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    <title>SB Nation User Blog:  WolfpackSteelersFan</title>
    <link>http://www.sbnation.com/users/WolfpackSteelersFan</link>
    <description>Posts made by WolfpackSteelersFan on SB Nation</description>
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      <title>ESPN - Team Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers - NFL</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/8/27/602498/espn-team-preview-pittsbur</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:03:04 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/preview08/team?team=pit"&gt;ESPN - Team Preview: Pittsburgh Steelers -&amp;nbsp;NFL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div class="description"&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know we've previewed the team probably much more in-depth than this site, but I thought I'd share it, in case anyone wanted one more site to preview the Steelers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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      <title>What's the best College Football Conference?</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/8/26/597909/what-s-the-best-college-fo</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:46:55 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Well, it's been a while since I posted any statistical analyses, but here's one I've been curious about researching for a couple of years. With excitement ramping up for the upcoming college football season, I thought it was the right time to post this analysis of how the top conferences stack up against each other.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;If any new BTSC readers enjoy this post, you may want to review my RB Analyses (&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/4/13/223331/650"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Part 1&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;nbsp;and &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/5/5/473086/another-analysis-of-top-rb"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Part 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;), &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/5/18/520032/quantitative-analysis-of-t"&gt;&lt;em&gt;WR Analysis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;, or &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/9/547973/quantitative-analysis-of-t"&gt;&lt;em&gt;QB Analysis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For years now, I've been hearing the SEC touted as the best college football conference, particularly by fans/alum of SEC schools. Being from an ACC school and spending the early part of my life in northwestern PA, I'm not one to just agree that the SEC is axiomatically the best conference without question. So, I wanted to research the conferences to see how each one really stacks up against another. Now, before I get into this, I'm going to say that I really wanted to get more details particularly about each conferences' non-conference schedule, but for the most part I'm forced to rely on a couple of ratings systems that I have found on the web, plus a few other websites with articles and statistics about how the conferences rate against each other.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;The majority of my analysis is based off of data that I got off of &lt;a href="http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin.htm"&gt;Jeff Sagarin's rating website&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://teamrankings.com/ncf/"&gt;Teamrankings.com&lt;/a&gt;, a website created by Mike Greenfield, as well as little bit of data pulled from &lt;a href="http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/stewart_mandel/08/11/conference.debate/index.html"&gt;this Stewart Mandel article on this very topic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;My basic approach here was to determine the overall conference rankings based on Sagarin's rating system and the system used at Teamrankings.com, and see how dominant or balanced the conferences have been. I was able to gather data for the last ten years from Sagarin's site, but only for the last seven years from Teamrankings' site. I also reviewed the relative values assigned to each conference for the years to determine if there was a large or small relative disparity between the conference values. For example, one year&amp;nbsp;the top&amp;nbsp;conference may have a large margin of superiority over the next best, while in another year, the top conference's margin may be much slimmer.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So, let's start looking at the data from Sagarin's and Teamrankings sites and then we'll take a look at Stewart Mandel's article and data. First, we'll look at the Sagarin data:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/22947/SagRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/22953/SagRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23405/SagRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23405/SagRanks_medium.JPG" alt="Sagranks_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sagarin Conference Overall Rankings by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/22956/SagRates.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23408/SagRates.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23408/SagRates_medium.JPG" alt="Sagrates_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sagarin Conference Rating Values by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Just a quick perusal of these tables indicates that the SEC has indeed lived up to its hype each of the last two years, finishing as the top conference each year, and also posting 2 of the 3 highest overall ratings values in the last ten years. However, the 8 years prior to 2006 indicate that the Conference relative strength has fluctuated between various different conferences. In fact, prior to 2006, three other conferences had finished at the top twice, which is twice as often as the SEC in that span. Also, the number of the ACC, Big 10, Big 12 and Pac-10 had finished in the top 3 was also right on par with the SEC in that span.