60 years watching 100 quarterbacks 1 argument

Johnny U to Mahomes

The Top 100 Quarterbacks of All Time — one fan's rankings, and 60 years of watching the game.

In January of 1969, a nine-year-old boy sat in the Orange Bowl and watched Joe Namath make good on the most famous guarantee in American sports.

He was rooting against him.

William Paige has spent the sixty years since watching quarterbacks — from Johnny Unitas in his ugly black high-tops to Patrick Mahomes doing things the game has no precedent for. This is his ranking of the hundred best ever to play the position, weighted for peak dominance, championship impact, and the honest truth that a 3,000-yard season in 1972 and a 3,000-yard season in 2022 are not the same accomplishment.

The top ten

Brass numerals carry an Extended Take

  1. 1
    Tom Brady
    Patriots · Buccaneers · 7 rings

    Montana's still who I would like to close my eyes and think GOAT, but Brady was just indomitable year after year, so… fair is fair.

  2. 2
    Joe Montana
    49ers · Chiefs · "Joe Cool"

    For most of my adult life, Joe Montana was the best quarterback I'd ever seen and the greatest of all time, full stop.

  3. 3
    Johnny Unitas
    Colts · 47 straight games with a TD

    If somebody showed up to a pickup game wearing black high-tops, we'd say he had his "Johnny U's" on. They were ugly but distinctive.

  4. 4
    Peyton Manning
    Colts · Broncos · 5 MVPs

    Peyton was my oldest daughter Tajuana's favorite quarterback throughout his entire career.

  5. 5
    Patrick Mahomes
    Chiefs · active

    I've been discerningly watching football for 60 years or so, and Mahomes is the best quarterback I have seen.

  6. 6
    John Elway
    Broncos · The Drive
  7. 7
    Dan Marino
    Dolphins · 5,084 yards in 1984
  8. 8
    Brett Favre
    Packers · 297 straight starts
  9. 9
    Roger Staubach
    Cowboys · Navy · Hail Mary
  10. 10
    Aaron Rodgers
    Packers · Jets · 4 MVPs

Ninety more follow, down to number one hundred. Sammy Baugh is in here. So is Milt Plum, who held a passing record for twenty-nine years and whom you have probably never heard of.

What an Extended Take is

Every quarterback gets the facts. Some get the afternoon I watched them.

My father played college football at Maryland State, and one of his teammates there was Johnny Sample, who went on to play defensive back for the Jets. Before that 1968 season, Johnny told my father that if the Jets made it to the Super Bowl, he'd have tickets waiting for us.

They made it. So the whole family went to Florida. Then my father took my brother Darryl and me down to the Orange Bowl on January 12, 1969, and we watched Joe Namath make good on the most famous guarantee in the history of American sports.

Darryl is gone now. That afternoon is one of the things I still have of him.

Extended Take — #27, Joe Namath

Who is
William Paige?

A South Jersey fan who has been watching professional football since about 1966, and who was in the stands for Super Bowl III two months before his tenth birthday.

He is the son of Roy B. Paige, a Maryland State College quarterback and a 1977 inductee into that school's Athletic Hall of Fame — a program that also produced Johnny Sample, Roger Brown, Sherman Plunkett, Emerson Boozer and Art Shell. He played quarterback himself before giving up football for basketball, which he went on to play at the Division I level.

This is his first book. It comes from a promise he made to his oldest daughter that he would write it some day.

You are going to disagree with this list. That's the point.

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