Thursday, June 27, 2019

Top 50 NFL Quarterbacks: #37 - Jim McMahon


Jim McMahon

Jim McMahon was not the offensive juggernaut that many on this list were, but he was a winner who led one of the most dominant teams in history to a Super Bowl victory.

He was the 5th overall pick out of BYU in 1982, and became the team's starter right away. He missed 2 games to injury that season, which would be the smallest number of games he would miss in a season in his career.

After a couple of seasons of just missing the playoffs, the Bears got off to a great start with McMahon in 1984, climbing to 7-3 before a violent hit knocked their quarterback out for the season with a lacerated kidney. They would go 3-3 in the remaining games, good enough for a playoff berth, but would fall to Joe Montana's 49ers in the NFC title game.

The next season was the best of his career, the best in the history of the franchise, and the biggest reason he is on this list. He set career highs with 2392 yards and 15 touchdowns, and led the Bears to wins in all 11 games he started. They finished the season 15-1, then blew through the NFC playoffs, outscoring their opponents 45-0 to advance to the Super Bowl behind 4 total touchdowns from McMahon. That Super Bowl was one of the biggest blowouts ever, and McMahon became the first QB ever to run for 2 touchdowns in a Super Bowl, and he went through the entire postseason without throwing a single pick.

He missed a lot of time in the following season, but the Bears won all 6 games he started, but he was lost for the season in week 12 after being slammed to the ground after the play had ended. The Bears still finished 14-2, but lost their first playoff game. Between 1984 and 1987, McMahon won 22 straight regular season starts, which was a record until 2009, when Peyton Manning reached 23. When you include playoff games, McMahon had a streak of 25 straight wins, which is far more than anyone else ever, since Manning had a playoff loss in the middle of his streak.

After 1988, McMahon bounced around the league, playing for San Diego, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Arizona, and finally Green Bay, where he was the backup to Brett Favre when the Packers won the Super Bowl, exactly 10 years after McMahon and the Bears had beaten the same Patriots in the big one.

Most of the players on this list racked up numbers like crazy, and although McMahon never threw for 2500 yards or more than 15 touchdowns in a season, he was one of the greatest winners of all time, and his playoff run in 1985 was one of the best ever recorded by any QB, which is why he belongs on this list of the best of all time.



1 comment:

  1. Like operating at any other corporation that develops or publishes games: stressful, precarious, overworked and underpaid. Though I do need to say that, as far as businesses go, EZMUT is among the ones that pays its employees much better. Although there has been a marked improvement due to the fact the days in the EZMUT Wife missive, which detailed soul-crushing continuous crunch effectively into the 80-hours, crunch is still a reality, and it could get pretty heavy at times (my personal records are 26 consecutive days without having weekly free of charge days and a single 16-hour workday), despite the fact that it is nowhere as frequent because it employed to become bad when EZMUT was the Great Huge Undesirable everyone loved to hate.

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