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Eli Manning: Hall of Famer?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Dick Whitman, Jan 23, 2012.

  1. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    To those who say yes on Eli already: Would you put Kurt Warner in? Warner's body of work is better by leaps and bounds, the only exception being if the Giants win Eli will have one more title (but still one fewer SB appearance so far). But in terms of their defining seasons they don't even belong in the same discussion.
     
  2. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    Has anyone said yes already?
     
  3. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    I know Montana is one of the all-time greats. No sane person would argue otherwise. But in his generation he was the fourth-best QB from a pure statistical sense. Elway, Moon and Marino all had more TDs. Those three plus Fouts had more yards. He's somewhere around No. 11 on most of the major career lists.
    What sets him apart from those guys, even elevates him above them, is winning four Super Bowls and going 16-7 in the playoffs. Only Brady has won more (they're tied now) and only Roethlisberger (with 10 wins) is even in the discussion where active players are concerned.
     
  4. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    Marino, Moon and Elway all played longer. What were their numbers per season? I think Montana comes off a lot better when the numbers are broken down.
     
  5. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    Not really. All of them played 15-16 years.
    Montana: 1979-94
    Elway: 1983-98
    Marino: 1983-2000 (and he's almost 150 TDs ahead of Montana, plus missed a good chunk of the 1993 season with the achilles injury)
    Moon: 1984-2000
     
  6. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Shockey said Eli would be a slam dunk if he won in two weeks and never played again. I thought some others agreed. Maybe not.

    To focus my point: I think Warner's career outpaces Eli's and would do so even if Eli had two or three more seasons like this one. The big variable is winning another SB, but if Eli and Warner were to end up with the same number of titles and SB appearances I think Warner should be 3x the candidate.
     
  7. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    You realize Montana played less seasons overall, didn't start right away AND missed an entire season and most of the next one, right?
     
  8. cyclingwriter

    cyclingwriter Active Member

    The third route is to do both ala Unitas, Brady, Graham, Baugh, Luckman. I think you are underselling Staubach. I want to say he retired with the highest QB rating of all time, or at least with a hare or two of tops.
     
  9. LongTimeListener

    LongTimeListener Well-Known Member

    Montana's playoff record is far from the only thing that separated him from Marino, Fouts and Moon. The fact that he didn't regularly shoot himself in the foot set him apart, but it also cost him a chance at regular 400-yard games. He also had a defense that was a lot better than people remember, which held down his yardage too.
     
  10. heyabbott

    heyabbott Well-Known Member

    Eli has more TD passes than Aikman and has only 5K yards less, in 5 less years.
    Eli has 4 more playoff wins than Warren Moon

    I realize they are of different eras but he has better numbers than Staubach and Greise. And he's a better QB than Bradshaw.

    Eli's won 3 of the toughest games played, the 2007 OT NFC Championship game in frozen Green Bay, the 2008 Super Bowl against an undefeated Patriots and this years OT NFC Championship game. Has a QB ever been hit that often in a Championship game and never turned the ball over and won the game?

    He's still got 5 years to compile stats, but if he averages 3000 yards and 20 TDs a year for the next 5 years, he'll have top 10 stats.

    Interestingly, of the 5 Super Bowl era QBs with the best all time stats: Marino, Elway, Fouts, Moon and Tarkenton, only Elway is a Super Bowl winner.
     
  11. Batman

    Batman Well-Known Member

    He did play fewer games than the three guys I mentioned. He also never led the league in passing, and only led in TDs twice (oddly, in the two strike seasons of '82 and '87).
    Again, he's an all-time great. Arguably, THE greatest. Just saying that from the point of a HOF discussion, he got there as much for what he did in the postseason as what he did in the regular season. He certainly combined the two better than anyone of that generation.
     
  12. HejiraHenry

    HejiraHenry Well-Known Member

    Hell, I had a guy in my circle arguing for Eli as a Hall of Famer last year.

    *****

    Comparing his raw stats to QBs like Aikman and Montana is nonsense of course.

    I'm sure there's some metric out there that evens the statistical playing field relative to league averages in a given era.
     
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