Our obsession of making every game the greatest moment in the history of sports or adding every successful athlete to the “elite or not-elite” conversation has become a major annoyance.  The conversation starts and ends with NFL quarterbacks: the field generals, the commander-in-chiefs of not only their respective offenses, but their defense as well. The quarterback is by far the most scrutinized player of any sport. Throw six touchdown passes and lose? Why didn’t you throw seven and win? Listing the elite quarterbacks of the NFL should be easy, right? Isn’t it all of the players that have won a Super Bowl and are still in the league: Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Joe Flacco and Russell Wilson? Wait. Manning, Roethlisberger, Flacco and Wilson?
 What about their eventual heir apparent:  Andrew Luck, Colin Kaepernick, Tony Romo (if you say it enough, it will stick), Robert Griffin III, Alex Smith, Cam Newton, Jay Cutler and Matthew Stafford? We’ve nearly exhausted every NFL roster for quarterbacks that have at one point or another been subjected to the “elite or not-elite” discussion forced upon us by ESPN every day of the week and twice on Sundays. The matter needs to be dropped entirely because the debate’s emptiness has become definite. Have you, at one time, led your team to a game-winning drive in the waning seconds of a win-or-go-home scenario? If so, you are elite. Have you won a Super Bowl? If so, you are most certainly elite regardless of the contribution of the other 53 guys on the roster.
Thus, the term “quarterback” has become synonymous with “team” in the most team-oriented sport ever invented. This isn’t basketball where one guy can dribble through and around defenders and take the ball to the hoop. This isn’t baseball where one pitcher can shutout the opposing team and then hit a solo homerun to support his cause. The one player guaranteed to touch the ball every single down is not the quarterback; it is the center.  A lot more than Super Bowl wins and game-clinching drives must be taken into consideration if we are going to formulate an elite group of NFL quarterbacks. I do not claim to have knowledge of this superior formula, but I do know that the current system is flawed if we have, at one point in time, brought into discussion every quarterback with the exception of Geno Smith. (Notice the omission of Mark Sanchez, as he was once brought into the discussion of elite quarterbacks.)  Simply including quarterbacks like salary cap eating, defense dependent, game managing Joe Flacco along with his much more obese opponent, Ben Roethlisberger. We rushed to name them part of the elite class after their first few seasons in the NFL, and now we have done the same with Russell Wilson who just won the Super Bowl in his second season as a professional quarterback.
Wilson was the second worst rated quarterback of the NFL playoffs, barely edging out Andy Dalton in Total QBR. However, since his team won, we anoint the quarterback because he’s expected to be the leader of the team. It’s what he’s supposed to do. Even if he didn’t lead his team to victory as a result of his statistics, it was still good enough to get by. And that is what the term “elite” has come to mean: good enough to get by.