The 100 Greatest Quarterbacks of the Modern Era - ArmchairGM - Sports Wiki, Sports Blog, Sports Resource, Sports Community, Sports 2.0

Stats geek analyzes the 100 Greatest Quarterbacks of the Modern Era

He has normalized everything to league averages under modern conditions. I don't know jack about football, but I am surprised to see Fran Tarkenton at #3.

The top individual seasons: (1) Otto Graham 1953; (2) Steve Young 1992; (3) Manning 2004; (4) Roman Gabriel 1973 (??!! see below); (5) Marino 1984. (I excluded Dan Fouts's 1982 because it happened in a strike year, and is adjusted to death to compensate for the fact that he only played nine games.).

Four of these great individual ratings coincided with great team performance. Graham led the Browns to an 11-1 season, Young and Marino chalked up 14-2. Manning was only 12-4, but with one of the greatest offenses of all time (522 points), and one can't fault Manning for the porous defense. The truly weird one is Gabriel. Gabriel's 1973 season was his first with the Eagles, and the team went 5-8-1, so if it was one of the best QB seasons of all time, the rest of the team must have sucked royally. That is certainly possible since they were 2-11-1 the previous year, scoring only 145 points, and increased to 310 points in one year with the acquisition of Gabriel.