The quarterback is appropriately known as the single-most important position in football (particularly in the NFL), and arguably all of sports. In a game where every single player is technically a specialist, getting the quarterback right, finding the right mix of personality, talent, and drive, is the chief headache of many a front office.
So it stands to reason that every single team in the NFL can be summed up in the personality and careers of the best that their quarterbacks have had to offer. And while there's no real way to measure that, career passing yards seems like a good place to start.
All-time franchise passing leaders by division
AFC East
Buffalo Bills: Jim Kelly (35,467 yards)
Josh Allen is fun. He is a freak. Probably the most talented quarterback in Bills history. But we are still seeing way too many jerseys with his name on the back rather than those reading "Jim Kelly". Kelly's era is defined by profound disappointment, but he should be memorialized as the Jerry West of NFL quarterbacks. From his third year onward, Kelly went seven for eight seasons in which he led the Bills to the playoffs.
Allen is the only other quarterback in Buffalo in line to beat that resume, and is actually only just over the pace necessary to eclipse Kelly's franchise record in as much time. And while Kelly never had to face Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs, not even the GOAT has made it to four straight Super Bowl appearances. It's time for the narrative to flip on those four appearances, and instead highlight that Buffalo actually got there. Throw in his legacy as the captain of the first 'no huddle' offense, and Kelly deserves way more flowers than he's given.
Miami Dolphins: Dan Marino (61,361 yards)
The Dolphins are a warning sign for the Indianapolis Colts. Like Indy's all-time passing leader, Marino lapped his era's GOAT, Joe Montana, in raw counting stats, and unlike Tom Brady decades later, Montana didn't have the longevity to catch him. And despite Marino's stats being dampened by a distinct lack of postseason success (at least Peyton got over the hump once before leaving Indy), he is Miami's GOAT without a doubt.
However, since his peak, the Dolphins have tried and failed to replicate his magic season, much in the way that the Colts should learn a lesson from if they don't want their 2025 campaign to be a single blip.
New England Patriots: Tom Brady (74,571 yards)
The greatest football player to ever touch turf has incredibly inflated the historical opinion of what is, all in all, a middling franchise throughout NFL history. This isn't quite LeBron James in Cleveland -- everyone still underrates the LeBron-less Cavaliers, even with a new core of two to four stars on the roster, depending on who you ask.
No, in basketball terms, the Patriots are like the San Antonio Spurs. Drew Bledsoe and David Robinson are fun, but it twenty straight years of Brady and Duncan have shifted the public opinion of both franchises from no names in the public consciousness to the picture of prestige in their respective leagues. That's not just GOAT-level play, but PR reversal.
New York Jets: Joe Namath (27,057 yards)
Good lord, are the Jets a poverty franchise. Namath might have the coolest nickname in NFL history, and his Super Bowl trophy is one of the greatest upsets in football history, but all of that success came a lifetime ago. 1968 was two years before the AFL-NFL merger, and since then the Jets have been something of a dumpster fire. And you want to know how bad the Jets' record of sustained success truly is?
The runner-up to Namath's franchise passing yards record is Ken O'Brien. Jets fans hope that they are the e "Curse of the Bambino" Sox or the pre-2016 Cubs. But they slot in better somewhere between the Mets and NBA's Los Angeles Clippers in terms of franchise sadness. The taste of glory is far enough away to where no one sees it coming back — and when (if) it does, only true Jets fans will remain to celebrate it.
AFC North
Baltimore Ravens: Joe Flacco (38,245 yards)
The Ravens are two things historically: young, and proof that defense wins championships. For example: in 10 seasons with Baltimore, Flacco went from a reach to just above the middle of the pack for most of his career. He went absolutely Super Saiyan in the 2012 playoffs, but that wasn't even his best regular season statistically. Flacco was never really able to line his tools up for one unimpeachable season start-to-finish the way that many of the names on this list have. But for the Ravens, they didn't care. Because their team still won, air attack or no.