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With that, let's take a look at the data from the Teamrankings website. First we'll look at the Overall Ratings just as with the Sagarin. Then, we'll take a look a conference Strength of Schedule and Non-League Rating (or rating versus their non-conference schedule).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23411/TRRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23411/TRRanks_medium.JPG" alt="Trranks_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com&amp;nbsp;Conference Overall Rankings by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23414/TRRates.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23414/TRRates_medium.JPG" alt="Trrates_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com Conference Ratings Values by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Looking at these tables, the SEC's argument appears even stronger, as&amp;nbsp;Teamrankings.com ranked them&amp;nbsp;the top conference for 4 out of the 7 years for which the data was available from the site. Unfortunately, we don't have the data from 1998-2000 to see if it also correlates with Sagarins' rankings. From looking over the data from both sources, there are some differences in the conference rankings, but, there are only&amp;nbsp;3 instances where the conference ranking differed by more than 2 between Sagarin and Teamrankings for a given year. There were 7 instances (out of a total 42) where the rankings differed by more than 1. So, with a couple of large discrepancies in 2002 and 2004, overall the rankings from both sets of data are consistent with each other. Based on this level of correlation, it seems safe to say that for at least two of the three years from 1998-2000, Teamrankings.com would have similar rankings as Sagarin. If that is the case, then we are again left to conclude that the SEC has been the dominant conference in the last two years, but prior to that, multiple conferences laid claim the title of the country's best football conference.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I didn't want to just look at overall rankings, because, I believe that what really determines relative strength between conferences is their non-conference strength of schedule and how they fair against that competition. Sagarin did not have that data broken out at all, and Teamrankings.com only had overall strength of schedule and non-conference Ratings. I was hoping to get to compare actuall non-conference strength of schedules, but I decided that this would have to do. So, here are the rankings and ratings values of each conferences overall strength of schedule and non-league&amp;nbsp;(or non-conference)&amp;nbsp;rating.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23594/TRSOSRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23594/TRSOSRanks_medium.JPG" alt="Trsosranks_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com Conference Strength of Schedule Rankings by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23597/TRSOSValues.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23597/TRSOSValues_medium.JPG" alt="Trsosvalues_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com Conference Strength of Schedule&amp;nbsp;Values by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23603/TRNLeagRanks.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23603/TRNLeagRanks_medium.JPG" alt="Trnleagranks_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com Conference Non-League Rankings by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23606/TRNLeagValues.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23606/TRNLeagValues_medium.JPG" alt="Trnleagvalues_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teamrankings.com Conference Non-League Ratings Values&amp;nbsp;by Year&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;Looking at these numbers, what do they really tell us. While the SEC has the highest non-league rating 4 out of 7 years, it only has the strongest overall strength of schedule in one of those years (2nd in the other 3). Here is where it would be really nice to know exactly how the nonconference strength of schedules stack up. And that is where the data that I pulled from the Stewart Mandel article comes in. In his article, which I would recommend reading BTW, he looks at various different values to determine relative rank between the conferences. But, in my opinion, the best to measure each conference is through their non-conference results. So, from all of the measures that Mandel used, I pulled his Non-Conference RPI values for each conference and put it into a table format, shown below.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23609/SIMandelNonConfRPITable.JPG" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/23609/SIMandelNonConfRPITable_medium.JPG" alt="Simandelnonconfrpitable_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nonconference RPI Values from Stewart Mandel article&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, he did not break out his data year by year, so there we can't do a direct comparison, but this data is still worthwhile. According to this data, the Pac 10 has consisently, for the last 10 years played the toughest competition outside of their conference. For the years 1998-2003, the Big Ten and ACC both had better results against better competition than then SEC. Since then, both conferences have dropped in their non-conference achievements, being passed by the SEC and Big 12.