What Is A Great Quarterback

In watching the QB carousel this year, a question has arisen:

What constitutes a great quarterback?

Right now Tre Harris has some of the best statistics in the league, including yards and completions. However, when you actually watch him in games, he throws more short passes and backfield tosses to the flat than just about any quarterback I’ve ever watched. Occasionally he’ll throw one deep, but documented sightings of Bigfoot seem to occur more often.

So is a great quarterback one who throws lots of short passes and earns a high completion rate, or is it a pivot who has a lower QB rating but throws the long ball for points?

It also brings into the question…nobody would dispute that Mike Reilly was one of the greatest quarterbacks in the league in 2017 and 2018. This year, he’s like a three-dollar strumpet and spends most of his time on his back. If going by stats, he has the third-largest yardage tally, but has one of the worst QB ratings, and lowest average yardage. Is he still a “great quarterback?”

If the key criterion is wins, then Matt Nichols needs to be in the conversation, but you almost never hear anyone refer to him as “great.” There are some who believe he isn’t even the best QB on his own team, much less the whole league. But it’s hard to argue that he delivers victories.

Looking at the history of the league as well as the current rosters, what defines a great quarterback? And do any of the 2019 pivots qualify for that tag?

The most important stat of all is how much his team wins with him playing. BLM, though not having the best stats, showed that his team could win — a lot — with him in the lineup. Yet, not so much (or as easily) when he’s not in the lineup. Reilly as shown that he can’t really win at all without a good team around him.

Some guys just have a secret sauce that propels the entire team. Vernon Adams Jr. is another one of those guys, as are Fajardo and Masoli. Reilly isn’t; Edmonton is doing just fine — or about the same — without him.

Gotta ask you this Mor…
What is with this “Tre” Harris moniker recently?
I mean, why, just why?

Because if you referred to him as “Twevoh Hawwis”, people would say you
forgot to take out your mouthguard. Notable people nicknamed Tre include:

Thurston Howell III
Clarence Williams III
Ernest Joseph Anastasio III, and from the same hometown:
Robert Swan ‘Bobby Three Sticks’ Mueller III

A great quarterback makes great plays, on a sustained basis. Win
(Peyton, Eli) or lose (Archie), he leaves a legacy of great plays. He
doesn’t become known as the king of hand-offs or of flare passes.
Furthermore his teammates believe in him and rally around him,
as was happening recently with Vernon Adams Jr.

There was a guy in my high school who had them put this under his
photo in the senior yearbook, at age 17:

“Greatness is the art of being great. There is no other way.”

I rattled this off to him at our 40th anniversary, and he had no
idea what I was talking about. Too many hard tackles, methinks.

Tre…as in “three.”

Tre “Three Yard” Harris. King of the three-yard pass.

;D
Got it. 8)

I thought that you were turning in to that Blue Bombers fan who used to post here and constantly referred to players with his own made up nicknames.
It was incredibly annoying.:frowning:

Well Harris is on pace for 5900 yards.

A great QB is a balanced one, but most importantly… one who has success. Any QB with more success than failure.

Then another question is “who is the CFL equivalent to Archie Manning, who was
certifiably ‘great’ despite a 26% win/loss record as a starter (35–101–3) ?”

Joe Namath is often listed as ‘great’ despite his mediocre statistics – even
in Super Bowl III, he mostly handed the ball to Matt Snell. But in an article
The Curious Case of Joe Namath’s Careerthis is offered as a litmus test:

“Can you tell the story of the game of football without mentioning that person??

Further reading:

The top 10 quarterbacks in CFL history versus Top 10 Top 10 Quarterbacks in CFL History

Decent lists, I probably prefer the first one a slight bit though. More recognition of & respect for the non-modern era.
Nice to see the Joe Krol selection, an all-time great who regularly gets snubbed when these sort of lists get cobbled together.

Nope.

Will make up annoying nicknames when the player annoys me, like “Sideline” Sol Elimimian, who couldn’t seem to get off the sideline for the first part of the year (while everyone else is out there killing themselves for the team). Or the aforementioned Tre Harris.

Yep.

5,900 yards, three yards at a time.

5,900 excruciating, tedious, boring, uninspiring yards. Fortunately he has some players who can turn his three-yard snoozers into a few stat-packing big plays.

But I’ll go out on a limb here. If Tre Harris throws for 5,000 yards this year, I’ll buy you a birthday cake.

