BroBible
In the words of the legendary Herm Edwards, “you play to win the game.” But how much of winning an NFL game simply comes down to the play of the quarterback?
It’s an age old question and one that doesn’t seem to have an agreed upon answered. Tom Brady will tell you that he had his hands in just about everything the New England Patriots did during their dynasty. While the biggest argument of the NFL offseason involved how much credit Jalen Hurts really deserves to the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl.
But there is, perhaps, no better label that an NFL quarterback can earn than “winner.” These 10 quarterbacks are, statistically, the great (regular season) winners of all-time.
It’s hard to win an NFL game without great quarterback play. But on the other hand, great quarterback play does not ensure a team a win if the rest of the roster doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.
It does, however, give you a much better shot of winning. Which is why this list of the 10 quarterbacks with the greatest regular season winning percentage in NFL history (per StatMuse) is full of both future and current Hall of Famers.
For the purpose of the exercise, we’ve limited the list to quarterbacks with at least 60 stars (sorry, Jayden Daniels) and players who primarily started at the quarterback position, which removed Taysom Hill and former quarterback/punter Bob Lee.
Without further adieu, let’s get into the list.
Steve Young, not Joe Montana, holds the greatest win percentages at quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. Young posted a 116-53 record across 169 regular season games in his Hall of Fame career.
And it’s hard to argue that he wasn’t the driving force behind the San Francisco 49ers dynasty of 1990s. Sure, having Jerry Rice to throw to didn’t hurt, but Young was named first-team All-Pro three straight years from 1992-94 and won the NFL MVP award in both ’92 and ’94, delivering plenty of clutch moments along the way.
If Young is an argument in favor of the value of quarterback win percentage, our next entry on the list is a strong argument against it.
Garoppolo, who is 57-25 in 82 games played for .695 win percentage, was the product of extremely strong systems and teams around him in both New England and San Francisco. When those teams didn’t deliver, Garoppolo’s teams usually didn’t win.
His numbers are also padded a bit by relief appearances of injured quarterbacks. Over his first 26 starts of his career, Garoppolo when an astonishing 21-5. But when he was asked to lead his team to victory, things often got dicey, creating the argument that quarterback wins truly aren’t a valuable measure of ability.
However, Garoppolo and the next entry on our list are the only quarterbacks...