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After looking at all of this data, what can we conclude with certainty? I would argue that the only thing we can really conclude is that the SEC has been the dominant conference for the last two years. However, prior to that, they were ranked 5th or 6th for the years 2004 and 2005 in both Sagarin and Teamrankings.com. And, going back to the 6 years before that, they were consisently a top 3 conference (certainly more consisently than any other conference). No&amp;nbsp;conference really stood out as being dominant for any stretch between 1998 and 2005. According to&amp;nbsp;Mandel's article, the Big 10 was the best conference from 1998-2003. But, according to the Sagarin data, the Big 12 did better, ranked in the top 2 for 4 out of the 5 years, while the Big 10 dipped as low as 5.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So, again, after looking at all of this data, the only thing really clear is that prior to 2006, conference strengths were pretty cyclical.&amp;nbsp;In fact, the only conference that had very little change in their ranking was the Big East, who finished in last place every year until 2006.&amp;nbsp;In the last two years, the SEC as clearly dominated, moreso than any other conference at any point&amp;nbsp;in the past 10 years. And, that is probably to be expected when, according to Mandel's article&amp;nbsp;their coaches' salaries have risen an average of 75% in the last five years. The average salary in the SEC is now $1.85 million, with 3 coaches making more than $3 million/year. So, for the foreseeable future it appears that the SECs recent dominance will continue.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;With that said, I will say that, if you meet an SEC fan who tells you it's always been that way, you can know from multiple sources, that's just not the case. And if the Big 10 and Big 12, which were the dominant conferences not even a decade ago, start paying big money for the best coaches, they may catch up quite quickly.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Well, any thoughts? Hopefully, all of the tables are not too much data to digest all at once.&lt;/p&gt;
  


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      <title>ESPN Readers vote Terry Bradshaw best Steeler ever</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/8/20/597651/espn-readers-vote-terry-br</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:27:06 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;p&gt;I was just checking out some finals on &lt;a href="http://espn.go.com/"&gt;ESPN.com&lt;/a&gt;, when I stumbled upon &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3538393"&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, showing how voters chose the best players of each NFL franchise's history. I was actually just going to throw it up as a FanShot, but then I stumbled on &lt;a href="http://www.hogshaven.com/2008/8/19/596689/darrell-green-is-the-peopl"&gt;this excellent entry &lt;/a&gt;at &lt;a href="http://www.hogshaven.com/"&gt;Hogs Haven&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;discussing the Redskins' choice in this very poll, so I decided to write up a FanPost on the Steelers' choice, as well as throw out some other points of interest (to me at least).&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Before I get into the Steelers' choice, I wanted to point out that the Ravens' choice for greatest player ever was Matt Stover. Apparently, he's a great kicker, but how was he even on the list? Anyway, if I had to guess, it would be that Browns fans highjacked this poll to annoy Ravens fans. Or maybe they just love Stover more than Ray Ray.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Anyway, on to the Steelers choice. As my title already gave away, the Steelers' choice for greatest player of all time was Terry Bradshaw. The other choices in the poll were Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Franco Harris, Jerome Bettis, Mike Webster, Lynn Swann, Jam Ham, Mel Blount&amp;nbsp;and John Stallworth, ranked in that order. First of all, I love Terry, but I would have had to vote for Joe Greene. Everyone that I've read or heard discussing the building of that 70's dynasty always points to Greene first, from Chuck Noll to Dan Rooney to Terry Bradshaw himself. In his autobiography from the 80's, Terry called Greene "the cornerstone of a dynasty." IIRC, that was the title of the Joe Greene section&amp;nbsp;from the chapter on their dynasty. Without his domination in the first two SBs, the Steelers probably don't win them, certainly not that first one. Bradshaw also said that winning that first SB gave him the confidence that he needed to perform so well in the following SBs.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I'm also surprised that the poll&amp;nbsp;did not include Hines Ward, since he owns every&amp;nbsp;receiving record for the team, or Ernie Stautner, the only player whose number is officially retired. Anyway, I thought I'd include our own poll here at BTSC to see how it lines up with the ESPN&amp;nbsp;version. I'm including Ward and Stautner, too. Let me know your thoughts on this as well.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
  


 	&lt;fieldset class="poll-box"&gt;
  &lt;legend&gt;Poll&lt;/legend&gt; 
  &lt;h5 class="poll-title"&gt;Who do you think is the greatest Steeler of all time?&lt;/h5&gt;
  
      
&lt;div id="poll_container_28664_641868241"&gt;
&lt;form action="/polls/vote/28664?container_id=poll_container_28664_641868241" method="post" onsubmit="new Ajax.Request('/polls/vote/28664?container_id=poll_container_28664_641868241', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true, parameters:Form.serialize(this)}); return false;"&gt;
