Peyton Manning’s rank among QB greats, according to SN NFL experts

1. Tom Brady

Brady has everything you want to be at the top. It didn’t take long for his unmatched competitive drive to manifest in his career, and the ability to come through in the most critical moments in the biggest games will be his legacy. Then you consider how he developed into a prolific passer as the scheme and talent around him matched his consistent high level of execution. What’s scary is that after four Super Bowl titles and six AFC championships, he has shown little signs of slowing down at age 38. He has time to pad his best-ever resume.

2. Joe Montana

Montana was a perfect 4-0 without an interception in his four Super Bowl trips with San Francisco. Those are the most cited statistics in his corner, but it was his cool control of Bill Walsh’s game-changing West Coast passing offense that grooves his greatness. Montana’s precision and execution made him a magical maestro. He also brought a special kind of swagger with his humor and easygoingness to most pressure-packed situations. It took someone terrific to displace him from No. 1. It’s only appropriate it’s Brady, who once idolized him.

3. Johnny Unitas

It’s been 60 years since the late, great Johnny U first started to sling it for Baltimore, but the imprint he made to help modernize the passing game and raise the profile as a popular national sport — paving the way for the unstoppable television fore it is today — can’t be honored enough. Consider him the George Washington of the remixed sculpture, the ultimate founding father for those who have thrown a forward pass after him. The numbers he put up were ahead of their time, and he matched his four MVPs with four championships through two eras. “The Golden Arm” still shines brightly enough to remain a top-five fixture for a long time.

4. John Elway

Elway is this high for aspects of his game that are still hard to measure, but easy at which to marvel. Those who evaluate Elway based on statistics are missing the point. He played on consistently good teams that often featured steady support from the running game and defense, but his intangibles — brashness, toughness and flair for the dramatic — give him one of the most unique complete packages. In addition to representing the ideal blend of arm and athleticism, he persevered to end his career with two Super Bowl victories after falling short in three other trips. That endurance is worthy of this ranking.

5. Peyton Manning

Manning isn’t the greatest QB in Colts history, and he isn’t the greatest QB in Broncos history. He isn’t even the greatest QB of his own era, as that title clearly belongs to Brady. Despite winning Super Bowls with two teams, his lackluster playoff record also hurts him. Although all of that keeps him below the four legends ahead of him, it’s difficult to justify putting him any lower than this. Manning walks away with statistical marks that may never be broken, and he established himself as the premier offensive coordinator on the field. He edges out a more championship-heavy Otto Graham, but is well ahead of the prolific passers he passed in the record books, Brett Favre and Dan Marino.

PHOTOS: Relive classic Brady vs. Manning battles

1. Tom Brady

There simply has never been a quarterback this excellent for so long, from beginning to end. Brady has played in 10 conference title games, won four Super Bowls in six trips, earned two regular-season MVPs and three Super Bowl MVPs (two of them 11 years apart), and he jumped out to a decisive edge against the other greatest quarterback of his era, Manning, when both were in their primes. Top five in most of the major career categories, Brady could still threaten Manning’s records.

2. Joe Montana

He’s the defining quarterback of his era who will go down as the first and greatest master of Bill Walsh’s revolutionary West Coast offense. Offenses tried to model themselves after the 49ers, but Montana was the piece no one could duplicate. Four Super Bowl wins in four tries, three Super Bowl MVPs, three regular-season MVPs — Montana played in a golden era for quarterbacks (Marino, Elway, Kelly) and was the biggest winner of them all.

3. Johnny Unitas

Unitas didn’t just have a great arm, and great legs, and great instincts, and great smarts, and great clutch ability, and great leadership — he was all of that years before his time. He was the blueprint for how to play quarterback then and for the next couple of decades. He retired as the leader in yards, touchdowns and TD passes in consecutive games, and with three championships and three MVPs.

4. Peyton Manning

Had he walked away after the four neck surgeries in 2011, his 13 years with the Colts would have put him in the conversation. His second act with the Broncos, especially his record-setting 2013 season, pushes him over the top. The purity of how he played in Indianapolis, though, made up the bulk of his career-best yardage and touchdown totals, and that’s where he won the Super Bowl that gave those records real meaning.

