A year late-Andy Dalton is a Chicago Bear

[Shake n Blake]

(04-09-2021, 09:00 AM)fredtoast Wrote: Here is the way I used to rate him before the last couple of year when he dropped significantly.  I felt there were only maybe 6 or 7 QBs who were clearly on an "elite" level.  I forget exactly how I rated them back then.  But then I had Dalton in the second tier of 7 or 8.  Again I forget exactly who was in each tier back then.  So technically I was saying that Dalton was in the same tier of some QBs in the top ten.

Yeah I always thought ranking via tiers was more fair. You usually had 3-4 guys at the top who were heads and shoulders better than everyone else, some "near-elite" guys like Russell Wilson and Ben, then a glut of guys in the 10-20 range who were often interchangeable.

For a year or three (2012, 2013 and 2015), Dalton was ahead of guys like Eli Manning, Matthew Stafford, Cam Newton, Carson Palmer, Andrew Luck, etc in many passing categories. In the span of 2 years ('12 and '13), he accounted for 66 TD's, and ranked 13th and 15th in passer rating. Then obviously he had his career year in 2015. Dalton was at his best from 2012 to 2016.

Then in some years like 2014 and 2017, Dalton was behind those guys. That's why I say they were interchangeable in rankings during those years.

Obviously Dalton tailed off hard from 2017 on, but during the peak of his run, I felt like he was in the mid-tier (10th thru 16th range) with the names I mentioned.