The quarterbacks who appear in this book who are the quarterbacks who would be on most
lists of the greatest ever virtually all played on teams with uh with better than average
defenses top ten defenses most of their careers you know Joe Montana uh keeps coming back
to Montana but that's just the way it is with arguing for the for the greatest agaisnt the
greatest Joe Montana played on teams with better defenses by and large than Tom Brady
has played on uh Terry Bradshaw is arguably has four Super Bowl rings because he played
on a team with a great defense Terry Bradshaw's job was to hand the ball off to a running
back and to not let the defenses god work go to waste uh uh but for the most part you're
you're looking I'm looking at people who who played on offenses that were uh that were
supported by great defenses uh maybe to a lesser extent Peyton Manning's Colts and and
uh Tom Brady's recent uh New England Patriots uh other than that uh and and you know you
also look at in the current NFL uh the Green Bay Packers Aaron Rodgers has had great success
though he had most of his success with teams that that did have great defenses he's now
having success with a team that that does not by any sort of standard have they have
a good defense uh you know in the same way that the Patriots have a good defense they
round into form at the right time they're anota great defense but for the most part
again going back through history you don't you just don't find successful quarterbacks
on teams with with lousy defenses you're always trying to make up you're always trying to
catch up and how much of a role does coaching play in this both in terms of quantity and
quality I think most if not all of the quarterbacks you compare him to in the book played under
excellent or Hall of Fame coaches right and that's the that's the uh that's one of the
factors that's sort of hardest to work around uh rarely in NFL history do you find uh great
quarterbacks without great coaches great coaches without great quarterbacks uh I say that and
then I'll tell you that that's not true there certainly have been great coaches who weren't
paired with great quarterbacks and great quarterbacks who weren't paired with great coaches we just
don't talk about them because they didn't achieve success you have to have both uh one
of the criticisms that's frequently leveled at Tom Brady is that he's a system quarterback
uh every great well not every great quarterback most great quarterbacks certainly the best
of the best have been system quarterbacks they're they bring a lot to the field one
of the things they bring to the field and this was true of Bart Starr was true of Joe
Montana certainly true of Tom Brady and we see it in people like Rodgers and Brees nowadays
their their great ability is their ability to execute or one of their great abilities
is their ability to execute their coaches system they're system quarterbacks uh you
have people Johnny Unitas wasn't anybody's idea of a system quarterback Johnny Unitas
went out there and chucked the ball around and and made things happen because he was
a great athlete and a great leader on the field uh Peyton manning is not a system quarterback
uh he's he is the the coach on the field uh so he is the great quarterback and the great
coach rolled together and you know no insult to Tony Dungy but uh you sort of have this
notion that Tony Dungy is a great defensive coach who uh whose great offensive accomplishment
was looking at Peyton Manning and saying well you know what you're doing just go do it uh
but more often than not the the the two things are are inseparable great quarterback great
coach uh if you're gonna achieve a level of success uh so then you get to start to asking
the question of well how much was quarterback and how much was coach uh it's hard to tell
with Tom Brady because he's only played under one coach a little easier with Montana who
played under two coaches uh one in San Francisco and one in Kansas City and had success in
both places uh seems to be indicative of the fact that he could succeed in different systems
uh Peyton Manning has now translated his success from Indianapolis to Denver but again Peyton
Manning is ort of doing his own thing uh Bart Starr is one of the places where you run into
some some trouble because Bart Starr didn't have a lot of success before Vince Lombardi
came along uh and particularly Vince Lombardi's system which much like Bill Walsh's system
in San Francisco uh years later was revolutionary at the time and set up a lot of success Bart
Starr also didn't have a lot of uh success after he was uh divorced of Lombardi uh there
it's pretty clear it's and this does not to my mind take anything away from Starr he was
fantastic at executing the system but that's a clear case of where coach and quarterback
uh needed each other and where the quarterbacks success is substantially attributable to the
coach I don't know how to I don't know how to uh I don't know how to correct for that
with Brady and and I suspect that I never will have that ability 'cause I don't think
he's ever playing for another coach This excerpt is brought to you by the Massachusetts School
of Law