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 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.
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Everybody understands the difference in eras. But you can't just pull that card to excuse every stat that doesn't look great.
His TD/INT ratio wasn't that good. He had several seasons with more INTs than TDs, and several more in which he had the same of each or maybe 1 more TD than INT.
Also, if you're going to highlight the number of SB appearances, you need to factor the era into that conversation too. Do you think he'd have appeared in that many Super Bowls if he were facing Allen or Mahomes rather than Bernie Kosar?