The Greatest NFL Quarterbacks, Ranked

Three Super Bowl MVP awards, the first player ever to collect a third, and the delivery never once looked hurried. The evidence is the 92-yard drive in Super Bowl XXIII on January 22, 1989: eleven plays, ending with a ten-yard throw to John Taylor with 34 seconds left. Cincinnati had the better defense that day and lost anyway.

Buffalo led 36–33 with thirteen seconds left in the divisional round on January 23, 2022, and Kansas City still got into field-goal range to force overtime, winning 42–36 on an eight-yard throw to Travis Kelce. Three Super Bowl MVP awards have come the same way — sidearm, off-platform, left-handed when the read demands it. The improvisation is mostly rehearsed, and it still cannot be planned for.

Seven Super Bowl titles, the most of any player and more than any NFL franchise has won — and putting that third here will read as an insult. Trailing 28–3 in Super Bowl LI on February 5, 2017, he threw for 466 yards and New England won 34–28 in the first overtime the game had ever required. Judged on peak seasons rather than accumulated Februaries, two men still edge him.

A record five Associated Press MVP awards, four in Indianapolis and the last in Denver, where the 2013 season produced 55 touchdown passes and 5,477 yards — both still the single-season marks. The arm had lost its zip by then and it made no difference; he was running an audible system at the line that nobody else could operate.

Forty-seven consecutive games with a touchdown pass, 1956 through 1960, and the record stood 52 years until Drew Brees passed it in 2012. The 1958 title game against the Giants, won 23–17 in the first sudden-death overtime the league had ever staged, is the afternoon that sold professional football to television. Black high-tops, stooped shoulders, not one wasted motion.

Ten professional seasons, ten championship games — his team reached the title game every year he played and won seven of them, though the count is contested because four came in the AAFC and only three in the NFL. On December 24, 1950 he threw for 298 yards and four scores as Cleveland beat the Rams 30–28. Nobody since has been that close to automatic.

Six league passer-rating titles, four of them consecutively from 1991 to 1994, earned while running like a halfback who happened to throw left-handed. The six touchdown passes in Super Bowl XXIX on January 29, 1995 set the record for that game. Years spent waiting behind Montana cost him the reputation his play deserved, and lists like this one keep under-paying him.

Ninety-eight yards, five rushes, six completions, a freezing Cleveland afternoon on January 11, 1987 — The Drive is still the template for what the position should do when the building is against you. The 1987 MVP award came next; the first championship waited until the 1997 season. Absurd arm, and for a decade rosters that could not match it.

Nineteen eighty-four is the whole argument: 5,084 passing yards and 48 touchdown passes, both single-season records at the time. The only Super Bowl he reached, XIX on January 20, 1985, ended 38–16 to San Francisco, and no team of his got back there. Fastest release the sport has produced, and the ring-counters have held the missing ring against him ever since.

The highest single-season passer rating the NFL has recorded belongs here: 122.5 in 2011, on a scale that tops out at 158.3. On December 3, 2015 a 61-yard Hail Mary found Richard Rodgers as the clock hit zero and beat Detroit 27–23. Throwing on the move is where he separates from everyone; nobody has ever made it look like less work.

An onside kick opened the second half in Super Bowl XLIV on February 7, 2010, and New Orleans beat Indianapolis 31–17 with the MVP going to the quarterback nobody wanted to build around. He passed for 5,476 yards in 2011, clearing Marino's mark. Every scouting report on him led with his height, and every one of them aged badly.

Three straight Associated Press MVP awards from 1995 to 1997, the only player to manage that. One day after his father died he played Oakland on December 22, 2003 and threw four touchdowns before halftime in a 41–7 win. He also owns the career interception record at 336, which is the same fact told from the other side: he never once declined the throw.

Heisman winner in 1963, then Navy service including Vietnam, so the NFL career did not start until 1969. On December 28, 1975 in Minnesota, trailing 14–10, he threw 50 yards to Drew Pearson for a 17–14 win and told reporters afterward, 'I closed my eyes and said a Hail Mary.' The phrase outlived everyone in that stadium. Captain Comeback was earned, not marketed.

Leading the league in pass completions, punting average and interceptions in one season is not a record anyone will approach again — he did it in 1943, playing all three phases. As a rookie in the December 12, 1937 championship game he threw for 335 yards and three touchdowns to beat the Bears 28–21. Most of what the position now assumes about throwing starts about here.

Eight of his nineteen professional seasons came in the AFL, before the merger, and that league counted — three championships there, the last of them in 1969. Super Bowl IV on January 11, 1970 ended 23–7 over Minnesota with the MVP award and a 12-of-17 passing line. The quietest great quarterback the sport has had, which is precisely why lists keep forgetting him.

Undrafted in 1978 with no NFL team willing to try him at quarterback, he went north and won five straight Grey Cups with Edmonton. Once Houston signed him in 1984 he threw for 527 yards against Kansas City on December 16, 1990. Canton took him in 2006, the first Black quarterback inducted, and six CFL seasons still sit outside his NFL totals.