Quote:
Originally Posted by Mile High Mania
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 3-5 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.
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Elway's TD numbers each season:
1983 - 7 TDs
1984 - 18 TDs, 11th in league (Marino 48, Krieg 32)
1985 - 22 TDs, tied for 7th in league (Marino 30, 4 w/ 27)
1986 - 19 TDs, tied for 9th in league (Marino 44, O'Brien 25)
1987 - 19 TDs, tied for 8th in league (Montana 31, Marino 26)
1988 - 17 TDs, tied for 11th in league (Everett 31, 2 w/ 28)
1989 - 18 TDs, tied for 12th in league (Everett 29, Esiason 28)
1990 - 15 TDs, tied for 18th in league (Moon 33, Cunningham 30)
1991 - 13 TDs, tied for 11th in league (Kelly 33, Rypien 28)
1992 - 10 TDs, 22nd in league (Young 25, Marino 24)
1993 - 25 TDs, 2nd in league (Young 29)
1994 - 16 TDs, tied for 12th in league (Young 35, Favre 33)
1995 - 26 TDs, tied for 6th in league (Favre 38, Moon 33)
1996 - 26 TDs, 4th in league (Favre 39, Testaverde 33)
1997 - 27 TDs, 4th in league (Favre 35, George 29)
1998 - 22 TDs, 9th in league (Young 36, Cunningham 34)
As you can see, Elway's TD pass numbers are not great. It looks like his average finish over his career is around 10th place or worse. Except for the one season where he finished 2nd with 25, his TD totals were never comparable to the leaders.
Let me reiterate that I think Elway deserves to be in the hall of fame. I am not saying he was undeserving. However, his TD pass numbers were mostly pedestrian numbers on a year-by-year basis. He clearly brought more to the table than just his TD numbers, but I don't think anyone can look at the numbers above and argue that they clearly merit the hall of fame.