Franchise Quarterbacks Who Made Late-Career Moves to New Teams: S/D

tom brady: one hates to say it, but yet again the gold standard. a(nother) title/super bowl mvp at age 43 → mvp runner-up at age 44 → and while his yards/attempt is way down this year, i don't think you can pin tampa's problems on him

peyton manning: mvp runner-up → mvp → extremely good year → utterly washed-up but won a super bowl

brett favre: not great with the jets at 39 → awesome in first year with vikes at 40 → dreadful in second year with vikes at 41

philip rivers: not terrible, at least made the playoffs, but merely average

matt ryan: lol no

matthew stafford: flags fly forever, so

warren moon: not great in his first year with the vikings at 38 → pretty damn good at 39 . . . led the league in yards/game with seattle at age 41. what a ballplayer

carson palmer: 'franchise qb' might be a stretch, but in his fifth season after leaving the bengals he was mvp runner-up for arizona at age 36 (and also finally won a playoff game lol)

joe montana: not a disaster, but a definite step down

johnny unitas: oh hell no

russell wilson: not looking great

boomer esiason: no, although he did somehow make a pro bowl in his first season with the jets

andy dalton: was andy dalton a franchise qb? no. i guess he's become a serviceable backup tho

donovan mcnabb: not at all

derek carr: i wouldn't bet on it

cam newton: yikes

kurt warner: what a bizarre career. great season with arizona at 37 (super bowl runner-up) → strong final season at 38

mark brunell: good season for the hatcats at age 35, but not really

steve mcnair: no (rip)

ken stabler: brutal

y.a. tittle: i don't really know enough about him to fully render judgment, but he had fantastic seasons for the giants age 36 and 37 then fell off a fucking cliff at 38

I was gonna say Jim Plunkett, but I'm not sure he ever deserved the "franchise" tag.

Warren Moon is the most underrated qb in history, if he had played his first 6 seasons in the NFL instead of the CFL he would be in a lot of conversations

disturbing that there are three bengals on this list, even though they’re all marginal

xp agreed. and race has a lot to do with both those things

also randall cunningham belongs here — his 1998 season with minnesota was remarkable, even if the rest of his post-iggles career was not

oh man, forgot about Carson Palmer and the Cardinals. that would've been so cool

still peeved that Kurt Warner didn't win the Springsteen Crotchbowl. that would've been such a unique achievement.

Peyton Manning probably the weirdest of these. it was such a success story coming off what looked like a significant, career-ending neck surgery. but their Super Bowl year he was legitimately bad, to the point where there was a whole genre of articles about whether or not it would be smart for Denver to start Brock Osweiler instead, even if nobody would seriously entertain the thought. and yet no one ever has a problem crediting Manning for it, because lets face it he was obviously an all-time great.

I really feel it'd get talked about more if they'd won the Super Bowl that year. really a shame they got bounced, as they woulda given the Broncos a big-time run for their money, and the Falcons were all very much "lol it's nice to be here, but the city of Atlanta doesn't win titles by nature"

i don't think anyone as ever thrown a football as smoothly and beautifully as Warren Moon

― mookieproof (mookieproof), Friday, November 4, 2005 1:25 PM (seventeen years ago)

the year Peyton should have won his second Super Bowl, he was playing at a very high level, but that Super Bowl started out with the snap over his head and never got any better.

probably one of the few times I felt like we coulda left the party we were at in the first quarter

I want to thank Favre for making Jet fans waste a ton of money on Favre jerseys that they probably flushed down the toilet that offseason

yeah that Super Bowl was one of the most one-sided playoff ass kickings I've ever seen

drew bledsoe’s post-pats career was . . . serviceable? i would not have expected him to be 17th all-time in passing yards (ahead of fouts and montana). palmer is 15th!

Bledsoe's post-Pats career was funny because it was very much informed by pre-conceived beliefs (myself included).

