Here are the 10 most underrated quarterbacks in NFL history.
It’s easy to think of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, measured by everything from rings to numbers to longevity and often a combination of those things. In no special order Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Dan Marino, John Elway and Joe Montana come to mind, with plenty of others who are easily mentioned among the all-time great signal callers.
But there is a subset of quarterbacks who were underrated and are just patently underappreciated. Maybe it’s a lack of team success that has kept them off the radar, or bad moments on a big stage.
Maybe it was a short peak, injuries or numbers that are dwarfed by the ease with which today’s NFL offenses operate and how quarterbacks put up numbers. Maybe running up against some great teams in their era holds some quarterbacks out of a conversation of all-time greats.
With all of the aforementioned in mind, here are the 10 most underrated quarterbacks in NFL history.
10. Brad Johnson
A ninth-round pick out of Florida State by the Minnesota Vikings in 1992 (the draft doesn’t go that long anymore, of course), Johnson didn’t seen an NFL field until 1994 as Warren Moon’s backup. He then started 21 games over the 1996 and ’97 campaigns, with a completion rate north of 60 percent both seasons.
Johnson opened the season as the Vikings’ starter in 1998, before being injured and replaced by Randall Cunningham. The rest was literally history, as Minnesota went on to set the single-season record for points scored.
Johnson was traded to the Washington Redskins in 1999. In his first of two years there he topped 4,000 passing yards, as the team won the NFC East and a Wild Card Round game. The franchise has won one playoff game since.
Johnson then landed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where he earned a Pro Bowl nod in 2002 and led the league in pass attempts in 2003. Oh and lest I forget Johnson got a ring in 2002, as the Buccaneers beat the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII.
Johnson landed back with the Vikings in 2005, starting 23 games over two seasons. From there he spent the last two seasons of his career with the Dallas Cowboys, with three starts as a 40-year old in 2008.
With brains and accuracy that far exceeded his physical tools, Johnson forged a long NFL career as a bit of a journeyman that no team ever wanted to fully commit to. A little over 29,000 career passing yards later, he is a fitting way to open this list.
9. Ken O’Brien
The quarterback draft class in 1983 was robust in the first round, with legends (John Elway, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino) and some who were far less than legends (Todd Blackledge, Tony Eason, though Eason did play in a Super Bowl). Somewhere in the middle is O’Brien, the 24th overall pick in that draft by the New York Jets out of tiny California-Davis.
In the seven seasons (1985-1991) he started at least 12 games for the Jets, O’Brien threw for at least 3,300 yards four times with an interception rate of two percent or less three times. He was top-10 in the league in passing yards four times, pass attempts five times, passing touchdowns twice and passer rating twice (No. 1 in the league in passer rating in 1985).
O’Brien was also among the top-10 most sacked quarterbacks in the league in all seven of those seasons. He was sacked the most times in 1985 (62) and 1989 (50), with another season (1987) where he taken down 50 times.
O’Brien seemed to most relish his duels with Marino, as an easy motivational nod to the “who’s that?” reaction from fans when he was drafted and the idea the Jets should have taken a falling Marino instead. Two of three best yardage totals of O’Brien’s career (479 yards on Sept. 21, 1986 and 393 yards on Nov. 10, 1985) came against Miami, and he was 8-8 in 16 career games against the Dolphins as the Jets’ quarterback.
The accomplishments of his notable draft peers dwarf what O’Brien managed to accomplish in his career, and Jets’ draft lore will always consider him a big mistake. But those things just serve to make him underrated, and O’Brien takes a spot on this list.
8. Dave Krieg
Perhaps the most notable moment of Krieg’s career came against the Kansas City Chiefs in 1990. Chiefs linebacker Derrick Thomas set the single-game record with seven sacks that day, but he just missed an eighth in a critical moment. Krieg somehow managed to stay upright as Thomas bore down on him, and he unleashed the game-winning touchdown pass on the game’s final play.
Krieg was signed by the Seahawks as an undrafted free agent in 1980. He stepped in for Jim Zorn in 1983, leading the team to the first playoff berth in franchise history and two postseason wins. Seattle went 12-4 and win the AFC West in 1984 with Krieg as the starter, then they won 10 games in 1986 and made the playoffs two more times in 1987 and 1988.
After Seattle, Krieg played for the Chiefs (1992-93), Detroit Lions (1994), Arizona Cardinals (1995), Chicago Bears (1996) and Tennessee Oilers (1997-98). At age-37 with Arizona he started all 16 games, and he started 12 games for Chicago the following year.
Krieg got beaten up a good bit in his career, and he’s still been sacked the fifth-most times in league history (494). He also retired with the most career fumbles, but has since been surpassed.
Krieg is also top-25 all-time in touchdown passes (261; 18th) and passing yards (38,147; 23rd). Lost in the shuffle of notable peers who won more, and what the Seahawks have had of recent vintage at quarterback, Krieg is clearly underappreciated.
