Bengals All-Time Top 5 QBs: The Edge of Awesomeness
Ken Anderson changes the game, Boomer Esiason stops a bus, Joe Burrow rises through the ranks, and much more!
The all-time Bengals quarterback list starts out very, very good, and then stays there!
1. Ken Anderson
(The following segment is excerpted from a 2022 Football Outsiders article, with some edits for content and length. The 1980 and 1979 DVOA results, now available at FTN Network, don’t change the Anderson Hall of Fame debate much, as those were poor seasons for him. And Randy Gradishar, of course, will finally enter the Hall of Fame in August.)
Cincinnati Bengals legend Ken Anderson may be the ultimate example of a borderline Pro Football Hall of Famer.
Anderson occupies a thin isthmus between the obviously deserving Hall of Fame quarterbacks and the obviously undeserving. No other quarterback is seriously mentioned as an all-time snub these days, though Philip Rivers will likely join Anderson when he fails to get in on his initial ballots. (Eli Manning is a separate beast.) What’s more, Anderson’s case rests near the front lines of some of our favorite HoF argument battlegrounds: too many quarterbacks versus too few, Super Bowl champions versus non-champions, statistics versus reputation and hagiography.
Statistical excellence has always been the centerpiece of Anderson’s Hall of Fame argument. That’s why the 1981 and 1982 DVOA and DYAR rankings are such exciting news for Anderson and his supporters.
Anderson ranked second in DYAR to Dan Fouts in both 1981 and 1982. Those high rankings add weight and depth to the assertion that Anderson was one of the two or three best quarterbacks of the early 1980s. They also suggest that Anderson’s performances in 1974 through 1976 were every bit as good as they look on his Pro Football Reference page, as opposed to being the result of some proto-West Coast Offense-aided statistical distortions.
Mounting analytical evidence, combined with a bar for Hall of Fame enshrinement that has dropped in recent years, should finally propel Anderson into the Hall of Fame sometime in the next few years.
Ken Anderson and the Black Ink Test
Here’s a quick summary of Anderson’s Pro Football Hall of Fame credentials:
1981 NFL MVP and Offensive Player of the Year
Led the Bengals to an AFC Championship in 1981
One-time All-Pro (1981)
Four-time Pro Bowler (1975, 1976, 1981, 1982)
Four-time NFL leader in quarterback rating
Two-time NFL leader in passing yards
Three-time NFL leader in completion rate
Three-time NFL leader in (lowest) interception rate
Two-time NFL leader in yards-per-attempt
It’s important to note that the top three bullet points boil down to “he was awesome in 1981.” Furthermore, the top four bullet points represent the typical resume of a clear NON-Hall of Famer. As I have written in the past, quarterbacks like Matt Ryan, Steve McNair, Boomer Esiason, Donovan McNabb and others have an MVP-type season, a Super Bowl loss and some scattered Pro Bowl-level accomplishments in their portfolios.
To briefly recount the case against Anderson:
His teams went 2-4 in the postseason, with the only wins coming in 1981.
He was an objectively bad quarterback from 1978 to 1980, between the departures of coaches Paul Brown and Bill Walsh and the arrival of Forrest Gregg and Lindy Infante.
Anderson’s Bengals rarely beat the Steelers or Raiders when they needed to.
Anderson’s mid-70s statistical accomplishments may be a statistical distortion caused by Walsh’s beta version of the West Coast Offense, so they need to be interpreted with a grain of salt.
That final point is critical. Anderson would be a longer-than-longshot without all of that “black ink,” and it’s all of those league-leading stats that prompt younger fans to point to Anderson’s Pro Football Reference page and scream “WTF is wrong with Hall of Fame voters?”