Flacco had Ray Rice, Lamar Jackson has himself, and most importantly, the Baltimore Ravens have their reputation for the best defense in the league. Starting with their first Super Bowl campaign in 2000 — in just the franchise's fifth season, mind you — the Ravens have only had five seasons in which they didn't finish as a top 10 defense in either scoring or yards allowed. In that time, they've made the playoffs six times in every decade, and are on pace to beat that mark for the 2020s.
Cincinnati Bengals: Ken Anderson (32,838 yards)
The Bengals are currently on their way out of Jets-level mediocrity, except without that signature Super Bowl and a cool nickname for their quarterback of the 70's (Queen City Ken doesn't really have a ring to it). Also unlike the Jets, however, the Bengals have a potential franchise GOAT on their hands.
They haven't made the playoffs since 2022, but Burrow's per game and per season stats blow Anderson and the rest of Cincinnati's all-time quarterbacks out of the water. Please, please, Cincinnati, don't turn Joe Burrow into the Andrew Luck of the 2020's. Invest in his offensive line. Don't rush him back from injury. He's you're only shot at relevance for the next half century.
Cleveland Browns: Brian Sipe (23,713 yards)
Oh, Art Modell, the words that Browns fans would have for you, all the way up to this day. The actual owner if the NFL's worst curse belongs to the resurrected Cleveland Browns, who, prior to The Move, enjoyed a long history of at least middling success in the NFL. And combined with the general insanity that was propagated by head coach Sam Rutigliano during the 'Kardiac Kids' Era, the energy of middling success sort of goes hand-in-hand with Sipe owning the franchise's career passing record over plumber-era GOAT Otto Graham and city darling Bernie Kosar.
And of course, leave it to the post-Move Browns to cut bait with the first quarterback since the 1980s that could challenge for the top of their list. Baker Mayfield had classic Dawg Pound energy written all over him, and Cleveland is probably looking at him in Tampa Bay like Squidward looks at Patrick and Spongebob through his window.
Pittsburgh Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger (64,088 yards)
Patriots fans, if Drake Maye's sophomore season isn't just a blip and is instead an indicator of things to come, the Pittsburgh Steelers are what your team is going to become. I'm not saying that he's going to become either Big Ben or franchise passing yards runner up Terry Bradshaw (27,989), but those two names bookend an era of excellence that has thrived since the first years of the merger.
Prior irrelevance means nothing to Steelers fans now, and they instead get to debate whether four Super Bowls mean more than a career QB rating of 93.5, 418 career touchdowns, 257.4 passing yards per game, and the only 5,000 yard season that didn't come from Manning, Brady, Mahomes, or Brees. For reference, the Green Bay Packers are the only other team in the NFL that get to have such a debate.
AFC South
Houston Texans: Matt Schaub (23,221 yards)
It's lucky that the Carolina Panthers found Cam Newton, because they'd be right alongside both Houston and the Jacksonville Jaguars in the hell that is the first few decades of a new expansion team. Ravens fans, this is what true expansion looks like, and it is painful. So painful, in fact, that Houston's horrible history of quarterback evaluation has wasted some of the brightest burns in skill player history.
Arian Foster, Andre Johnson, Deandre Hopkins — all incredible careers and even more incredible peaks wasted by elevating mid to good instead of good to great. And no, two 4,000 yard seasons does not make Matt Schaub good.
Indianapolis Colts: Peyton Manning (54,828 yards)
If one team's fanbase is allowed to absolutely hate Tom Brady, it is the Colts'. Even if he left football behind after herniating a disc in his neck, Manning would still have retired with the all-time MVP record with four and with the second-most career passing yards ever — in just 13 seasons. In that same time, Manning led the Colts to 11 playoff appearances, enough to tie him with Joe Montana and Steve Young, and a regular season success rate similar that only they and Tom Brady can match (for reference, the rest of the top of the quarterbacks playoff leaderboard have a playoff appearance rate of about 50%).
