Best Player Ever for Each Team

Matt Stover as the Ravens pick is hilarious.

L O L matt stover xp :)

ooh good thread idea... some of those are just insane tho. bills most egregious, shoulda been O.J. or bruce smith

deion??

i guess gerald riggs would be the obv choice but you could argue jamaal anderson since i think he's probably got the best individual season in their history and his super bowl year was pretty iconic around that time, i remember everybody doing the dirty bird back in fifth grade

crazy that archie manning wasn't the saints' pick

i think its weird (maybe not the right word but its late) for outsiders to quibble w/ these picks. like the bobby hebert blurb on espn is "Led Saints to playoffs in 1988 after throwing 20 TDs", and you can't really put a finger on something that might galvanize a city like that unless you were there, though it probably says more about the median voting age than anything

maybe not weird to quibble since some of these are just flat out rong, just saying that in some of the instances where franchises don't have a barry sanders or a favre, the answer might make a lot of sense to ppl who are avid fans of the team and not to the rest of us

chiefs - i'd go with willie lanier
saints - bobby hebert??? what the fuck?? you're picking from roaf, mills, swilling, johnson and jackson, and you come up with BOBBY HEBERT?
jets - klecko

i don't have a problem w/deion, i know he's mainly identified for his play w/other teams but he had a good run in atlanta - he's not like one of those 'technically was a falcon at one point' HoFers like favre and campbell. aside from him i'd probably go with bartkowski or vick (lol).

honestly i think favre is less of a slam dunk for the packers than you intimate, mostly because of don hutson

would it be crazy for me to pick bob lilly over emmitt

dallas is one of the more interesting ones, was hoping for irvin personally

emmitt seems kind of like a letdown even though im not really surprised that he one since he's got the records. from the little that i remember from those teams, aikman to irvin always seemed like the more legendary/memorable component of the team

wrt favre i meant in more of a "of course favre is going to cakewalk in an espn.com poll" way, though i don't think you can really compare anyone in the history of the packers to favre except for maybe bart starr in terms of keeping the packers continually relevant in the league, and i'd give the edge to favre do the amount of teams/parity in his era

for some reason when i was a kid i had a weird fascination with bart starr. in florida there's this state test called the fcat that you have to pass in order go get out of elementary school, middle school and high school, and i remember writing my essay for the fifth grade fcat about finding a game used bart starr jersey in the everglades and it being magical (maybe) or something, or maybe i spun it into a moralistic thing about giving the jersey back to its rightful owners, dont really remember

yeah but hutson's arguably the greatest WR of all time - he was having thousand yard, double digit TD seasons in an era when the leading WRs in the nfl would catch like 25-30 balls a year, max. also won like 3 championships.

he also had 30 picks as a defensive back!

hm i didnt know that

for a lot of these id just go w/ who i immediately think of since those are probably the players that are, for me, the faces of the franchises, so to speak, i.e. warren sapp over derrick brooks even though statistically sapp isn't really fucking w/ him or cunningham over bednarik even though there is no comparison. then again that's like just chalking things up to taste when talking about music and that's not very fun, though i think it's best to approach this argument w/ a mix of straight up stats and who did the most in terms of winning and visibility for the franchise

yeah i see where you're coming from, and i'd give it more wiggle room if it said "greatest franchise players of all time" or just "faces of the franchise" but it specifies BEST, so i'm just going with who i thought was most dominant.

reggie white over bednarik and randall!

Surely Eddie or Steve over Campbell.

i... what? eddie george over earl campbell? are you high?

Surely WARREN MOON over Eddie or Steve (but under Earl)!

I did a book report way back when on Don Hutson! he was something

cankles what about Nobis for the Falcons! awesome defensive player

Earl Campbell was a Jim Brown type freak of nature and I will carry him over my shoulder for as long as it takes so that his knees and hips will heal once again.

why not ickey woods for the bengals???

wtf! ricky nattiel was way better than john elway!

srsly, though. marshall faulk over eric dickerson? i'm not too sold on that.

no Kosar no Kredibility

hell i'd take bruce matthews over eddie fukkin george, no contest

faulk over dickerson i'm cool with, but imo deacon jones has a good argument for that spot~

yeah, Jim Kelly is some crazy talk. should have been Bruuuuuuuuce.