Like I remember how he came off of the bench during the AFC Championship when Brady got hurt, and the narrative was "shit, who does Belichick play in the Super Bowl? Brady's a game manager, and he's hurt, maybe he needs to ride the big arm for a potential shootout".

even after he wins, there's still a lot of haterade saying Brady's just a 'game manager', and Bledsoe gets HUGE money from the Bills, AND his team stomps the Patriots 31-0 in the opener, and people are talking like maybe the Patriots let wrong QB go, but Bledsoe's hot start cools off a bit, team doesn't make the playoffs, and he's fairly mediocre to bad for them after that. and Brady begins proving he's far from a 'game manager'.

granted, Patriots didn't make the playoffs that year either, but they'd win the next two Super Bowls after that

the aughts were such a dire time for QBs, like who can believe people like Tommy Maddox and Chad Pennington were exciting the fans.

tbh i want little more than to have my games managed

Matt Ryan's legacy kind of a sad one, going from "28-3" to "33-0".

Bengals fans hated Dalton so much that many of them will turn on his games now just to laugh when he fucks up

Brunell was overpaid, dude was beat up from years of playing behind terrible o-lines, and going to Snyder-land rarely paid off for old veterans.

Rivers just hit a wall towards the end of his career where he just didn't have it anymore.

wouldn't be surprised at all if Russell Wilson rebounds a *bit* under a new coach, only in that it's hard to play worse than he did this year, and that under a better system, he might get back up to 'mediocre'.

I'd take a guy who managed me into six Super Bowl wins.

I mean the "he's just a game manager in a good system" myth was obviously bullshit from probably his second season on, usually from hateful division rivals. there were years where he put up ridiculous numbers with absolute trash teammates on offense (2005 I think comes to mind). and moving to another team and winning a SB there in your 40s can pretty much put a cork in it, as painful as it was watching it happen.

one of my fellow idiot Fin fans that used to be a columnist on a site I wrote for (and abandoned due to the idiocy) had the signature "Brady is a system quarterback, Marino was a SYSTEM" that he signed his posts with.

I seem to remember Montana having a pretty great year for the 49ers but very different system over there

xp I'm sure that made Tom Brady cry. It's hard to wipe your tears away with all those rings.

The year Peyton won the SB with Denver, I mean wow that was the sort of season Ryan Leaf could point to and say “see I was just as good as Peyton Manning.”

lol yeah that was v much a Dilfer-type year for him

actually probably worse than that

the funny thing about Warner is inbetween the Rams and the Cardinals he had that weird blip with the Giants

yeah, where they benched him when the team was still fighting for a playoff position and then they crashed out with Eli playing as rookies often do

while journeymen are specifically excluded, let us nevertheless also pay homage to:

vinny testaverde (seven teams, 16th all-time in passing yards)
joe flacco (four teams, 19th)
kerry collins (six teams, 20th)
dave fucking krieg (six teams, 24th, got sacked so much)
fitzmagic (nine teams, 34th)

well, maybe not flacco

Just looked, Moon is still #13 all time in NFL passing yards behind Elway and Stafford... Think about reasonable production for six more years if he had been in the NFL his whole career and he'd be flirting with the top 5.

Dan Fouts had a tale of Johnny U's lone season with the Chargers where they were on the road where they were going over to a teammates room to have a beer and they walked in on the a bunch of the players passing a joint. Unitas saw the scene and kinda backed out saying "I guess I went to the wrong room" or something of the like.

Remember Warner's hand got busted up with the Rams and he was having all sorts of time losing the ball and fumbling - he did not have much grip in his passing hand. Some thought he was washed up but I he had a surgery and they got it straightened out before he had the late career surge with the Cardinals.

Odd thing I remember about Stabler going to the Oilers was that Dan Pasterini went to the Raiders and as I remember right him getting hurt with the Silver and Black kind of opened the door for Plunkett (I think after Marc Wilson also got hurt too). It was kind of unusual to have the QBs trade teams like that even really now.

The old school NFL trade I was always curious about was the fact that Fran Tarkenton left the Vikings to go to some horrible Giants teams for a few years and then came back to Minnesota.

Michael Vick had a couple very good seasons with the Eagles iirc