Top 5 Quarterbacks in Buffalo Bills History

What must Josh Allen do to pass Jim Kelly? Did Doug Flutie or Ryan Fitzpatrick crack the Top Five? Why do Bills quarterbacks make bad presidential running mates? Part 1 of a league-wide series.

Let’s get straight to the list and handle the formalities afterward.

1.Jim Kelly

“Jim Kelly is god,” read a banner at Rich Stadium on Sunday. “I'M IN A JIM PACKED STADIUM,” read another. When he rode in a limo through downtown Buffalo on Monday, August 18, after he had signed the contract, hundreds of fans lined the way, waving, cheering. Six hundred people, including New York Governor Mario Cuomo, showed up at a chamber of commerce luncheon a week later, reviving a tradition that had lapsed for three years. – Paul “Dr. Z” Zimmerman, Sports Illustrated, September 1986.

The Bills signed Kelly for a princely $8-million in 1986, three years after drafting him and a few weeks after the USFL “won” three dollars in damages from its lawsuit against the NFL. The team had gone 4-28 in the previous two seasons, hence the very literal savior narrative. But the masses have a habit of quickly turning on savior types. The Bills were slow to turn things around under Kelly. Within a few years, they were known as the “Bickering Bills.” The joke at the time was that Kelly needed to hold press conferences to take back the things he said at his previous press conferences.

After Kelly got injured late in the 1989 season, he publicly blamed lineman Howard Ballard for the missed block that knocked him out of the game. When Frank Reich finished that season 3-0, some fans wanted Reich to keep the job, even though Kelly led the team to a 12-4 record the previous year. Even Thurman Thomas added fuel to the fire, claiming in a 1989 television interview that the Bills needed an upgrade at quarterback. There were also some boiling racial tensions in the locker room; Kelly publicly blasting a black lineman probably did not help on that front.

Nearly all of this drama has been memory-holed. The Kelly-Thomas-Marv Levy Bills are now famous for winning four straight AFC Championships (let’s be nice; these fans have been through a lot), not racial tensions or in-fighting. Kelly is one of the NFL’s most respected elder statesmen and a heroic cancer survivor. But one thing I hope to do throughout the Top Five QBs series is to recapture a sense of what the careers of some of these legends looked like before they became legends. 1980s Kelly would have been a blogosphere chewtoy if there was a blogosphere back then.

On December 2nd, 1990, the Bills deployed a no-huddle offense in the first quarter against the Eagles. That game, which the Bills won 30-23, is considered the birth of the K-Gun offense, and with it the modern approach to up-tempo offense. Watch the first 15 minutes of the game on YouTube and you will see that Vern Lundquist, Dan Fouts and the NBC television crew were as flustered by the Bills’ hurry-up offense as the Eagles defense was, nearly missing some snaps because of graphics and replays.

The K-Gun turned the Bills into a perennial contender. A loaded lineup on both sides of the ball helped. Kelly lost the MVP vote to Thomas in 1991 but would have won the award in modern times. He was probably the NFL’s best player in 1990 and 1991.

Kelly declined quickly after the four Super Bowls and retired after a poor season in 1996. “Kelly, who had a career-low 14 touchdown passes and a career-high 19 interceptions last season, cannot remember the final play of his career,” according to the AP story of his retirement. “He sustained a concussion after fumbling twice on the same play before being sacked in a playoff loss to Jacksonville.” 

''I don't want to go out the way some other quarterbacks went out,” Kelly said in that same article. “I want to go out with some dignity, with respect from my peers, respect from my teammates. I wanted to retire a Buffalo Bill.''

Kelly spent his first three professional seasons in the USFL and his decline phase is short, so his raw stat totals don’t look historically spectacular. But he still ranks 12th in all-time postseason passing yards. Russell Wilson, who played in two Super Bowls and spent a decade as a perennial playoff participant, is about 100 yards behind Kelly and may never pass him.

Josh Allen is 1,140 postseason passing yards behind Kelly; that’s one or (more realistically) two playoff runs behind. Kelly and Allen are tied, however, at 19th overall with 21 career postseason touchdown passes.

2. Josh Allen

Allen : AFC Championship Games :: Jim Kelly : Super Bowls. 

