The picks are excellent and the explanations even better. To me, the heart of this post is after your words... And Finally. I was fortunate enough to have almost unfettered access to great stars of yesteryear, and if Hearst's expense account didn't cover it, I did. My advantage was being pretty much the same age as these Iconic players....and sometimes the owners. Without the artificial buffer zone imposed by the NFL and some teams, we were allowed to interact and let water seek its own level. This unveiled rare insight to the point where you had to make personal and professional decisions. It created key interpersonal elements that are no longer shared -- empathy and respect. In the 1970s I partied with the Raiders in Santa Rosa and Alameda. In the 1980s I did the same with the 49ers in Rocklin and all over America. Truth be told, there wasn't that much difference between these two historic groups. Probably the biggest difference between Ken Stabler and Joe Montana is one of them was left-handed, from Alabama, and didn't care what people thought; and the other was from Notre Dame and played on a very image-conscious team. Looking back, it's a miracle my liver survived. As for sources, the players' wives, girlfriends -- and sometimes both -- were always eager to talk. They would call to complain about some injustice to their spouse. Yes, journalists were put in an awkward spot, but this is where judicious use of empathy, respect, and real news value came into play. We weren't looking for clickbait, we wanted a real understanding. Of course, this was all before social media and a focus on branding over being oneself. Oh, there are surely REAL MEN still playing this great game, but they are pampered on and off the field, ostensibly for their own protection. What crap. I think it's to their detriment because when something goes amiss -- which is often -- who are these players going to tell -- their social media followers? Mike, times are changing even more than we acknowledge as we deify the current influx of Gen Z players. It will be interesting to see if and when they look up from those customizable devices and learn to interact with real people, eyeball-to-eyeball.
I have been told stories like yours over the years, Frank, from some of the other elderstatesmen of the media rooms.
One DISadvantage of not doing any real reporting until I was almost 40 is that I was never at the same age as the players. Some young reporters are great at getting the guys to talk about anime or video games, or modern pop music. I know just enough to get by, but its not like I can really connect with the players like a peer.
Wholly agree with everything you wrote. As an old fart in his early 70s, and a writer of some competence, I will just say that what I appreciated most about those pre-Internet writers of my youth and early adulthood was their skill in drawing out every last erg of information and emotion they wanted and needed to tell the story they wanted to tell. For me the consequence of the wealth of information now available, despite the various hurdles put up by top-tier athletes and their teams' media departments, is a certain level of laziness that has crept into too much work. Sure, Dr. Z was opinionated (boy, at times was he ever), but it came from the heart and head, not the mouth. I could go on. But I think I've made my point. Thanks, Mike!
Well said. Dr. Z had long word counts, but they still had word counts. Folks of my generation, including me, developed the habit of prattling on when we were not in print.
And I cannot evaluate most modern NFL writers because I have no idea what their editors did to them before publication. Probably something vicious.
That's assuming their editors actually edited. One of the things that I heard after I left the comic book industry was how editors basically rubber stamped scripts from Big Name Writers and in this day and age with the Big Boy Outlets fawning over their stars, well, y'know . . .
In your second to last paragraph, I replaced "Super Bowl victory" with "tush push remains legal" and the rest of the paragraph's wild celebration still makes sense based on what I've read and heard from your work the past few months. Seems to me Barkley, Brown or Smith might be good options on third and one but what do I know? I'm driven crazy by Matt LaFleur going three tight end package on every third and one and Jordan or the RB getting stuffed. Packers have gone to motioning Tucker Kraft, stopping him behind center, taking the direct snap and TE sneaking. What would Coach Me do? I'd run my 3rd and 4 offense on 3rd and 1 to spread the defense because that's when my run game is most effective.
Jordan Love ahead of the Majik Man? Yeah, but Majkowski made the play that created the modern Packer motto. Facing 4th and goal against Bears with seconds remaining at Lambeau, Majik scrambled to his right and threw 14 yards into the end zone for a game winning TD. Penalty flag! Majik was called for throwing after crossing the line of scrimmage. In one of the first big instant replay reviews, Majkowski's trail foot was behind the line of scrimmage when the throw was made. The ref spoke to the crowd "After further review" and Packer fans added "the Bears still suck!" Leroy Butler created the Leap; Majik created the Lingo.
