Elected as one of 18 finalists.
12 Yrs, 208 TD, 128 INT, 32,344 Yds, 93.7 QBR
1 Super Bowl, and single post-season records.
12 Yrs, 208 TD, 128 INT, 32,344 Yds, 93.7 QBR
1 Super Bowl, and single post-season records.
No but the media loves his story. HOF QBs don't lose their job to Mark Bulger or Eli Manning.FL4WL3SS said:Elected as one of 18 finalists.
12 Yrs, 208 TD, 128 INT, 32,344 Yds, 93.7 QBR
1 Super Bowl, and single post-season records.
johnmd20 said:But what he did with the Cards was impressive.
DrewDawg said:Compare him to someone like Aikman.
Warner threw TDs nearly 50% more frequently, made more 1st Team All Pro teams, threw 20+ TDs in a season 6 times as often, won more MVPs, has a passer rating 12 points higher, and had a higher winning percentage, but went 1-2 in the Super Bowl, while Aikman was 3-0.
I'm not trying to pump up Warner or crap on Aikman, but there's no doubt to me which one was a better QB, even accounting for differences in how the game was played, and no doubt which one got to play with Emmitt Smith, Michael Irvin and a top 10 defense for 7 seasons.
Devizier said:The postseason obviously matters, which is why Aikman makes it (even as a relatively marginal candidate).
trekfan55 said:He's 1-2 in Super Bowls but he has the 3 best Super Bowl performances by a QB in history. That has to count for something.
ivanvamp said:Gale Sayers had a 5-year peak in a 7-year career. Warner had a 6-year peak. It makes me wonder how long the HOF peak needs to be. After all, the average NFL career is just 3 years. To have a 6-year HOF peak is pretty incredible.
CaptainLaddie said:(SMALL SAMPLE SIZE ALERT)
Yeah really. His Super Bowl numbers: 83-132 for 1156 yards, 6 TD, 3 INT, a 96.7 rating. Over 16 games that's 442-703 for 6165 yards, 32 TD and 16 picks.
His numbers in Arizona were insane in the Post Season.CaptainLaddie said:(SMALL SAMPLE SIZE ALERT)
Yeah really. His Super Bowl numbers: 83-132 for 1156 yards, 6 TD, 3 INT, a 96.7 rating. Over 16 games that's 442-703 for 6165 yards, 32 TD and 16 picks.
Just think about that -- his numbers in the biggest game, with some great defenses -- he would have broken the single-season passing yards record by almost 700 yards.
Postseason numbers, for three players, averaged over 16 games.
Player A: 363-584, 3953 yards, 27 TD, 13 INT and a 87.5 rating.
Player B: 377-568, 4860 yards, 38 TD, 17 INT and a 102.8 rating.
Player C: 397-618, 4853 yards, 26 TD, 17 INT and a 89.2 rating.
Tom Brady, Kurt Warner, Peyton Manning
Young only started in 1 super bowl in 1994.Devizier said:First off, Joe Montana.
It's a good thing you didn't extrapolate Phil Simms' 1986 Superbowl appearance, where was good for a nearly perfect 150.9 passer rating.
Now, here's the thing. Only twelve quarterbacks have appeared in 3+ Superbowls.
Of those, you have Montana and Bradshaw (!) with the most exemplary performances. Aikman did very well, but the Cowboys mostly ran/blew out their opponents.
After those guys, Warner stands out ahead of Brady, Elway, Tarkenton, and Manning (among others). But that's a short list and, as you pointed, a small sample.
Go down to two appearances, and you have Steve Young and Jim Plunkett who were dominant in the Superbowl. Bart Starr was great (for his era), too.
Drop it down to individual Superbowls and you have amazing performances by Simms, Doug Williams, Delhomme, and *sigh* Jim McMahon in the Bears' obliteration of the Patriots.
Devizier said:
Let's take that a step further:
Ken Anderson had nearly the same QBR+ as Warner, playing in ~60 more games than Warner did (or 150%).
Tony Romo's career is already longer than Warner's was, and his adjusted numbers (QBR+, AYA+, etc.) look nearly identical to Warners'
Same goes for Philip Rivers.
Obviously, Anderson will never be a Hall of Famer, and barring some spectacular postseason performances, I doubt Romo or Rivers will be, either.
The postseason obviously matters, which is why Aikman makes it (even as a relatively marginal candidate).
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:No. He shouldn't get in although he might.
Three points are really relevant here.
1. Just as in baseball, the logic of comparing candidates to the worst guy you can think of at that position already in the HoF is fundamentally flawed. Its a recipe for watering down the HoF and really just entails compounding one mistake with another. Whether Warner is better than Joe Namath or Troy Aikman isn't really relevant.
2. Total production matters in football just like in baseball. And no position is more important to stay healthy than QB, because if you get hurt, the dropoff is often huge for your team. Kurt Warner started 12+ games in four years. Not only did he have a big stretch in the middle of his career that he didn't perform well, but in several other years his frailty and penchant for holding the ball too long (which led to taking many hits) hugely undercut his team's chances of success.
3. Numbers are almost impossible to compare over time in football, so performance vis-a-vis competitors in the same era is critical. Looking at the more modern era of football, there are 5 QBs in the HoF that played most of their games and made their greatest mark in the 1970s (Staubach, Namath, Tarkenton, Bradshaw, Griese), 4 who did so in the 1980s (Fouts, Montana, Marino, I'll count both Elway and Moon as half in this decade), and another 4 for the 1990s (Kelly, Young, Aikman, half of Elway/Moon).