&lt;ul class="poll-list clearfix"&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141044" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141044" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Terry Bradshaw&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141045" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141045" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Joe Greene&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141046" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141046" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Jack Lambert&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141047" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141047" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Franco Harris&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141048" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141048" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Jerome Bettis&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141049" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141049" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Mike Webster&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141050" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141050" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Lynn Swann&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141051" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141051" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Jack Ham&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141052" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141052" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Mel Blount&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141053" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141053" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;John Stallworth&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141054" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141054" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Ernie Stautner&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

    &lt;li class="clearfix"&gt;&lt;span class="radio"&gt;&lt;input id="poll_option_141055" name="poll_option" type="radio" value="141055" /&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;span class="option"&gt;Hines Ward&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p class="poll-vote-submit"&gt;&lt;input class="button" name="commit" type="submit" value="Vote!" /&gt; &amp;nbsp;  80 votes | &lt;a href="#" onclick="new Ajax.Request('/polls/results/28664?container_id=poll_container_28664_641868241', {asynchronous:true, evalScripts:true}); return false;"&gt;Results&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/form&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
  
&lt;/fieldset&gt;

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      <title>Top 10 Rivalries in NFL History (Steelers in two of them) </title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/8/14/593933/http-www-nfl-com-videos-vi</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Thu, 14 Aug 2008 21:47:19 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;blockquote&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Top 10 Rivalries in NFL History (Steelers in two of them) &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  
&lt;div class="source"&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.nfl.com/videos?videoId=09000d5d808afc6a&amp;campaign=ec0009"&gt;NFL Video Galleries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
      </description>
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    <item>
      <title>A Few Thoughts on the NFLN's Show: Top 10 Super Bowl Performances</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/26/559284/a-few-thoughts-on-the-nfln</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:36:05 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;p&gt;I don't know if anyone else saw the NFL Network show on the Top 10 SB Performances, but I caught it this past Tuesday night and there were a couple of things that I wanted throw out there on BTSC and hear the community's thoughts. These are mainly random thoughts, so I apologize in advance if it's kind of scattered.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;First, Lynn Swann's SB X performance was ranked number 5, which was the only Steeler performance. This got criticism from some on the show because he "only had 4 catches." Considering the style of game at the time, and the fact that 2 of the 4 catches are considered among the greatest feats of grace and athleticism in NFL history, I think his performance is deserving of top 10, even top 5, recognition.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Joe Namath's performance in SB III&amp;nbsp;was ranked 8th. Again, there were the haters who said his stats were very average (even below average), but I thought this deserved to be included. Sure, as games go, this was probably one of the most boring SBs to watch, but this was the greatest upset ever. The historical significance and&amp;nbsp;the pressure of Namath's guarantee should certainly be factored into his performance in the game. But, here was the clincher for me. QB's still called their own plays back then, and Namath directed that game to victory. They also pointed out that Namath was the kind of guy who loved to sling it all over the field, but in this game, he put aside his ego and called his halfback's number more often than not.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;For anyone that was watching, I don't know if you noticed, but Terrence Moore's commentary was the most annoying throughout the show, at least to me. Tim Curran's smarmy looks were up there, too.