The Two Greatest Quarterbacks of All-Time

Ranking Tom Brady and Peyton Manning reveals priorities for quarterback play: regular season versus playoffs results, plus redefining the position versus evolution and longevity

• You can find all the QB GOAT posts here

I wrote up the updated methodology and highlighted a handful of current quarterbacks who fall inside of the top-100, but outside the top-50.

I don’t agree 100% with all the rankings, but the beauty of stats-based analysis is that we can take representative data from nearly one million of quarterback dropbacks over nearly a century of the modern NFL to rank-order quarterbacks by value. Good luck watching, grading and comparing every quarterback snap from 1947 to 2024 and then forming your own film-watcher list.

On the career plots, you’ll see indications for Pro Bowl (PB), All-Pro Second-Team (AP2), All-Pro First-Team (AP1) and Most Valuable Player (MVP) regular seasons. I’ve also added an image of the Super Bowl trophy for championship seasons.

Without further ado, the top-2 most value quarterbacks in NFL history. For those who didn’t play the last two years, I’ll post the rankings and career-value graph, with a link to my previous post with my commentary on that quarterback.

Links to past posts:

• 50-46

• 45-41

• 40-36

• 35-31

• 30-26

• 25-21

• 20-16

• 15-11

• 10-7

• 6-3

No. 2: TOM BRADY

Regular: 2nd, Peak: 4th, Playoffs: 5th

I discuss in great detail in my post from a couple of offseasons back why Tom Brady ranks slightly below Peyton Manning my the QB GOAT methodology and the many ways you could slightly tweak assumptions to get Brady to No. 1. There are also missing contextual factors that may have pushed Brady higher, including weather adjustments and teammate quality, though I’m not 100% sure adding those - even if possible - would necessarily crown Brady.

Here’s a blurb from my commentary on Brady’s career and his comparison with Manning. You can find the full link below.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time upfront talking about who Tom Brady was as a player. First, we all know the story pretty well. Second, I’m not sure anyone will listen to that story before hearing the answer to the most pressing question: How could the nearly universally recognized GOAT not, in fact, be No. 1 in this series? There are a lot of tiny answers to that question, but the bigger one is that the designation is more up for grabs than some think.

By the process of elimination, (spoiler alert) you can surmise that Peyton Manning will be No. 1 in the series. This is not a ranking I backed into. In fact, when I did this series via podcast last summer, it was Brady who was No. 1. Two things happened to change the rankings: 1) I changed the methodology slightly to raise the baseline efficiency level for value created, meaning average and slightly above average accumulation now receives less credit relative to extraordinary seasons. Manning simply had more crushingly efficient regular seasons in his career, which I’ll detail in his writeup. 2) Brady’s final season, by this harsher standard, was slightly negative. Brady’s had passing efficiency of 6.1 ANY/A in 2022, which was a little better than the NFL average of 5.9 ANY/A, but worse than the 3-year rolling average used in the calculation (6.25).

The most important context of the relative rankings of Brady and Manning is that it was almost too close to call. The difference in total value added by my calculation was roughly 3x bigger between Brady and Joe Montana (QB GOAT No. 3) than between Brady and Manning. An almost infinite number of small tweaks to the methodology could flip the two. More obvious adjustments, like weather, could flip the results in Brady’s favor. Whether the final rankings had Manning No. 1 and Brady No. 2, or the reverse, the big conclusion is that either set of rankings can’t be dismissed, if you have a comprehensive view of value added, and don’t only look at team playoff success, Super Bowl wins and accumulated counting stats. I didn’t have an agenda with these rankings, but decided to run with the results and not change them and back into Brady at No. 1.

No. 1: PEYTON MANNING

Regular: 1st, Peak: 1st, Playoffs: 12th