7. Drew Bledsoe
If Bledsoe hadn’t suffered a severe injury early in the 2001 season, who knows when an obscure 2000 sixth-round pick out of Michigan named Tom Brady would have gotten an opportunity. Bledsoe was traded to the Buffalo Bills the following offseason, and eventually reunited with Bill Parcells in Dallas with the Cowboys. In 2006, Bledsoe was “Wally Pipped” again–by Tony Romo–and he retired after that season.
The Patriots drafted Bledsoe No. 1 overall in 1993 out of Washington State. In his second season he led the league in completions (400), attempts (691) and passing yards (4,555), as well as interceptions (27). He led the league in attempts in 1995 (636) and 1996 (626) too, letting it fly at a level that would stand up among the leaders in that category today. He led the league in completions again in 1996 (373). In 2002 with the Bills, he topped 600 pass attempts one last time (610).
Bledsoe’s 44,611 career passing yards sits 16th all-time. He helped lay the groundwork for what would become the NFL’s modern dynasty, making the Patriots relevant after a really dismal stretch of years before his arrival. But his career, as with many others on this list, has an unfulfilled, incomplete feel through no fault of his own.
6. Ken Stabler
Having a Super Bowl ring might ordinarily disqualify someone from an underrated list. But here we are with “Snake.”
In his first full season as the starter for the Raiders (1973), Stabler led the NFL in completion percentage (62.7). Then in 1974 he led the league in touchdown passes (26) and, as a nod to today’s more advanced stats, adjusted yards per attempt (7.9). In 1976, he led the league in completion percentage (66.7), touchdown passes (27), yards per attempt (9.4), passing yards per game (228.1) and passer rating (103.4). The Raiders would go on to beat the Vikings in Super Bowl XI to complete that 1976 campaign.
In 1979, his final season with the Raiders, Stabler finished top-five in the league in passing yards (3,615) touchdowns (26) and passer rating (82.2).
Stabler started 28 games over the 1980 and 1981 seasons with the Houston Oilers. In 1980 it was good and bad over all 16 games, with the second-best completion percentage (64.1 percent) and second-most interceptions (28) in the league. He spent his final three seasons with the New Orleans Saints (1982-1984), with 14 starts in his age-38 season (1983).
Stabler died in July of 2015 at 69 years old, so he passed before he gained induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the following year. That wait only reinforced how underrated he was, and frankly still is.
5. Jim Hart
In retrospect, this looks like a big miss for me when I formed the Mount Rushmore for the Cardinals. From 1967-1980 Hart started 168 games, with nine seasons in the top-10 of the league in passing yards. He also finished top-10 in pass attempts nine times in that span, with eight top-10 finishes in completions as well.
In 1974, Hart earned the first of four straight Pro Bowl nods and won NFC Offensive Player of the Year as the Cardinals made the playoffs for the first time since 1948. From 1974-1976, the middle years of Don Coryell’s tenure as head coach, the Cardinals won double-digit games each season with a 31-11 combined regular season record. In 1974 and 1976, in an early rendition of the “Air Coryell”, offense, Hart finished first and third in the league in pass attempts.
When he retired after the 1984 season with the Washington Redskins, Hart was third all-time in passing yards (34,665), behind only Fran Tarkenton and Johnny Unitas. He’s still 30th on that list today. And yet he’s not in the Hall of Fame, surely due to spending his career with the generally dismal Cardinals and an 87-88-5 overall record as their starter.
Another black mark on Hart is a 209:247 career touchdown-to-interception ratio, with more touchdowns than picks just three times in a season where he played a notable amount. But he’s still criminally underrated for what he did during the era he played, and in the broad annals of NFL quarterbacking.
4. Vinny Testaverde
What if I told you there’s a quarterback who won a Heisman Trophy, then had 46,223 career passing yards (15th all-time) in the NFL, and he’s also top-20 ever in passing touchdowns (275) and completions (3,787). He also started 16 games in a season in both his age-37 and age-38 seasons, and 15 games in his age-41 season. Oh and he played until he was 44 years old, starting six games for the Carolina Panthers in 2007.
The title of this slide gave it away, but that quarterback is Vinny Testaverde. He became a punching bag and a punch line right away upon being drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers No. 1 overall in 1987. In his first two full seasons as a starter, 1988 and 1989, he threw 33 touchdowns against 57 interceptions as he threw the most picks in the league both seasons. In 1990, he famously admitted to Terry Bradshaw that he was color blind.
Testaverde got some notoriety with the Cleveland Browns, when Bill Belichick notably benched Bernie Kosar in favor of him, and it was with that franchise that he had his best season. In 1996, as the Baltimore Ravens’ quarterback by then, Testaverde had 4,177 passing yards (second in the league) and 33 touchdown passes (second in the league) on his way to his first career Pro Bowl selection at 33 years old.