The Colts' legacy will forever be linked to Manning, as the Patriots' is to Brady -- so much so that the name Johnny Unitas has somehow been overshadowed in the land of blue and white.
Jacksonville Jaguars: Mark Brunell (25,698 yards)
See the Texans for how expansion teams go, but remove the top-shelf talent of Deandre Hopkins, Andre Johnson, and Arian Foster. That said, the Jags started off way hotter than any expansion team should, thanks in large part to a four-season heater by Brunell to close out the 1990's. In the back half of the decade, the Jaguars only had one season where their offense finished outside of the top 10 in either scoring or total yards, and no one is writing home about Jimmy Smith over either of the Texans' top two receivers.
Un-fun fact, though: through an equal four-season sample size, Trevor Lawrence is just off pace to catch Blake Bortles on the Jacksonville passing yards leaderboard. Gross.
Tennessee Titans: Warren Moon (33,685 yards)
When you think about greedy owners that blow up their teams in the name of stadium renovations, the likeliest name to come up first in your mind is the Cleveland Browns. The second should be the Tennessee Titans. And oh, how a saga like his botched move could destroy a team's aura. Super Bowl XXXIV aside, the Titans have yet to recapture the magic of Moon's run of seven straight playoff campaigns in Houston.
Luckily, the Titans have fared better than the Browns have: first with Steve McNair at the turn of the millennium, and then now with Cam Ward, who Moon un-retired his jersey for. Cross your fingers for that to mean something.
AFC West
Denver Broncos: John Elway (51,475 yards)
The AFC West is ruled by several franchise-defining GOAT's, the first and oldest of which is Denver's Jonn Elway, who had the best retirement in franchise history until Peyton Manning came along nearly two decades later. And unlike the Manning's Colts, who enjoy the dominance of two quarterbacks in GOAT conversations during their respective eras, the Broncos don't have a Unitas.
If three MVP's aren't enough to move you, try on the fact that the runner-up to Elway's 51,475 in a Broncos uniform is Peyton Manning himself, with 17,112 passing yards in just four seasons. The Broncos are Elway, Elway is the Broncos.
Kansas City Chiefs: Patrick Mahomes (34,997 yards)
Let me paint you a word picture of the AFC West's second franchise GOAT: in 13 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, Peyton Manning put up 54,828 passing yards, good for second all-time in 2010. In his rookie season, Manning put up nearly 4,000 yards. In Mahomes' first season, he only played in a single game. And even counting that season, on a 13-year timeline, Mahomes is on pace to throw for over 63,000 yards, and over 59,000 for a 16-game pace rather than the modern 17.
Mahomes, a little over halfway through his eighth NFL season, has eclipsed franchise runner-up Len Dawson by over 6,000 yards, has made the conference finals in every year as a full-time starter, and given Kansas City its only three Super Bowls since the AFL-NFL merger.
Las Vegas Raiders: Derek Carr (35,222 yards)
The Las Vegas Raiders are a team defined by their eras. In the context of this list, that era would be the Madden-coached juggernaut of the 1970's, when teams scored an average of under 20 points per game and the per game passing attempts leader was Fran Tarkenton (31.7). For reference, in 2016, teams averaged over 22 points per game, and Drew Brees' 42.1 attempts per game led the league.
All of this to point out that Ken Stabler, the Raiders' runner-up to Derek Carr for this list, led a top five offense and posted the fourth-highest passing yards total of the season (2737). They won the Super Bowl that year. And in 2016, Carr posted 1,200 more yards. The fact is that outside of the accursed turn-of-the-century blip led by Rich Gannon and an older Jerry Rice (damn you, Tuck Rule), the Raiders haven't had a quarterback stay long enough in the modern era to build any sustained success with the team.
Los Angeles Chargers: Philip Rivers (59,271 yards)
If there is another AFC team outside of the Indianapolis Colts that looks on in envy at Tom Brady's Patriots, it's the Chargers. But kudos to Indy, they didn't trip over their own feet nearly as much as SD/LA during its greatest era. You'd be surprised, by the way, at how little regular season success that the Chargers had with Rivers under center.
