This year was the year of the old-man QB trying to give it one last go before we rode off into the sunset. This is the end of an era of sorts, as evident in Tom Brady’s hilarious History Channel post on his Twitter account. Rivers, Big Ben, Drew Brees, Brady…old guys were slinging the rock around all across the league, so today, I’m delivering to you OLD-MAN QB RANKINGS as it stands right now in the 2020 NFL season.
My cut off for this exercise was Matt Ryan. Ryan is 35 and not quite and old man, so anyone older than Matt Ryan qualifies in my OLD-MAN RANKING:
Honorable mention: Alex Smith, clocking in @ 36 years old, even though he looks like he’s 25. Smith was 5-1 as a starter this year, threw for 1,500 yards, 6 TD’s, 8 INT’s. Just didn’t play enough to get on the official list, but an inspirational comeback.
5- Big Ben (38): Ben did not age gracefully, his stats don’t actually reflect how bad he was. He got by with some decent play and a great defense early on but really struggled down the stretch, lost 5 of his last 6, and was the primary reason the team got blown out by the Browns in round 1. Yards per attempt and yards per completion way down vs prior years.
4- Drew Brees (41): Only played in 12 games but went 9-3 in those games. Still over the 70% completion mark but his age is starting to show as well. The offense looked just as good, if not better, with Taysom Hill at QB. This is the 2nd straight year where we can say that about the Saints. He’s good, but he’s barely hanging on to good.
3- Phillip Rivers (39): Really older than that when you consider how many kids he has, that kind of thing will wear on you over time. 11-5 this year, wasn’t perfect but he was super reliable, and got this team where they needed to go. You could see a marketable improvement from last year’s Colts team to this year’s colts team and he is the main reason why. This team struggled to win 7 games last year, Rivers infused new life and actually played better as the season went along.
2- Aaron Rodgers (37): What can you say about the guy that hasn’t been said already? By the end of the season it became crystal clear that he’s the MVP of the league. 70% completion rate, top 7 in pass yards, and a 48 to 5 TD to INT ratio. #1 seed in the NFC. Truthfully, the only thing holding him back from #1 overall is that I’m grading on a curve.
Number 1. Tom Brady (43): What A-Rod did this year is amazing, but call me in 6 years. That’s how much older Brady is and Brady is still as crisp as ever. #3 in the NFL in passing yards, he threw for 40 TD’s for the first time since 2007 when he set the record with 50, and he did it with a bunch of WR’s he had never played with before. Brady is the 5th QB all time to reach 40 passing TD’s twice and the first to do it after the age of 40. He has the record now for the most pass yards as a 40 year old breaking his own record from the year prior.