The homerism does not become you. And the idea of a league-wide conspiracy to put an asterisk on a team's Super Bowl achievement is risible.
Also, I look forward to Drake Maye's debut on the Patriots list next year after he harnesses the power of The Patriot Way to overcome Roger Goodell's machinations and leads the Pats back to their rightful place at the top of the mountain.
Also, the second half about the glory days of SI, et al, is wonderful and has me wondering if we (Gen X) really did poison the well with us being first up to bat at the Web and bringing layers of irony and sarcasm to it. Maybe Letterman is the Ur figure in the decline of Western Civilization, whatever that is.
The first generation of Internet NFL writers did as much bad as good. Lord knows we didn't need more Favre hagiographies (sorry Peter, but seriously), and the whole industry needed to be called on its BS. Still does. But a business model bubble burst -- several of them, really -- and now the choice architecture is built so folks looking for interesting voices on the Internet cannot even find them.
Great exposition at the bottom, freaking awesome. As you alluded to: do Sundays still feel like Sundays? I think they do. But the line is getting more blurry in the the age of overexposure (of the players/teams) and minimum viable products (in journalism).
I remember that he claimed to watch every game. He said it was secret how he was able to get them all, which I assumed meant that he was pirating a good number of them somehow.
I do remember some amount of frustration with his power rankings. For a guy who claimed he was watching all of the games and clearly knew a lot about strategy, his rankings seemed very subjective. It was the perfect setup to get me sucked in to Football Outsiders.
Dr. Z got VHS tapes AND film, sometimes from teams. He may well have watched every game. He could not, however, use something like NFL+ to pull up every one of Jalen Nailor's targets, something I did last week for the Almanac. And he could not listen to as many coaching press conferences around the league as he wanted, etc.
SOMEbody's got to start picking at the ranking changes.
Not too early to move Lion-Goff above Lion-Stafford. WAY! too early.
First I figured you were holding the inanities and insanities of the Herbert Hive against Stafford. But then you also bumped up Stroud, after a rather 'meh' year, too. So I think you're with mixed success fighting off QB combat fatigue here at the very, very end. Manifesting itself in badly undervaluing sustained goodness, or maybe goodish-ness.
Referring to them as "Lion-Goff" and "Lion-Stafford" makes me picture them as furries.
Anyway, I think the ranking change is defensible. As it fades into memory, we're all starting to forget how many "meh" seasons Stafford compiled as a Lion in between his "Wow!" seasons. Conversely, IMO, the fallout with McVay is still coloring perceptions of Goff, no matter how much we try to isolate only his time with Detroit.
Goff now has three straight years in Detroit of more than 20% passing DVOA (Stafford, in 12 seasons, has two, and one of those was only 8 games due to injury). That is, as you put it, sustained goodness. Yes, I definitely get the arguments about their relative supporting casts (although I don't think the gap between the current Lions and the 2011-13 and 2014-2017 Lions is quite as cavernous as some make it out to be).
Yeah, that one doesn't work for me, especially when you consider Goff's performance in their playoff loss. It might be unfair to hold one game against him, but I think that's enough to keep him from jumping over Stafford for at least this year.
If you hold that one game against Goff, you also have to give him credit for the 3 really good games he played in the ‘23 playoffs. Stafford had 3 playoff games total as a Lion, and only played well in one of them (Remember this list is only considering their careers as Lions).
My point, Scott. Neither Goff nor Stroud did anything historic last season. (Stroud didn't even have a good year, really; just moved up the list 'cuz of 'excuses')
It wasn't like the guy he passed was historic, either. Some teams have harder lists than others. For the Texans, Stroud has yards, and yards are enough. For the 49ers, the climb is much harder.
Goff's last two seasons were better than any of Stafford's Lions seasons. But Stafford got to be the long-suffering guy you only saw on TV once per year, while Goff gets sneered as a product of the system while leading outstanding offenses for the second franchise of his career.
Stroud leapt over Deshaun Watson, who had one great season and two OK ones.
