the five best QBs in the game right now, or at the very least top 10.

Elway's legacy has a lot to do with things like what you posted earlier...The Drive, helicopter twirl, Stanford/Cal, etc. But that's not what made him great. What made him great was consistently dominating the league in every important statistic for when he played.

To draw a comparison with baseball again, it's old hat to statisticians that Derek Jeter is the worst fielding SS in the game. But you can't tell that to many people without seeming crazy, because of things like that insane throw he made in the 2000 playoffs from way out of nowhere. But that doesn't mean that fielding is his strong suit because of one amazing play...however, nobody says he's a bad PLAYER, because he's a fantastic enough hitter that it more than makes up for his fielding deficiencies. What makes Derek Jeter great? He puts up unbelievable numbers for his position year in and year out. The rest is just folklore.

Comparison isn't valid, baseball players have to get graded on both offense and defense so as you said with Jeter, his average and clutch hitting makes up for his lackluster skills on the field.

Fair enough, but the original point of the article is still not refuted.

I don't care what the stats say, Elways is much better.

That stats don't show the injuries of McNabb as of recent. They also don't show him being a world class bitch resulting in the release of a world class athlete in Terrel Owens. I know, I know, it was TO's fault....I mean look at him at Dallas....it was his fault here too....oh wait...maybe it wasn't. Maybe McNabb was the shithead....should have got rid of McNabb. How many super bowls did they make it too before TO? How many playoff appearances have the 49ers been to after TO? I'm glad Jerry Jones fired Parcells ass instead of TO. ALso, how many playoffs did the COwgirls make it to before TO? That's what I thought. ANyways this isn't a TO topic, I'm just saying McNabb has also been a whiny bitch and Elway never brought any negative attention to his team that I can remember (his career did start before I was born so sorry I'm wrong on this).

McNabb has also had a world class defense on the other side of the ball, which "statistically" may not have anything to do with the QB's, but lets face it, a good defense is a great offense (you know what I'm talking about Clown, Big Ben in Pittsburgh, the Steeler defense was so solid all that it required Ben to do was be efficient, not spectacular, which already has given him a good shot to the HoF).

I will say McNabb has had some great years, and some amazing individual efforts in games (4th and 27 in the playoffs) but Elway, man he was all heart.

1. The stats DO show his injuries. It's a little stat I like to call "games started."

2. It WAS TO's fault, just like it was in San Francisco. He's grown up in Dallas. Let's take a look at some things TO did while playing for Philly:

A. Constantly criticize McNabb
B. Wear a Michael Ivrvin throwback jersey in Philadelphia knowing full well about the rivalry between the teams and the intensity of said rivalry during the 90s.
C. Instigated a fistfight with Hugh Douglas in the team locker room.
D. Said the team would be undefeated if Brett Favre was the quarterback instead of McNabb, then said Favre was tougher than McNabb despite McNabb playing with an injury that entire year.
E. Issued an apology for his conduct which he later admitted in writing was phony.

Yep. Totally McNabb's fault. He drove TO out of town. But this topic isn't even about TO, it's about Donovan McNabb's athletic abilities. Also, you'll note that even after TO McNabb has led the Eagles to the playoffs, and he led them to 4 straight NFC Championship games before him. And if you're going to use the "he couldn't win the big one" argument, I'd like to direct you to one Peyton Manning, who was universally considered one of the best QBs in the game even when he was choking in the playoffs every year instead of winning the big one.

Just as a side point, before TO the Cowboys were doing something that people in the sports world like to call "rebuilding." You could now say that they're rebuilt. To further exemplify my point, consider that before TO the Cowboys every day starting QB was Drew Bledsoe, their #1 wide receiver was the aging shell of Keyshawn Johnson, and their defense was awful outside of Roy Williams. That should tell you something about why they couldn't make the playoffs without him. TO didn't single-handedly get them over the hump, he was just a piece of the puzzle.

A good defense helps the offense immensely, yes, but I would like to pose two points to you:

1. Name a team in the NFL right now that doesn't have a good defense. Even the Dolphins have a solid D.
2. A defense only gives you opportunities. (unless they score a defensive TD.) What separates adequate from good and good from great is what you do with those opportunities. McNabb did good things with them, whereas there are plenty of QBs who don't. Remember the Colts-Chiefs playoff game in 2006? Manning threw 3 INTs that day, but the Chiefs offense couldn't capitalize and lost the game. A defense doesn't make a great offense, a defense gives an offense opportunities to show what it can do.

Also, Roethlisberger is one of the best QBs in the game. I'd put him solidly at #3 behind Manning and Brady. He could be the best in the league by the time he retires. Admittedly, his rookie year was a bit of smoke and mirrors caused by low pass attempts per game and him doing what he needed to do with those attempts and letting the defense and running game do the rest, but that's how a rookie QB SHOULD play on a good team. He was getting used to the system still, and he performed excellently for a rookie. But all you have to do is look at his second season and especially what he did last year (behind easily one of the worst offensive lines in football at that) to see that he's actually a great QB.

Elway was all heart, but that doesn't equal talent. If heart was all it took, a lot of teams would have been champions in every sport imaginable that weren't. At some point you have to look at objective quantifications too back up claims of greatness.

I didn't read all what you wrote.

I do understand injuries are shown in stats, but what I meant was he's not as durable as Elway was. HE has shown moments of being tough.

