While pulling together numbers for our recent post on Quarterback numbers, a couple numbers jumped out at us that we didn’t know and never would have guessed.

John Elway is generally considered one of the top quarterbacks of his era, and would probably rank in a lot of people’s top 10 of all time lists (a quick search showed him at #4 in the first one we found). However, while Elway did reach the 300 career touchdown mark,  he did so without ever throwing 30 touchdowns in a single season–in fact, his career high was set in his second to last season (1997) at 27–a number that shocked us for how low it is, compared to today’s game. Elway also never had a season with fewer than 10 interceptions, had only one season with over 4,000 yards passing, only cracked a 60% completion percentage three times in his career, and had a career completion percentage of just under 57%.

Of course, compare those numbers to another Hall of Fame quarterback from that era, who only threw for over 20 touchdowns once in his career (23 in 1992) and never cracked 3,500 yards passing in a season, and Elway looks like the Hall of Famer he is. Of course, Troy Aikman had Emmitt Smith running behind him, and won three Super Bowls.

If Elway put his numbers up today, I wonder if he would even be able to hold his starting job–especially based on his early career. But win a couple Super Bowls, and those numbers get you an easy invite to Canton.