As for Goff, you have a general failure to de-Garoppolo QB ratings, Mike. Goodness knows the Rams looked at each's performance and decided Stafford's were way better.
Going back to the top of this piece & tush push ... Would the league have considered banning the Packer sweep? Everyone knew it was coming, no one could stop it. If you are concerned about injury consider being pancaked by Fuzzy Thurston & Jerry Kramer running full-tilt at you while trying to reach through them for Jim Taylor. Banning that play never came up and it does nothing for the Green Bay legacy that it was the team to try and ban the tush-push.
Hurts deserves his ranking and so do the glory days football writing team at Sports Illustrated. I just hope your column doesn't emulate that mag in this crucial way: it doesn't carry the SI curse.
When I think of Night Train I see him clotheslining around the neck. Ouch.
While we are citing, the league outlawed stickum because of Lester Hayes, although it was Fred Biletnikoff who first made it famous and was actually rewarded with SB XI MVP for four catches (no TDs) when Stabler threw all day. Shell eliminated Marshal (no sacks, tackles, assists) while Clarence Davis ran for 130-something yards.....stickup was ok then.
And they instituted the five-yard no-bump zone because of Mel Blount although he couldn't touch Cliff Branch with or without the rule and became so frustrated he spiked Branch on the ground, top of helmet first.
Which rule was that, Scott? (and yes, I know they didn't call it "the Ty Law Rule"; unless they did, which would be pretty darn funny! And incur the appreciation of generations of Ty Law descendants!)
Up till the Superbowl the criticism of Jalen Hurts passing was valid. The Chiefs saw the same film and bet their SB threepeat on taking Saquan Barkley away. Run fits would have priority. Only 1 high safety, Force Jalen to beat them. So he beat the living crap out of them. Spags had no answers to well thrown passes at WRs getting schemed open.
Having a great skill corps is certainly a big part of it. Man coverage would not work at all. Zones not much better. But a QB has to read it and hit those guys in stride. QBs make WRs famous not the other way around. See: AJ Brown's seasons with Mariota.
Hurts had a good, not great game. The Eagles' defense beat the living tar out of the Chiefs, giving the Eagles' offense opportunity after opportunity after opportunity.
Thats crap, he had a great game. 10 yards per attempt is ridiculously effective with only 5 Incompletions. Plus 72 rushing. Blah blah the defense. The Defense held them to 20 and scored 7. The other 33 is Hurts running an offense that limited Saquan to 57 yards
Still, his performance at 10 YPA was dominant. The Chiefs shut down run and forced him to throw with their looks and he buried them all game long for that decision.
Hurts was also able to play loose in the knowledge that his defense was in total control. He had a great game, no doubt, but the knowledge that you have a large margin for error helps any athlete.
Jack, I think it matters. Flutie was/is listed at 5-10, but I was there when he was measured while in the USFL at exactly 5-9 3/4 (5096) but the PR staff still posted 5-10. Fran Tarkenton was/is listed at 6-0. FWIW, Eddie LeBaron is often overlooked in these discussions. A tenth-round draft pick out of Pacific by Washington in 1950, LeBaron served as a First lieutenant with the Marines in Korea, was wounded twice and awarded the Bronze Star for Heroism.....then he won Rookie of the Year honors with Washington in 1952. After his playing career, LeBaron was GM for the Atlanta Falcons. LeBaron was the shortest regular starting QB in NFL history at 5-6.
Hey, as a fellow Vertical Growth Opportunity person I want - I need! - to know which one to emotionally overinvest in! (other than I don't; and am average height)
Loved the series Mike! Also, like those writers from past ages your writing tells us about THESE times. About the challenges of being a "sports journalists" in the age of click-bait and debt-laden, "private equity" buyouts. Anyone with the sense to read this 20 years from now would learn not only of the best QBs of each team but also what life was like in our year of the lord 2025.
1) As others have said, if the question is "Who was better, Dr. Z or XXX?" The answer is pretty much never XXX.
2) I was a little skeptical about Hurts at the top of the Eagles list. So I looked up Philadelphia's fantasy scoring records, an imperfect but reasonable approximation of a QB's production, especially for one who runs as much as Hurts. Hurts' four seasons as a starter rank first, second, fifth, and sixth in franchise history. (1990 Cunningham is third, Barkley last year is fourth.) So he's dominant statistically and has two Super Bowl appearances, with a championship? OK, yeah, he wins.