Teams will figure out how to scheme for this. A few have already eaten his lunch. Expect that number to increase as the year goes on, unless a courageous Offensive Coordinator puts in a patch.

Tre isn’t in the East anymore, so he won’t be able to get away with this beer-league approach for very long.

It’s clearly a Rod Blackish.

As for great QBs, I would not put Harris in that category yet. He hasn’t learned the difference between personal stats and team stats. It seems to me he thinks team success comes from his great stats rather than his great stats coming from team success. Someone mentioned Namath and he is a great example of this; his stats in SBIII were not good but he sacrificed his personal stats to win that game and did a masterfull job of managing the game away from the Colts.

BLM is the only QB in the league I would say deserves to be in that category so far but there are a couple that have the potential.

What is with all you guys seemingly assuming Trevor harris call his own plays?

Please explain.

Who said he calls his own plays?

Who said he calls his own plays? Are you seriously asking that question? All of the quotes below are from this message trail. Why criticize the guy for following the offensive co-ordinators orders?? That’s why he has a speaker in his helmet. I don’t get it.

[i]However, when you actually watch him in games, he throws more short passes and backfield tosses to the flat than just about any quarterback I’ve ever watched. Occasionally he’ll throw one deep, but documented sightings of Bigfoot seem to occur more often.

So is a great quarterback one who throws lots of short passes and earns a high completion rate, or is it a pivot who has a lower QB rating but throws the long ball for points?[/i]

It seems to me he thinks team success comes from his great stats rather than his great stats coming from team success.

Tre “Three Yard” Harris. King of the three-yard pass.

[i]5,900 yards, three yards at a time.

5,900 excruciating, tedious, boring, uninspiring yards. Fortunately he has some players who can turn his three-yard snoozers into a few stat-packing big plays.

But I’ll go out on a limb here. If Tre Harris throws for 5,000 yards this year, I’ll buy you a birthday cake.

Teams will figure out how to scheme for this. A few have already eaten his lunch.[/i]

Tre isn’t in the East anymore, so he won’t be able to get away with this beer-league approach for very long.

I’ll say it again, who says he calls his own plays? You are making an assumption based on youropinion of what those statements means.

Very few QBs call their own plays so calling out posters for what you think they mean with regard to something that is not unusual is not very productive to the conversation. If you want to start an argument give it your best shot, if you want to discuss Harris then stick to the facts and facts are as you have noted above. None of those statements are incorrect. Harris has earned that reputation despite playing for 3 different CFL teams as a starter while having his calls made for him by coaches just like every other QB in the league.

Forget about who said he called his own plays, explain to me why he should be judged differently than every other QB in the league who also has his plays called for him?

All lists are subjective. I agree and disagree with both.

I think the CFL is too small to have a great QB that couldn’t put together at least a .500 record, but Deiter Brock is close to what you look for. Tracy Ham too, although he won a Grey Cup it was with a Baltimore team that wasn’t tied to the import rule.

Okay, I’ll explain.

Harris, like nearly all QB’s in the modern game, does not call his own plays (outside of audibles).

However, on EVERY called pass play, there are at least three passing routes, and sometimes as many as five. Nearly every pass play includes an intermediate target, a short target, a dump-off target, and occasionally a long target.

Harris consistently chooses the dump-off or short target. This can only mean one of three things: The Eskimos receivers suck at getting open (pretty unlikely), Harris has no arm (again, not true), or Harris intentionally opts for the easiest pass.

But beyond the “why,” the question remains: Can a QB like Harris, who puts together pretty good stats for himself with short passes, be considered a “great” quarterback? Or is greatness borne of more spectacular play? If it’s the former, then Matt Nichols probably needs to be in the conversation (another three-yard artist).

Hi Morris,

I understand your point. I also understand about the secondary routes that Harris’s receivers are running and the check-offs that any quarterback potentially has as a play develops.

But I can tell you that Harris in Ottawa had a lot of three step drops and as a guy who played the position, I can assure you that there is little if any time to look at other receivers except the primary one … unless of course he opts to try to scramble.

In Ottawa, I absolutely believe that the offence was built around quick hitters and it was frustrating for the fans to a certain degree. I can absolutely understand what people are saying when they complain about Harris throwing short all the time.

But those quick hitters are the routes that his primary receivers are sent out of the huddle to run and I do think that Harris is getting a bum rap being accused of trying to accumulate personal stats at the expense of his team.