What it Means to be an "Elite Quarterback"

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I'm thinking a lot quarterbacks will be lining up to be labelled "not elite" heading into the 2013 NFL season. Last year, the pre-season buzz was all about whether or not Eli Manning was elite. This year, Joe Flacco threw his name into the "is he elite or not?" debate, with most analysts seeming to say he was not. Both quarterbacks are now Super Bowl MVPs, and the debate has never seemed more irrelevant.

Can we please stop agonizing over who's elite and who isn't? I'm sick of it.

Now I'm not going to sit here and tell you that there's no such thing as an elite quarterback. Of course there is. But here's the thing about elite QBs: it's a very fluid process. A quarterback can be elite one year, and be very much non-elite the next season. It's all about consistency.

Really, that's difference between an "all-timer" and "elite". For guys like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, there's no denying their greatness—they're sure-fire Hall of Famers. But for the majority of QBs it's not that simple. They're just trying to be consistently "elite" from season-to-season. And a lot of them fluctuate from "elite" to not-so-much a couple times over the course of their careers.

There is no single definition of elite in this debate, which is probably the most frustrating aspect of it all. People have their own checklist of what brings a guy to that top level, and a ton of different factors are used. For most, winning a Super Bowl is often pretty high on the list (sorry, Marino), so let's start there. Let's look at 5 quarterbacks who have recently won the Big Game, and see how elite they were immediately following their Super Bowl season. I'm going to exclude Flacco here, but don't worry. I'm sure we'll be hearing plenty of people chime in on his "elite"-ness over the offseason.

We'll start with someone who is elite by any definition, Tom Brady. Brady's first Super Bowl win was in 2001, after he had taken the starting job from Drew Bledsoe. Bledsoe, at the time, was a darling of the league, a guy who chucked up a ton of balls and racked up a ton of yardage. And yet it was Brady under center in 2002, with big expectations on his shoulders. How did Tom respond? By putting up the worst quarterback rating of his career, and missing the playoff. In other words, Brady stumbled the year after he became "elite". Of course, with the body of his career, we now know just how good he is. But Brady still went from "elite" after his '01 championship, to "pretty good" in '02, to back-to-back champ in '03 and '04, to "one of the best ever" thereafter. It's a process.

It's not just a first-ballot guy like Brady either. Eli Manning is the poster boy of the elite quarterback debate, and he has gone from elite to not more than anyone else in recent memory (Mike Vick is in the conversation though). When Eli's Giants won their first Super Bowl in '07, he surely was not elite (he had a quarterback rating of 73.9 and led the league in interceptions). It wasn't until his second Super Bowl title in '11 that people began putting him in the top class of QBs. Like Brady, though, Eli struggled immediately after finally becoming "elite", completing under 60% of his passes and throwing for about 1000 yards less than the previous season. Eli ended the season 15th in quarterback rating and in the top-10 in interceptions thrown. Was he really that elite in 2012?

Next on the docket is Drew Brees. After his Super Bowl win in '09 the list of the best quarterbacks in the game was finally extended beyond Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Phrases like "he's not at the Manning/ Brady/ Brees level" were being brandied about (and as a Saints fan I loved it). Heading into '10, Brees was definitely considered one of the elite QBs in the game. Like Brady and (Eli) Manning, however, Brees struggled after his ascension into elite-ness. He promptly saw his quarterback rating and touchdown numbers drop, while he set a career-high in interceptions. The gold standard of QBs has been back at "Manning and Brady" since.

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All this is to say that an "elite" quarterback isn't "elite" forever once he gets the title. Guys can be elite one year, and average the next and vice versa. Ben Roethlisberger followed his first Super Bowl-winning season with the worst campaign of his career. Meanwhile, Aaron Rodgers has been elite for the last 3-4 seasons and counting despite his team regressing over the last couple years.

The ultimate point here is that pre-season (and post-season) "elite quarterback" debates are worthless. We don't know who's going to be elite until we've seen a couple games' worth of evidence. There are guys who have earned the title by their career as a whole (Peyton Manning, Brady, probably Rodgers), and then there's everybody else. What do we—as fans, analysts, general managers, whatever—gain from this debate? I know it's not as easy to understand, but not every quarterback fits nicely into a simple category.

What makes a player like Peyton and Brady different from the rest is consistency. They have put up elite seasons year after year, and therefore are locks for the Hall of Fame. But for guys who haven't been in the league that long, there is no way to predict how their career arcs will look going forward. We don't know if RGIII, or Luck or even Eli will be elite by the time they retire. We just don't.

Categorizing players makes everything much more simple, but it doesn't work like that in a lot of cases. Let's look at Eli one last time. He has the 2 Super Bowl MVPs, but he has also completed under 60% of his career pass attempts, and has a lower career passer rating than guys like Shaun Hill and Mark Bulger. He was great throughout the 2011 NFL Season. He's been inconsistent other than that. And that's really what it's all about.

Was Joe Flacco elite this season? Well, he had one of the best post-seasons in NFL history and won the Super Bowl, so I'd say yes. Will he be elite next year? No one knows, and we won't know until we see the 2013 Ravens on the field.