Many people have heard of the old commercial that asked the question “How many licks does it take to get to the center of;(well, you know)” But we have our own question that has us just as curious, How many yards in one season does it take for a quarterback to be called elite?
That is the question looming for Arizona Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer who was said to not be an elite passer by many critics, but another saying that proves this to be a false statement is that “the numbers don’t lie” and Palmer is right in the midst of any other prolific passer in NFL history.
To make this determination one would have to go back in history and look at the great passers of the past to the present and looking at the offenses that had systems that allowed the QB to throw for a lot of yards.
Examples being the Air Coryell Chargers lead by Dan Fouts, the Miami Dolphins of 1984 lead by Dan Marino, the run-and-shoot offense by the Houston Oilers and Warren Moon. Buffalo Bills and Jim Kelly s K-gun, and the greatest show on turf with Kurt Warner and the Rams, and finally the New Orleans Saints high octane offense since 2007.
Those are just to name a few, and every one of these offenses utilized the pass as its primary attack.
There have only been five quarterbacks in NFL history to ever reach 5,000 or more yards in one season, Drew Brees has reached that mark four times and everyone else on the list including Peyton Manning (the all-time leader) did it only once.
So 5,000 cannot be the marker to set for elite quarterbacks as that number is set so high that those that surpass it could be headed to Canton some day(Mathew Stafford still in question) but the point here is that 5,000 yards is superstar status.
So the next number would have to be the 4,000 yard mark, and many quarterbacks have surpassed this mark in NFL history, but the difference between the elite and the non-elite is how many times that passer has passed this accomplishment.
Stay tuned for part two of this article as we go into the passers that have accomplished this feat several times and you will be surprised at the hall-of- famers that have not reached this milestone.
