You know nothing. Of approximate contemporaries, Steve DeBerg, Greg Landry, Brian Sipe, and Craig Morton all had better QB ratings than Bradshaw.

One single stat....and a meaningless one at that.

Among current contemporaries Romo and Rivers have as good or better passer ratings than Peyton and Brady. So, are you going to tell me those guys are just as good or better.

If not for his last game, he would have had more interceptions than touchdowns in his career.

As did they all, including the guys you mention above...and the likes of other contemporary HOFers.

He was fair to middling, with a good supporting cast and the dominant defense of that time. Put in the same situation many other QBs could have had those four rings.

That is an argument that could never be proven. You could also just likely say that if Joe Montana were not nurtured in the Bill Walsh system he would have just been averageish.......if Otto Graham were not nurtured under Paul Brown he would have been average.

Yep, they basically assaulted receivers going down the field back then but Bradshaw was above average, no more.

Yeah. No way you can compare. Those QB's got their asses beat, stomped and crushed on a weekly basis. So did their receivers.

There was no such thing as the 5 yard contact rule. The only rule was "don't interfere once the ball was in the air" A DB could hammer a WR all the way down the field.

Also, there was little if anything you couldn't do to "rough the passer" unless it was a Joe Turkey Jones type thing.

The league has become COMPLETELY pussyfied and geared 100% toward passing and scoring. A LOT. And it protects QB's and receivers like little girls now. The stat differences will and should be light years apart.

And they are.

If they could do today, what they did back then, Manning + Brady would still be great, but have very very different #'s

You know nothing. Sure, those guys had lower QB ratings. Every freeking QB from that era had lower QB ratings. Almost every QB from that era had barely 50% completion pct. Almost every QB from that era had more int's than they had TD passes. The QB rating system is geared toward the more current age. Matt Schaub and Andy Dalton have much much higher QB ratings. Are you gonna take them over Staubach and Starr and Bradshaw? Fuck no.

It is ignorant to say that Bradshaw/Stabler/Namath were overrated because of some idiot statistical analysis.

Did you know that Deacon Jones did not record one official sack in his career?

Bradshaw vs. Stabler is the battle of the overrateds. Both have career ratings in the 70s, lower that Brian Hoyer. Along with Joe Namath, both are among the most overrated QBs ever. Bradshaw played well in big games, Namath played in NYC which boosted their reps, but numbers say they were more ordinary than one would think.