That’s reductive but broadly accurate. Both quarterbacks enjoyed a great deal of success on stacked teams. Kelly consistently got his teams one step further in the playoffs, with an occasional assist from Frank Reich. Allen is a stellar athlete who is a joy to watch, but Kelly was a great athlete in his era, and the K-Gun was as fun to watch as Allen’s weekly Superman routine. Allen is trapped in the same league and conference as Patrick Mahomes, but you may have heard of fellows named Elway and Marino. 

To climb past Kelly, Allen must at least reach a Super Bowl, or win an MVP, or do something substantive that Kelly never did.

Allen remains about three seasons from passing Kelly in regular season yards and two or three years from climbing past him in touchdowns. It’s inevitable that Allen will eclipse Kelly’s raw lifetime numbers, but as a Too Deep Zone subscriber you are likely hip to the distortions underlying NFL passing stats: passing Kelly by a thousand yards or a few dozen touchdowns won’t be a convincing argument for Allen. 

None of this is meant as a knock on Allen. It’s just easy to forget how great Kelly was 35 years ago when Allen is plowing through tacklers and throwing footballs into orbit every Sunday, and we cannot let recency bias cloud our judgment. 

3. Jack Kemp

Kemp was selected by the Lions in the 17th round of the 1957 NFL draft. The Lions cut him in training camp. Kemp played briefly for the Steelers and spent time on the Giants and 49ers taxi squads. He served in the Army Reserve, getting discharged for a bad shoulder. He played one game for the Calgary Stampeders, then got cut. Kemp signed on with the newly-established AFL in 1960 and became an immediate star, first for the Chargers and then the Bills, whom he led to two AFL championships in 1964 and 1965.

I’m extremely skeptical of early AFL accomplishments, largely for the reasons hinted at above. Kemp wasn’t the only NFL reject/CFL refugee who became a perennial AFL All Pro in the early 60s; he’s just arguably the most famous one. Many of these early-AFL superstars suddenly and not-so-mysteriously declined soon after the introduction of the common draft in 1967, which brought an instant influx of upgraded talent into the upstart league. Kemp did indeed decline quickly, though there were extenuating circumstances: a preseason knee injury which erased his 1968 season; a budding political career that took him from the field in 1969 to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1971. 

Kemp challenged for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and ended up in George H. Bush’s cabinet. He became a bit of a rock star in the 1990s Republican Party, which may have been a bit like being a rock star in the early-60s AFL. Kemp was Bob Dole’s running mate in 1996; their campaign sailed wide right. Kemp’s son Jeff, meanwhile, spent the 1980s bouncing around the NFL as a backup quarterback, eventually landing with the 1991 Eagles, who had one of the best defenses in NFL history but burned through five different quarterbacks.

Kemp ranks below Allen because I cannot pretend that winning a one-game playoff for the championship of an eight-team not-fully-major league is really more impressive than the gauntlet Allen is forced to run through each year to lead the Bills to a bronze medal.

Kemp ranks above Joe Ferguson, despite my AFL skepticism, because it is hard to argue with two league championships when the counter-argument revolves largely around handoffs to O.J. Simpson and Joe Cribbs. 

4. Joe Ferguson

Ferguson was the Bills quarterback for most of O.J. Simpson’s signature seasons in the defense-dominated 1970s. As such, he posted some remarkable boxscores. In all of the following games, he’s the only Bills quarterback to have attempted a pass. 

• Ferguson completed 2-of-7 passes for 43 yards and two touchdowns in a 37-13 victory over the Patriots during his rookie 1973 season. Simpson rushed for 219 yards. Both completions went to Bob Chandler.

• The following week, Ferguson went 3-of-5 for 70 yards in a 34-14 win over the Jets in the season finale. Simpson rushed for 200 yards to give him 2,003 for the 14-game season.

• Ferguson went 0-of-2 in a 16-12 Week 3 win over the Jets in 1974. Simpson rushed for 117 yards. Joe Namath went 2-of-18 on this rainy, windy afternoon. No team has attempted just two passes in a game since this one; Mac Jones and the Patriots came close in a wind tunnel against the Bills in 2021.

• Later that season, Ferguson completed one nine-yard pass to Ahmad Rashad on seven attempts in a 15-10 victory over the Browns. Simpson rushed for 115 yards and one touchdown. 