In his 13 years as a full-time starter, the Chargers only made the playoffs six times. And before you blame Rivers, look at his 2015 season: 4792 passing yards, 66.1% completion, and a quarterback rating of 93.8. The Chargers' record? 4-12. Chargers are gonna Charger.
NFC East
Dallas Cowboys: Tony Romo (34,183 yards)
Dak Prescott is on the verge of surpassing Tony Romo for the Cowboys' all-time lead, but it does beg questions about Dallas' quarterback history. No one's saying that Troy Aikman is overrated. No one's calling him Joe Flacco. But they both did elevate their games come the postseason, and were both arguably outshined by the rest of the roster. The Cowboys' true MVP's of the 1990s were Emmitt Smith and Deion Sanders, and the Cowboys' roster then was more stacked than it has been since.
All that I'm asserting is that judging by era to era, getting eclipsed in career yards, completion percentage, touchdowns, TD:INT ratio, yards per game, (deep breath) and quarterback rating by Dak Prescott and Tony Romo while having played the most games out of the three is evidence that Aikman's status in Dallas' pantheon of legends is a little inflated by the players around him. Era to era, Staubach probably outpaces him in those stats, adjusting for play style changes.
New York Giants: Eli Manning (57,023 yards)
Put. Eli. Manning. In. The. Hall. Of. Fame. He has the 11th most career passing yards in NFL history. He has two Super Bowls, two Super Bowl MVP's. In Super Bowl XLVI he went 30/40 for nearly 300 passing yards and a passer rating of 103.7. I don't care about the .500 win-loss record. Warren Moon went 102-101, Joe Namath went 66-70-4. I don't care about the 244 career interceptions.
Johnny Unitas had nine more and posted a higher career interception percentage. He was New York's most valuable player on two of the most historic Super Bowl campaigns of all time, including what could be the greatest underdog story in NFL history. And no, his defense did not carry him to both. In 2011, the Giants were a top 10 offense in scoring and total yards, while their defense was 25th and 27th in the league, respectively. Put. Him. In. Canton.
Philadelphia Eagles: Donovan McNabb (32,873 yards)
You've got to hand it to the Eagles. While the Green Bay Packers' near-seamless handoff from Favre to Rodgers to Love has gotten its flowers, Philly has sneakily been doing that since the 1970s. You can draw a pretty damn clear line between all five of their franchise career passing yards leaders, which paints a picture of perfectly-placed, "almost there" success.
The only sizable gap in that line is between McNabb and Wentz, and is largely filled by a four-year stretch in which Michael Vick would eclipse McNabb, Jaworski, and Cunningham in completion percentage, yards per attempt, and passer rating.
Washington Commanders: Joe Theismann (25,585 yards)
In a weird way, Joe Theismann's place atop the Commanders' franchise in career passing yards is more of a testament to him being the darling of Washington's greatest coach, Joe Gibbs. Of the top ten quarterbacks on Washington's career yardage leaderboard, Theismann is in the dead middle in both quarterback rating and completion percentage, while also posting the eighth-ranked yards per game average (150.9).
Outside of the yardage total, Theismann's only stats that stand out from the rest of the leaderboard are years in Washington and volume. He is the longest-tenured quarterback under the winningest coach in Washington football history (Gibbs won Washington's only three Super Bowls), making his place atop this list just another feather in Gibbs' hat.
NFC North
Chicago Bears: Jay Cutler (23,443 yards)
If there is one team that has truly flown in defiance in the laws of nature regarding the quarterback position, it is the Chicago Bears. Let this sink in: Chicago's QB has only made a Pro Bowl roster twice since the AFL-NFL merger, and one of those instances as an alternate. Even worse, that alternate was Mitch Trubisky.