One little piece of the Hurts puzzle is that he was really good, overall, in 2021 and 2023. He has a four-year run that stands up to Jaworski and McNabb, really, and is better than Randall.
Cunningham is an interesting case, in that he’s a sort of proto-Herbert (to me, anyway): amazing, almost superhuman, highlights, but more tantalizing than realized. It's very hard to rank him.
Dunkin' has been around since 1950, so there is a good chance it would be available for your hangovers. Depending on how far back you went and what city you went to, of course.
Not back in the Tex Maule days, probably any city. The strip mall itself was first coming into being. Franchises themselves were just beginning to flower, and Dunkin' had only a handful of soldiers in the first wave.
In '55, yes. But there were over three hundred locations when it went public in '68. So, again, depends when. The internet wasn't around in any form the way it is now until the 90's, So any time before that counts for your thesis, not just the fifties.
The picks are excellent and the explanations even better. To me, the heart of this post is after your words... And Finally. I was fortunate enough to have almost unfettered access to great stars of yesteryear, and if Hearst's expense account didn't cover it, I did. My advantage was being pretty much the same age as these Iconic players....and sometimes the owners. Without the artificial buffer zone imposed by the NFL and some teams, we were allowed to interact and let water seek its own level. This unveiled rare insight to the point where you had to make personal and professional decisions. It created key interpersonal elements that are no longer shared -- empathy and respect. In the 1970s I partied with the Raiders in Santa Rosa and Alameda. In the 1980s I did the same with the 49ers in Rocklin and all over America. Truth be told, there wasn't that much difference between these two historic groups. Probably the biggest difference between Ken Stabler and Joe Montana is one of them was left-handed, from Alabama, and didn't care what people thought; and the other was from Notre Dame and played on a very image-conscious team. Looking back, it's a miracle my liver survived. As for sources, the players' wives, girlfriends -- and sometimes both -- were always eager to talk. They would call to complain about some injustice to their spouse. Yes, journalists were put in an awkward spot, but this is where judicious use of empathy, respect, and real news value came into play. We weren't looking for clickbait, we wanted a real understanding. Of course, this was all before social media and a focus on branding over being oneself. Oh, there are surely REAL MEN still playing this great game, but they are pampered on and off the field, ostensibly for their own protection. What crap. I think it's to their detriment because when something goes amiss -- which is often -- who are these players going to tell -- their social media followers? Mike, times are changing even more than we acknowledge as we deify the current influx of Gen Z players. It will be interesting to see if and when they look up from those customizable devices and learn to interact with real people, eyeball-to-eyeball.
I have been told stories like yours over the years, Frank, from some of the other elderstatesmen of the media rooms.
One DISadvantage of not doing any real reporting until I was almost 40 is that I was never at the same age as the players. Some young reporters are great at getting the guys to talk about anime or video games, or modern pop music. I know just enough to get by, but its not like I can really connect with the players like a peer.
Wholly agree with everything you wrote. As an old fart in his early 70s, and a writer of some competence, I will just say that what I appreciated most about those pre-Internet writers of my youth and early adulthood was their skill in drawing out every last erg of information and emotion they wanted and needed to tell the story they wanted to tell. For me the consequence of the wealth of information now available, despite the various hurdles put up by top-tier athletes and their teams' media departments, is a certain level of laziness that has crept into too much work. Sure, Dr. Z was opinionated (boy, at times was he ever), but it came from the heart and head, not the mouth. I could go on. But I think I've made my point. Thanks, Mike!
Well said. Dr. Z had long word counts, but they still had word counts. Folks of my generation, including me, developed the habit of prattling on when we were not in print.
And I cannot evaluate most modern NFL writers because I have no idea what their editors did to them before publication. Probably something vicious.
That's assuming their editors actually edited. One of the things that I heard after I left the comic book industry was how editors basically rubber stamped scripts from Big Name Writers and in this day and age with the Big Boy Outlets fawning over their stars, well, y'know . . .
Great series, Mike.