There was more to Ferguson’s game than handoffs, mind you. He led the NFL with 25 touchdown passes in 1975, throwing seven to Chandler and seven to Simpson as the Bills went 8-6. Ferguson was off to a strong statistical start in 1976 when he suffered a back injury in Week 7. Backup Gary Marangi threw 16 interceptions in seven games and completed just 35.3% of his passes, numbers which looked almost as bad then as they do now. Head coach Lou Saban resigned during that season, angry with how Ralph Wilson handled a Simpson preseason holdout. Offensive line coach Jim Ringo took over, Simpson suffered a knee injury in 1977, and Ferguson led the NFL in interceptions as the Bills plunged to 3-11.

Remarkably, this is not even the beginning of the end of Ferguson’s career. He remained the Bills starter for SEVEN more years. In fact, they made no serious effort to replace Ferguson until they drafted Matt Kofer in the second round in 1982 and Jim Kelly in 1983. Instead, the Bills replaced Simpson with the electrifying Joe Cribbs and the overmatched Ringo (who once tried to quit the team at halftime) with “Ground” Chuck Knox. Ferguson put up big numbers throwing to Frank Lewis and Jerry Butler in the early 80s for a frequent playoff also-ran.

Ferguson’s career had a long tail. He threw a few passes for the Colts at age 40 in 1990 and signed with the Canadian Football League’s San Antonio Texans (long story) in 1995. I think of Ferguson as a Joe Flacco type: early success on a running-and-defense team, long tenure as a so-so starter, then as an increasingly venerable/lovable backup. 

We leave this segment with Ferguson throwing five touchdown passes in a 38-35 victory over the Dolphins in 1983. Dan Marino makes his first start in this game, making it a kind of last hurrah for the 1970s. 

5. Doug Flutie

6. Ryan Fitzpatrick

Flutie and Fitzpatrick both played the wandering folk hero role very well. Each could make fun-to-watch, video game-worthy plays outside of structure, and each sometimes went out of his way to do so. Both could charm the boxers off the press pool, and they knew it. If you signed either of them as a backup, your starter was immediately in trouble: both could win over the coaches, locker room and fans. Flutie could also win games. 

Head coach Wade Phillips famously benched Flutie, the Bills starter for nearly all of the 1999 season, before a Wild Card game in favor of Rob Johnson, whom the team signed for five years and $25-million in 1998. About one zillion words have been written about this famous incident, which culminated in the Bills losing to the Titans thanks to the Music City Miracle. 

Phillips claimed in his memoir that Bills owner Ralph Wilson ordered the quarterback switch, which is plausible. Flutie had also played poorly for much of the 1999 season, a fact which was spackled over by the Bills defense and the media’s habit of building winnersauce narratives around victories in which Flutie went 18-of-40 with three interceptions. At any rate, Johnson is one of the reasons Football Outsiders began studying sack rates in the early-2000s and proved that quarterbacks are at least as responsible as their offensive lines for sacks: his pocket clock was a sundial. Starting Johnson in the playoffs based off an impressive end-of-season dress rehearsal (if that’s how it really went down) was a huge mistake, yet the Bills would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those pesky Titans and their trick plays.

Flutie’s remarks before that Titans game are a treasure trove for lovers of passive aggression. “I have no choice but to accept it,” he said of the benching. Fair enough. He then defended a sloppy, narrow 13-10 victory over the Patriots in Week 16.  "People have a short memory," Flutie said. "I played flawless football the second half of that game and through the overtime; it doesn't matter." (Two teammates fumbled in the second half and overtime of that game; still, have you ever heard Tom Brady, or even Aaron Rodgers, describe one of their performances as “flawless”?) And then there were his final thoughts on the matter: "That's why you don't miss a game; that's why you play through injuries, that's why you keep going. Because you give someone just a little window of opportunity and they take advantage of it, and Rob did that."

The fact that fans took Flutie’s side during this barely-concealed tantrum is only mildly surprising. What’s shocking is that Wilson brought Flutie, Johnson AND Phillips back for 2000. Flutie suffered a groin injury in training camp. He replaced Johnson midseason for some wins by scores like 20-3 and 16-13. Then he got hurt again. Phillips resorted to starting Johnson each week until he racked up a half-dozen sacks or so, then bringing Flutie out of the bullpen. That went over just as well as you might imagine. 

Flutie left for the Chargers in 2001, where he could not quite sabotage the shaky early career of Drew Brees. 

