No Respect for Bears Super Bowl Quarterbacks

One way of looking at it is the Bears defenses in the Super Bowl did more than virtually any defenses ever did in the game considering who their offense had at quarterback.

This would be greatly underselling the skills of Jim McMahon, however.

Gregg Rosenthal of NFL.com released his updated all-time Super Bowl quarterback ranking to include this year's addition, Jalen Hurts, and  in it the Bears had two of the worst quarterbacks ever to play for the Lombardi Trophy.

Rosenthal considers Rex Grossman the worst starting quarterback ever in Super Bowl history. He considers McMahon the second-worst quarterback ever to win a Super Bowl and the 59th best of the 66 who have started.

He rates Grossman one behind David Woodley, who had a much higher career interception percentage (4.8 to 3.8), lower completion percentage and much worse passer rating than Grossman. Grossman's career passer rating was 71.4 and Woodley's 65.7, and both had the same yards/pass attempt of 6.6.

Woodley had the benefit of playing behind one of the greatest pass blocking lines of all time, one that got even better as Dan Marino came in but was still very good from 1980-83 when Woodley played the bulk of his games. They were top 10 in fewest sacks allowed every season Woodley played there. Once they were No. 1 and once No. 2, so he did much less with much better support. 

Grossman had one of the league's worst lines at protecting the passer based on sacks in 2007 and a top-10 line in 2006.

Woodley had Nat Moore, Tony Nathan and Duriel Harris as his top targets and Grossman had Muhsin Muhammad and Bernard Berrian.

The only thing Woodley really did better was run the ball for 699 yards his first three seasons, but when your pass blocking was as good as Miami's, why would anyone be scrambling?

In the game itself, both quarterbacks had leads early, the Bears 14-6 and the Dolphins 17-10.

Grossman threw for 165 yards with a touchdown and two interceptions in the Super Bowl in the rain. Woodley threw for 97 yards, 76 of it on a first-quarter TD pass. He threw one interception.

Perhaps it's picking at nit and only one place, but Grossman deserves to be higher than Woodley.

McMahon's ranking is far lower than it should be at 59.

They have him ranked behind 25 quarterbacks who played in Super Bowls but never won in one.

He's ranked 16 spots below Kerry Collins but for his career he had a better completion percentage (58.0-55.7), better yards per attempt (7.1-6.5), better passer rating (78.2-73.8) and better touchdown percentage (3.9 to 3.3). Collins lost his only Super Bowl in embarrassing fashion. McMahon won his.

Playing in his only Super Bowl, Collins was 15 of 39 for 112 yards with four interceptions against the Ravens in the 2000 season.

THE ALL-TIME SUPER BOWL QUARTERBACK RANKINGS

Admittedly, Collins faced the second best defense of all time in the game but gave an account of himself far worse than Grossman did in Super Bowl XLI. McMahon's only Super Bowl passing effort was a 104.2 rating on 12 of 20 for 256 yards and had the benefit of the greatest defense of all time.

With McMahon's departure from Chicago in 1989 the Bears failed to make the playoffs two of the next four years and then dropped off considerably. When he was starter, the Bears went from 1984-88 as division champions.

His contribution to that world champion team was always underrated and this ranking is yet another example of it.