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Lordandmaster -> The greatest football player of all time was... (8/11/2008 8:22:03 AM)
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Jim Brown and Jerry Rice are the two names you hear most often, and I'm not going to deny that they were all-time greats, but I'm sayin' right here that the greatest football player of all time was Otto Graham.
I bet half o' you whippersnappers never even heard of Otto Graham.
Well, take a look at the all-time leaders in passer rating. Otto Graham comes in tied for 14th at 86.6 (with Philip Rivers--ha!). So how on earth does that make him the greatest player of all time? Well, another thing you'll notice is that with two exceptions, EVERY quarterback ranked above Graham was active in 2007. And those two exceptions are all-time greats themselves: Steve Young and Joe Montana. Why is that? Well, as any fan of the game knows, passer efficiency ratings have increased tremendously over the decades, and there's no end in sight. When a has-been tub-o'-lard like Chad Pennington ranks 9th all time in passer efficiency rating, it tells you that passer efficiency ratings can't simply be compared from era to era. (I'm hoping you're all going to agree readily that Chad Pennington is not the ninth-best quarterback of all time.) You have to look at passer ratings WITHIN their era.
Who had the highest career passer rating before Otto Graham? The answer is Sid Luckman, at 75.0. Now Sid Luckman was also an all-time great, but that's not the point. The point is that Graham smashed the previous record by over 15%. That would be like someone having a career passer rating today of 111.8. And that's unheard of.
Just in case you're still not convinced: Otto Graham played both ways, too, and in his rookie season (1946), he had five interceptions, including one returned for a touchdown. That was in addition to leading the league in touchdown passes (17--against only 5 interceptions) and putting together a tidy 112.1 passer rating. Unthinkable today.
Otto Graham is the greatest football player who ever lived!
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