Higher in the all-time list:Brees vs Ben?

Talent means nothing if it doesn't produce results. Drew Brees isn't celebrated for his touch on passes, timing and pocket presence alone. Drew Brees is celebrated and thought of highly more than Big Ben for Drew Brees maximized his talents to their absolute limit for a much longer duration of time. Think about this another way Blast.


As me and you can both agree, Big Ben was never big on study habits nor honing his craft. That major character flaw, by itself, showcases that Big Ben's talent never fully manifested into achievements. Drew Brees is the complete opposite.


As the High School Basketball Coach Tim Notke once said;


"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard enough."


Big Ben had talent but never polished nor refined it; limiting his overall performance. Drew Brees?! Completely different. Aaron Rodgers?!


Again, comparing Big Ben vs Aaron Rodgers is comparing platinum to bronze.

 

Doesn't matter. You are what your legacy says you are. Even so, let's play along with this logic shall we?!


Using the same metric, does this mean Big Ben is better than Peyton Manning?! Mind you, Big Ben has a far superior outdoor record than Manning. Mannings best performances came indoors as a Colt sans his historic 2013 Campaign with the Broncos.

 

Using merely trophies as an argument for QBs is quintessential cherry picking. The Super Bowl is the ultimate game to determine which team is better; QB and all. Should we only use Super Bowls (also Championships considering we are talking about the centennial plus history of the NFL) as the metric, Tom Brady, Otto Graham, Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana are all without equal. This simply isn't true.


Brady, Graham (less so) and Montana are not all just universally ranked higher than Bradshaw due to the trophies. All are ranked higher for they possessed greater peaks for far longer periods of time. That is what separates the likes of Montana and Brady among many other QBs.


Now, back to Brees vs Big Ben, the same argument I made holds weight here. Pittsburgh didn't solely win Super Bowl XL nor XLIII because of Big Ben. Other players had to step up to seal the deal; namely Hines Ward and doubly so Santonio Holmes. No one is disputing the throw Big Ben made to win the game. That said, Santonio has to make that catch. Otherwise?!


The game is over. Pressure was more on Holmes to win it than the throw by Big Ben.

 

For AFC North football I'm taking Ben over Brees who played nine games a year in a dome including Atlanta .

 

You said AFC North Football. That isn't the prompt. The prompt is as follows;


Higher in the All Time List; Brees vs Ben?


The 100+ Year History of the NFL doesn't revolve around one division. Yes, the AFC North has been a formidable division for a considerable period of time but it hasn't been around since the NFLs Foundation. Even ignoring that, the question posed is based on who is the superior player overall.


In the match up of player vs player, Drew Brees wins. More accomplished and far more dominant overall. Super Bowls represent the team as a collective. All Pros and individual NFL Records represent their respective parties.

 

what?!

I could said the biggest play of this drive was the first one on first down and 20 when Ben avoid the sack....And no,again the game would not been over if Holmes don't make this catch....It would been 3rd down for the steelers and the worst case scenario would been overtime....Don't forget Holmes drop the ball on the first down and goal too

 

Not really seeing how more pressure was on Holmes than Ben in that situation.

 

Yeah, Brees was so great playing in a weak division and still couldn't avoid losing seasons .

 

Don't think there's necessarily a huge difference. And you'd obviously be happy with either.

But to me Ben's clearly the better QB.

If you were starting from scratch right now and you could take either guy at the beginning of their career. But I don't think I can think of a reasonable argument to take Brees. He's going to be lower variance, especially in the playoffs. But that variance helped Ben early in his career as much as it hurt him later.

And at the peak of their careers, Ben was just a better player IMO. And way more entertaining (although again, I'm super biased here).

My guess is also that if Brees stayed in the AFC with the Chargers, he wouldn't be thought of as highly as he is having played in the conference with fewer elite QBs. He'd be another Phil Rivers...good thrower, but can't get through the gauntlet of the AFC.

And SBs are a big deal for QBs.

And should be at least a tie breaker when guys are similar in terms of apparent talent. So even if someone thought this was a tie

Ben won 2 and went to a 3rd. Brees went to won and won.

Both great careers.

 

The bold part is not true.

Not sure if you remember this, but that throw to Holmes was on 2nd down.

So what happens if Santonio doesn't make that catch? They line up on 3rd and Ben has 2 more shots to get a TD. Maybe right back to Holmes both times...[ETA: Steelers43 is correct that we were only down by 3. So we would have kicked the FG on 4th and trusted the D to get us to OT. Which would have been dicey against that offense. We did get the stop when playing to not get them the TD. Preventing a FG would have been harder. But that D was one of the all time greats IMO]

Basically the same thing that happened when Holmes didn't make the much easier TD catch earlier (I don't remember if it was the previous down or not and I'm too lazy to look at the play by play right now).

I'm sure if you talked to 100 OCs across the league, all of them would say that the "right" thing to do on that play in that situation is to throw it 10 rows deep in the stands and line up for 3rd down.

I actually think that the fact that it was 2nd down really highlights the best (and the worst) of Ben.

I don't think any other QB could walk around with the balls Ben has. You absolutely throw that ball away even if you're a super-human QB. You absolutely don't try to thread a pass into triple coverage on 2nd and 6 in what will probably be your last drive for a chance to win the game. You throw it away and play the next two downs where you'll certainly get a better opportunity to win.

Unless you're Big ****in' Ben.

This is what gave us the absolutely glorious moments like that Holmes catch.