In your second to last paragraph, I replaced "Super Bowl victory" with "tush push remains legal" and the rest of the paragraph's wild celebration still makes sense based on what I've read and heard from your work the past few months. Seems to me Barkley, Brown or Smith might be good options on third and one but what do I know? I'm driven crazy by Matt LaFleur going three tight end package on every third and one and Jordan or the RB getting stuffed. Packers have gone to motioning Tucker Kraft, stopping him behind center, taking the direct snap and TE sneaking. What would Coach Me do? I'd run my 3rd and 4 offense on 3rd and 1 to spread the defense because that's when my run game is most effective.
Jordan Love ahead of the Majik Man? Yeah, but Majkowski made the play that created the modern Packer motto. Facing 4th and goal against Bears with seconds remaining at Lambeau, Majik scrambled to his right and threw 14 yards into the end zone for a game winning TD. Penalty flag! Majik was called for throwing after crossing the line of scrimmage. In one of the first big instant replay reviews, Majkowski's trail foot was behind the line of scrimmage when the throw was made. The ref spoke to the crowd "After further review" and Packer fans added "the Bears still suck!" Leroy Butler created the Leap; Majik created the Lingo.
Now that is some context. Jordan ain't getting any Love from me over Majikowski.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXmljbptQX0
The Happy Schnapps Combo singing you know what...
The homerism does not become you. And the idea of a league-wide conspiracy to put an asterisk on a team's Super Bowl achievement is risible.
Also, I look forward to Drake Maye's debut on the Patriots list next year after he harnesses the power of The Patriot Way to overcome Roger Goodell's machinations and leads the Pats back to their rightful place at the top of the mountain.
Well said!
Also, the second half about the glory days of SI, et al, is wonderful and has me wondering if we (Gen X) really did poison the well with us being first up to bat at the Web and bringing layers of irony and sarcasm to it. Maybe Letterman is the Ur figure in the decline of Western Civilization, whatever that is.
The first generation of Internet NFL writers did as much bad as good. Lord knows we didn't need more Favre hagiographies (sorry Peter, but seriously), and the whole industry needed to be called on its BS. Still does. But a business model bubble burst -- several of them, really -- and now the choice architecture is built so folks looking for interesting voices on the Internet cannot even find them.
Great exposition at the bottom, freaking awesome. As you alluded to: do Sundays still feel like Sundays? I think they do. But the line is getting more blurry in the the age of overexposure (of the players/teams) and minimum viable products (in journalism).
I'm confident Dr. Z was better, but memory is a poor witness.
I remember that he claimed to watch every game. He said it was secret how he was able to get them all, which I assumed meant that he was pirating a good number of them somehow.
I do remember some amount of frustration with his power rankings. For a guy who claimed he was watching all of the games and clearly knew a lot about strategy, his rankings seemed very subjective. It was the perfect setup to get me sucked in to Football Outsiders.
Dr. Z got VHS tapes AND film, sometimes from teams. He may well have watched every game. He could not, however, use something like NFL+ to pull up every one of Jalen Nailor's targets, something I did last week for the Almanac. And he could not listen to as many coaching press conferences around the league as he wanted, etc.
SOMEbody's got to start picking at the ranking changes.
Not too early to move Lion-Goff above Lion-Stafford. WAY! too early.
First I figured you were holding the inanities and insanities of the Herbert Hive against Stafford. But then you also bumped up Stroud, after a rather 'meh' year, too. So I think you're with mixed success fighting off QB combat fatigue here at the very, very end. Manifesting itself in badly undervaluing sustained goodness, or maybe goodish-ness.
Referring to them as "Lion-Goff" and "Lion-Stafford" makes me picture them as furries.
Anyway, I think the ranking change is defensible. As it fades into memory, we're all starting to forget how many "meh" seasons Stafford compiled as a Lion in between his "Wow!" seasons. Conversely, IMO, the fallout with McVay is still coloring perceptions of Goff, no matter how much we try to isolate only his time with Detroit.
