I remember Unitas too, but I would have to dig up stats and compare them and I'm too lazy to do that now. LOL So I guess I'll have to take your word for it.
I do believe that these guys are a heckuva lot better than so many other famous QBs out there, past and present, who were/are more hype than skill or talent.
By the way, I didn't know that Starr was considered mediocre in college. Apparently, he blossomed with the Packers.
@Applewood Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas were compared frequently during and after their careers. And you could understand why: from 1958-1968, either the Packers or the Colts went to the NFL championship game in every season but one. (1963, when the Giants played the Bears thanks in part to Starr missing the second of two Green Bay-Chicago games with an injury.) In five of those seasons that they threw enough to qualify, Starr ranked higher than Unitas by the league's rating system
and had a higher yards-per-pass average than Unitas did.
Both men played in an era in which quarterbacks weren't just field officers carrying out orders from the generals on the sidelines; quarterbacks were expected not only to help develop game plans but to change them on the spot, on the fly, often improvisationally. And Starr did it better, and he has the rings to prove it: he won five to Unitas's three, and that includes the Super Bowl. (Starr's team won the first two of those, too.)
I suspect one of the big reasons why Johnny Unitas's image loomed larger than Bart Starr's was the 1958 NFL championship game, the one so widely credited with putting the league on the map once and for all, the one in which football and television finally married in earnest and became the first such championship game to go to sudden death overtime, not to mention the one in which Unitas's Colts beat Charlie Conerly and the Giants. Because it was so long considered the greatest game ever played, too, Unitas earned an image so overwhelming that all those end-of-the-century polls nailed him as one of if not the greatest quarterbacks in the game's history.
The so-called Vince Lombardi system in Green Bay probably joined that to underrate Bart Starr in the public mind long range. The popular belief is that Lombardi teams won it on the ground and didn't pass as much, but the popular belief is actually wrong: Lombardi liked to strike early with passing, then mix in the running game as much to keep the clock on the move as anything else. You could say, as one analyst has, that Lombardi's Packers didn't win because they rushed, they built up rushing yardage because they won. But it's also true that as the 1960s went forward the Packers' running game actually faded while Starr's raw passing statistics got better. In fact, his arguable best season was 1966---when the Packers didn't have a running game to speak of but Starr threw fourteen touchdowns against a measly three interceptions and averaged nine yards a pass.
Would you like to see how Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas compare in the postseason?
Even in 1967, when Unitas won the NFL's Player of the Year award, Starr proved better when it mattered. The Colts played the Rams for a divisional playoff spot and the Rams flattened the Colts, 34-10 . . . but in round one of the playoffs the Packers flattened the Rams (remember, this was a season in which the Rams had the fabled Fearsome Foursome defensive line) 28-7, with Starr riddling them for 17 complete passes in 23 tries for 222 yards.
These were two great quarterbacks in the era when quarterbacks really were trusted more on the field, but the evidence says Bart Starr was better.
By the way, for those who might be wondering: Tom Brady's postseason completion percentage is only 2.2 higher than Starr . . . but Brady has a slightly higher interception percentage and a slightly lower yards per pass average. Starr's postseason yards per pass completion average (13.5) is also higher than Brady's. (11.1) Even allowing the changes in the NFL's postseason and the length of Brady's career, that's quite a difference.
