The Top 100: NFL’s Greatest Players

http://top100.nfl.com/

I watched part one of this the other day and am loving it so far. If you have NFL Network you gotta watch dis shiz.

Some of the Lenny Moore runs they showed were siiiiiiick.

will tivo

Looks like a great show, unfortunately i have cablevision and we dont get the NFL network.

Same for brighthouse. I don't suspect these will show up on torrents, huh?

there was some production music under tony dorsett's number that was unbelievable. Trilling brass and funk bass. anybody know what that tune is?

never mind, found it.
It's called sideline to sideline by (duh) sam spence.
Can't find it online anywhere, but here's a sample
http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B000UOHJ4Q/ref=pd_krex_dp_001_008?ie=UTF8&track=008&disc=001

My friend found a huge vinyl collection of NFL Films music for free at a garage sale. So dope.

Randy White was a fucking monster.

Wow I love this series! Watched a ton this afternoon: seeing the old linemen running for TDs, awesome stuff, especially since their unis were heavy as hell. Also how much do I <3 Randy Moss. That rant abt how 84 doesn't stretch on gameday was great.

Love how it's like mini Americas Game, good footage & really good presenters for each player. NFL films kicks ass.

Alan Page seems like the coolest guy ever.

Chuck Klosterman sighting!

yeah, i got a little teary at alan page. what a great!

I don't know which was more perfect: Derek Jeter talking about Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez talking about Dan Marino.

Except Jeter is overrated.

*yawn*

marino should have been higher! alex rodriguez's commentary was less than insightful, also. >:[

Slingin' Sammy Baugh was so cool.

Jerry Rice #1. My personal #1 (Walter Payton) at #5.

I would've gone with Jim Brown #1 I think.

Also I don't think Joe Montana should be the #1 qb.

what y'all feel -- feelings about http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG aside -- about http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG over marino? i'm not down with that.

Marino is better for sure.

Better than who. They had him below Montana, Manning, Elway, Brady and http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG it looks like. I'd give him the nod over http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG. Probably not the others.

Oh, I get it.

Esteem for Marino seems to have been slowly corroding in recent years. Maybe it's because of how passing games seem to get more explosive year after year... if Marino 'only' has numbers going for him, people will start to devalue them as trends change? Regardless, I wouldn't take Bort Fervr over him.

I didn't watch any of this on NFL Network, but I'm looking at the full list now:

http://top100.nfl.com/

Honestly, I think Peyton should be #1. The longer his career goes on, the more I'm convinced that there's not really even any competition for the top spot. Rice and Brown are be perfectly justifiable choices, but Rice feels too 'safe' to me and Brown... he's such an abominable person that I'd rather not see him lauded any more than is necessary.

The fan votes are weird, btw. Bob Lilly at 97, John Hannah and Raymond Berry left off entirely... just weird.

my first thought on this wqas that http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG was overrated.

the thing with manning, imo, is that although he is game-by-game the best active QB right now, he definitely stepped up a grade as he moved into his 30s, and except for the super bowl year he has always been and possibly still is a bona fide post-season choker. montana has such an impenetrable mystique about him for me and i can't dedcide if that counts for him or against him, but he i consider him out front alone for QBs in my lifetime.

Peyton is pretty great but I think we overrate modern players a bit.

I don't care if Brown is a lousy guy. This is about who was the best.

The reason Rice seems safe is because he was amazing.

If you're going to give Montana credit for being a winner despite not being a particularly great statistical quarterback I don't know how you can rank him over Otto Graham.

Honestly, I think Peyton should be #1.

^ you spelled it wrong. The second letter is an "a". Then I agree with you.

And I know you mean Manning, but I have one word for you: playoffs.

Payton's relatively low yards/attempt is a mark against him.

Payton and Peyton each only have one ring, fwiw. I don't think rings has anything to do with greatness unless you have a habit of wilting under pressure (http://images.chron.com/blogs/askacat/hatcat.JPG). Manning played very well in many of the postseason games they lost.

Pretty tired of the farve hatcat btw.

it is a good excuse to start spelling farve properly at least.

also, completely divorced from any notion of who might actually be more deserving, and even allowing for QB bias, the idea of kurt warner being one of the 100 greatest players of all time sits very poorly with me.

and even if manning wasn't the reason indy lost every playoff game, i've definitely seen him throw away a few. his playoff rep is hardly unfair.

And I know you mean Manning, but I have one word for you: playoffs.

― Randy Moss' dog's personal chef (Bill Magill), Friday, November 5, 2010 4:42 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, I mean... I'm not a fan of that rationale, but it's an old argument and nobody ever changes their mind about it. Either it's a big deal to you or it isn't, I guess.