The New York Jets went 12-4 in 1998, and 12-1 in the games Testaverde started as he had 29 touchdown passes and just seven interceptions. They also reached the AFC Championship, as the best team Testaverde played on.
Testaverde is a poster boy for a quarterback’s success being tied to the situation he lands in. Even Steve Young was not very good early in his career in Tampa Bay, before reaching the heights he did in San Francisco. Any critique of Testaverde as a pure numbers compiler, due of course to his longevity, is misplaced.
3. Tony Romo
Romo suffered a back injury during the 2016 preseason, opening the door for a rookie named Dak Prescott to take over, and after one brief appearance he retired after that season. His run as the Cowboys’ quarterback feels even further away when taking into account he missed 12 games with a broken collarbone in 2015.
In the nine seasons before that (2006-2014), encompassing the substance of his run as the starter, Romo averaged 4,127 yards and 30 touchdowns per 16 games played. In 2014, his last fully healthy season, he led the NFL in completion percentage (69.9), touchdown rate (7.8 percent), yards per attempt (8.5), passer rating (113.2) and QBR (79.7).
Imagine doubting the excellence that is Tony Romopic.twitter.com/1xK5dXfV9u
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) June 7, 2020
Romo’s 97.1 career passer rating is the fourth-best all-time. Go ahead and read that again.
During that stretch from 2006-2014, he had the seventh-most passing yards (33,270) and the fifth-most passing touchdowns in the league (242). The quarterbacks that bested him in both categories in that time frame are Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Philip Rivers. If he had played more than six games in 2010, and/or taken over sooner in 2006, Romo’s run would have been even better.
But alas, Romo never got to a Super Bowl and only won two playoff games in his career. The constant spotlight on him as the Cowboys’ quarterback opened the door for nitpicking his shortcomings. But a realistic look at his numbers proves just how good Romo was for a pretty significant stretch of years.
2. Steve Bartkowski
The Falcons took Bartkowski No. 1 overall out of Cal in the 1975 draft, anointing him as the franchise savior automatically, and simply put he played on some dreadful teams. As noted by our own Michael Collins over at Blogging Dirty, “Bart” was sacked on 9.3 percent of his dropbacks during his career, five times on more than 10 percent of his dropbacks and in 1977 that rate was an astronomical 17.6 percent.
That physical pounding led to 42 missed games over 11 seasons in Atlanta, and seven knee operations for Bartkowski during his career with four more knee surgeries after he retired. Yet there he was persevering, with back-to-back 30 touchdown seasons in 1980 and 1981 (a league-high 31 in 1980). In 1983, he led the league in passer rating (97.6), and had the best interception rate in the league (1.2 percent, 22 touchdowns against five interceptions). In 1984, he led the league in completion percentage (67.3).
Bartkowski started five games for the Falcons in 1985, then he spent his final NFL season with the Los Angeles Rams in 1986 and made six starts.
Bartkowski stands as a “what might have been.” What if he had spent his career on a better team? What if he had been healthier for longer stretches? He is too easy to set aside among the best quarterbacks of his era, and a natural runner up on my list of underrated quarterbacks.
1. Ken Anderson
Before Joe Montana made it cool and won a bunch of rings in San Francisco, and other iterations of the system followed, it was Anderson who piloted the West Coast offense under a Bengals’ assistant named Bill Walsh. In four full seasons (1972-1975) with Walsh, Anderson led the NFL in passing yards twice (1974 and 1975), yards per attempt twice (1974 and 1975 again) and completion percentage once (64.9 percent in 1974).
But Anderson was not done when Walsh left Cincinnati. He earned a Pro Bowl nod in 1976, then won league MVP in 1981 when he threw for 3,754 yards with 29 touchdowns and 10 interceptions. The Bengals reached Super Bowl XVI, losing to the 49ers with Walsh as the head coach.
Anderson led the league in completion percentage again in 1982 (70.6 percent) and 1983 (66.7 percent). That mark in 1982 stood alone as the single-season NFL record until 2009, and only Drew Brees (four times) and Sam Bradford (once) have topped it. Anderson also led the league in passer rating four times in his 16-year career (1971-1986), all with the Bengals.
Somehow, Anderson has yet to get a call to take his rightful place in the Hall of Fame. After 30 years of being snubbed, he recently told Sporting News he’s no longer worried about it.
“I don’t think twice about it, to be honest with you, except those times of year when it comes time for the election and somebody will call and say, ‘What do you think?’” “Other than that, it doesn’t cross my mind.”
“I guess the only time I was disappointed was the first time I was eligible, and I got into the final 15 and didn’t make it, and then it was disappointing… My dream was fulfilled when I got a chance to play professional football for 16 years.”