The fact that he's willing to take insane chances like this and that he can deliver is the reason that we were never really out of a game when Ben was under center.

And it's also probably the reason why his INT% goes up much more than other HoF caliber QBs of his generation when you get to the playoffs.

Maybe this is a good way to answer this question: If you're down by 4 with 2 minutes left in a critical game against a very good team. Who do you want under center in the prime of their careers? I can't see how the answer here isn't Ben (again, I'm biased though).

 

Needed Tomlin as a HC, obviously

 

i would give you a hilarious and strongly disagree combined rating if there was an option for that

 

Just a correction,the steelers were down by 3 points,so they would kick the FG if the steelers were on fourth down to tie the game!

Overtime was the worst case scenario for the steelers at that point

 

It's fairly close, but I'd definitely rank Ben above Brees. When Ben was on, I don't think anyone could match him, not even Brady. He just wasn't as consistent as Brady.

 

Not sure why you're going so hard in the paint to discredit Ben. Without BR, the last generation of steelers football would have been worse than the 80s steelers football and Tomlin would have been canned after 3 years.

 

Ben carried that bum for years, no doubt about it.

 

Fantastic.


Yet again though, without Brees, those Saints teams are a complete laughing stock. With him, they were far meow competitive. Even if I am awarding that claim, the NFL is the ultimate team sport.

Brees did his part as far as offensive production is concerned. The remainder of New Orleans shortcomings in the 2010s was a lack of defense. That is more so both a Front Office and Development issue. Not Brees.

 

Your last statement invalidates your entire argument.

No need to rebuttal here.

Bias clouds truth.

 

I am not.


I am merely answering the question. Between Brees vs Big Ben, Brees was the more dominant player. Big Ben was notoriously streaky as far as his performances go; great peaks but equally great valleys. Very seldom did Brees have back to back bad games.


He was a Top 3 QB for a very long time. Big Ben never was sans 2014. I don't understand how that cannot be used as a legitimate argument given the prompt.

 

Holmes doesn't make that catch?!

Game over.

 

If you can refute the argument, I will be happy to amend my stance.

 

So you don't think they would have been able to play 3rd down if Holmes doesn't make that catch?

Even in the CFL, you get 3rd down.

 

Thanks!

I thought we were down by 4.

If I thought it through, I would have seen that didn't make sense becuase the Cardinals needed a TD to win and weren't playing for a FG to tie.

 

FWIW, contrary to popular belief I think it's OK to admit when you're wrong on the internet. I just did it twice on the site because Steelers43 pointed out two different mistakes I made.

1. We were only down by 3 at this point, when I thought we were down by 4; and
2. I had Faneca on the list of players in Cowher's career that were drafted by Noll (because in my head I confused him with Dirt).

I think a lot of people probably forget that there was a bunch of game left after the catch. And that the Cardinals did a good job of driving the field to try to take the lead back.

The game doesn't end after a 2nd down play when there's 37s left on the clock.

Each play takes something like 7-10 second to run.

From around the 10, there's no way that we're calling a run on the next play.

So we line up for 3rd with 37s or so on the clock.

As long as we don't turn it over, there's no play that ends the game on 3rd.

We'd obviously be playing to pass it into the end zone on 3rd. So if that fails (and it's not a turnover), it's likely an incomplete. Then we casually line up for a FG with 30s left on a stopped clock (or we go for the win right there on 4th). After the kick, maybe the clock's at 25s. Which means less time for the Cardinals to drive to FG range to win.

It's worse (but probably still gets us to OT) if we get sacked or we Jesse James it down to the 1 or something.

On a sack, you have 30s (maybe 27 because the play takes longer) to rush the FG team on and kick. You'd probably be inside the 20, so the kick would be something like a 37 yard kick. You'd 100% have the FG team ready to do this when you line up to try on 3rd. You'd probably aim to snap it with something like 3s left so regulation is over after the kick. Worst case would be having 1s left after you kick and they get a chance to return for a TD (which is very low probability).

If you're worried about rushing on to the field, it might be better to intentionally take an illegal formation penalty or something. The 10 second run-off puts you at less than 10 seconds left. The FG is till in the low-to-mid 40s. You tie it up with almost no time left on the clock. You'd still have to kick off, but if they don't return it you go to OT. But probably they just rush on to the field and kick the FG. I think 30 seconds is a reasonable amount of time to do this. The play clock is only 40 seconds long, so this isn't really all that much of a rush.

If you get a completion in play and don't get out of bounds, then you either do the same thing as a sack. Or maybe if it's at the 1 or something you line up for a quick sneak. I think I'd love the quick sneak here. It's very hard to stop that (especially with a massive QB like Ben). I think this is better than a coin flip to win the SB. There will be no time left after this play if over, so that would be for the game.

I don't think either team had TOs left. Maybe they intentionally take a penalty because who cares about half the distance to the goal from the 1 yard line. But that basically guarantees OT.

 

I agree with you 95% of the time... but on Brees vs Roethlisberger, we'll have to agree to disagree.

If Brees was as great as you claim... why no more Super Bowls or Super Bowl appearances? I would argue the same thing with Rodgers. The greatest QBs are judged on their Super Bowls and Super Bowl appearances. Rodgers and Brees are examples of amazing regular season QBs who usually disappointed in the post season. Both will be HOF locks... but I would rank a QB like Kurt Warner who had 3 SB appearances, 1 victory... over Brees and Rodgers.