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Pastimes : Football Forum (NFL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (2116)	5/7/1999 2:01:00 AM
From: blankmind	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 45639

John Elway Was 100 Yards From the Best By ALLEN BARRA Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Perhaps because they retired within 10 days of each other, Wayne Gretzky and John Elway are being accorded the same status: Mr. Gretzky as the greatest hockey player of all time, Mr. Elway as the greatest quarterback. One of these labels fits. On paper and on ice, Mr. Gretzky was the most dominant player his sport has ever seen. Mr. Elway, to be generous, is one of the top 30 quarterbacks in National Football League history. In other sports, the perception of greatness invariably matches the statistical record. There may be an argument as to whether Greg Maddux or Roger Clemens is baseball's best pitcher this decade, but both have the supporting numbers. And anyone who wants to make the effort can prove that Hakeem Olajuwon's contributions on the basketball court are close to those of Michael Jordan's. But in football, judgments about players almost never have anything to do with the statistical record. I'm not sure exactly why this is, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that most football commentators are former players and coaches whose careers began when football statistics were only dimly understood. Nonetheless, by the NFL's own flawed method of ranking passers -- flawed because it gives improper weight to relatively unimportant stats like pass-completion percentage -- Mr. Elway is only 26th best in league history. And under the system devised by our computer, Mad Max, known as Pass Efficiency Rating, or PER -- which combines the two most important passing statistics, yards per pass and rate of interception -- the career Denver Bronco ranks even lower. Greatest Ever? A while back, I applied our basketball rating system, Max Points, to every leading National Basketball Association star since 1960. No. 25 was Elgin Baylor. I also applied our ultimate baseball hitting stat, SLOB, to every hitter since 1950, and No. 25 was Al Kaline. Messrs. Baylor and Kaline were great players, to be sure; they're in their sports' halls of fame. But does anyone consider them the best ever? Yet to many Mr. Elway is the greatest quarterback in NFL history. Mr. Elway has never been the NFL's No. 1 passer in a given season, by the league's ranking or by ours. In fact, the relatively unheralded Dave Krieg, who has spent most of his 19-year career with mediocre teams, is Mr. Elway's equal or superior in nearly every passing statistic. Prior to the 1997 season, Mr. Elway had been on the losing team in three Super Bowls -- not just three losses, but three losses by a total of 96 points. Funny how winning a couple of championships can put a spin on your career. So how did Mr. Elway manage to rank so high in the Greatest Ever pantheon? The simple answer is that many people regarded him as a great athlete when he arrived in the NFL from Stanford University in 1983 and treated him that way throughout his career. Indeed, in terms of size, mobility and arm strength, Mr. Elway was the prototypical NFL passer, and that -- and not numerical performance -- is how he was judged. Plus, Mr. Elway's many late-game heroics helped overshadow his deficiencies. (Of course, had Mr. Elway been a better quarterback, he wouldn't have had to bail himself and the Broncos out so frequently with last-minute comebacks that often relied on his improvisational athletic skills.) To be sure, there is a sound argument that Mr. Elway was better than his numbers. Mr. Elway made no secret of the fact that he felt handicapped playing under the stuffy conservative offense of his old head coach, Dan Reeves. After Bill Walsh disciple Mike Shanahan took over the Broncos in 1995, Mr. Elway's passing numbers improved dramatically. From 1983 to 1994, Mr. Elway had just four seasons averaging more than 7.2 yards per pass; under Mr. Shanahan, he was over 7.2 three times in four seasons. Last year, he hit a career high of 7.88. Very few passers reach their peak at age 38. If only Messrs. Shanahan and Elway had hooked up sooner, Mr. Elway might have been able to justify the claims being made for him as best ever.