When the Pittsburgh Steelers have had sustained success, they’ve done it with stellar quarterback play in the form of Ben Roethlisberger and Terry Bradshaw. The latter helped run one of the best dynasties in all professional sports, winning four Super Bowls in the late 1970s. Despite that, Bradshaw couldn’t crack a top-10 all-time quarterbacks list, put together by a group of historians at Talk Of Fame Two and written by Clark Judge on Friday. Bradshaw was the first name off the list, but the historians did give him 11 votes.
“In that vein, it was interesting to see that Terry Bradshaw didn’t crack the Top Ten,” Judge wrote. “All he did was win four Super Bowls, and, yes, I know he had two more TDs (212) than interceptions (210), but look when he played. Different era, people, when quarterbacks were treated like chew toys and receivers crossed the middle of the field at their own risk.”
Bradshaw’s 11 votes were four votes shy of tenth place.
Having two more touchdowns than interceptions isn’t an especially great number, and his career passer rating of 70.9 isn’t great either. However, winning four Super Bowls certainly is, and it’s important to remember that Bradshaw played in a much different era of football when statistics weren’t as gaudy as today.
We run into these problems when trying to rank players who had their primes multiple decades apart. Nowadays, you probably don’t want a quarterback who threw more than 20 interceptions three years in a row, as Bradshaw did from 1978-1980. But the Steelers weren’t complaining. That was in the middle of Pittsburgh’s dynasty, with the Steelers winning four Super Bowls in six years.
Back then, quarterbacks weren’t protected nearly as much as they are now. What people consider a dirty hit nowadays was commonplace from defenders. It may be hard to view Bradshaw alongside current quarterbacks today, but with four Super Bowl rings, it’s just as hard to leave him out of the top 10.
Even more interesting is that current Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers cracked the list, coming in 10th. Terry Bradshaw recently had some words for Rodgers earlier this offseason.
“A four-time league MVP, 10-time Pro Bowler and five-time All-Pro, Rodgers is one of the most talented quarterbacks in today’s game. Ranking first on the NFL’s all-time passer rating list, he has the best career touchdown-to-interception ratio and the lowest career interception percentage,” Judge wrote. “In other words, the guy is efficient. He’s also successful, leading Green Bay to five conference championship games and a 2010 Super Bowl victory.”
Rodgers is one of the more curious cases in the NFL. If you took every achievement away from every quarterback the game has seen, and just watched them chuck the ball, you might walk away thinking Rodgers is the best to ever do it. He has one of the best arms the game has ever seen. His four MVPs and five All-Pros make that point for him.
That said, he has almost none of the postseason achievements to show for it. Rodgers has only been to one Super Bowl, when he beat the Steelers in 2011.
Now Rodgers is with a franchise that knows those postseason struggles all too well. The Steelers are slowly dissipating from a team that strives for Super Bowls to one that hasn’t won a playoff game in nearly a decade. They’ll hope Rodgers and his experience can get them over the hump. Maybe it will break the curse for both sides.
The entire top 10, in order, includes Tom Brady, Johnny Unitas, Joe Montana, Otto Graham, Peyton Manning, Sammy Baugh, Patrick Mahomes, John Elway, Dan Marino, and Rodgers. But not Terry Bradshaw.
