Who is the greatest quarterback of all time?

[The Duke]

For ym mooney, the one guy I'd want in a big game as my quarterback is John Elway.  He wasn't one very good teams in the early years, but he still won the AFC titles.  "The drive" and "the dive" define Elway for me.  He had maybe the greatest physical gifts of any QB, and the heart of a Lion.  Not a Detroit Lion, but a real lion, you know?

[The Duke]

Jim Kelly and Phil Simms don't belong on the same list as Montana and Unitas.

I didn't wnat to be accused leaving anyone off, so I included everyone who could reasonably be called a great QB.

[The Duke]

While I said Elway, the most overlooked two factors for choosing a QB are release time and ball velocity.  No one ever examines these things (which is why its so hard to darft QBs), but Marino had the best release time ever.  The ball was out in a hurry.  Brett Favre had the best ball velocity.  I'm surprised no one picked Marino in the poll, and that Favre has only one vote.

[The Duke]

I went with Marino, but really couldn't picck between him & Elway  While he was on a good team, he never had an excellent team the way Montana, Unitas did.  He never won a Super Bowl, but they never really had much of a running game & in order to really win you need to have both (Elway had Terell Davis).

In 10 years its going to be Peyton Manning, what this guy has done is just amazing.  He is going to break ever record their is, could have s ring this year & if the Colts D improves he will see a ton of rings in his future.  He is BY FAR the best QB in the game right now.

If ElI becomes 1/2 as good as his brother I will br real happy

Eli's biggest obstacle is the NY media.  Its a far cry from Oxford Miss up there.

[The Duke]

Another point in favor of Elway in the Elway/Marino debate:
The Broncos went to all those Super Bowls with Elway because he could play north of Mason-Dixon outdoors in winter. The Dolphins always faded in December because they couldn't win in Pittsburg, Buffalo, Denver, etc.

Peyton needs to prove himself outside the dome before he can be truely great. If he somehow wins in Pitt and N.E. this year, he'll have my respect.

I always wondered how Marino would have done if he would have played for someone like the Bills or Steelers.

Well, Marino was from Pittsburgh originally, so I doubt he had a strong aversion to snow. It would be interesting to see if the Dolphins failures to win up north had to do with Marino's worse performance, or if it was something else like the defense.

The Dolphins generally had a bad running game, and in the snow, you usually need a good running game to win. They generally had a bad defense, too.

My experience with warm weather teams is that the speed players (wide recievers, defensive backs) have toruble staying loose in the cold.  Its more them than the Qbs in most cases, not sure about the fins specifically.

Another guy that I'm surprised to see hasn't gotten any support is Tarkenton. He was the all time leader in passing yards until Marino came along, and did it back in the 70's when the rules were a lot friendlier for pass defenses and less so for pass offenses. He could scramble and run quite well, too. Took the Vikings to 3 Super Bowls.

It's probably that he lost 3 Superbowls, and not all to superior teams.  He was a great player, but QBs always get blamed for team failures.