5. Brett Favre

Favre was the gunslinger’s gunslinger, and when he was on, he was near-impossible to beat. He was willing and able to make the biggest plays with his arm or legs (or both) at any time. The records Manning broke had belonged to him. If not for the terrible stretch in Green Bay before his late renaissance — and so, so, so many interceptions — he’d have reached the summit.

MORE: Quarterbacks who hung on too long

1. Tom Brady

So we can be clear on the absence of bias on my list, Brady is a quarterback who kept the team I’ve followed out of (at least) two Super Bowls — and I grew up across the river from Joe Montana and watched him play high school basketball. 

But Brady is the best ever.

Over the years it has not mattered a lot whom the Patriots placed around him. Troy Brown is not a Hall of Famer. David Givens and Deion Branch are not. Brady has played with only two genuinely transcendent receivers in all his time with the Pats: Randy Moss (for three seasons, perhaps only one of which was in his prime) and Rob Gronkowski (the past six seasons, two of which were compromised by injury). Brady has elevated all of them. He has been a full-time starting quarterback in 15 NFL seasons. He has missed the playoffs once. He never had produced a losing record. He has been to 10 conference championship games, six Super Bowls and four times has been World Champion. It’s possible there’s not anyone close.

2. Joe Montana

Montana’s subtle athleticism was the foundation upon which Bill Walsh built the West Coast Offense. Never known as a player with a rifle arm, Montana cut apart defenses with precision and completed 63.2 percent of his passes, leading the league in completion percentage five times, including at 70.2 percent in 1982, the sixth-best figure of all time. If Johnny Unitas changed football into a game in which downfield passing was a much more important element of success, Montana changed the paradigm again by excelling in Walsh’s scheme to control the ball with the passing game. Montana three times was Super Bowl MVP, the only player to win the award so often. He is one of three quarterbacks to win four Super Bowls. If there had never been a Tom Brady, Montana would still be the best of all time.

3. Johnny Unitas

Five times a first-team All-Pro, three times the NFL MVP, Unitas might be considered the first great passing quarterback ever to play. Consider that Unitas finished with 40,239 career passing yards. There are 17 other QBs who passed the 40k mark. Every one but Fran Tarkenton began his career after 1970. Dan Fouts, the third-oldest in the club literally started his career on the day Unitas’ ended, taking over for Johnny U after he made his final start in a road loss to Pittsburgh. When Unitas retired, Tarkenton had 33,248 yards, John Hadl had 28,946 and Y.A. Tittle had 33,070.
Essentially, there was no one close to him.

4. John Elway

It’s quite possible Elway was the most physically gifted person to play the position. His arm was among the best ever, and he was fast and mobile and perhaps the most famous play he ever made — at age 37, mind you — was a sprint in Super Bowl 32 on which he dove forward to assure a first down and was hit so hard he was spun like a helicopter. Top that, Peyton Manning. Elway played in five Super Bowls and won championships in his final two seasons, but unlike Manning, he went out playing still at an elite level. His final season: 59 percent completions, 22 touchdowns, 10 interceptions in 12 starts. Over his final three years, his teams were 35-8 when he played.

5. Peyton Manning

It took some effort to get him a second Super Bowl win. He played four seasons after major neck surgery, endured one of the worst beatings any runner-up ever experienced and then lost his starting job temporarily in 2016. He fought back, though, to lead the Broncos to a season-ending win over San Diego that clinched a No. 1 seed and then hard-won postseason victories over Pittsburgh, New England and Carolina.

Manning owned the most brilliant football mind of any modern quarterback, and owns so many of the key passing records, but his penchant from coming up short in the postseason cost him a spot higher on the list. He is tied for the third-most postseason wins of any QB but needed those three final wins just to push his record above .500. The only other player in the top 10 with less than a .600 winning percentage is Brett Favre.
Should it be about that? Some people say no. But it’s funny how the greatest quarterbacks mostly win those games.

