Thread by @AdamHarstad

Joe Namath's rookie contract was the largest in professional football history. Not among rookies, among everyone.

His knees were so messed up that the military gave him deferred service. He used to have to get them drained during halftime so he could finish games.

Despite this, Namath made the pro bowl in his 1965, his first season, and was named Rookie of the Year. He was a first-team All Pro QB in 1967, 1968, and 1969, earning AFL MVP in the latter two seasons.

(Side note: in 1969 the AP named him 2nd-team All Pro *AND* league MVP.)

Shortly after, injuries began to mount. He missed 9 games in 1970 and 10 games in 1971 before playing 13 out of 14 games in 1972 and again being named first-team All Pro, this time of the post-merger league.

Missed 8 more games in 1973 before winning Comeback PotY in 1974.

After 1974 the injuries caught up to him and he was legitimately a bad quarterback. But still one of the most famous and beloved.

In 1975, a rival football league based their entire competitive strategy on "sign Namath to an insane deal, compete with the NFL".

Seriously.

Conventional statistics underrate Namath for a variety of reasons. First off, they fail to era adjust. Everyone knows Namath threw a lot of INTs. But did you know that (prior to the atrocious 1975+ years) Namath's interception percentage was actually *better than league average?*

Notice Namath's sack% in that last image? PFref only has sack data for individual players back to 1969 so that's mostly riddled-with-injuries Namath.

Namath was prob one of the top 5 QBs ever at avoiding sacks. Peyton, Marino, Namath, NVB, maybe Doug Williams or John Brodie.

Because he was so good at avoiding sacks, he was *elite* at avoiding fumbles. Among noteworthy QBs, only Bert Jones, Johnny Lujack, and Peyton Manning had fewer fumbles per play than Namath.

Lost fumbles are recovered closer to the end zone and are much more damaging than INTs.

Unitas' best five years were probably '63-'67. Namath's five pre-injury years were from '65-'69. Let's compare.

Unitas: 104 TDs, 70 INTs
Namath: 97 TDs, 104 INTs

Now compare with rush TDs and fumbles added in.

Unitas: 108 TDs, 105 INT/Fumbles
Namath: 103 TDs, 117 INT/Fumbles

Obviously not all of those fumbles were recovered by the defense. But also the ones that *were* recovered by the defense were much more damaging.

Also a lot of INTs are dictated by game script and therefore supporting cast, and Unitas was surrounded by Hall of Famers.

Also, the point isn't to say that Namath was as good as Unitas. He wasn't! I could count the number of quarterbacks who were as good as Unitas on one hand with fingers to spare.

The point is it was a *lot* closer than most people think.

Again, we have individual sack data back to 1969. Here's era-adjusted ANY/A, which includes yards per attempt, passing TDs, Ints, and sacks (but not fumbles!) from 1969 to 1974.

Remember, this is mostly *POST-INJURIES* Namath.

Compare him to the other Hall of Famers.

Is Namath the worst quarterback in the Hall of Fame? Let's compare him to a guy who *NEVER* gets mentioned as the worst QB in the Hall to see.

Joe Namath and Len Dawson were contemporaries. The top two quarterbacks in the AFL. Here's their raw career stats. Dawson in a runaway!

Yet for some reason, despite the fact that Dawson started 8 seasons in the '60s and Namath only started 5, PFHoF voters named Namath the first-team all-decade quarterback for the league. Not Dawson.

Namath retired two years later and voters enshrined him two years earlier, too.

Partly this was because people who watched the game actually *saw* the sacks, even if they weren't recorded in the stats. They knew the difference.

Also, Dawson feasted on the AFL from 1962-1964 and Namath didn't. The league was legitimately #bad in its first few seasons.

Also, Namath sustained a higher level of play once the leagues merged. Dawson wasn't a bad quarterback, but Namath was an All Pro.

Note that to this point I've largely refrained from talking about Namath's *FAME*. I'm just laying a purely statistical argument for him as one of the best quarterbacks of all time.

But the dude was *FAMOUS*, too, in a way we couldn't possibly comprehend today.

Aside from engineering the biggest (and most historically significant) Super Bowl upset of all time and being the highest-paid player before he ever set foot on the field, he also signed record endorsement deals and played on the first MNF game in history.

Again, the '70s were a time when a rival league had just joined the NFL and other rival leagues saw hopes of doing the same.

And one of those rival leagues based their whole strategy on just acquiring an over-the-hill Namath. The dude was a *BIG DEAL*.

Also, Namath was the only quarterback in history to throw for 4,000 yards before the league expanded the schedule to 16 games.

He was actually the only dude in history to throw for 3,750 yards before the league expanded the schedule.

Anyway, this is my Namath rant.

No, he's not in the Hall of Fame just because of "The Guarantee". He was way more famous than you can imagine, but he was a worthy Hall of Famer based strictly on his play on the field.

His stats were *WAY* better than you think for a variety of reasons (tanked by hanging-on years at the end, conventional stats completely ignore his biggest strengths, people don't understand the concept of era-adjusting).

I'm not saying he's one of the Top 10 quarterbacks in history. He's not. I wouldn't say he's Top 20, either. But he's probably Top 30 strictly based on play on the field. There are 31 quarterbacks in the Hall of Fame and I'd say he's better than at least a half dozen of them.

And if you give *ANY* weight at all to things like "being maybe the most famous player in history" or "engineering the biggest SB upset ever", his Hall of Fame candidacy becomes even stronger.

But like I said, he's worthy even without that stuff.

Y'all can feel free to ignore this, I'm mostly just putting it down in one place so that the next time some ignorant jerk plays the Namath card on me I don't have to type it out all over again.

Cheers!

Addendum: Namath also arguably put the league on the path to its modern contract structure. He brought huge signing bonuses into vogue.

Also, remember how I said he was *REALLY, REALLY* famous? Jets' season-ticket sales more than tripled after signing him as a rookie.

Link for that last cite. Article from 1988 from stodgy old-guard football people complaining about those darn signing bonuses and having to pay rookies.

chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-19…

While we're at it, here's a fun article on the wild process of signing Joe Namath to that rookie deal:

salon.com/2013/08/18/joe…