Great Quarterback theory and history
The best place to start is a list of Super Bowl most valuable player, MVP’s. If our men are memorialized anywhere, it is on an elite list of big-time performers whose games are remembered with reverence and accolades. A full list of Super Bowl MVP’s can be found at the Athlon Sports website, here.
Thirty times men have been named MVP of the Super Bowl that played the quarterback position. That’s a pretty high incidence in just 54 games, almost 56%. Some men appear more than once and five men have been named MVP multiple times, including Tom Brady of the New England Patriots four times.
Taking out the multiple appearances, only 22 different men have garnered that distinction. Some we can eliminate right off of the bat. Joe Montana of the San Francisco Forty-Niner’s?
Ever hear of Jerry Rice (who won an MVP, too), Ronnie Lott, Michael Carter, Roger Craig?; he’s done.
How about Terry Bradshaw of the Pittsburgh Steelers? Lynn Swann won an MVP, Franco Harris is a Hall of Fame running back, and when your entire defense is called the “Steel Curtain”, you aren’t flying solo. Bye bye, Terry.
Bart Starr, two-time MVP, had several Hall of Fame teammates, Paul Hornung, Jim Taylor to name a couple, so we cannot put him into that category, either.
Is this even a real thing?
Similarly, Joe Namath, Roger Staubach, Len Dawson, Jim Plunkett, Phil Simms, Doug Williams, Mark Rypien, Troy Aikman, Steve Young, John Elway, Kurt Warner, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Joe Flacco, Nick Foles, and Patrick Mahomes all had a lot of help. We can name the other players and coaches that any of these men had to assist them in winning it all and yet we insist that quarterbacks have this stigma thrown on them, including the Detroit Lions Matthew Stafford.
We are almost forced, as soon as we start, to admit that the “great quarterback” who wins by himself is a myth. Look up any championship quarterback, hint-we did for this. We did limit it to the Super Bowl era but that’s fifty-four years!
As we were researching the topic one name did occur to us as having come close to being this guy, John Elway. Not Super Bowl XXXIII Champion John Elway with Terrell Davis, Rod Smith, and Shannon Sharpe but 1986 Elway who seemed to will his team past the Cleveland Browns on more than one occasion.
The thing is that Elway was a Pro-Bowl quarterback and the superstar of his team but he didn’t do things alone, either. The 1986 team had two other offensive Pro-Bowlers, Sammy Winder and Keith Bishop, and three defensive representatives, Rulon Jones, Karl Mecklenburg, and Dennis Smith, rosters for the 1987 Pro Bowl are here. As far as we can tell this is as close as any quarterback has come to winning it by themselves.
The offense was ranked sixth and the defense held their own, ranked tenth in yards against. Winder, also, wasn’t a great running back who only had one 1,000-yard season in his career and Bishop was a guard on the line, credit the Pro Football Reference website.
Elway’s receivers were okay but none were individually great. Mark Jackson and Vance Johnson both had good professional careers as wide receivers. In other words, his cast wasn’t great on offense but John made it work with good options, not great ones.
Elway beat a more talented Cleveland Browns team to get to the Super Bowl but his team lost that Super Bowl to one of the best defensive units in history featuring Lawrence Taylor, Jim Burt, Leonard Marshall, Harry Carson, Karl Banks, along with Phil Simms, Joe Morris, and Mark Bavaro on offense.
Elway came close, though. We’re sure that as soon as we point out the falseness of the “great quarterback” myth, someone will point out that Elway eventually won two Super Bowls, had 22 playoff appearances and won 14 of them; It did take him fifteen years to win a Super Bowl, for what it’s worth, but that’s how this goalpost-shifting game goes.