MORE: All-time greatest QB rivalries

1. Joe Montana

It’s beyond the four Super Bowl wins, three Super Bowl MVPs and game-winning Super Bowl drive. In a loaded NFC with Chicago, New York and Washington, San Francisco won the most because of Montana. The storybook charm is streamed with endless vignettes, and for some reason the regular-season finale on Monday Night Football against Detroit in 1992 — the one where Montana returned from a near two-year absence to lead two second-half TD drives — still sticks out. He delivered that night, too. The best always do.

2. Tom Brady

Brady is the other four-time Super Bowl winner in this conversation, and he might have better credentials than Montana. It’s Brady’s remarkable consistency as a winner — he’s appeared in 10 conference championship games — that keeps him in this conversation despite Spygate, Deflategate or any other blip you want to put on his resume. Brady still has time to become the only five-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback, and he’ll get a few chances to do it.

3. John Elway

I popped in “The Drive” on a whim a few weeks ago. Elway’s passes still jump off the screen. Between that and the scrambling — he averaged 4.4 yards per carry for his career — you have the most-physically blessed quarterback next to maybe Cam Newton. Elway won the last two of five Super Bowls, but was better in those years where he put Denver on his back like that day at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

4. Peyton Manning

Manning dominated big-time football on the national stage for most of my adult life. For all the heat Manning took for his playoff record, he closed his career with a 14-13 record in the postseason. He battled with Brady in the greatest quarterback rivalry of all time, and he won the last few playoff rounds. He also set the gold standard for the greatest single-season for a quarterback of all time (5,477 yards, 55 TDs) at 37 years old.

5. Johnny Unitas

You could put any one of three Green Bay legends here — Bart Starr, Brett Favre or Aaron Rodgers (yes, Rodgers is that good) — in the wide-open No. 5 spot. But the nod goes to Unitas, who is the founding father of the modern quarterback. Unitas starred in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, also known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and that game helped make the NFL a priority in living rooms. Unitas owned the spotlight for 18 seasons. It still shines today.

MORE: How legendary QBs fared in first starts

1. Joe Montana

He a four-time Super Bowl champion who directed the 49ers’ dynasty of the 1980s. Joe Cool was impervious to pressure, as shown by his 31 fourth-quarter comebacks and his famous quote — "Isn't that John Candy?" — to his fellow 49ers in the huddle before leading the game-winning drive in Super Bowl XXIII. A great stat that helps separate him: 122 career passes in the Super Bowl without an interception (with 11 touchdowns and a 127.8 career rating in the big game). He has eight Pro Bowl selections and two MVP awards.

2. Tom Brady

This is a close call with Montana. Brady has played in 10 AFC title games, six Super Bowls and is a four-time champion. He’s a fierce leader and clutch player with such a quick release, and he always knows where to go with the ball. He hasn’t always had the greatest supporting cast, but he makes everyone around him better. He has 11 Pro Bowl selections and two MVP awards.

3. Peyton Manning

Manning, a five-time NFL MVP with 14 Pro Bowl selections, owns the record book in most career categories. He’s the ultimate cerebral quarterback and a great leader who truly was the proverbial coach on the field. He won a Super Bowl with the Colts and Broncos and lost one with each team. His drive to return to the NFL after multiple neck surgeries proved his phenomenal dedication and work ethic. His record 55 TD-pass season in 2013 was so prolific.

4. Johnny Unitas

Unitas is a three-time MVP, 10-time Pro Bowl selection and one of the first big-time passers in the NFL. He led the Colts to an OT win over the Giants in the famous 1958 NFL Championship Game that played a huge role in elevating the NFL as a television sport.

5. Brett Favre

With three MVP awards, 11 Pro Bowls and a Super Bowl, Favre holds or is in the top three of many career passing categories. The leader of the Packers played with tremendous passion and confidence to throw it into tight windows with his great arm strength.

MORE: 40-year-old club: Best performances by aged QBs