Chicago's actual greatest quarterback is Sid Luckman, and his last season with the Bears was the same year as the start of the Korean War. He played with a leather helmet, won the 1943 MVP award throwing for 2,194 yards, and competed with 10 teams, not for the Super Bowl, but for the NFL championship. The Bears don't care about the quarterback. They care about defense and Walter Payton.
Detroit Lions: Matthew Stafford (45,109 yards)
Now that the Los Angeles Rams have completed the "Matthew Stafford Resurrection Project", we can all be fully honest: the Lions of the 2010's destroyed his entire prime. Even they acknowledged it when they completed the trade that sent Stafford to LA. The Lions robbed what could have been the defining QB/WR pairing of the decade of the influence they should have had, and truthfully, outside of the Barry Sanders years and Dan Campbell's reclamation project, Detroit is a sorry franchise on par with the Jets.
That history is reflected in their career passing yards leaderboard: Matthew Stafford's runner-up is Jared Goff. For reference: Bobby Layne is third on the list, and it took Goff only four years to eclipse his eight-season total by nearly 2,000 yards. The Lions have had one Pro Bowl-level quarterback season between 1958 and 2014, and unlike the Bears, they haven't had the success in spite of that gap. Depressing work.
Green Bay Packers: Brett Favre (61,655 yards)
The Packers are NFL excellence personified, and their entire history of greatness is exhibited well by the top three quarterbacks on their all-time yardage leaderboard. Favre and his successor Aaron Rodgers piloted one of the most successful three decades in NFL history: under their combined watch of 33 seasons, the Packers only missed the playoffs nine times, with both carrying their own weight (11 and 13 playoff appearances for Favre and Rodgers, respectively).
It is fitting that they are also close in yardage totals while wearing green and yellow: Rodgers left Green Bay behind by just over 2,600 yards. Third on the list is the leader of Green Bay's other iconic era: Bart Starr, who accumulated a then-impressive 24,718 total yards for his career. As for the '70s and '80s, well -- let's not worry abou that.
Minnesota Vikings: Fran Tarkenton (33,098 yards)
The Vikings sneak up on you, and if you're a fan, that fact is heartbreaking. Did you know that through the 2024 season, the Vikings held the NFL's seventh-best all-time winning percentage, and played the eighth-most total playoff games in the league? No? Then you're probably putting their GOAT Fran Tarkenton in the same place on your all-time QB rankings that the NFL did on theirs.
For shame — upon his retirement, Tarkenton was the all-time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards by a QB, and wins. And yes, he lost three Super Bowls — but hey, he's been to three Super Bowls.
NFC South
Atlanta Falcons: Matt Ryan (59,735 yards)
In their 60 year history, the Falcons have made the playoffs 14 times. Matt Ryan was their quarterback for just under half of them. And for a franchise that is as historically bad as they are (bottom 10 in all-time winning percentage and playoff games played), it is gruesomely fitting that their biggest contribution to football culture at large can be summed up by two numbers, rather than words: 28-3.
Still, as boring of an MVP as Ryan is, he is Atlanta's only MVP and represents the absolute peak of their success as a football team. Let's hope it gets better from here.
Carolina Panthers: Cam Newton (29,041 yards)
The Panthers are a young organization, so young that their top three quarterbacks in career passing yards also serve as a near-exact timeline of both the team's existence and the higher-scoring tendences that grew through the 2000's onward. And while they haven't been met with much postseason success, Newton is the face of the absolute freaks that Carolina has been blessed to have on its roster, particularly recently. His peak was short-lived, but oh, what a peak it was.
That magical 2015 Panthers team was full of freaks, featuring a whopping six All-Pros. Notable, however, is that while the majority of them came from the Panthers' defense, it was the Cam Newton-led offense that led the league in scoring.
New Orleans Saints: Drew Brees (68,010 yards)
Drew Brees isn't just his franchise's GOAT. He helped to save New Orleans' morale after Hurricane Katrina. He is the only quarterback with more than two 5,000 yard seasons — and he has five. He was the leader of all but one of the Saints' playoff wins in their near-60 year history.
It is no coincidence that over half the slots in ClutchPoints' list of the 10 greatest Saints of all time are occupied by members of Brees' teams. Drew Brees isn't just the greatest and most prolific Saints quarterback of all time. He is the New Orleans Saints.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Jameis Winston (19,737)
The Buccaneers feel like an expansion team that never evolved past the expansion stage. Since their founding in 1976, only three former Bucs have had their numbers retired, and current quarterback Baker Mayfield is the only Tampa QB to ever make it to more than one Pro Bowl.
To the team's credit, they have been more successful since the turn of the millennium, but even in their success, the Bucs have not cared much for the quarterback position. Their Super Bowl-winning 2002 squad featured a bottom-half offense buoyed by the best defense in the NFL at the time, and it seemingly took Tom Brady's arrival to get the franchise to take football seriously. This team reflects the personality of their all-time leading passer well.
NFC West
Arizona Cardinals: Jim Hart (34,639 yards)
Some NFL teams seem cursed, like the Jets. Some are new, and therefore, operating with barer cupboards than most, like Carolina or Houston. Some are sad, milling about on the verge of true success and immortality, like the Vikings. But the Cardinals are simply just sad. Four NFL teams have survived since the 1920's, and three have won at least one Super Bowl. Three of them boast all-time winning percentages above .500.
Arizona is the odd man out on both fronts. On the winning percentage front, they're only above the Jaguars and Buccaneers all-time. Mediocrity is their name, and it is appropriate that their all-time passing yards leader has a win-loss record below .500 himself and the third-lowest passer rating in the franchise's top 10. Hart's only claim is that he's the only quarterback in Cardinals history to play more than 10 seasons with the team, and the only one outside of Kyler Murray to play over 100 games in a Cardinals uniform. Mediocrity begets mediocrity.
Los Angeles Rams: Jim Everett (23,758 yards)
You know, the Rams' history is bizarrely like a freakish hybrid of Tampa Bay's and Chicago's. Like the Bears, the Rams' success in between the AFL-NFL merger was built upon a strong defense led by Deacon Jones and the legendary running of Eric Dickerson (seriously, 1800+ yards as a rookie!?). And like Tampa, all of their Super Bowl-related success comes after the year 2000, and they haven't been able to hold onto a true franchise-defining QB for more than five years.
Kurt Warner only stayed for three. Jared Goff only stayed for four years, and who knows when Matthew Stafford will leave the game behind? So, Everett's one Pro Bowl amid eight seasons of mediocrity will stand as a relic to what the Rams were — at least for one more year. All hail McVay.
San Francisco 49ers: Joe Montana (35,124 yards)
It's surprising to learn, but the San Francisco 49ers' aura of prestige can be linked to two eras and three people. The modern Niners are inseparable form the brilliance of head coach Kyle Shanahan. Prior, well -- you know who Joe Montana is. Joe Cool. The four-time Super Bowl Champ. The man who ruined Dan Marino's only Super Bowl bid. The Brett Favre to Steve Young's Aaron Rodgers (but, like, way more stable and less toxic).
Before Brady came along, Montana was the ultimate winner, and it was his success that made the 49ers the 49ers we know today.
Seattle Seahawks: Russell Wilson (37,059 yards)
The parting was rough, the wounds are still new, but just like Vince Carter and Toronto, Russell Wilson will eventually reclaim his spot at the top of Seattle fans' hearts. Seattle had the Legion of Boom and the Beastquake, but they also had a quarterback in that same time period that only missed the Pro Bowl once in his 10 year stint as a Seahawk. Wilson also led the league in passing TD's one year, and then eclipsed that total by six more in a later season.
Names like Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman are emblematic of Wilson's time in Seattle, but his individual performance only got better in the back half of his tenure. And it wasn't at the team's expense either — Wilson only missed the playoffs twice as a Seahawk, and posted a losing record only once.