By your own words Staubach played an excellent game against the Steelers in a Super Bowl but still the Boys lost.
I noted that. It was the only such game in that pre modern, rules change driven pinball machine of an NFL. Bradshaw had an even greater game that day.
Again, if the 49ers plated the 70s Steelers in two Super Bowls and lost them both would you still argue that Montana is the best quarterback in the history of the NFL?
You can ask the same question as many times as it pleases you, but I've given you the answer I mean to and the reasons for it. :cheers:
Meantime, I've been looking at the king of 4th quarter comebacks, Peyton Manning. He's still 8 ahead of Brady despite Tom playing a year beyond him already...I was thinking about that when it struck me that I was looking at part of the rebuttal to the foolish notion of Manning as "the greatest regular season quarterback." A backhanded compliment/insult meant to focus attention to the difference between regular season wins and success that seemed to end in the post season.
My normal argument was to note that his actual position stats were better than post season Golden Boy Brady, at least until the last couple of broken years dragged them a little lower. Of course the answer by most was the old confusion of team accomplishments with individual play.
But thinking of both of those things...during the time they hung this around his neck he was having to routinely make a lesser team look better than they were. He did that by leading last quarter charges that ended in totals which led to people mistaking the value of his supporting cast more often than not, a thing only pointedly demonstrated during his year off due to catastrophic injury, when that supporting cast won all of 2 games.
Here's the list of seasons, with total wins followed by how many of them were pulled out of his helmet late:
1998: 3-13 record, 1 comeback
1999: 13-4 record, 7 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 6-11
2000: 10-6 record, 3 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 7-9
2001: 6-10 record, 0 comebacks. They were as bad as they looked.
2002: 10-6 record, 5 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 5-11
2003: 12-4 record, 4 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 8-8
2004: 12-4 record, 4 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 8-8
2005: 14-2 record, 1 comeback, or they could have as easily been 13-2, a great year.
2006: 12-4 record, 3 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 9-7, and they won a SB.
2007: 13-3 record, 2 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 11-5
2008: 12-4 record, 7 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 5-11
2009: 14-2 record, 7 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 7-9
2010: 10-6 record, 2 comebacks, or they could have as easily been 8-8
In other words, without him leading the team to 4th quarter victories you're looking at a mediocre team, with the exception of a three year stretch when Dungy gave him a solid defense. They won a SB in that stretch. In the worst 2 years they couldn't even manage to rally. During the rest of his days at Indy he had to lead his team to an average of 5 comebacks each year. Or they averaged 11 wins with comebacks. Without them Indy was a team averaging 7.5 wins a season.
To put it in perspective, Brady has had to come up with 2.5 of those each season, on average. And during that stretch they've averaged about 12.5 wins. Meaning that during Brady's entire career he played with teams that on average would have won 10 games each year, even without the comebacks.
