QB Winz: It’s Not Everything, It’s The Only Thing

These are dark times. The pro football season’s only got four teams, three games, and just one Lombardi Trophy left to reward.

Sad!

At least the serious-minded football analysts are here to provide us with a good laugh. You know the people I’m talking about: Every year around this time they go on and on insisting the performances of the quarterbacks we’re currently watching don’t much matter when it comes to determining who the better quarterbacks are.

Silly me – all my life, I assumed the ultimate point of every NFL season was to win it all, quite naturally leading me to believe winning postseason win totals actually are a fine measure of an NFL QB’s greatness. Alas, equating who’s the best with who wins the championship is apparently too simplistic for some.

In my defense, I’ve been brainwashed by frauds like Vince Lombardi – you know, the trophy guy – who said, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” And Al Davis and his “Just win, baby” jive. And Herm Edwards’ “You play to win the game” and last year’s hero Matthew Stafford getting 200 commercials post-victory and Patrick Mahomes refusing to come out of a divisional round game and Bill Belichick naming his boat ‘VI Rings’ (in hindsight, I’m sure Bill regrets not naming it after an October win over the Jags when his pal Brady had a strong yards-per-pass attempt number). 

Speaking of Tom, what exactly makes him the GOAT? How ‘bout his GOAT predecessor, Joe Montana? (A clue: It’s not arm strength.)

But y’know, maybe the smarts are right – maybe we should just end the season around the holidays. What’s the point of going through the bother of all those January playoff games? The cold weather…the injuries…the heightened competition…the harder hitting…the ‘winner takes all’ standard. Who needs it?!

The smarts will still say you need to grind film or check out their advanced-analytics model to better understand. “You can’t count rings as a measure of one’s greatness.”

But here’s the thing – Yes. Yes, I can.

‘Cause the contrary is absurd.

Not “Damar Hamlin has a body double”-level absurd, but still.

Listen, the inconvenient fact is this: The majority of pro football championships are won by the teams with the best QBs. There are a bunch of inflection points for the modern NFL, but there aren’t many more influential on actual gameplay than the introduction of the Mel Blount rule in ‘78. It’s not a 45-year fluke that ever since then the good QBs win a lot more than the mediocre ones. 

However, so long as the NFL’s braintrust continues its (mean-spirited?) practice of awarding only one Lombardi per year, the math simply doesn’t allow for every good QB to win one. The profession of pro football QB has become saturated because late-stage Bradshaw & Staubach & Fouts into Montana & Elway & Marino inspired generations to instead follow in their black Puma cleats. That doesn’t change present and future reality, though: The guys who do win titles are (still) gonna be the ones who endure as legends.

Otherwise, we can just gather ‘round the laptop and swoon over who’s got the best stats…and that’s a world I don’t want to live in.

Now of course, the smarts will come back with talk of “small sample size” and old-school ball-talkers will throw around rhetoric like “football is the ultimate team game…it’s not just about one guy.”

Terrific, but egalitarian platitudes notwithstanding, that one guy who gets paid 10-20 times more than most of his teammates is more important to winning or losing…and if he loses, he’ll also get the lion’s share of the blame. That’s the deal that’s been struck with the devil, Roger Goodell, or otherwise.

Like it or not, Josh Allen will get dinged more than Boogie Basham if these Bills never reach a Super Bowl. Don’t take my word for it: Ask Dan Marino if the lack of a Lombardi ever comes up when his career is analyzed.

The fact that Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers have won the same number of Lombardis as Ravens heroes Trent Dilfer and Joe Flacco serves as a legitimate knock on the two Packers’ Hall of Famers.

Wring your hands all you want, but this is how recorded history works.

QBs will claim these conversations about legacy and such are for fans and media…but that’s because, like most other human beings, they’d prefer to deflect the pressure. Don’t be duped, though: You think Patrick Mahomes doesn’t understand the gravity of this Sunday? If he wins, it’ll be a remarkable third Super Bowl in just four seasons for the 27-year-old. And we’ll talk for at least the next fortnight about whether a win in Glendale, AZ, has him on track to go down as the best ever. 

But if Mahomes loses – hobbled or not – the conversation will turn to Joe Burrow as the ultimate winner, and he’ll be the ascendent, transcendent one. And that’s what the conversation should be if he wins two straight title games in Arrowhead.

You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned the QBs’ respective rosters, coaching staffs, or whether the game would be better played at a neutral site under a roof. These are footnotes to the main plot. I know ignoring reality is all the rage these days, but let’s not overthink this: The result for QBs in the QB League is “The only thing.” One thing it isn’t is a high-school math equation. Every QB these days puts up good numbers (besides Zach Wilson – see, there are exceptions to most every rule), so the differentiating quality now is wins.

What metrics are we regarding if not a QB’s wins in the big games? Stats provide the Emmitt Smith paradox, as in: #22 was great…but he wasn’t better than Walter Payton or Eric Dickerson (or Tony Dorsett or Orenthal) even though he ran for more yards than they did.

Kerry Collins has more career passing yards than Joe Montana. Matt Schaub has a better passer rating than Roger Staubach.

There’s an element of fluke to all this, of course. Some randomness. Matter of fact – with all due respect to the aforementioned trophy guy – sometimes winning isn’t the only thing that matters. At least not the very last one. Take John Elway – sure, those two Super Bowl wins at the end of his career were nice…but I submit Elway’s legend is owed more to his first two losses in the Super Bowl, because the only way those thoroughly mediocre Broncos teams were able to reach the big game was the singular greatness of their QB. 

Strawman arguments aside, though, no one thinks Trent Dilfer is better than Dan Marino. Likewise, Eli Manning wasn’t better than Tom Brady…but winning when it matters most does matter.

Is it the number one criterion? I don’t know…but it’s up there!

Whatever happens Sunday, Mahomes and Burrow, like Allen, will still be great…but when the debate is best ever, rings count. The titles are history’s markers. They’re everything.

If nothing else, though, winning needs to matter – it’d be a real shame for all those Cleveland Browns’ jokes to go to waste.

BEST BETS EVER of the WEEK

(Last Week: 2-2 ATS. Playoff ATS Record: 7-3)

Spread: Eagles -2.5

Total: SF/PHI u46

Spread: Bengals Pick ‘Em

Total: CIN/KC o47