&amp;nbsp;One thing that was particularly questionable to me was the inconsistency that he showed. He called Timmy Smith's performance (ranked 6th, I believe)&amp;nbsp;in SB XXII&amp;nbsp;the biggest fluke ever. Then, he called Doug Williams' performance (their top pick)&amp;nbsp;in the same game the greatest SB performance ever, without question, and not even close. Both were great performances by backups. The only real difference that I can see is that Williams had been a starter in the past, while Smith was a rookie, but neither ever really did anything else after that game. So, how is Smith a fluke, while Williams, who surely benefited from Smith's running and the Hogs' blocking, is the greatest SB performance ever? Why is Williams not just as big a fluke? He didn't start most of that season. Personally, I don't think either is a fluke, just great performances on the biggest stage. Maybe they didn't do much afterward, but nobody can take that day from them.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;I don't remember all of the top 10, and their website doesn't have them listed. I do remember they had Jerry Rice's SB XXIII performance at 10, Steve Young's 6TD passes was in there (2 or 3?), Marcus Allen in SB XIX, John Riggins in SB XVIII, Vinatieri's two game-winning FGs was ranked 4, and I can't remember the last one. Maybe Larry Csonka in SB VII.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;I was a little surprised that Franco's performance in SB IX didn't get any love. I don't think it was even included in the "Best of the Rest."&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Well, that's pretty much it.&amp;nbsp;Those were some things that I found interesting about the show. Particularly, I was curious whether you at BTSC agree or disagree with me on Namath and what I saw as the inconsistency in how Terrence Moore treated Smith and Williams. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;

  
  


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      <title>ESPN - Steelers have a lot of options on offense - NFL</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/26/559274/espn-steelers-have-a-lot-o</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:25:11 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=walker_james&amp;id=3458639"&gt;ESPN - Steelers have a lot of options on offense -&amp;nbsp;NFL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div class="description"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another Steelers preview. Not much new, but worth filling in the dead sports time in midsummer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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      <title>Rookies get tour of HOF</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/17/553661/rookies-get-tour-of-hof</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:33:20 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;p&gt;The NFL has decided to give all incoming rookies a tour of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The idea is to give them a sense of what they may be playing for, and hopefully turn the tide of recent incidents involving the likes of Odell Thurman, Chris Henry, Michael Vick, and Pacman Jones.&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;Since I am interested in history (NFL and otherwise), when I came across &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/columns/story?columnist=walker_james&amp;amp;id=3443225"&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;I thought it was pretty interesting. As much as I generally dislike Michael Irvin, I have to admit that this is a great idea. Some of you may have seen his HOF induction speech, and in it he described being passed over for the Hall the previous year. He believed a main reason was his off the field issues, like getting arrested in a hotel room with 2 strippers and cocaine. But, he used it as an example for his children, telling them that there are consequences when you do something wrong. So, apparently, he has decided to do something to improve the conduct of the young players coming into the league. Here is what Irvin said about his idea.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"When I was inducted into the Hall, I told the commissioner that guys coming out of college don't appreciate the game," said Irvin, who went through the tour with Cowboys rookies on Friday. "They don't have an understanding of the game's history. They've been playing football to get away from their history.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"So I told Commissioner [Roger] Goodell that the first thing he should do is bring them here and give them a sense of history. It's impossible to go there and not come away with something."&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I can definitely see something like this helping out "at risk" players. From what I can tell, all of the players quoted were considered high character anyway, but the response was definitely positive.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;[Matt] Ryan was ecstatic to see game-worn artifacts of his favorite player: former &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/clubhouse?team=gnb"&gt;Green Bay Packers&lt;/a&gt; quarterback &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?statsId=1025"&gt;Brett Favre&lt;/a&gt;. Falcons offensive lineman &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?statsId=8798"&gt;Sam Baker&lt;/a&gt;, who grew up with Jackie Slater's son, took a picture next to the enshrinement statue for Slater, a star for the Rams. Dolphins quarterback &lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?statsId=8834"&gt;Chad Henne&lt;/a&gt; did the same with the bust of fellow Pennsylvania native Dan Marino, and Long took pictures next to the replica of former offensive lineman Dan Dierdorf.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;"[Dierdorf is] a legend at Michigan and a legend in the league," said [Jake] Long, a Michigan alum. "And being able to see him here is pretty cool."&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Who know? If Vick had seen the HOF, would he have decided to risk it all on dog-fighting? Maybe, maybe not. But hopefully, seeing&amp;nbsp;a glimpse of how you could be remembered will have a positive impact on some of the these young guys. The league hasn't decided if it will be a one time thing, but I suspect the NFL will continue it, kind of like how the SB being played in February and starting the season on Thursday night have become traditions.&lt;/p&gt;
  


