Article:Pro Football's 100 Greatest Quarterbacks....of any era

If you're reading this, chances are good that you're looking to find out who I believe to be the 100 greatest quarterbacks in pro football history. What I'm going to do is unveil these one-by-one and link to my write-up on them; it could take 100 days, it could take 40, it could take 365. Stay tuned, because "conventional logic" is going to take a backseat to "something intelligent".

Here's how it gets done. Using my Points Generated and Efficiency formulas, I went back through every individual season in pro football history and scored points based on who the most dominant players were. From 1932-1969 (AAFC and AFL included), the top quarterback in each category received 5 points; second place received 4, and third place 3. Starting in 1970, the top 5 each year received points as well; fourth place received two, fifth place received one. Each quarterback's total in each category was then tallied over his career. The square root of his production points was added to the square root of his efficiency points, and then "THE TITLE POINTS" were added to that (five points for a title, four points for a title game loss). What remained was the guy's total score, which was then sorted.

A few notes on that: -- To be eligible for the efficiency award, a quarterback had to have a certain number of offensive opportunities (passes + rushes) -- The reason for the square roots being used is to either award consistency or punish lopsidedness. Fran Tarkenton and Dan Marino set every passing record in the world largely because they handled the ball a ton more than anyone else; Terry Bradshaw and Norm Van Brocklin would suffer because their teams were run-heavy, occasionally play-action. The square roots balance it out. -- The title points being added to the end are because a championship is a bonus, not the be-all-end-all. From my research, I determined that Tarkenton was the first to really be stuck with that "But he never won the big one" label as an insult. -- If two players were tied in final points (or insanely close), I deferred to the one who scored a higher average number in eligible seasons. That's my own bias, but I'd rather see superlative play for a shorter career than average to marginally above-average for a longer period of time. -- There are a small number of what I call "perfect seasons". This is where a quarterback leads the league in production and efficiency in addition to leading his team to a championship win. --

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