And Ben 3rd best in the league? I don't think so...I think he's the smartest in the league however. I don't think he's as talented as some of the other QB's. I still Carson is better, and that's not biased at all from being a Bengals fan. The number of sacks, lack of production in the running game, and yet Carson still is putting up amazing numbers speaks about him as QB.

But Big Ben, aside from that screwy start he had this year from those injuries, has got to be the strongest QB's, smartest, and most consistent. But he never really throws up crazy numbers like attempts and yards. He's exteremly efficient, when at the end of the day that's what you want. But I don't think he's in the top 5 for most skilled.

And name a defense that's bad? Have you seen the BEngals? I possess no where near the skills to run a defense, but even I when I watch the Bengals can tell their defense looks lost. And that's a hard thing to do when each play is only a few seconds long.

Every QB that was on a slump this past year, even two years, has had breakout numbers agains the Bengals.

Last year, Roethlisberger was sacked 47 times, more than any other quarterback in the league. He was sacked a little over 10% of the time that he dropped back to pass. That means that for every 10 passes he attempted, one resulted in a sack. If he weren't so good at breaking tackles, that number would be a lot higher. The Steelers lost a league-leading 347 yards in sacks. I bring this up only to point out how terribly Roethlisberger was protected last year. Keep that in mind while reading the rest of this.

Despite this, he managed to throw for 32 TDs, second only to Tom Brady, who had a WAY deeper receiving corps than Roethlisberger (besides Ward and Holmes, who was injured for 4 games, the Steelers have NOBODY. Hopefully Limas Sweed will change that.) and only 11 INTs. Of 404 pass attempts, he completed 264 for 3154 yds and a 65.3% completion percent. Of his completions, 7.9% of them went for TDs compared to 2.7% for INTs. His yards per completion (considered by many to be the most important stat in all of football) was a sparkling 11.9, meaning that on average every pass he completed went for at least a first down. He finished the year out with a 104.1 passer rating. He also compiled 204 rushing yards and 2 rushing TDs.

If the Patriots didn't have such an amazing year last year, Roethlisberger easily would have been the top QB story. He put up better numbers in every important category than ANY other starter besides Tom Brady. Better than both Mannings, better than Palmer, better than Romo.

Compare his line to Palmer, who despite an all-star receiving corps, an adequate line, (sack percentage was only 2.9%) and a decent running game, could only muster a 26 TD, 20 INT season: good for more INTs than any other QB in the game. He had a 4.5% TD rating and a 3.5% INT rating, meaning in any given pass, it was only 1% more likely to go for a TD than an INT. Palmer finished the year with an 86.7 passer rating, 10 rushing yards, 0 rushing TDs.

As far as career numbers, Roethlisberger has thrown for less INTs, a higher TD%, a higher career long pass, higher yards per attempt higher ADJUSTED yards per attempt (which penalizes for INTs), higher NET YARDS per attempt (which penalizes for INTs AND sacks, meaning you'd think Palmer would have an advantage here,) and a higher yards per completion, all this despite being sacked more than twice as often as Palmer. Why people continue to rate him higher than Roethlisberger is beyond me...the dude had one good year, and he was surrounded by absolute all-stars.

Now I want you to imagine what Big Ben could have done last year with the Bengal offense around him instead of a clearly rebuilding Steeler offense.

Dude, don't bring up Palmers rushing stats and rushing TD's, frankly I'm suprised it's positive yardage LoL.

And Big Ben playing for Bengals would not be better in any way compare to playing for the steelers, there is no offensive advantage in cincy.

The Bengals were god awful in rushing this year. Rudi Johnson was injured all year and didn't break 500 yards and previously he was getting 1300+ for the last 3 or 4 years, not to mention he averaged under 3 yards per carry.

Kenny Watson was streaky. Kenny Irons, the stud from Auburn (school that pumps out RB's left and right) tore his ACL in the very first preseason game on a 10+ yard rush.

And the Bengals had a great receiving group when all THREE WR were there...chad, TJ, and CHris Henry (Peter Warrick before that). Did you watch the Begnals first half of the year? 2-6 was their record without Henry. They were god awful. Three players can only get your team so far man, it's not that hard to cover just 3 men. Without a legit running game and another threat on the field Carson was a sitting duck and couldn't do shit.

the Steelers have an all star offense as well with good REceiving corps in Hines Ward , and I also knew Santonio would be good after seeing him play for my bucks. And Heath Miller is one of the leagues most solid TE, something the BEngals have never had. I'm not saying the Bengals are worse, but the Steelers are not bad on their offense either. The STeelers rushed for over 2000 yards on the season. That packed with tenacious d of the Steelers, Big BEn has quite a lot of tools around him.

And I'm not saying the only reason Ben is only good because of his team. I've followed it for a long time, my friend from high school, his older brother was a bad ass QB and went to Miami and had to ride the bench for 3 years because of Ben, and this kid was awesome...now plays like 3rd or 4th string on the Colts. He took Miami to the top 25.

I'm just saying the Bengals offense isn't as all star as people think, it was just one season of 11-5. I think they are much worse off from the Steelers personally when the run game is added into it.

But anyways this is a dumb debate...if I were a GM and the first two picks of QBs is clearly Brady, Manning....I'd have no clue who to pick between Ben and Carson. They are both studs in my mind.