I actually agree with you polyphonic, and it disheartened me a little to see how much the fan voters privileged recency in their selections. I still think Peyton's as good a football player as has ever lived. I also think the deck would be stacked against a QB in this kind of poll no matter what, which I think is a sign of how tough the position is. It's a lot easier to be the world's greatest WR or RB than the greatest QB... there aren't any "yeah, but" caveats with Rice.

Payton's relatively low yards/attempt is a mark against him.

― macaroni rascal (polyphonic), Friday, November 5, 2010 4:46 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not really. I grew up watching him play behind shitty offensive lines, and he did it all himself until his 11th year in the league. It's not baseball, where geeks can plug numbers into a computer and see who the best guy is. It's football and Payton was the best.

You think he's the only guy who played behind bad offensive lines?

there aren't any "yeah, but" caveats with Rice.

The "yeah, but" for Rice is that he was a receiver. Not exactly the most "football" of positions.

also Rice thanked Dancing With the Stars in his HOF acceptance speech. = immediate disqualification.

sort of wanted peyton at #1 (shocking), but i don't really have a problem with the top ten except for montana

also marino should be higher wtf

v happy with bruce smith as highest-ranked buffalo bill; that seems otm to me

I'm not a Marino stan by any means but the whole no-superbowl and 'yeah buts' against him really bother me. It's the intangible thing of who the hell do you want as your QB when you need to win? I know that's too navel gazy for a show that ranks players but still...you lose a lot of interesting, creative players if you're just going on numbers and rings and all that.

imo.

dilfer won a superbowl

i basically hate dan marino, but if you're just going by what it was like to watch him play as a criterion? he was amazing.

Exactly. Ppl can yeah but all they like but you cant argue with game film

I saw all of Jerry Rice's career and to be honest as great as he was, I never thought "holy sXXT" that was freaking amazing like some of the crazy stuff I saw guys like Taylor, Payton, Sanders, Manning, Marino and others do.

I know that Rice's numbers are freaking eye-popping, but I never looked at him as the dude that you had to STOP, as really that offense ran through Montana/Young and really they were so freaking loaded -- all of their guys could catch you know especially the backs like Craig and Rathman. Rice had the hands like a guy like Largent, but he had the speed which made him deadly on those little slants, but some of the guys below him changed the freaking game. And really, the guy that changed the game on those Niners teams was Bill Walsh's whole passing attack through Joe Montana.

Keep in mind, the 49ers already had two championships in the bag before Rice ever showed up. You want to say Rice is the greatest WR, sure, no doubt and no question...greatest football player ever - no freaking way.

People can keep talking rings as being the thing, but if the Steelers hadn't of been idiots and would have just taken Dan Marino like they should have done, they probably would have 10 titles by now or more. Marino had the most epic arm of any of the guys I have saw play and my earliest football memories start at the end of Staubauch and the Steel Curtain. Marino could throw the deep ball like a damn laser.

Being great in football is a hell of a lot of luck of being the guy with the talent on the right club at the right time and somehow not getting hurt.

One guy that I saw play a bunch that I think might be low on the list is Rod Woodson. That dude was a freak. Woodson was so fast and such a good tackler the Steelers would do crazy blitzes with him at corner.

Great post, earl. Cosine all of it, 100% otm.

Great call on Rod Woodson. One of the most versatile DBs ever.

seems like, based on the talking head rhetoric and the roundtable discussion, that the things they tended to bear in mind in placement were individual records, superbowl appearances and rings, success over an entire career, post performance notoriety, gaudy overall numbers and peer respect.
Based on those metrics, you can see how they would place rice at 1.

woodson i have to say i remember the guy from my youth and it's one of those things where you don't realize he was so awesome b/c you took him for granted and it's only after he retired that i really realized like "rod woodson huh? that guy is all-time." feel like that kind of thing happens a lot with positions like defensive back b/c they're never going to get the attention accorded to qbs at the time of their fame. anyway, that's how i see it. but i haven't seen a football game since 1867.

1867? Was that when it was played with human heads?

perhaps. i don't remember too good these days.

I think giving it to Jerry Rice is a bit of a strawman, as he probably won't embaress the NFL like someone like Lawrence Taylor or Jim Brown might do on any given day.

Even if you add in championships, the Niners were already a superpower before he showed up. No doubt that Rice is a big reason they were able to keep that juggernaut going from the early 80s to mid 90s. And again, I point out that the Niners had a couple of really good TEs, backs that were fantastic in the passing game and the other paired recievers they had like John Taylor were also great. You couldn't just double team Rice and hope for the best like say a club could do with say James Lofton on the Packers you know, who was also just crazy good.