Goff now has three straight years in Detroit of more than 20% passing DVOA (Stafford, in 12 seasons, has two, and one of those was only 8 games due to injury). That is, as you put it, sustained goodness. Yes, I definitely get the arguments about their relative supporting casts (although I don't think the gap between the current Lions and the 2011-13 and 2014-2017 Lions is quite as cavernous as some make it out to be).
Yeah, that one doesn't work for me, especially when you consider Goff's performance in their playoff loss. It might be unfair to hold one game against him, but I think that's enough to keep him from jumping over Stafford for at least this year.
If you hold that one game against Goff, you also have to give him credit for the 3 really good games he played in the ‘23 playoffs. Stafford had 3 playoff games total as a Lion, and only played well in one of them (Remember this list is only considering their careers as Lions).
"To climb historic lists, quarterbacks must do historic things."
My point, Scott. Neither Goff nor Stroud did anything historic last season. (Stroud didn't even have a good year, really; just moved up the list 'cuz of 'excuses')
It wasn't like the guy he passed was historic, either. Some teams have harder lists than others. For the Texans, Stroud has yards, and yards are enough. For the 49ers, the climb is much harder.
Goff's last two seasons were better than any of Stafford's Lions seasons. But Stafford got to be the long-suffering guy you only saw on TV once per year, while Goff gets sneered as a product of the system while leading outstanding offenses for the second franchise of his career.
Stroud leapt over Deshaun Watson, who had one great season and two OK ones.
As for Goff, you have a general failure to de-Garoppolo QB ratings, Mike. Goodness knows the Rams looked at each's performance and decided Stafford's were way better.
So Stroud now has one great season - maybe - and one OK season - maybe.
Going back to the top of this piece & tush push ... Would the league have considered banning the Packer sweep? Everyone knew it was coming, no one could stop it. If you are concerned about injury consider being pancaked by Fuzzy Thurston & Jerry Kramer running full-tilt at you while trying to reach through them for Jim Taylor. Banning that play never came up and it does nothing for the Green Bay legacy that it was the team to try and ban the tush-push.
Hurts deserves his ranking and so do the glory days football writing team at Sports Illustrated. I just hope your column doesn't emulate that mag in this crucial way: it doesn't carry the SI curse.
Outlawed the head slap because of Deacon Jones
Outlawed taking your helmet off because of Emmitt Smith (can't have PLAYERS being the face of the league- good lord!)
Outlawed receivers pushing off because of Michael Irvin
Outlawed the horse collar because of Roy Williams
thnx. Amazing they didnt outlaw horse collar because of Night Train Lane. Guess a great nickname helps
When I think of Night Train I see him clotheslining around the neck. Ouch.
While we are citing, the league outlawed stickum because of Lester Hayes, although it was Fred Biletnikoff who first made it famous and was actually rewarded with SB XI MVP for four catches (no TDs) when Stabler threw all day. Shell eliminated Marshal (no sacks, tackles, assists) while Clarence Davis ran for 130-something yards.....stickup was ok then.
And they instituted the five-yard no-bump zone because of Mel Blount although he couldn't touch Cliff Branch with or without the rule and became so frustrated he spiked Branch on the ground, top of helmet first.
The league did institute the Ty Law rule after the Patriots had their defensive success against the Rams in 2001.
Which rule was that, Scott? (and yes, I know they didn't call it "the Ty Law Rule"; unless they did, which would be pretty darn funny! And incur the appreciation of generations of Ty Law descendants!)
Enforcing illegal contact beyond 5 yards.
The NFL would never have banned the Packers Sweep because the league was not run by Whiny Heinies back then.
Thank you, Pete!
I hate reading really smart, thoughtful pieces like this. Makes me feel inferior. Please stop!
You're the man, Les.
Les: I enjoy reading your writing as well as Mike's. Different styles, but both appeal to me. It's nice to have both.
Up till the Superbowl the criticism of Jalen Hurts passing was valid. The Chiefs saw the same film and bet their SB threepeat on taking Saquan Barkley away. Run fits would have priority. Only 1 high safety, Force Jalen to beat them. So he beat the living crap out of them. Spags had no answers to well thrown passes at WRs getting schemed open.
Having a great skill corps is certainly a big part of it. Man coverage would not work at all. Zones not much better. But a QB has to read it and hit those guys in stride. QBs make WRs famous not the other way around. See: AJ Brown's seasons with Mariota.
