National Football League
It takes 53: Are star players overrated in today's NFL?
National Football League

It takes 53: Are star players overrated in today's NFL?

Published Jul. 13, 2015 1:39 p.m. ET

By Garry Huckaby

Lately I’ve come to the realization that most casual football fans don’t really understand football. It seems a lot of them think one guy can just magically win a game all by himself. You see and hear it all the time on social media, sports talk shows and even in bar room sports conversations.

Eli Manning has two rings and Tony Romo doesn’t, so Eli is the better quarterback”. By that logic Eli must be twice as good as Peyton, Right? These casual observers don’t seem to understand the whole TEAM aspect of the game. There’s a reason that teams have 53 men on their rosters, because it takes all 53 men to win or lose a game.

It takes much more than that though.

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It takes the 53 men on the game day roster, practice squad players, coaching staff, scouting staff, front office personnel, trainers, doctors, etc. Professional football is the ultimate TEAM sport. In other sports such as basketball, one player really can turn a loser into a winner (see Lebron James) but that’s just not the case in the NFL.

If it were, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady would win every Super Bowl, but that doesn't happen. In fact, the majority of recent Super Bowls were won by TEAMS with a good quarterback and a dominant defense (Seattle, Baltimore, New York).

We saw what happened to Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, his offensive line couldn’t hold up against the dominant Seattle defense and down they went.

For example, on any given offensive play if one player on the offensive line fails to block his man that play most likely fails. The same holds true for the defensive side of the ball. The front seven can all do their job and get pressure to the quarterback forcing him to throw the ball earlier than he wants to, but if the cornerback falls down or gets severely beat the defense most likely fails on that play. An offense can be great, and the TEAM may still lose a lot of games because the defense can’t slow down the other team.

That’s the problem with the whole “this guy has a ring therefore he’s better than this guy who doesn’t have a ring” argument. Wins and losses are TEAM stats not individual stats, they have nothing to do with the quality of an individual player. Some of the greatest players in the history of football never won a Super Bowl (Dan Marino, Barry Sanders, Kenny Easley, Junior Seau, etc…). On the flip side there have been some very average players that have won Super Bowls some of them even multiple Super Bowls (Trent Dilfer, Eli Manning, Brad Johnson, etc…).

It’s hard to know if public opinion has always been this way or if it has shifted over the years and social media just brings it to us more often. How can you have a whole legion of so called fans that don’t even understand the most fundamental aspect of the game? If one player was all it took to win championships, then why wouldn’t a team just sell the farm and give up all their future draft picks for “that guy?"

There are many championship-starved franchises (Philadelphia Eagles, Arizona Cardinals, Minnesota Vikings) that most certainly would do it if that were the case. But in the real world, it takes every single man pulling his weight to make the sled move.

That should be why we love this game. It’s the ultimate TEAM sport and that’s what makes it great. That’s why you see quality franchises always churning the bottom of their rosters. They know the TEAM is only as good as it’s weakest link and when December rolls around and the playoff are upon us, it’s usually the deepest teams that go the farthest.

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