Took Chad. Had to. He's been the best QB from a playoff's perspective up until this point excluding the SB win w/ Namath. Unfortunately he's an even year QB and once Miami bench's Henne, the Fins will get a WC spot with Penny at the helm. After all - it's 2010. Chad's play action was 2nd to none. Manning is probably the only QB that can pull a a fake as well as Chad did. I can't even remember how many times I thought he handed it off and he's walking real casual in the backfield and then tosses one. If he wasn't injury prone we could have made a lot of deep playoff runs.
Quarterbacks Kenny O'Brien was better. He could make all the throws. He could not move and did not give the offensive line a chance sometimes. But at least in his first five years he was pretty good. Chad was good when healthy. He used his head not his arm. When the arm went he really had no chance. Both were fine men and worthy Jets.
O'Brien by a pretty wide margin if your talking passing skills. And he won just as many championships as Marino...
Good question. The way I look at it is, what if Chad played on those mid-'80s teams and what if O'Brien played on the team as constituted during Chad's best years? Looking at it that way, I'd say O'Brien was the better quartback whose worst sin to the fan-base at large was being drafted before Dan Marino. Still, Chad played on better teams when this organization was in a much better place, and had the better Jet career. Both good guys, both very talented. Still, if you were to ask me who was the better pure QB, it would be Ken O'Brien, hands down. In terms of "Football IQ," Chad's was considered to be among the best of his era (perhaps trailing only Peyton Manning - albeit without Peyton's physical ability). O'Brien, perhaps not at Chad's very high level, was considered very smart QB and had a great arm. Half the reason O'Brien did get beat up (the other half being the Jets poor O-line) was he (unlike his predecessor, Richard Todd) was deadly accurate, and more likely to take the sack rather risk tossing the ball up for grabs. Also, don't forget, rules to protect the QB and that cut down on sacks (such as being able to throw the ball away outside the tackles) weren't there in O'Brien's-era.
I grew up watching O'Brien and he was great. I think CP was great his first year. Once he was injured in the Giants preseason game, he always had me worried. Some games Chad was straight money, other games, he had me on the edge of my seat big time. His first year playing full bore after Vinny was out was the shit..
I'd have to go with Chad, although both QBs broke a lot of fans' hearts. The Jets enjoyed playoff success with Chad, which Ken never managed. O'Brien was a destroyer at his peak in the 1986 season, but he never really recovered from the injury and meltdown at the end of that season. Chad was superbly efficient in 2002 and the beginning of 2004, but never really recovered from the first shoulder injury in 04. If both had remained at their peaks for six or seven seasons, O'Brien would probably get the nod.
Hard to decide who was better, I voted for O'Brien, but they were different kinds of quarterbacks, and maybe this is just me being nostalgic, but I enjoyed watching Kenny play more that I did Chad.
I agree. If Marino was on our team with no OL, I wonder how good of a QB he would be? OB was dynamite and outplayed Marino in many head to head games without an OL. IMO Marino was NOT a complete QB. he was statistically oriented. he wanted to throw for high TD numbers and so on 1st and an inch to go for a TD, he'd rear back and throw a TD. big deal. Thats why stats suck. It was because of Marino Miami did not have much of a run game and they never won a Super Bowl even though Marino has all-world numbers! Put OB on the Miami team and they win a SB or two. Pennington could not hold OB's jock strap as far as being a QB goes! OB was just as smart and very resilient, tough, excellent deep thrower, and had a great arm on top of it all! in fact today is the anniversary of OB outdueling Marino in a very high scoring game! Marino threw for 3 TDs and 5 INTS. We won as a result!
It's close, but I'll give the nod to O'Brien. The 1986 duel against Marino may have been the best regular season game I've ever watched.
Yeah, October 23, 1988 Jets 44 Dolphins 30 Erik McMillan had three interceptions and returned one for a touchdown. I will not agree with you and say that O'Brien outdueled Marino. O'Brien had a ho-hum day (18 of 37 for 174 yards). Their September 1986 game was a passing duel. The 10/23/88 game not so much.
He declined before that. After the playoff game we lost to the Raiders Chad got jumpy. He looked for the check down way too quickly even before he got hurt. O'Brien stayed fearless his whole career.
All the guys who were too young to watch O'Brien need to watch this video before they vote: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Uq0F2whpl4[/youtube] The guy was incredible.
Funny, as I watch that my reaction is how great Toon and Walker were - in most of those plays they were wide open. Again, taking nothing away from O'Brien - for one year especially, he was magnificent, and for another 2 or 3 he was pretty good.
Kenny O. I'm probably biased becaus of my age (I'm old enough to remember the 80's very clearly) but I think he's very unlucky not to have a better reputation than he does have. I'm sure after about 3 seasons he was the highest rated active passer in the NFL and deserved it too. Marty
KOB was tough as nails, but Penny was more accurate and won more big games, including 2 in the playoffs. KOB was a MUCH better scrambler, though. Hasty, that's a great highlight video you posted... damn, did Wesley Walker ever get caught from behind?!
This is a good video to help show one of the points I was making between the era's. Look at all that vertical passing - it's before the west coast offense was real popular. That directly leads to a lesser completion percentage that people like to oogle over and a lot of the times directly correlate to accuracy. Kenny's accuracy on those deep balls was outstanding.