Hurts had a good, not great game. The Eagles' defense beat the living tar out of the Chiefs, giving the Eagles' offense opportunity after opportunity after opportunity.
Thats crap, he had a great game. 10 yards per attempt is ridiculously effective with only 5 Incompletions. Plus 72 rushing. Blah blah the defense. The Defense held them to 20 and scored 7. The other 33 is Hurts running an offense that limited Saquan to 57 yards
Oh, I think the Iggles O-line deserves a great deal of credit, just like the D-line and Hurts. The SB was a total thumping; everybody gets some.
And the D gave up 14 in garbage time, long after the game was decided.
Still, his performance at 10 YPA was dominant. The Chiefs shut down run and forced him to throw with their looks and he buried them all game long for that decision.
Hurts was also able to play loose in the knowledge that his defense was in total control. He had a great game, no doubt, but the knowledge that you have a large margin for error helps any athlete.
Q: who was shorter; Doug Flutie or Fran Tarkenton?
A: it doesn’t matter, both brought people in Massachusetts and Minnesota to their feet.
Jack, I think it matters. Flutie was/is listed at 5-10, but I was there when he was measured while in the USFL at exactly 5-9 3/4 (5096) but the PR staff still posted 5-10. Fran Tarkenton was/is listed at 6-0. FWIW, Eddie LeBaron is often overlooked in these discussions. A tenth-round draft pick out of Pacific by Washington in 1950, LeBaron served as a First lieutenant with the Marines in Korea, was wounded twice and awarded the Bronze Star for Heroism.....then he won Rookie of the Year honors with Washington in 1952. After his playing career, LeBaron was GM for the Atlanta Falcons. LeBaron was the shortest regular starting QB in NFL history at 5-6.
Hey, as a fellow Vertical Growth Opportunity person I want - I need! - to know which one to emotionally overinvest in! (other than I don't; and am average height)
I enjoyed the writing, the history and stuff. Thank you. For anyone disagreeing with Mike’s list: Create your own. 🙂👍🏻✌🏻
Loved the series Mike! Also, like those writers from past ages your writing tells us about THESE times. About the challenges of being a "sports journalists" in the age of click-bait and debt-laden, "private equity" buyouts. Anyone with the sense to read this 20 years from now would learn not only of the best QBs of each team but also what life was like in our year of the lord 2025.
1) As others have said, if the question is "Who was better, Dr. Z or XXX?" The answer is pretty much never XXX.
2) I was a little skeptical about Hurts at the top of the Eagles list. So I looked up Philadelphia's fantasy scoring records, an imperfect but reasonable approximation of a QB's production, especially for one who runs as much as Hurts. Hurts' four seasons as a starter rank first, second, fifth, and sixth in franchise history. (1990 Cunningham is third, Barkley last year is fourth.) So he's dominant statistically and has two Super Bowl appearances, with a championship? OK, yeah, he wins.
One little piece of the Hurts puzzle is that he was really good, overall, in 2021 and 2023. He has a four-year run that stands up to Jaworski and McNabb, really, and is better than Randall.
Cunningham is an interesting case, in that he’s a sort of proto-Herbert (to me, anyway): amazing, almost superhuman, highlights, but more tantalizing than realized. It's very hard to rank him.
Dunkin' has been around since 1950, so there is a good chance it would be available for your hangovers. Depending on how far back you went and what city you went to, of course.
Not back in the Tex Maule days, probably any city. The strip mall itself was first coming into being. Franchises themselves were just beginning to flower, and Dunkin' had only a handful of soldiers in the first wave.
Well, yes. Thus the "depending" part of my statement ;)
Dunkin would only have been in Mass, right? So it would have to have been a Patriots camp. Or maybe the Giants when they were in Hartford.
Southern New England at least.
In '55, yes. But there were over three hundred locations when it went public in '68. So, again, depends when. The internet wasn't around in any form the way it is now until the 90's, So any time before that counts for your thesis, not just the fifties.
WOMEN'S LIB: THE GREATEST LIE THE DEVIL NEVER NEEDED TO TELL.
My essay: