AFC North over the next 5-7 years

P. Manning says Hello ...Nick Foles says HI also

 

You need the straw to stir the drink, Lets hope we hit the QB jackpot
and we will compete with anybody, anywhere anytime.

 

I might give you Manning, but Foles had an unbelievable postseason. He wasn't a real franchise QB, but he more than played like one that season. That's even rarer.

You can take your chances with catching lightening in a bottle, I'll take the Bradys, Montanas, Bens, Bradshaws, any day.

 

Neils Bohr reference?

 

Joe Flacco says hello.
The Ravens treated him like a franchise QB, but other than an unbelievable postseason, their success was from defense and WRs.

If you will only take 4 QBs from the last 50 years, that seems like lightning in a bottle too.
(Even if you add Aikman, Staubach, Manning, Young, Elway, and Farve, that is still very rare given the time span and the number of teams in the league.)

If it was that easy to get a franchise QB on demand (like the people saying the Steelers should have one ready immediately after Ben is gone), then Cowher should have put in more effort in his first decade with the Steelers.

 

If the drink is made properly you should not have to stir it

Straws are for women, wimps and guys who think they want to be women

 

Exactly how many SB's have the Steelers won without a franchise QB?
How many have the Patriots won?
How about the Packers? The 49'ers? The Cowboys? (OK they won 1). The Saints? The Giants? The Seahawks? The Chiefs?

I'd even say Flacco was a franchise QB. Not a HoFer but the guy won a lot of games.

 

Okay, two different arguments.

No one is saying that you pass on a franchise QB when you have one.
(That's why Ben got all those huge contracts to keep him around.)
My point is that they are hard to find, and may not be on hand when you need one.

Other people are pointing out that, until a franchise QB comes along, it is still possible to win a Super Bowl without one.
If Neil didn't throw the game to the Cowboys, Cowher would have 2 SB victories.
Brady only won Super Bowls when the Patriots also had a top defense. When their defense dropped from great to just good, they couldn't win it all.
As Mahomes is showing this year, it takes more than just a franchise QB to have lasting success.


Second argument...
How did the Ravens do from 2013-2017?
The Ravens stacked most of their playoff wins and the SB when Flacco was on his (cheaper) rookie contract.
They paid Flacco like a franchise QB after the 2012 season.
They had to get rid of valuable players to pay for his contract, and then weren't a good team anymore despite their "franchise" QB.
(As I already said, a lot of their success was due to defense and WRs who could bail out Flacco.)

 

No, he managed a lot of games and rode his defense's coattails.

 

Someday before I’m old, I would like someone to define what constitutes a franchise quarterback? It gets thrown around a lot here and each time I call someone on it I get no response.

Is a franchise QB a HOFer, or just the guy you draft and is the next man up?

It’s like when after one good game we would get “is Ben elite” posts. How did that work out?

 

Fair enough.
As someone who is slinging around the term too, I'm curious about how others define it.

I figured it had to be closer to HOFer.
Stafford spent 10 years at Detroit and played at a decently high level, but I don't think people refer to him as a franchise player. (Do they?)
Same for Palmer and Dalton at Cincinnati.

I could easily be wrong.
But I'd need to hear a better definition that doesn't rely on "I can just tell".

Fran Tarkenton is a HoFer, but his name doesn't come up often when discussing franchise QBs.

 

I am not so sure if matters who is on this team if we play the same way as we have over the last 10+ years. We need new idea's. We've had plenty of talented teams over the last decade and only could get so far for a reason. JMO>

 

I define it as a QB who plays multiple years for a given team and that team/franchise has no intention or reason to replace him. Franchise QBs can very greatly in production but if a franchise feels that their QB is good enough to be a long term leader of the offense, then, for that team, he's a franchise QB. Of course, everyone has their own definition and this is JMO>

 

That steamship has sailed.

 

What makes these type of threads/posts frustrating aren't the predictions, but the flawed logic arriving there. If you want to predict something negative about the team - doesn't win the Super Bowl, doesn't make the playoffs, doesn't have a good (whatever your moving definition of that is) team this year, etc. - you're not exactly predicting snow in July with the way things can change in this league.

At one point last year the Buccaneers were sitting 7-5 after losing two in a row and three of four, including a 38-3 drubbing at home by the Saints. You weren't hearing any more SB predictions then than you were for any other 7-5 team. Meanwhile, the Chiefs were sitting 10-1 having just beaten the Bucs. They'd go on to win their next four (losing their season finale while sitting many of their starters), heavy favorites to repeat as SB champs. Not only would the Bucs run off their next eight in a row and take home the Lombardi, they've won six of seven to start this year. Meanwhile the Chiefs are sitting 3-4 in the cellar of the AFC West.

This franchise may be frustratingly methodical/slow in its approach to certain issues, but to compare them unfavorably against teams like the Ravens, Bengals, and Browns - none of whom have seen sustained success, just occasional blips - seems remarkably short-sighted. Moreover, the logic used attempting to show they'll be superior for five to seven years just fails. Just using the above quote as an example:

• Harris doesn't need to be "Derrick Henry-esque" to be a focal point. He's already showing more functionality in the passing game, meaning he'll be used in at least a slightly different manner. Let Harris be Harris, and the Steelers be the Steelers.
• Having two rookie O-linemen as potential building blocks to a "top tier OL" isn't bad thing. One can argue the Steelers ignored run blocking as a component too long into Ben's twilight years. Now it's being addressed, and Rome wasn't built in a day.
• Finding a competent game-managing QB the equal of Tannehill is not as difficult as implied - it certainly doesn't require a first round pick.

 

This discussion got me to thinking, "How many SB winning QB' are not HoF'ers?

Kenny Stabler (Oakland), Jim Plunkett (Oakland, won SB's XV & XVIII), Joe Theismann, (Washington), Jim McMahon, (Chicago), Phil Simms, (NY Giants), Doug Williams, (Washington), Jeff Hostetler (NY Giants), Mark Rypien (Washington), Trent Dilfer (Baltimore), Brad Johnson (Tampa Bay) are all SB winning, non-HoF QB's. Of the guys that have won SB's and are still active, I think they will all get in except for Joe Flacco and Nick Foles. (Brady, Roethlisberger, Mahomes, Wilson, Rodgers). Brees will be a first ballot HoF'er. I think Eli Manning will eventually get in.

What does this do to help clear up what constitutes a franchise QB? Well, most of these guys you associate with one team. Stabler finished his career with the Houston Oilers. Plunkett was drafted and was perfectly awful in New England. I believe Theismann and Simms spent their entire careers with their respective teams. I remember Hostetler playing for the Raiders and the Redskins. Brad Johnson was drafted and played several years for Minnesota. Williams and Dilfer bounced around a bit. By my reckoning, the only guys I see as franchise QB's on that list are Theismann, Simms and Stabler. Those three were drafted by the teams with which they won SB's. In the case of Theismann and Simms, they spent their entire careers with the teams that drafted them. Stabler spent most of his career with Oakland and retired after one year with the Houston Oilers.

Stabler, Plunkett, Theismann and Simms were quality QB's for their time. Hostetler and Plunkett were late bloomers. Brad Johnson and Mark Rypien were decent. Johnson always reminded me of Neil O'Donnell. All Dilfer had to do was not turn the ball over. Foles might end up having a nice career, jury is still out. Both Mark Rypien and Doug Williams saved their best games for the Super Bowl. I think both were MVP's So were Plunkett in one of his wins and Phil Simms.

 

Very Well Said. Now let me figure how 2 put numbers in this reply.

 

Plunkett should be a HOF by my ideas of HOF, but since I don't vote
Also well done

 

I figured you'd just tell me I was #1 and raise a select digit of your hand.

 

I believe some of it are the comparisons against not one team, but against the field.
So in your example, that the Steelers have to be better than the cherry-picked best examples of the Ravens, Bengals, and Browns combined.

As anyone who has played poker knows, even if your hand is a favorite against all other individual hands at a large table, your hand is still likely to lose against the entire table. Or that pocket aces will lose occasionally when you play enough hands, despite being the best starting hand.

 

Kinda like Ben lol after cowhers players fell off we never built a true elite defense for the postseason.

2011- Tebow debacle, 0 sacks 29 pts
2014- 30 pts 1 sack
2016- 36 points, 0 turnovers
2017- 45 points, 0 sacks 0 turnovers
2020- 48 points 0 sacks 0 turnovers

 

Ben 12 tds 9 int past decade playoff losses

 

Instead of HoF'ers, I quickly counted what I would consider non-franchise QB, and I used a very liberal standard for that. I came up with 14. 41 SB's have been won by franchise QBs.

In order to win without a franchise QB you need historically great defenses like the '85 Bears , '00 Ravens, and '02 Buccaneers or phenomenally abnormal play from an otherwise pedestrian QB like Foles. To think you can build a consistent SB contending team on either of those just isn't a reasonable expectation. Championship caliber teams start at the QB position.

It's no coincidence that the Steelers, 49er's, Packers, and others have only won SB's when they had a great QB.

 

Agreed, but all in all ...it does show there is more than one way 2 so called...skin a cat....
I always wondered what sick F**k came up with that saying??

 

Before I dive into my argument why I don't think it is that simple, let me say that I respect the work you did in going through all those SBs.

4 QBs account for 18 of those SB wins, almost a third of the total.

• Brady has 7. It definitely helps a team's salary cap when your QB is willing to play for far less than his market value, because his wife earns more than the highest paid NFL player.
• Bradshaw had 4. Noll had arguably the greatest drafts ever in the early 70s, when he did a better job scouting smaller schools than other teams. (That is an advantage that is no longer possible.)
• Montana had 4 and Aikman had 3. At the time, both Dallas and SF were able to buy their way to better teams than most of the league. (Over the last 25 years with the salary cap, both those teams have been average.)

There are 7 other QBs (including Ben) who have 2 wins.
That means 11 players accounted for 32 SB wins.
So on average, once every 5 years a single team in the league will get one of those special players.
That leaves 23 Super Bowl wins for teams that don't hit the jackpot.
14 non-franchise QB victories isn't as bad as it first seemed.

Or consider that over the last 25 years only Brady, Ben, and Eli have more than 1 SB victory.
If a team goes all out to get a franchise QB, they will still be lucky to get a single SB victory over a dozen years.
(Someone else will have to figure out how many franchise QBs are around each season, to get more accurate odds.)

(Eli is an odd fish. He is a franchise QB, but I'd argue that he also falls into the "great defense and/or abnormal playoff play" category.)


As an aside, you said:
"To think you can build a consistent SB contending team on either of those (historically great defense, abnormal QB play) just isn't a reasonable expectation."

For better or worse, that is exactly what Cowher did (until Ben was forced on him).
Someone else pointed out that the 90's were slim pickings for drafting good QBs.
If your team can't get a twice-in-a-decade QB, then they are stuck trying to find another way to build a SB contending team.