Serious question, Who besides Mahomes is “Elite”, and why? no starting QB other than Mahomes and Stafford have won anything of consequence recently.
Josh Allen against Miami is elite...
Lamar Jackson against Miami is elite...
Justin Fields against Miami is elite...
...I kid, I kid.
Besides virtually any mobile QB against the Dolphins defense who all seem to have career days, I'd have to say it's
Mahomes and everyone else. That certainly doesn't mean there isn't a clear list of guys who've proven to make some incredible plays when their teams all need them to, but nobody's perfect like Mahomes. Far too often people are spoken of as though they're on his level.
To be clear, nobody's on Mahomes' level.
The number of times I've heard,
'We need to find an elite QB like Mahomes, Allen and Jackson...' really obscures the fact that Mahomes is the only QB out there who's great at
everything. And that's what makes him such a freak-show anomaly both on-field and in the statistical record.
I've come to appreciate that when you have a running QB like
Josh Allen,
Lamar Jackson,
Jalen Hurts,
Cam Newton,
Colin Kaepernick, etc. you may very well end up with a few MVP awards and even the occasional "great" year like Kaepernick's 2012, Newton's 2015, Jackson's 2019, Allen's 2020 or Hurts' 2022. And that's if you hit on a guy, because lord knows there are plenty of
Justin Fields,
Kyler Murray and
Zach Wilson out there as well who fail (to varying degrees) to reach the level of greatness expected on draft day.
Still, the production routinely dips immediately thereafter to levels that leave you scratching your head.
Kaepernick looked good for a couple years but in his final 3 he looked more like a bust. Cam
Newton was unstoppable in '15 and took the Panthers on a Super Bowl run after going 15-1 in the regular season. Still, he's remembered more for being a so-so QB. Josh
Allen has spent 6 seasons in the NFL with a career passer rating of 92 in a era where that's literally
average! He's only been north of 100 once. And at the end of 2023, the Eagles unstoppable offense turned into something that looked completely fraudulent.
Hurts went from being the most respected guy to another example of,
'wait a minute, how do we feel about this guy?'
There's a price to be paid with mobile QBs. Not only do they inevitably slow down and lose their youthful athleticism at some point, but half their "prime" ends up being comprised of wasted years. You can toss
Deshaun Watson on that pile as well.
The upside of someone like Tua--being a pocket passer--is that his "window" is basically the 15 years he'll play between being drafted and retirement wherein essentially every season will see him grow increasingly efficient based on an ever-expanding level of experience and familiarity with his offense.
It's far less likely Tua ever seriously contends for an NFL MVP award but it's not at all unlikely he consistently puts up well above-average statistical performance which gives you a pretty insanely long window around which you should be able to field some pretty awesome teams.
People spend so much time / energy talking guys like Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen up as "elites" they really end up digging themselves into a bit of a hole when they look at who's making it to Super Bowls. The reality is that this fanbase probably has to set aside it's dreams of finding the next Marino. Believe it or not, the Buffalo Bills currently have the closest thing...a player who the fans will probably look back on and think,
'what exactly went wrong?!' I wonder if Bills fans in 2050 will sound like Dolphins fans today who lament how Miami "wasted" Marino's career.
"Elite QB" is one of the most awful terms in sports because the concept drives people away from actually understanding what's happening. Instead, we get arguments about who's more perfect than the next guy and in that kind of mental model, we can never blame them for anything nor can we explain why all the "non-franchise" QBs get to and sometimes even win Super Bowls.
I've watched
Matt Ryan,
Nick Foles,
Eli Manning,
Joe Flacco,
Jared Goff and
Jimmy Garoppolo compete for Super Bowls in the last decade. Some of those guys had the lead. Some were up with just minutes to go. Some lost by a single score or on the final drive.
Trust me, it ain't about being perfect. And if we're being totally honest, the national opinion on what
Matthew Stafford was, with his career rating of 91, is entirely different post-SB compared to where it was when he was in Detroit and viewed as a mid-tier gunslinger. No one dared make a case for Stafford as elite when he'd been in Detroit for a decade and was 0-3 in the Playoffs. He was the most impressive of the class that featured
Ryan Tannehill,
Kirk Cousins and others.
Truth be told, the fact that guys like
Lamar Jackson and
Josh Allen are
imperfect isn't some fatal flaw either. Let's be honest, they still scare the crap out of us. As they should.
So can Tua win one? Absolutely, but it'll take the right kind of team. If/when it happens, fans will change their tune and crown him and talk about he "played elite down the stretch." Yeah, yeah, yeah...