As for Mister Harvard Hipster Beardo Fitzmagic, he produced big stats for the Bills in 2010, often in lopsided losses, after two years of slowly winning a starting job from the uninspiring Trent Edwards. Fitzpatrick threw nine touchdowns in three Bills victories to start the 2011 season, and ESPN talk show personalities began shouting Pay the Man! as a rallying cry. 

This was very early in the social networking era, and I think Fitzpatrick became one of the first NFL players to be stanned for by media influencers in this particular way. We’re used to seeing posts like “Joe Burrow gets the [bag of money emoji]” on our feeds now, often as cynical/pandering efforts at engagement. Thirteen years ago, it was odd to see studio analysts stumping for a player to get a payday, especially in midseason (as opposed to some free agency preview segment in March).

The Bills paid Fitzpatrick a reported $59-million over six years in October of 2011, just at the tail end of that early-season hot streak. He went on to lead the NFL in interceptions and was sent on his legendary cross-NFL sojourn one year later.

Fitzpatrick was roughly the 25th-to-35th best quarterback in the NFL for many years. Flutie would probably have been the 20th-to-30th best quarterback in the NFL during his peak, including the Bills years, if he was not in the CFL for much of that time. Both got more opportunities, and ink, than similar quarterbacks who didn’t have quite as much charisma or chutzpah. 

Let’s round out the top ten:

7. Drew Bledsoe

We’ll talk more about The Living Monolith in the Patriots essay.

8. Tyrod Taylor

About 30% less effective than Flutie or Fitzpatrick but given 80% less credit for the things he did well, for reasons too obvious to mention.

9. Trent Edwards

Custodial check-down artist from Stanford who won a starting job from first-round bust J.P. Losman, then lost it to FitzMagic.

10. Rob Johnson or J.P. Losman

If you are wondering why we don’t plan to pick the Top Ten quarterbacks from each franchise, here is your answer. 

An Introduction to the Top 5 Quarterbacks Series

Back in 2011, during the horse latitudes of the NFL lockout, I wrote a series for Football Outsiders ranking every team’s Top Five quarterbacks. It was a popular series, and I revised the rankings slightly before publishing A Good Walkthrough Spoiled, a greatest hits album of my early FO content, in 2013. 

The 2011 and 2013 seasons were a LONG time ago. Russell Wilson did not make the original list. When I revised it, he still ranked as the fourth best quarterback in Seahawks history, behind Matt Hasselbeck, Dave Kreig and Jim Zorn. Aaron Rodgers’ rankings were largely speculative. Trent Green ranked second, behind Len Dawson, on the Chiefs’ all-time list because there were no better options. (Joe Montana, based only on his Chiefs accomplishments, ranked fourth.).

The goal of the original series was not to talk about history’s greatest and most famous quarterbacks. In fact, there were blank entries for some of the league’s biggest superstars, including Tom Brady and Peyton Manning (who were locked in a tiresome GOAT argument at the time). Instead, I wanted to talk more about quarterbacks like Kreig, or like Joe Ferguson in the Bills segment: guys who played for years, took their teams to the playoffs and still have both ardent fans and detractors in their home cities. This series will again spotlight such quarterbacks, but:

a) I don’t plan to punt on the likes of Brady, challenging myself instead to find something new to say; and

b) I have better tools at my disposal now, including YouTube, a more robust Pro Football Reference than existed at the time, newspaper archives and a decade-plus of writing experience.

The Bills segment above gives you a sense for how the Top Five QBs series will look and feel: snapshots of Kelly riding though Buffalo in a limo and Flutie working the media after a benching, strange boxscores from ancient games unearthed like pottery shards, found footage of outstanding games by journeyman handoff machines, more of a collage than anything comprehensive.

We’ll go division-by-division, in alphabetical order within each division. I like that format because it starts us off with the AFC East teams, who are always fun to talk about, and we get to bury the AFC South in the middle. A tentative schedule:

February 22nd: Buffalo Bills, Free to All Subscribers

February 29th: Miami Dolphins, Free to All Subscribers (something easy to pre-schedule while I work the Combine!)

March 7th: New England Patriots: Paid Subscribers

March 16th: New York Jets: Paid Subscribers

We’ll continue one countdown per week, certainly taking 1-2 weeks off around the draft, then switch to two per week in late spring, with a mix of free and paid content. And of course, there will be postings about the scouting combine, free agency and other current events in between.

This series is designed to allow us to both debate and reminisce, and I hope to see folks doing both in the comment threads in the days and weeks to come!