John Elway is the most OVERRATED quarterback of all time

This thread will be my attempt to educate people about how the perception of John Elway as an All Time Great QB is vastly overstated and that in reality he was no where close to being as good as his reputation states. In effort to not have one massive original post, I will be breaking up points in individual posts. Some of the posts will be taken directly from a Chief fan twitter page (I know, Eff the Chiefs, but it provided good insight).

Hopefully by the time you are done reading, you will at least be open to the idea that Elway's reputation does not match reality.

It CAN be unfair to compare QBs from different eras. So this post will be an attempt to compare Elway to his own peers. During John Elway's career (1983 to 1998), there were 19 QBs who started 100+ games. Here is where Elway ranks in major statistical categories:

Completion%: 16th
TD%: 13th
INT%: 10th
Passer Rating: 14th
Yards per Attempt: 10th
Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt: 11th

So if you believe (like many do), that John Elway is one of the top 10 QBs of all time, why wasn't he even statistically a top 10 QB in his own era?

Through 1998 when Elway retired, he had the most starts out of any QB in NFL history with 231. He had 2 more starts than Dan Marino (ranked 2nd), 29 more starts than Warren Moon (ranked 3rd) and 56 more starts than Dave Krieg (ranked 4th).

Because Elway played such a long time relative to every other QB that came before him, he ended up with superficially impressive counting stats, while never performing at an elite level relative to his peers. At the time of retirement, he was 2nd in NFL history in Touchdowns and 1st in QB wins (a stat I don't like anyway, but people do so I will list it).

Counting stats aren't very impressive to me, considering that the longer you count, the higher the totals go. Elway had 120 less touchdowns than Dan Marino in 2 more games played. He had 10 more touchdowns than Warren Moon in TWENTY NINE more games.

John Elway won Player of the Month twice, in his 16 season career.

Brock Purdy won Player of the Month twice so far, in less than 1.5 seasons.

Elway won one MVP in 1987, but he absolutely should not have. That season, Elway's stats were:

54.6 completion
3198 Passing Yards
19 TDs
12 INTs
7.8 YPA
83.4 passer rating

Here are Joe Montana's stats in that same season

66.1 completion percentage (12% higher)
3054 passing yards (144 less in 12 less attempts)
7.7 YPA (basically identical)
31 TDs (12 more!)
13 INTs (1 more)
102.1 passer rating (almost 20 points higher!)

You tell me who should have won it that year. If your answer isnt Montana, the only other acceptable answer is Jerry Rice, who had 1078 yards and 22 touchdowns

The narrative around John Elway has always been that he was a winner. I am not a big QB wins guy, but this is interesting.

John Elway was 52-47 in his career against teams that finished above .500 and 96-35-1 against teams that did not.

I will be back later with more.....

I would agree with this. Throw Troy Aikman's name in the hat as well.

I agree with you about him being one of the most overrated QBs.

Some of your metrics though...I think your posts would be better by excluding them

Like the player of the month stuff, seems just cherry picking. Player of the month is pretty useless metric to judge a player's career.

"John Elway won Player of the Month twice, in his 16 season career.
Brock Purdy won Player of the Month twice so far, in less than 1.5 seasons."

Jerry Rice also has the same amount of player of the month (ONCE) as Laveranues Coles. Like, really.

Originally posted by the_dynasty:
I agree with you about him being one of the most overrated QBs.

Some of your metrics though...I think your posts would be better by excluding them

Like the player of the month stuff, seems just cherry picking. Player of the month is pretty useless metric to judge a player's career.

"John Elway won Player of the Month twice, in his 16 season career.
Brock Purdy won Player of the Month twice so far, in less than 1.5 seasons."

Jerry Rice also has the same amount of player of the month (ONCE) as Laveranues Coles. Like, really.

Its just one of many, my friend. It's not supposed to be a mic drop post.

Originally posted by SteveWallacesHelmet:
Its just one of many, my friend. It's not supposed to be a mic drop post.

it doesnt make your point any more valid, if anything it makes it less valid imo. its a laughable metric.

Good stuff Steve 👍🏻👍🏻. Eye opening for sure

A lot of people forget that the perception in the early 90s was that Elway was a playoff underachiever
kinda like Dak nowadays

and was made fun of routinely:

[video][/video]

The following are John Elway's career best in big statistical categories. In parentheses are how many times during Elway's 16 year career that those statistics were exceeded by other quarterbacks:

27 Touchdown passes (37 times a QB had more)

4030 passing yards (26 times a QB had more)

63.7% completion percentage (29 times a QB had a better percentage)

7.9 Yards per attempt (29 times a QB had more)

93.0 passer rating (34 times a QB had a better rating)

Elway's CAREER BESTS weren't even very good relative to his peers.