I'd rank Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott ahead of Rice on the best all time players to play on those Niners clubs anyway. Montana is probably the most efficient QB to ever play the game whose running of that Bill Walsh offense completely changed football. Ronnie Lott was the most punishing defensive back of his time.

They should have just gone old school and given it to Sammy Baugh, who was really the first real passing quarterback, most likely the greatest punter ever and also would play defensive back at the same time.

Some of those other players were like forces of nature. People knew Payton and Sanders were coming as for the most part they didn't really ever play on many clubs with much passing and they still couldn't stop them. Just watch the clips, those guys were insane.

LT changed the game, as he was so fast, it changed football using the LB as a such a blizting force on the pass rush. His arrival also came along with Parcells and pretty much the Giants left over a decade of being terrible to being good and have never left for long being a power and to a way, they still model their defense on those clubs.

Jim Brown played nine years and led the NFL in rushing eight times back before football got neutered. That's just nuts. Jerry Rice is great, but c'mon man how can you compare to that kind of stuff.

There are also guys like Deacon Jones who might have been the football sack king if the stat was kept during his era.

How do you feel about Johnny U?

i love u, earlnash!

I like a lot of what you're saying, but Jerry Rice didn't score 75 TDs more than anyone else in the history of football (at the time) on accident. And given how much of what he did was yards after catch, it's not like it was just the system he was in.

Earlnash otm forever....

To an extent, Rice busting those short passes was pretty much the perfect athlete being put into a perfect space at the perfect time and those short slants where they pretty much use picks to setup took a lot of teams to figure out. Rice also played into his 40s with his whole career pretty much in line with the big passing explosion. I'm not doubting that Rice is great and it is hard to argue that statistically he is a step beyond any wide out to come before, but a huge part of those numbers was being on the exact right team at the exact right time also.

One way I kind of think about these things is that you have to swap great players of the same time period around and put them into each other's shoes. For instance, every NE knucklehead will say that Tom Brady is way better than Peyton Manning - hey man THREE RINGS...etc, you know. Swap 'em around how does it all work out? I'm not doubting that Tom Brady is great and I don't doubt that he would be successful if he had been with the Colts for the past decade, but does he win 3 titles... I say hell no. I can't see NE being worse with Manning, although just by philosophy, it would have ended up being a different looking team, but I could believe the 3 and maybe even a bit more.

Brady is also an example of a guy who was in the right place and the right time. Wade Phillips is not going to go with the hot hand and bench Drew Bledsoe. That was a pretty ballsy move at the time by Belichick and I think in the hindsight of models and all of that success, the way it all started is kind of forgotten a bit. Does the Pats win with Bledsoe? I think it is entirely possible it could have happened. Bledsoe was not washed up and criminy he won that one playoff game in Pittsburgh. I'd say on Earth 2, Bledsoe has two rings and is sitting in Boomer Esiason's chair now on CBS and Tom Brady is the all time leading passer in Houston Texans history.

I never saw John Unitas play, but by all counts, he is one of the bedrock guys on the evolutionary chart of the quarterback/passing game. When he retired, he pretty much owned the record book. Unitas also another guy that kind of got in the right place at the right time. The dude was drafted and didn't make the Steelers out of college and was a bit of a fluke he got back into pro football. It could have turned out very different if he was on the Steelers in the late 50s early 60s as they really really SUCKED at that time.

I think Derrick Thomas is one of the more recent great players that is under-rated or at least under-appreciated, probably because he died young and played in KC, but that guy was great. I don't see why it took that long for him to get into the hall of fame.

You make some great points, especially about Bledsoe. I watched some of the presentation of this show on NFL Network today, and during the LT segment I thought about Derrick Thomas a lot. Mostly I was wondering... is there really that big a difference between Thomas and Taylor? Could those Giants teams have been as successful with Thomas rushing the passer? I wouldn't even necessarily argue that he should be in the top 100 or that he was actually as good as LT, but it just struck me that they could be so similar in terms of talent and production, but one guy's in the top 5 - the highest ranked defensive player - and the other isn't on the list at all. And yeah, it's a damn shame that it took so long to get him in the Hall.

One thing I'll say for Rice, going to the pro bowl at the age of 40 is amazing. I don't think there's a single receiver playing today who I'd expect will be able to do that. Though I guess I should know better than to count out T.O.

i was late to pro football; I think the first game I remember seeing was John Elway's superbowl, i didn't start paying attention till the titans came to nashville and i didn't start watching closely until about 2000. So shows like this are real helpful to give me some groundwork.

but a huge part of those numbers was being on the exact right team at the exact right time also.

