Give Young the credit he's
due
Send a question to Peter
King
Posted: Thu October 16,
1997
A lot of you questioned my ranking of Steve Young as the
35th-best player of all time. Let me make you angrier. I'll
probably move Young
up if he plays OK in the next two or three
years—assuming he doesn't retire because of
concussions.
Young (No. 35 on my list) falls well behind Montana (No. 9), but he's closing in
on Namath (No. 34). Click on a cover to view it larger.
photographs (from top) by John Iacono, James Drake, Peter Read Miller
|
I ranked the top 35 players of all time in the revised
version of my book,
Football: A History of the Professional
Game. The QBs on that list
are:
3. Otto Graham
8. Johnny
Unitas
9. Joe
Montana
10. Sammy
Baugh
15. Dan
Marino
22. Terry
Bradshaw
24. Roger
Staubach
34. Joe
Namath
35. Steve
Young
John Elway might well be on the list in the next printing.
His body of work is pretty incredible and he'll be a lock
if he wins a Super
Bowl.
As I said last week, I think the public takes Steve Young
for granted. "If I never take another snap,'' Young
told me this summer, "I think I've taken my place
among the good quarterbacks. But I think I have to win
another championship. Otherwise, people
will always be able to say,
He's got the numbers, but he only won one
title.''
By the way, one faithful web-person wrote that Doug
Williams ought to be considered more fondly by history than
Young. I want to be nice about this, but
are you
high? Young's career rating is 96.9, the best in history;
Williams's is 69.4. Young out-percentages Williams, .647 to
.495. He has a plus-96 TD-to-interception ratio, Williams a
plus-seven. Barroom arguments about players are fine, but
give me one with a
scintilla of
validity.
The moral of all this? Young should get the credit he's
due. He's been a great NFL
player.
(Oh, and if you want the rest of the list, buy the
book.)
Why do punters no longer try to nail one into the coffin
corner? Every kick seems to land in the middle of the
field and the kicking team races to try to down the ball.
Is this a change in strategy or
what?
—Mark Steffey, Leominster,
Mass.
Near midfield, punters are told by special-teams coaches to
either kick the ball to the moon so the cover guys can run
under it and trap the ball inside the 10, or kick it out
inside the 10. There are few very good directional kickers
so most coaches
would rather have their wing guys try to get down in time to
cover a pop-fly punt. If you like coffin-corner punts,
watch Mike Horan of St. Louis. He's probably the best
coffin-corner guy in the
game.
What do you think of Vikings
QB Brad
Johnson?
—Chad Souvignie, Tucson,
Ariz.
I like Brad Johnson a lot, and the Vikings are lucky to
have signed him for four years last December at the bargain
rate of $3.8 million a year. He'll be one of the top 10 QBs
in the league for the next few years. He's tremendously
poised and
smart.
I talk to Cris Carter regularly and he thinks Johnson is
one of the most underrated players in the game, a true
leader with great talent. Dennis Green talks about how well
Johnson manages a game. I think there's little doubt he's
got everything you
want to have in a QB who's still young (29) and skilled enough
to have you in a playoff chase every
year.
Which team breeds the best
coaches?
—Baron Rodriguez, Redding,
Calif.
The 49ers, easily. The Bill Walsh coaching tree has shaken
loose lots of quality coaches, including Dennis Green, Mike Holmgren, Ray Rhodes and Mike Shanahan. Walsh didn't
just inculcate his staff with great offensive skills. He
taught them all how to
run an organization and motivate players,
too.
What's going on with WR Eric Metcalf in San Diego? I
thought he would be a bigger part of the Chargers'
offense.
—Matt Ring, Des Moines,
Iowa
Me too. I keep hearing grumbling from Chargers people. Some offensive players think the Kevin Gilbride offense
is too complicated and Gilbride himself is too inflexible. Metcalf is
not the most disciplined player and I think he's found it
tough to be as
perfect as you need to be in Gilbride's
offense.
Is Jim Kelly a Hall of Fame
QB? Where does he rank among other
greats?
—Andrew Slonka, Los
Angeles
I have a vote in the Hall of Fame balloting every January
and I'm leaning toward voting for Kelly when he comes up
for consideration in 2002. He distinguished himself by
running what a lot of people felt was a gimmicky
offense—the no-huddle—for several
years before defenses caught up with it. As for where he
ranks with the greats, I'd rank him thusly with the
quarterbacks of his
day:
1. Joe
Montana
2. Dan
Marino
3. Steve
Young
4. John
Elway
5. Bret
Favre
6. Jim
Kelly
7. Phil
Simms
8. Warren
Moon
What's the deal with the Vikings secondary this
year? Do its problems stem from Tony Dungy's
departure?
—Andrew Wilder, Grand Forks,
N.D.
I wrote about the Vikes' secondary during training camp
because I felt it was the single most important element of
the team this year; it would determine how far Minnesota
would go. I think that's still true. Corey Fuller is a
risk-taking physical
corner and he's gotten beat a lot this fall. So has running mate
Dewayne Washington. Minnesota's safety play has been even
weaker. It doesn't help that lots of teams hate the Vikings'
secondary—truly
hate those guys—because they're such big trash-talkers.
Fuller, especially. I think the secondary misses Tony
Dungy, but I also think it's not as talented a group as the
Vikings need to face talented quarterbacks like Favre and
Scott Mitchell twice a
year.
Why are the Bengals so bad this
year?
—Richard Riedling,
Cincinnati
The defense has been absolutely toothless. They bring in
Dick LeBeau to run the new zone blitz, and the impact
players like DT Dan Wilkinson play like pussycats.
That's the root of the problem. Jeff Blake's inconsistency
has to alarm the Bengals,
too.
Herschel Walker still runs under 4.5 in the 40. Why don't
the Cowboys use him more as a runner or a receiver, or even
at tight
end?
—Jonathan Stern, Albany,
N.Y.
Herschel's a tantalizing talent but he's probably best
used at a lot of different jobs, mostly on special teams.
Bill Parcells has an opinion on players like Herschel: When
they do some things well, let them do those things, and
don't give him them
more things to do than they can handle
well.
That's the indirect way of saying
this: He's a nice role player for $275,000 a year, he left a
bitter taste in the Vikings' mouth the last time he was a
regular player, and you're grasping for straws to fix the
Dallas offense. It's not fixable. The
line's about half as good as it was—even Bronko Nagurski
couldn't solve its
problems.
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