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      <title>ESPN - Asteroid named in honor of former Steelers announcer Cope - NFL</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/17/553613/espn-asteroid-named-in-hon</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:13:44 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3439936"&gt;ESPN - Asteroid named in honor of former Steelers announcer Cope -&amp;nbsp;NFL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div class="description"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just came across this on ESPN.com. I thought you might be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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      <title>Pittsburgh Steelers (1933-Present)</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/13/551554/pittsburgh-steelers-1933-p</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:55:27 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/nfl/pitt/steelers.html"&gt;Pittsburgh Steelers&amp;nbsp;(1933-Present)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;div class="description"&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's a cool little site that I stumbled on. I haven't looked through it all, but thought I'd put it up for everyone to see.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
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      <title>Quantitative Analysis of the Greatest QBs in NFL History</title>
      <link>http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/6/9/547973/quantitative-analysis-of-t</link>
      <author>WolfpackSteelersFan</author>
      <pubDate>Sun, 08 Jun 2008 01:21:19 -0000</pubDate>
      <description type="html">
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WolfPackSteelersFan&lt;/strong&gt; continues to impress with his exhaustively thorough research and ideas for interpreting the statistical greatness of players by position in different eras. I think one would be hard pressed to find all this nifty and informative data consolidated in one place on the internet. &lt;strong&gt;BehindtheSteelCurtain&lt;/strong&gt; is blessed to have him in its community. Click through for some oustanding data compiling, objective interpretation, and accessible writing. Enjoy. -&lt;em&gt;Blitz-&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;*************************&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;So far I've analyzed the top RBs in NFL History &lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/4/13/223331/650"&gt;here (Part 1)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/5/5/473086/another-analysis-of-top-rb"&gt;here (Part 2)&lt;/a&gt;, and I've looked at the top &lt;a href="http://www.behindthesteelcurtain.com/2008/5/18/520032/quantitative-analysis-of-t"&gt;WRs in NFL History&lt;/a&gt;. So, I have decided to turn my attention to the top QBs in NFL history.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;

  &lt;p&gt;For each of these analyses, I have gotten my raw data from &lt;a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/leaders/"&gt;Pro-Football-Reference.com's leader boards&lt;/a&gt;. If you take a look at that site, you will see that there are many more statistics for the QBs than for RBs or WRs. So, I had a lot more data to work with and more players to analyze. As with the WRs analysis, I started by pulling the data for players in the top 10 of every statistical category, which gave me a total of 63 QBs. But then, once I had done that, I saw that there were players that clearly should not be included in the analysis. Take, for example, Jim Miller, who played from 1995 to 2002. He played a total of 8 years, but only appeared in 37 of a possible 128 games, starting 27 of them. So, I decided I had to weed out some players.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I&amp;nbsp;filtered out&amp;nbsp;any QB who played since 1980 with fewer than 2000 yards per season. I figured that if they played in the modern era and had production that low, they likely spent a significant amount of time as a backup. This eliminated players such as Rich Gannon, Mark Rypien&amp;nbsp;and Neal O'Donnell,&amp;nbsp;all of whom started Super Bowls (Rypien winning his).&amp;nbsp;Despite the SB experience,&amp;nbsp;each were backups for as much as half of their careers. It also eliminated some promising new starters: Philip Rivers, Tony Romo, and David Garrard. In&amp;nbsp;these cases, they have not been starters long enough to establish themselves as one of the historical greats. Overall, the&amp;nbsp;weeding out process eliminated 13 of players.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At that point, I began looking at the data and realized that it would be necessary to break this analysis up into two parts: Modern Era (ME) and Old School (OS). Since the passing games were so different between these two eras,&amp;nbsp;it seemed to me that comparing players from the 40s, 50s and 60s with those&amp;nbsp;from the 80s and 90s&amp;nbsp;would not really be an accurate comparison. The older players had much lower completion percentages and yards/season or game, but also much higher yards/attempt than the Modern Era QBs. So I broke up the list into players that played before 1978&amp;nbsp;and since 1978. This seemed to be the logical break point since that is the year that major rules changes began to aid the passing game. However, I decided&amp;nbsp;to include Johnny Unitas and Fran Tarkenton in the Modern Era analysis because, of those QBs that played their entire career before the rule changes, they were the only two in the top 11 in career passing yards.