J1: What Defines The Clutch Quarterback?

Throughout NFL history, the most important position has evolved over time. For most of NFL history the most important position on the field was the running back because of the belief that you had to establish the run. That started to change in the 80’s when Joe Montana and the 49er’s emerged as an NFL superpower. Today the most important position on the field is the quarterback. Brad Johnson may have been the last NFL quarterback to take a back seat to the rest of the team. Today you cannot win without a quarterback. This is many reasons why teams like the Browns, Cardinals* (*excepting them from the years Kurt Warner was there), Chiefs, Jaguars, and Bills have all been real bottom feeders in the NFL for the past ten years. On the contrary teams like the Colts, Patriots Steelers, Ravens, Falcons, Packers, Texans, and Giants have all excelled due to upper echelon quarterbacks. The term clutch in the NFL refers to a player usually a quarterback who has excelled in crunch time. Throughout history QBS like Joe Montana, John Elway, Johnny Unitas, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Bart Starr, Dan Marino, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, and Troy Aikman have all defined themselves as being clutch in some way. To many those QBS are the greatest of all time, well that’s the point, the greatest QBs of all time are usually clutch. Joe “Cool” (Montana), never lost a Super Bowl and never through an INT in one either. Johnny Unitas invented the “two minute drill” in the “Greatest Game Ever Played”. John Elway for the longest time held the most 4^th quarter comebacks in NFL history, and had his signature game “The Drive”, where he led his team 98 yards for the tying score. Terry Bradshaw won four Super Bowls. Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach won a combined 5 Super Bowls, and their teams were never out of it. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have been widely regarded as the two most clutch QBs in the game today. Tom Brady always keeps his team in the game and Peyton Manning can read a defense faster than he can a sentence.. One example of this is the Dallas Cowboys and Tony Romo, and how they have yet to really make a deep playoff run because of Romo. Recently one player has really stood out and it has been Joe Flacco. Flacco has helped take his team all the way to the Super Bowl and has beaten the likes of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. I believe that quarterbacks must be at a certain level of  being clutch because how can you depend on the most important position in football if they haven’t ever been really clutch before.