So where would Kurt Warner fall in the list of the best QBs that primarily made their mark in the 2000s?
Brady
Manning
Favre
Roethlisberger
Brees
Romo
Rivers
Some of these guys split decades (Favre in the 1990s/2000s, Romo and Rivers the 2000s/2010s). Still, that's already seven guys right there. The first five are basically HoF locks. Romo and Rivers are going to end up with really strong cases as well. Those two are the #2 and #6 QBs of all time by passer rating, will likely eventually climb well into the Top 10 in counting stats like TD passes, and are likely to end their careers having started somewhere between 50-100% more games than Warner. They get a huge boost over him just from aggregate production.
Basically, if a guy like Warner is going to get into the Hall, you're talking about a significant expansion of the number of QBs in this era that make the grade - close to twice as many guys from the 2000s as in some previous decades. Even though the importance of the QB position has increased over time, I can't get behind that.
coremiller said:
Well, Anderson really should be in the HoF. He's by far the best eligible QB who hasn't been inducted, and his career compares favorably to a lot of guys already in. If Warner was as good as Ken Anderson, he should be an easy "yes" vote.
Looking at Warner's career rate stats will understate his value because his career had such an odd arc. His case is all peak value and career rates including his non-peak years won't properly show how high his peak was. Warner may have a similar career ANY/A+ to Romo, but the shape of the distribution is totally different. Warner had three seasons of 130 or better; Romo doesn't have any (highest is 127). Warner has 3 seasons in the Top 50 all-time by ANY/A+ (well, going back to 1969 when ANY/A data begins); Romo has one (69th--this year) in the Top 100. Warner has as many Top-50 ANY/A+ seasons as anyone except Peyton Manning. At his 99-01 peak he was a legit all-time great, and he tacked on enough good years in Arizona to give his career some more depth. It's a pretty unique case.
coremiller said:
It depends on how you weight peak vs career, but I'm a peak guy and I would take Warner over Roethlisberger, Romo, and Rivers in a heartbeat (based on career to date for the last three guys).. Warner only played 12+ games in four seasons, but in two of those seasons he won the MVP and in three of them he made the Super Bowl.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Its definitely a unique case. The thing is that he had three great years but relatively few "good" ones and then a shockingly large number where he contributed little or even negative value to his team due to some combination of injury, poor play, or riding the bench.
Also notable: The Greatest Show on Turf was one of the most loaded teams of all time and other QBs had as much success running that offense as he did when given the chance. Warner's passer rating in 2000 was less than Trent Green's. His passer rating in 2002 was less (in fact, waaaaaay less) than Marc Bulger's.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Given that both Trent Green and Marc Bulger had passer ratings over 100 (both higher than Warner in those respective seasons) when given the reins to the Greatest Show on Turf, what do you think Roethlisberger, Romo, or Rivers would have done with that offense?
Obviously these are hypotheticals. But I think the contextual offensive talent really matters in considering Warner's peak. Usually there's no way to assess how a relatively mediocre QB would fare with the same talent around him but in this case we actually can do that, because it happened twice.
coremiller said:
[SIZE=14.4444446563721px]Green was an excellent QB in his own right, who had a lot of success in KC. He was much better than mediocre. Warner's issue in 2002 was that he played hurt a lot of the year.[/SIZE]
If there's a knock on Warner's 99-01 peak, it's that the NFC West sucked at the time and as a result the Rams played some very easy schedules, which padded Warner's stats. Football Outsiders ranks their the defensive schedule strength in 99-01 as 31st, 27th, and 23rd. That might be enough to knock down his peak from "all-time great" to merely "excellent", in which case his case starts to fall apart.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Yeah, I previously edited that mediocre characterization, having forgotten how well Trent Green did in KC for a few years. Still, nobody is confusing Trent Green with a Hall of Famer and so if he and Marc Bulger could put up huge numbers akin to Warners with the Greatest Show on Turf (albeit in smaller samples), in my book that still pretty fatally undercuts a HoF argument that is based almost exclusively on peak production. I didn't know that about the defensive strength of schedule but that also seems relevant to me.
coremiller said:
That still underrates Green -- he was a Top 5 ANY/A passer four years in a row (2002-2005) in KC. He was basically as good as Romo/Rivers/Roethlisberger. He was just a late bloomer who didn't become a starter until 28, promptly blew out his knee and lost his job to Warner, and then didn't get his own team until he was 31. Then he was really good from ages 32-36 before injuries ended his career. He's not close to HoF level because his peak wasn't high enough to get in on peak value alone and he had no longevity, but if he had played for 10-12 years at his 02-05 level he probably would be an HOF candidate. His career is one of the great what-ifs in football history -- he might have had Warner's career if he didn't blow out his knee.
Bulger was a decent player who had some success, but he never came close to matching Warner's 99-01 run with the GSoT except in 02, when he only played in 7 games (SSS).
jsinger121 said:Young only started in 1 super bowl in 1994.
Morgan's Magic Snowplow said:
Fair enough about Green having a good stretch for a few years. Still, if Warner's argument comes down to peak, yet he basically wasn't any better in the 1999-2002 window than Green (a guy who was maybe somewhere around the 4th-8th best QB in the league for 4-5 years but never had a really impressive peak) or Bulger, then I think his case is pretty weak.
Its hard to evaluate how much numerical success of QBs is due to contextual talent, but I think its one of the big questions that have to be asked, especially when thinking about "peak" seasons that might also just have coincided with a perfect storm around that QB of talent, coaching, schedule, health, and luck. Daunte Culpepper had a pretty sick statistical peak too, but I don't think it was really indicative of his ability.