Quote:
Originally Posted by RedinTexas
I think my main point about Elway was that his TD numbers were generally good, but not great. I don't dispute that Elway should be in the hall of fame, but it really is surprising to see his year-by-year TD numbers while knowing that he is in the hall of fame. They are not impressive.
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The thing I look at is the style of offense and unfortunately for him, Reeves did not call a wide open style of offense. You can view the Reeves' era and the post-Reeves' era with Elway and see the dramatic difference. Just look at it up to 1992 and after, you'll see the difference.
And again, you just have to look at where he finished at retirement against all QBs that had ever played the game. Elway was in the top 1-5 of every major category when he retired at the end of 1998.
QBs started to explode with regularity in the early 2000's, that's just a fact.
In his era, Jim Kelly played in a more prolific offense... not like Marino or Moon, but even Jim's #s were not that much greater than Elway.
Many people view all QBs in all eras as equal in the framework of how the game was played and that's flawed. Yes, there were exceptions to this comment, but they were few and far between. Elway has still started in the 2nd most Super Bowl games all time (for QBs). Reeves had them poorly set up for success leading up to the 3 in the 80s, that is well documented.
Most wins by a Starting QB ... Brady (247), Favre (188), P Manning (187), Brees (172), Roethlisberger (166), Elway (149)
Top 6 as of now... was #1 at retirement. Favre's first season was 1991, 7 years before Elway retired. The other four started after 1998.