Wow I thought Ravens fans were supposed to be really good fans who blew off the Orioles by August every year because they were so pumped for another season of boring miserable Ravens football. Not that they shouldn't blow off the Orioles, but the Ravens aren't that much more fun to root for.

can't argue with brady but the lack of love for stanley morgan is ;_;

Kelly over Bruce Smith? that's an outrage. And Hebert over Swilling or Mills is a joke (A. Manning doesnt even register).

And the Matt Stover thing? Something's very wrong here. Ray Lewis>?

yeah, there are some good choices, but the overwhelming margins for the victors are surprising. dickerson and deacon jones seem like good choices to me, too. what about henry ellard? what about kellen wisnlow for the chargers? why not call some real shit and say bill walsh for the niners and al davis for the raiders? lombardi for the pack?

jerry rice over joe montana imo

might go with jimmy smith over fred taylor too

haha derrick brooks. he is definitely the most valuable blogger out of all of these. or he was until his blog link stopped working >:[

EffIrsay (2 hours ago)
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Everyone is making the wrong assumption tht only Ravens fans participated in the voting. How would ESPN be able to ensure that only Ravens fans clicked a selection on the online poll?

They couldn't.

So for ESPN's Jimmy "Dyn-O-Mite" Walker or the other bloggers here to get down on Raven's fans for the Stover pick is just stupid. Either ESPN's voting system F-ed up or a a middle-aged fatass Browns fan living in his momma's basement took a break from "World of Warcraft" one night to spam the voting.

Either way, it's BS.

pelonr8erfan (5 hours ago)
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Ray Lewis! That's what people think of when you say Ravens! I being a Raider fan think of fat Saragusa belly flopping Rich Gannon after he was down, killing our Super Bowl run. But everybody else thinks of Ray Lewis.

being a Raider fan think of fat Saragusa

PITT!

Surely Eddie or Steve over Campbell.

-- forksclovetofu

umm WAHT

Terry Bradshaw??? There are lots of players I'd pick over him. He probably is the most recognizable because of his TV gig, but the best? No way. Lambert, Green, Ham, Stallworth, Swann, Harris, Blount, Webster, etc. etc. etc....

yeah when i saw bradshaw's pic in the teaser i knew i had no need to read this. christ hines ward would be a better pick than bradshaw nevermind lambert or greene or (my pick) blount. for falcons nobis or bartkowski would be good pics but i think considering the history of the franchise (a very good to great year here or there with stunningly awful years more frequently interspersed among them, often in very very close tandem to the great years) anderson or william andrews (or yeah vick) would be the most fitting picks.

Bradshaw is an interesting example of what happens when you are ass-deep in Hall of Fame talent. It makes me wonder what would have happened if Joe Gilliam had ever gotten his act together. Would he be sitting in the Hall instead of Bradshaw?

I musthave missed the Bradshaw thing. What a joke. My Steeler pick is Joe Greene.

speaking of terry bradshaw and asses, did anybody else get subjected to the same torture i had to endure of having to watch "failure to launch"?

I have a lot of respect for Bradshaw despite my glee during the Turkey Jones incident. :/

I've listened to his country single. Now that's depression.

I've seen him take hits Peyton Manning never imagined.

He's no way the best of all time for the Steelers but he's close- 2nd or 3rd maybe

Steelers D was outrageous. Name someone, but who?

That was the best team I've ever seen.

Big Red Machine transported to football.

Growing up, the Steelers and the Vikings had the same team. Scrappy QB's with good to great RB's and great WR's and the best defense in the league.

I have a lot of respect for Bradshaw despite my glee during the Turkey Jones incident. :/

I've listened to his country single. Now that's depression.

I've seen him take hits Peyton Manning never imagined.

He's no way the best of all time for the Steelers but he's close- 2nd or 3rd maybe

Steelers D was outrageous. Name someone, but who?

That was the best team I've ever seen.

Big Red Machine transported to football.

^^^ cut lines from the blade runner speech

outrageous

so drunck btw when i do my declarative spielman