Best NFL Quarterbacks

The career leader in passing yards (89,214) and touchdown passes (649), with seven Super Bowl rings and five Super Bowl MVP awards. Three league MVPs and a title won in Tampa Bay at age 43 put real distance between him and the other multi-ring passers here.

Four trips to the Super Bowl produced four wins, three MVP awards in the game and zero interceptions on 122 attempts. The 92-yard drive to beat Cincinnati in Super Bowl XXIII, finished with a throw to John Taylor in the final minute, is the play his case rests on.

Named MVP of Super Bowls LIV, LVII and LVIII, a haul in that game topped only by Brady's five. His 2018 breakout produced 50 touchdown passes and 5,097 yards and earned him league MVP honors, an award he collected again in 2022.

Left the game in 2000 holding the career marks in completions (4,967), passing yards (61,361) and touchdowns (420). His 1984 MVP season broke both single-season records at 5,084 yards and 48 touchdowns, yet Miami lost Super Bowl XIX to Montana's 49ers and he never got back.

No player has won more than his five NFL MVP awards, and his 2013 season set single-season records of 55 touchdown passes and 5,477 yards. Manning finished with 539 career touchdowns and won titles with two franchises, Super Bowl XLI in Indianapolis and Super Bowl 50 in Denver.

Rodgers took MVP honors in 2011, 2014, 2020 and 2021, a total trailing only Manning's five, and his 122.5 passer rating in 2011 set the single-season record. He was MVP of Super Bowl XLV, though one ring across an 18-year Green Bay run is the standing argument against him among the champions here.

A record 297 consecutive regular-season starts, and the only player to win three straight MVP awards, in 1995, 1996 and 1997. Favre delivered Green Bay's first title in 29 years at Super Bowl XXXI and retired holding both the touchdown record at the time (508) and the interception record (336).

Started five Super Bowls and won the last two, taking MVP honors in Super Bowl XXXIII with 336 passing yards in what became his final game. The 98-yard march against Cleveland in the January 1987 AFC Championship, The Drive, framed a career built on late rallies.

The only quarterback with five 5,000-yard seasons, closing a 20-year career with 80,358 passing yards and 571 touchdowns. He completed 74.4 percent of his throws in 2018, the highest single-season rate in league history at the time, and was MVP of New Orleans' Super Bowl XLIV win.

Went 4-0 in Super Bowls with the 1970s Steelers and won MVP in the last two, including 318 yards and four touchdowns against Dallas in Super Bowl XIII. He added the 1978 league MVP, and no quarterback matched his four rings until Montana got there in January 1990.

Won the 1963 Heisman at Navy, served his military commitment, then led Dallas to titles in the 1971 and 1977 seasons and took Super Bowl VI MVP. He led the NFL in passing four times and retired after 1979 with an 83.4 passer rating, the best career figure in league history to that point.

The first great scrambler, and he retired after 1978 holding the career passing marks Marino later broke. Three Super Bowl trips in the 1973, 1974 and 1976 seasons brought three losses. Marino gets sympathy for the one shot that never came again; Tarkenton had three chances and could not land one, which is the fair reason to keep him under the champions.

Nobody has ever looked calmer running a late drive, and his overtime win in the 1958 title game is what put pro football on national television for good. His totals look small now because everything about his era suppressed passing. What actually dates the case is the ending, a fading final year in San Diego in 1973, long after the arm went.

He played for the championship in all ten of his professional seasons from 1946 through 1955 and won seven. The catch is that four of those titles came in the AAFC, where Cleveland was so far ahead of the league that the wins prove less than they should. The NFL half alone, three titles in the six seasons from 1950 to 1955, still clears most of the passers here.