There are no shortage of NFL quarterback debates to be found on social media and within the podcast sphere. It’s a subject of debate as old as the moment we normalized throwing footballs with real craft. “Who’s the best QB in the NFL” barely takes a two-week vacation before folks are ready to throw down and crown a new name.
Let’s be honest here: Part of the endeavor is meant to influence an audience to click, watch, subscribe, and otherwise assist the monetization of internet content creation. Everyone
is “someone” when it comes to discussing a topic these days, right? So, naturally, it makes sense that anyone who is interested in football and covers it for an audience should feel compelled to weigh in on their standards for the game’s best passer. Right?
Maybe not. If you’re like me, it sure feels as though we’ve reached a saturation point for the topic. Yet you also understand that the topic isn’t going away. Ever.
People who debate about the game’s best quarterbacks will come and go. The further we get from some of the sport’s all-time greats, the less we’ll hear those names raised up these days given a proper lay up in the arena. If humanity manages to survive another 100 years, you can be certain someone somewhere will be debating who among the day’s best quarterbacks is actually the best — all brought to you via an Ai neuralink now embedded in human brains. It’s inescapable, and will only becomes more so in time.
Putting the facts-leaning sci-fi aside, readers of Buffalo Rumblings might have guessed at this point that someone, somewhere, has roped Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen into another round of “is he or isn’t he” while trying to name the NFL’s best current quarterback.
I’m not here to write 1,200 words on why Allen is or isn’t at the top, and that’s simply because I no longer really care a great deal. It’s like trying to decide between the best Porsche 911 ever made. There are no wrong choices at the top of the list. No matter where one places Allen, his greatness is undeniable. The Bills are exceedingly fortunate to have drafted him into an environment best-suited to bring out the best in his professional career.
The game of football is a team sport, and that fact alone has a great deal to do with why Josh Allen has yet to win a Super Bowl. Too many things must go right for Allen to reach the heights (annoyingly) familiar to Patrick Mahomes. Even Mahomes realizes that about himself, and you can bet he feels damn lucky to have accomplished what he did early on in his career.
Still, even Mahomes isn’t immune to the podcast angst. One need also only look back to the “rivalry” between Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. The constant debate about who was better failed to recognize that both were equally elite.
Below, you’ll find a clip from an episode of “Check the Mic” with Steve Palazzolo and Sam Monson, wherein they ponder whether or not Mahomes is still the best quarterback in the NFL today, while also making arguments for Stafford and of course Allen, as well others.
Palazzolo and Monson agree Mahomes has trailed off in recent years, and that last season was a down campaign for both the Chiefs and him individually. Between the pair, one sides with Mahomes, while the other sides with Allen as being the best in the game. Mind you, no one has played a down of NFL football since the beginning of February, and neither of those two quarterbacks even made it to February.
Working against Mahomes right now is that, sure, he’s human; it’s a team game, and so on. The truth is that Mahomes is among the modern game’s most consistently elite quarterbacks, as is Allen, Lamar Jackson, Matthew Stafford, and quite a few others such as Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, and Joe Burrow. It’s true despite any downtick in efficiency or production, for any of those mentioned above or ones others may feel I’ve slighted in forgetting to mention.
But for the following to be said of Mahomes:
“Mahomes has not played like the best QB in the NFL for quite a number of years now… we’ve reached the point now where I just cannot, in good conscience, construct an argument that he’s a better quarterback right now than Josh Allen, certainly, and maybe a couple of others.”
I ask the following:
“Why does it matter — of Mahomes, or Allen… and anyone else?”
It’s not that Palazzolo and Monson lack for good content here, especially considering the well-thought-out arguments for and against each player. In considering Stafford, the idea that he’s proven up and down, and perhaps less ready to rise above an average or worse team in the same way Allen can — I understand that argument.
It’s that their discussion sounds like a fantasy football argument to me, a pastime that I believe has done a fine job of messing up what makes the sport so great. For sure, these arguments existed before fantasy football dominated peoples’ lives. It’s just that many people now believe how a person performs in the fantasy realm dictates their status in the league.
In the end, the NFL has never before been loaded with so many top-tier quarterbacks, and each carry enough talent to best the rest of league on any given day. In a league full of talented players, I believe a quarterback’s situation matters as much as their ability. In the end, fans will almost always side with their favorite quarterback in this debate.
You can check out their conversation in full below, which consumes nearly a half hour of time.
