The Greatest NFL Player in History

I enjoy reading, especially when the reading concerns sports. So when I found They Call Me Assassin, the autobiography of Jack Tatum, ex-Raider and star safety, at a local garage sale, its $0.25 price tag and title made it an easy decision to purchase.

When I arrived home later that day, I flipped it open and began reading. It began like any other autobiography: a catchy opening line that described the athlete and a the first chapter dealing with his defense that he plays with "aggression," but he is no "assassin." Tatum earned that nickname on the field because of his bone-crushing hits, one of which would paralyze Daryl Stingly, a receiver for the New England Patriots.

As I read the book, I understood it as an autobiographical defense of the star receiver; nothing more, nothing less. After some time spent reading, I found my way to Chapter 7, aptly titled "Rating My Peers in the NFL." The first sentence caught my attention and wrapped me up, grasping my attention for what would be an entertaining chapter: "Quite often I run into people who actually believe the athlete of twenty or thirty years ago was better than our modern day athlete."

The statement is obviously the introduction to Tatum's attempt to refute those people and their points, valid or not. The paragraph progressed to finally culminate with this analogy: "The airplane, for example, is not faster than the jet, a buckboard does not compare to an automobile, and athletic progress is most definitely part of the improving world."

Think about that for a minute. "Athletic progress is part of the improving world." It is a strong statement, no doubt, but it captures, I believe, the essence of what I am about to tell you.

Every sports fan in the entire world believes that he knows the true ranking of the top 20 quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers in history. And everyone has a different list. No doubt, I have my own ranking that I consider to be accurate, but because everyone has a different way of "grading" players or "comparing" them, I seriously doubt that I could get more than just one of the next twenty people I talk to, to agree with me.

But since reading this book, which was probably two or three years ago, I have changed my philosophy on the subject. I am not certain that there is any statistical or significant way to determine, for example, if Johnny Unitas was better than Peyton Manning. How can we?

When players are ranked, it is usually based on their "numbers," or statistics. But how can we compare Unitas, who played against far simpler defensive schemes, to Manning, who now must digest literally thousands of schemes? At the same time, can we determine whether Unitas would have thrived in today's NFL, fully understanding the schemes?

Certainly, it sounds nice on paper to spew out numbers, such as "Bart Starr won the first two Super Bowls" and "Dan Marino threw for 63,361 yards and 420 touchdowns, he didn't need to win a Super Bowl." But really, how do we define "the best."

Do we say that statistics are important, but Super Bowl rings are predominantly more so, because, after all, the goal of every athlete is to earn one. But then we look at the players that surrounded our athletes of comparison. And because we have no better way to determine their talent, since, after all, many of them played twenty or more years ago and the majority of us vaguely remember what we ate for breakfast this morning, we use statistics. How effective is our reasoning? How can we say that Bart Starr would not have played well in today's NFL? That Johnny Unitas, the top player in many "old-timers' " minds, would not have been as successful as Peyton Manning is today.

It is clear and apparent that Super Bowl rings are, however, the most important scale to which we measure a quarterback's success. Before this season's Super Bowl, Peyton Manning was perhaps regarded as a top ten in history, but not the best in the NFL today. And who was better? Tom Brady, the man who brought the word "intangibles" back into style, the man with three rings in four seasons.

But when the Chicago Bears, the NFL's best defense for much of the season, met Manning's Colts in XLI, Peyton rose victorious, crowned MVP for his efforts and finally silencing his critics who thought he would never win "The Big One." And shortly after that game, perhaps even in the postgame, analysts began to comment that Manning is better than Marino because he won a Super Bowl. Had he never won a Super Bowl, Manning would likely have gone down in history as one of the "best who had never won a Super Bowl."

Yes, Super Bowl wins and losses are so important that we have begun to categorize players according to the best who never won and the overall best. But does this make sense? After all, some players were not blessed in the same way Joe Montana was. Montana was a part of several Super Bowl winning teams and is now considered by many to be the best because of his rings. But his teammates certainly played a large role in his 49ers dominance during the 1980s. Jerry Rice, Roger Craig, and Dwight Clark all played a major role in the team's victories. He was surrounded by hall of fame talent, but he did not disappoint. The problem comes into play when we ask, "how would he have done on a lesser team?" For example, what would have happened if Dan Marino and Montana would have switched places during their careers. Would Marino have won as many Super Bowls? Would Montana have won any?

Certainly, Super Bowls play a significant role in how we define and rate our stars of today and yesteryear. But can we compare our stars of today with those of yesteryear?

Some, including me, have begun rating the players by generation. It makes more sense to compare Unitas with Tarkanton, Starr, and Bradshaw than it does to compare Y.A. Tittle with Jim Kelly. There are fewer flaws in the system, the only one being, how do we define a generation? Fortunately, many of us already subconsciously define "generations." For example, when you think of Montana, Elway, Marino, and Kelly, they all fit together seamlessly. Aikman, Young, and Favre fit into their own category, a sort of "90s" category. Though their careers began in different seasons, they were compared side-by-side for much of their time spent on the field.

So how should we compare players? How can we compare players of different times and generations? Or perhaps that is the allure of it, that we all define it differently, we all have our own personal scale that we believe to be superior. It keeps us busy in the offseason, debating over who you would take if a new franchise was starting and you could have any player from any time in history. Maybe that's why we do it. And why mess with tradition?