It has often been said that the hardest job in all of professional sports is playing quarterback in the National Football League. I tend to agree with this take for a number of reasons. A quarterback at the pinnacle of his craft harnesses a tremendous amount of responsibility. Quick decision making, consistent accuracy, and playing under duress are all requisite skills for QBs. These qualities are part in parcel what make quarterbacking so challenging. And I haven't even mentioned the emphasis we place on success; quarterbacks are largely (often times unfairly) judged on winning. This brings me to the quarterback myth: In the NFL you must have an elite quarterback in order to win.
Now in my mind, there are very few elite quarterbacks in the NFL. Most people who follow the NFL closely will list these names as the best of the best at QB: Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning. That's it. These are the men who have carried the NFL torch over the last 5-10 years, and some of them longer. Others will argue for Ben Roethlisberger, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco, and now Russell Wilson. None of these men deserve that distinction, and they have 6 Super Bowl wins combined. Ironically, my list of elite QBs has the same number of Super Bowls wins to their credit. These eight men account for 12 of the last 13 Super Bowl wins.
If you believe the myth that an elite quarterback is the only recipe for success, why is it that the most common list of elite QBs wins less than half of the last 13 Super Bowls? Even if someone chooses to argue that all of these men are elite quarterbacks, that accounts for 25% of the league having an elite Quarterback. I can't remember any year that NFL analysts have been able to list 8 legitimate Super Bowl contending teams, and 12 teams make up a playoff field. Nobody was calling Eli Manning elite before his two championship runs.
The elite players are at the top of their game over a long period of time, especially at quarterback. These players win regardless of the surrounding circumstances, and often times will their team to a postseason berth. There is no secret as to why the Indianapolis Colts went 2-14 the year after Peyton Manning left town. The New England Patriots missed the playoffs without Tom Brady in 2008. The New Orleans Saints organization was a "tire fire" before Drew Brees signed with the team in 2006. These players are the elite, and nobody can question that.
Even though it is easy to draw a line between the top shelf quarterbacks and the second tier, this serves as proof that elite quarterbacks are not the only way to win Super Bowls. They give teams a great chance to compete, but that is it. Tom Brady lost twice to Eli Manning on Super Bowl Sunday, but no one will tell you Eli is a better player. Football is a team sport, and Eli has two Super Bowl rings because of it.
The last thing we all must consider is how the game has changed. More and more quarterbacks are able to succeed as the rules have catered to the offensive side of the ball. Defense is being legislated out of the game. Defenders can't make contact with receivers down the field. Defenders can't touch quarterbacks unless they scramble down field. Defenders don't receive the benefit of the doubt under any circumstances. What results is fearless offenses that can manipulate those rules to put up big time statistics.
It is my opinion that the new, high scoring NFL has created a problem. That problem is that eventually the "toughest position in sports" will become so easy that anyone can do it. These gaudy numbers you see from Matthew Stafford, Phillip Rivers, and Cam Newton prove that any team has a chance. In today's NFL any team can win it all, because every team can score 30 points in a given game.