Right, but there are other players who played in great offenses, and they never put up comparable numbers. Doesn't it seem like RBs and WRs get points off for being on good teams? It's like the opposite of how QBs are judged.

Also: If Bledsoe had two rings he would have two more than Esiason (or Marino).

Well technically speaking, Bledsoe does have one ring from the first NE win.

LT came first in 81 with Derrick Thomas not starting until 89, so they played a little bit different periods with some overlap. I think LT was an evolutionary step in the linebacker position like Sam Huff and Dick Butkus has been before. LT was a star though as those NFL network films with him running around the side line in a froth screaming at people left and right (even his own team) along with his manic play on the field with playing on a championship team in NY, pretty much takes him to another level. This level of intensity was something that the NFL films played up in LT similar to what had been done with Huff and Butkus before.

I figure you would have done well with either Lawrence Taylor or Derrick Thomas, but LT was a star in a way few defensive players ever become. All of this makes his sorid and scummy fall from grace (for like the second or third time) kind of sad.

"Let's go out there like a bunch of crazed dogs..."

They used to show this one NFL Film to my high school football team before home games. I've seen that clip a ton of times.

"CARTHON, MAURICE CARTHON!!!"

LT came off as such an intense nut, it was like his own team was afraid of him.

the way LT's life has turned out makes me super-sad, yeah

I was about to be like "oh LT's fine, all he does is golf now" but then I remembered... yeah.

Lee Roy Selmon <3

Blows my mind every time I see the Larry Allen segment. Benchpressed 600 pounds ?!?!?!?! How do you even

i was late to pro football; I think the first game I remember seeing was John Elway's superbowl

i wish i'd watched more games when i was a kid, the first season i started paying attention was '87, i'm pretty sure we got all the redskins games on broadcast (technically it was steelers country) and a lot of nfc east: darrell green, art monk, reggie white, randall cunningham, lawrence taylor, phil simms. definitely saw a few of those 49ers games with montana, rice, lott..

but i quit watching football completely from about 1991-2002. at least i totally missed all those cowboys super bowl wins.

so in the future, there's going to be some pay service from nfl where you can go and watch all the games in their entirety, right? there has to be.

i mean i remember watching some games walter payton, barry sanders, a bunch of these players but i didn't know that much about the game. i dunno i'd like to rewatch one of the crazy warren moon/houston oilers games for instance.

NFL Network airs old, full games in the offseason... speaking of Moon, I watched The Comeback on there a couple years ago and it was ~magical~

:D

wicked. i'll have to keep an eye out, i actually have nfl network now

Those Moon Oiler teams and the AFC games were really fun to watch in that time period, even if they got their clock cleaned in the superbowl. The Glanville teams in Houston were flat out wacky. They had this total wide open offense ran by June Jones that is pretty similar to what football is like now and a defense that lived and died by late hits and crazy ass plays. Maybe it was because I went to IU and Cris Dishman was from Purdue, but that lunatic was either making the most amazing or stupid play (sometimes at the same time) in a game to win or lose an Oilers game on defense at the same time.

I got a lot of respect for Warren Moon, the dude didn't get a shot in the NFL until he was like 28 and only after he was the undesputed king of the CFL was given a shot. I don't want to play the race card, but damn the dude was like 6-3 and had the perfect QB build and played at a PAC10 school...what else do you really need you know to play QB in the big leagues? All that went down and the guy still almost threw for 50000 yards in the NFL. Warren Moon was a bad ass.

Well they obviously didn't get their clock cleaned in the superbowl, but they didn't have alot of playoff success...they were still a fun team to watch. The Bengals games with them were totally intense, as Sam Wyatt even called them out a bunch of times (and he was an offensive guru ahead of the times).

Yeah, Wyche (I assume that's who you mean) probably doesn't get enough recognition today for what a great offensive coach he was.

Still haven't seen the whole 100 yet, keep missing them when they get repeated but I'm on top of it all this week.

Just watched 41-30, including Sid Luckman. The letter that George Halas wrote to Luckman, before Halas died? "I love you with all my heart", "My pride has no bounds"...wow.

;_;

So many great stories. Also: this week I learned that Alan Page is awesome.

I loved Page when he played for the Bears when I was a little kid. I was too young to see him as a Viking, but to win MVP as a D-lineman is a huge deal.

Here's a great fact from Page's Wikipedia page (which is pretty impressive):

"He is the only person in NFL history to have both worked on the construction of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and inducted into the Hall of Fame."

How cool is that. Seriously. Dude built his own house :)

wow. that man is v v cool.