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As with the previous analyses, I have tried to look at these players in terms of what they did in a per game and per attempt&amp;nbsp;basis. But, because of the fact that there were so many other statistics available, I also included yards per season and career completion percentage in the analysis. I thought these were important to include because QBs are so often judged in a given year based on these statistics.&amp;nbsp;Below are the categories that I used to analyze these players:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yards/Season&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Completions/Game&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Completion Percentage&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yards/Game&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Touchdowns/Game&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Touchdown Percentage (TDs/Attempt x 100)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yards/Attempt&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Yards/Completion&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Passer Rating&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Net Yards/Attempt (Incorporates Sack Yards lost) - Not used for OS&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sack Percentage (Sacks/Attempt x 100) - Not used for OS&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Sacks/Game - Not used for OS&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Interceptions/Game&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Interception Percentage (Interceptions/Attempt x 100)&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As noted, I did not use the sack statistics to analyze the Old School players, because they did not keep sack statistics during the careers of most of those players. Also, as with the Fumbles/Game in previous analyses, I ranked those with fewer sacks and interceptions higher.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Enough introduction; let's get into the analysis. First, we will review the Old School players, then the Modern Era.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The table below&amp;nbsp;shows the Old School players, with their statistics.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9432/OldSchoolQBData.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9432/OldSchoolQBData_medium.JPG" alt="Oldschoolqbdata_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Click to Enlarge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;As with the previous analyses, I sorted these players and ranked them in each category. The results are shown in the table below.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9468/OldSchoolQBSortedRank.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9468/OldSchoolQBSortedRank_medium.JPG" alt="Oldschoolqbsortedrank_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Click to Enlarge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And, here is the table showing the aggregate ranking of players that were analyzed. The rankings were calculated by taking summing the rankings of each player and dividing by the number of categories (in this analysis, that number is 11).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9438/OldSchoolQBOverallRank.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9438/OldSchoolQBOverallRank_medium.JPG" alt="Oldschoolqboverallrank_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;What do you know? Another old Cleveland Brown at the top of the list! I guess that will make kwoop and bereadawg happy. Man, they were loaded their first 20 years! Otto Graham is in the top 6 in every category except Interceptions/Game. Fran Tarkenton is ranked number 1 in the most categories (5), but he's hurt by his relatively low ranking in Touchdown Percentage, Yards/Attempt, Yards/Completion, and Interceptions/Game (all 17 or lower). I expected Unitas and Tarkenton to dominate this analysis, but I was surprised. Given that Otto Graham also won several championships, I guess it's safe to say that he was the greatest quarterback of his era.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that we've looked at the Old School, let's take a look at the data for Modern Era QBs. This will, of course follow the same pattern as the Old School players. Here is the statistical data for the Modern Era players.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9471/ModernQBData.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9471/ModernQBData_medium.JPG" alt="Modernqbdata_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Click to Enlarge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The Modern Era analysis contained the sack statistics that I mentioned were left out of the Old School analysis. That game me 14 categories, which made the table too long to be able to read, even by clicking it to enlarge the image. So, I have broken it down into two images, which are shown below.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9480/ModernQBSortedRank1.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9480/ModernQBSortedRank1_medium.JPG" alt="Modernqbsortedrank1_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9483/ModernQBSortedRank2.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9483/ModernQBSortedRank2_medium.JPG" alt="Modernqbsortedrank2_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br id="1212965165125" /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Click Either to Enlarge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;And, again, the table with the aggregate ranking of the Modern Era Quarterbacks is shown below.