Chiefs at Panthers - Week 5 - Record: 1-4

Ahh, back to reality. In fact, I think last weekend’s win against the Broncos was a dream. It had to be, looking at this pitiful effort. But then again, the AFC West as a whole is purely awful. Is it possible this could be the year when the division title goes to a 6-10 team, thoroughly embarrassing every other team in the AFC, all of which will have gone 9-7 or better?

That team won’t be the Chiefs by any means. So instead of asking for Carl Peterson’s head or whining about the offensive line for the 57-thousandth time, I’m going to proceed with a gluttonous feasting on reality, no matter how hard to swallow. This will be painful, but hey, no pain no gain.

Here’s the truth of the matter.

If the Chiefs don’t get cracking and put on the field a Super Bowl caliber future Hall-of-Fame quarterback, fughedaboudit. That’s about all you need to know. That one word.

Fughedaboudit.

Sorry, but I’m in this to see the Chiefs win the Super Bowl. I’m not in it to watch them play hard by-golly-gosh-whizzaroo, or to see them prance around in the playoffs, or especially to endure their 38th straight rebuilding year.

If they aren’t winning Super Bowls, fughedaboudit.

And the key to winning Super Bowls is to have a great great great quarterback. No, it is not to have a great great quarterback, or to have even a great quarterback, but a great-times-three quarterback. And to show you that I’m not just talking out of my butt, I went to the trouble of identifying every single quarterback who has won Super Bowls for their teams, and then looking as objectively as I could at each one and their skills.

There have been 27 Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks over 42 such games, and for each one I rated them on a scale from 1 to 10. I think my ratings are quite reasonable, and I believe any quibble with them would be about ratings very close around that range, meaning some may think such-and-such is a 7 when I gave them a 6.

Here are my findings, and these are truly not surprising, but they are indeed quite telling. In 21 of the 42 Super Bowls, winning teams fielded quarterbacks who were a 10. That is 10, as in not only Hall-of-Fame quality but One-of-the-Greatest-Ever Hall-of-Fame quality.

21.

I’ll write it out so you can see it more clearly: Twenty-one. That’s a full half of them.

Yes, of course--who were the quarterbacks? They were, in alphabetical order (along with the number of Super Bowl victories they called): Troy Aikman (3), Terry Bradshaw (4), Tom Brady (3), John Elway (2), Brett Favre (1), Joe Montana (4), Roger Staubach (2), John Unitas (1), and Steve Young (1). 21 total Super Bowl wins among them.

This is not to mention the handful of Super Bowl losses they quarterbacked, nor does it include the 10’s from the ranks those who’d never won a Super Bowl, and by my ratings those were Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, and Fran Tarkenton.

To give you an idea of my rating considerations, here were the all the others (* still active with chance to get better consideration as of 2008).

9: (Hall-of-Fame great but not the greatest) Len Dawson, Peyton Manning*, Jim Plunkett, Phil Simms, Bart Starr. 7 total Super Bowl wins.

8: (Near great) Joe Namath, Kurt Warner. 2 total wins.

7: (Very good) Ben Roethlisberger*, Jim McMahon, Ken Stabler. 3 total wins.

6: (Good) Bob Griese, Eli Manning*, Joe Theismann, Mark Rypien, Doug Williams. 6 total wins.

5: (Average) Brad Johnson. 1 total win.

4: (Fair) Trent Dilfer, Jeff Hostetler. 2 total wins.

3: (Poor) No one

2: (Dirt poor) No one

1: (Worthless) No one

Certainly some may argue with calling a quarterback like Trent Dilfer even fair, or going so far as to believe Kurt Warner was in the "near great" category, but that’s cool. Opinions may vary.

The point in all of this is a simple one.

A team that does not have one of the greatest quarterbacks ever literally has a mere 50% chance of winning the Super Bowl. This should be sobering. You could have a team filled with Hall-of-Famers at every other position, but if your quarterback stinks, let me introduce you to the word again: fughedaboudit.

Indeed look at the two guys there in the fair category. And look at the Super Bowls they won.

In 1990 the New York Giants had an awesome offensive line and a quick bruising back in Ottis Anderson. Jeff Hostetler played because Phil Simms (a 9 there if you didn’t catch it, the guy who pretty much got the team there to begin with) was simply too injured to go. Without Simms, the Giants eeked into the Super Bowl when 49ers back Roger Craig fumbled trying to run out the clock in the NFC title game, allowing them to kick a gimme game-winning field goal. In the Super Bowl itself, the Giants rode their line and Anderson to a razor-thin 20-19 win, with great help--it should be added--from Bills defenders who refused to tackle Mark Ingram allowing him to get a critical first down, and the Bills kicker who missed a very makeable field goal in the last seconds.

In 2000 the Baltimore Ravens were able to have Trent Dilfer run the offense because they had a phenomenal back in Jamal Lewis and had an impenetrable defense led by Ray Lewis. In the Super Bowl they got a critical momentum shifter from yet another Lewis, Jermaine, who ran back a kick for a touchdown after the Giants had just done the same. And then there was Dilfer himself, who started the whole thing by throwing one key pass for a touchdown, just one, and that was all that defense needed.

Every other team here needed that super duper Super Bowl quarterback. Every one of them. Someone might argue that these guys were in the Super Bowl because they were already great and that’s why they were there anyway.

Precisely the point.

Think about it this way. Do the same thing with running backs. Go ahead, look. You'd see gobs and gobs of Super Bowl winning teams with mediocre or worse backs. You'd think the guy running the ball the most would be so important, but, well, he isn't. Compared to the QB, the RB is light years less important.

And what about the 2008 Chiefs? Let’s see, about how far do you think they are away from having the kind of quarterback that's required out there leading the charge? About 57 bazillion light years? No, that’s too close, I know. Sorry. I mean, yeah, to be only 57 bazillion light years from having that guy would be wuhnn-derful. As it is…

Okay, enough with the silly hyperbole.

It just kills me to see what I do happen to see throughout the NFL, virtually every other team with at least some guy in there, being the go-to-guy, being the guy they drafted and are wisely developing, getting snaps, getting experience, getting the chance to be that super quarterback. Of course not every team has that. The point is

The Chiefs need to be a team that does have him.

Right now we're only a smattering of games beyond our attempt to run the option with Marques Hagans--whimper...

Is it just our destiny that we can never develop our own guy to be super? You do know, of course, that we never have. Never ever. Len Dawson, Joe Montana, Elvis Grbac, Trent Green, all of them pick-ups from other teams or from somewhere not-the-Chiefs. Our feeble attempts at drafting and building a studly play-maker (can you say Todd Blackledge?) have been disastrous. Every single crappy one of them.

Oh yeah there’s always hope for someone like Brodie Croyle. I do have hope, but with Croyle--sigh... I just don’t see it, not at all. I always hope I’m wrong with this. It’s not like I don’t want him to surprise us all.

But if Croyle doesn’t work out, why would anyone think this Chiefs front office should continue its ineptitude? And I promised I wouldn’t say anything about Carl Peterson. Hey…

Fughedaboudit.
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