A laughable fan poll from ESPN.com SportsNation. It asks people to rank the 32 NFL starting quarterbacks.
Want to take a stab at where our own Tarvaris Jackson ranks? That's right. . .#32. I have a feeling that at the end of the '07 season, we'll all be able to look back and have a good laugh at this.
As of now, these are the current results:
- Peyton Manning
- Tom Brady
- Drew Brees
- Carson Palmer
- Donovan McNabb
- Matt Hasselbeck
- Brett Favre
- Philip Rivers
- Marc Bulger
- Vince Young
- Ben Roethlisberger
- Steve McNair
- Michael Vick
- Tony Romo
- Chad Pennington
- Jake Delhomme
- Trent Green
- Matt Leinart
- Eli Manning
- Jeff Garcia
- Alex Smith
- Jay Cutler
- Byron Leftwich
- Jon Kitna
- Matt Schaub
- Daunte Culpepper
- Mark Brunell
- JaMarcus Russell
- J.P. Losman
- Rex Grossman
- Charlie Frye
- Tarvaris Jackson
Couple of observations. . .
-Packer fans have clearly been stuffing the ballot box. Anyone who really thinks that Brett Favre is a better quarterback right now than guys like Rivers or Bulger may be legally retarded.
-Rex Grossman appears to be ranked right around where he should be.
-JaMarcus Russell, who has yet to even take the field in an NFL pre-season game, is better than Tarvaris Jackson? Really? With the offense he's surrounded by in Oakland? I have a hell of a time believing that.
Like I've said in the past, it will be a pleasure watching Tarvaris Jackson make so many people look so completely stupid this season. See, if you look at the list. . .particularly the bottom half of it. . .you see a lot of guys with known issues. Grossman, Frye, and Losman aren't very good. . .Brunell, Green, and Kitna are all about 80 years old (and Green's the only one that really has anything left in the tank). . .Leftwich and Garcia aren't even guaranteed to be the starters on their own teams, and so on.
On the other hand, nobody really knows what the Vikings have in Tarvaris Jackson. Not even the media geniuses or the "intelligent" fans of other teams that have come to such logical conclusions as "OH MY GOD TARVARIS JACKSON HAS STARTED 2 NFL GAMES AND HE SUCKS AND THE VIKINGS SHOULD CUT HIM RIGHT NOW." Given the choice of "unknown with potential" or "known with issues," I'll take the former on every occasion.
Shoot, Jackson doesn't even have to be great for the Vikings to be successful in '07. With the best run defense in football, an improved pass defense, and one of the best rushing offenses in football, all he has to do is be average. I, personally, think he can be better than average. . .much better, quite frankly. . .but he doesn't necessarily have to be.
So let people think that the guy's horrible now. Like I said earlier, I think we'll be the ones having the last laugh by the end of the season.