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9477/ModernQBOverallRank.JPG"&gt;&lt;img class="photo" src="http://assets.sbnation.com:/assets/9477/ModernQBOverallRank_medium.JPG" alt="Modernqboverallrank_medium" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;For the Modern Era analysis, Peyton Manning is the pretty clear number 1. He in the top 3 in 9 of the 14 categories,&amp;nbsp;top 5 in 11 of the 14 categories, and he's in the top half of 2 of the other 3 categories. His lowest ranking is 14, for yards/completion. By comparison, Johnny Unitas is ranked number 1 in more categories (4), but is in the bottom 5 in half of the categories.&amp;nbsp; Dan Marino, ranked second in this analysis, is in the top 5 in 6 of the 14 categories,&amp;nbsp;and he is also in the top half of 12 of the categories. Carson Palmer is ranked in the top 5 in 5 of the 14 categories and the top half in 11 of the categories.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;After reviewing these two analyses, Otto Graham and Peyton Manning actually have a greater gap in overall ranking&amp;nbsp;than Jim Brown and his next closest competitor, Ladainian Tomlinson. Since Graham's career, and those of his&amp;nbsp;era, are all over, we can say more surely that he was the greatest QB of his time. Peyton Manning is still playing, and therefore may drop in production and hurt his rankings. But, up to this point in his career, he has&amp;nbsp;clearly been the most&amp;nbsp;productive QB of the Modern Era, at least in the regular season.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Again, here are a&amp;nbsp;few points of interest that I wanted to highlight before wrapping up this post:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Our own Big Ben ranked number 1 in two categories, and was in the top 10 in 8 of the categories. Unfortunately, as we know, he's been sacked a lot, and his ranking in the sack categories reflect that.&amp;nbsp;But, overall, as a player&amp;nbsp;entering the prime of his career, he stacks up favorably with some of the historic greats. His overall average ranking puts him at number 9 in the Modern Era analysis, with an average ranking of 12.21. As we've&amp;nbsp;discussed here before, he looks like he could be a future HOFer.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Just a few highlights to differentiate the game before 1978 and after: 
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;None of the OS QBs&amp;nbsp;had more than 15 completions/game, most less than 10.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Only 4 in the ME analysis had fewer than 15 completions/game. Tarkenton and Unitas, I included just to see how they measured up. The other two were Dave Krieg, who started many years, but also was a back for a few years, and Jim Hart, who probably should have been in the old school analysis, since he played 13 of his 19 years before 1978.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Most of&amp;nbsp;OS QBs&amp;nbsp;had a completion percentage under 55 (all but 8).&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Over half of the&amp;nbsp;ME QBs had a completion percentage over 60.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;No OS QB&amp;nbsp;averaged more than 200 yards/game, most less than 150.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Over 3/4 of the ME QBs averaged more than 200 yards/game, a handful over 250.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;All but 3 OS QBs average more than 13 yards/completion, more than half average more than 14 yard/completion.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;All but 3 ME QBs average less than 13 yards/completion.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Most OS QBs had passer ratings below 80.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;All but 6 ME QBs had passer ratings above 80, with 7 of them above 90.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Nearly half of OS average less than 1 TD/game, but&amp;nbsp;nearly half also&amp;nbsp;had a TD percentage of 6 or greater.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;All of the ME QBs average more than 1 TD/game, but none have a TD percentage as high as 6.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;So, the game went from few passes, usually deep bombs, to a lot of passes, generally shorter and higher percentage, which most of us already knew, I guess.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;In some ways, this analysis&amp;nbsp;is also&amp;nbsp;an analysis of the transition that the NFL made from a primarily running league to a primarily passing league. As I already said, I really kind of expected Johnny Unitas and Fran Tarkenton to dominate the Old School analysis. Mainly, this was&amp;nbsp;because they were so high on the all time passing yardage list. However, considering how well they did in both analyses, it's safe to say that both were certainly great QBs. They also played during a type of transition period, and it's likely that their passing and the excitement that it could create is why the league wanted to become more of a passing league. However, of the one QB that dominated either analysis, Otto Graham has by far the most championships.&amp;nbsp;Unitas won 3, Tarkenton 0, and Manning 1, so far. Depending on the source, Otto Graham has won 7 or 8 football championships, and I believe he had a little help from a guy named Marion Motley. So, then, just as now, an overall balanced team is more likely to win a championship than the team with Superman at QB.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Well, I think that's it for this one. What do you guys think? Any other data that should have been included?&lt;/p&gt;
  


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