Originally posted by shortcircuit
I would throw a few names at you and beg to differ.
Joe Montana
Johnny Unitas
Brett Farve
Dan Marino
John Elway
There are a few to consider. Elway and Montana have more rings. Marino is the only one with less rings than Manning. This is not to demean Manning at all. He is one of the greatest....just not THE greatest.
It drives me nuts when people judge a player based solely on how many rings he has.
Tom Brady has more rings than Manning, but any objective observer who has watched their careers can see plain as day that Manning is the better player.
If Marino had a running game OR a defense, he would be considered the greatest QB ever. He did it consistently year in and year out with no running game and no great wide receivers (please don't start waxing poetic now about Mark Duper, please).
I remember watching those great Jets-Dolphins games in the '80s. Without Marino, that was a 4-12 team. With him, they went to the playoffs most years. The only other guy I could say that about that I've ever seen was Manning.
Joe Roby, the owner of the Dolphins once said that, under Marino, "our idea of a balanced offense was the long pass and the short pass" .
As an aside, the Pats going 11-5 last year with Matt Cassel has sure taken some of the luster off of Brady's legacy, eh?