Ask any of your friends who is the best quarterback in the NFL? You will most likely get a variation of answers that include Peyton Manning and Tom Brady and possibly Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers.
The funny part about the current quarterback debate is that it's predicated on past success and not current success. If you ask any intelligent football mind they will likely tell you Brady or Manning are the two best quarterbacks in the game, yet Manning won his only Super Bowl in February of 2007 and he owns a 9-10 career playoff record. While Brady owns a 14-5 playoff record and three Super Bowl victories, he hasn't won a playoff game since the 2007 AFC Championship Game and you can’t forget about the crushing Super Bowl loss to the Giants when Brady and the Patriot offense was M.I.A. most of the game. Last season put Brady in the same conversation of what Manning has been doing for years, great regular season, disappointing postseason.
The Brady supporters will tell you that he has three rings, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Since starting an astonishing 10-0 in the playoffs, Brady has lost 5 of his last 9 playoff games and hasn't looked good doing it. The Peyton Manning retractors say that he puts up numbers in the regular season and disappears in the playoffs; well the last four years would say that Manning and Brady are far more similar than they are different. Since his last Super Bowl win, Ben Roethlisberger has won two rings, while Brees, Rodgers and Eli Manning have all won a Super Bowl.
It's time we all looked at the other worthy quarterbacks. Assuming that the criterion to be considered elite is having at least one Super Bowl win, it’s a five player debate.
Aaron Rodgers recently won his first Super Bowl last February over Ben Roethlisberger, who already has two rings of his own. Rodgers’ Packers were essentially untouched in the offseason, plus they get back RB Ryan Grant and TE Jermichael Finley, who were lost to injury last season. Rodgers took the mantle from Brett Favre and ran with it, but as the 2011 season comes up the Packers are not the favorites in their own conference, that belongs to the Free Agency winners, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Brees defeated Manning two years ago in the Super Bowl but is stuck in the shadow of Manning despite having comparable numbers for his age and a Super Bowl victory to his credit.
Still hanging far under the radar is Roethlisberger, who despite having two Super Bowl rings is still thought of as a by-product of a system and not the determining factor behind the Steelers success. Throughout their history the Steelers have always won with defense and a solid running game and that is no different today and that history is what plagues Big Ben.
In his second Super Bowl win, Roethlisberger lead a game-winning drive culminated by a terrific throw on the run to Santonio Holmes. A game-winning touchdown in the Super Bowl is usually stuff of legends but not for Roethlisberger, he will always be looked at in the second tier of quarterbacks by many.
Despite all that I have mentioned, with the game on the line I would still take Brady, but the competition for the best quarterback in the game is still very much up for debate.
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