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RE: You really cannot compare Joe Montana with Peyton Manning....

"I don't see where the game has changed all that much."

Well that pretty much sums up your experience watching the NFL then. Since you don't remember when holding receivers was legal (Pre-1978), or the blows to the head that players like Ronnie Lott used to level of "defenseless" receivers, I'm sure you just can't see how the game has changed. Not to mention the protection the QB's get from the refs nowadays, just listen to guys like Troy Aikman and Boomer Esiason lament about how spoiled today's QB's are.

Pre-2008 there was one QB who threw for over 5000 yards in a season, Dan Marino in 1984. Since 2008 it has been done 7 times, 6 times in the past 3 seasons. No one has thrown for 7 TD passes in a single game since 1961, until this year when two QB's did it. QB's are more successful today because success has been designed into the rules. You cannot deny how much the game has changed unless you are totally blind.

Note that we have lived in the "Golden Age" for NFL QB's since 2004 now. Here is how this link described the transformation:

"The Golden Age (2004-present)

As if quarterbacks hadn't been coddled enough by coaches and rule-makers over the past two decades, one profound game, and one very angry team executive, made their lives even easier in 2004.
•One, New England defenders pushed the bounds of pass interference rules in the 2003 AFC championship game, badly roughing up Indianapolis receivers and shutting down the Colts high-powered offense in a 24-14 Patriots victory.
•Two, Indy's powerful president, Bill Polian, complained to the league rather loudly in the wake of his team's loss.

As a result, the NFL determined that its officials would "re-emphasize" pass interference rules in 2004 and beyond. Though not officially a rule change, the impact on the passing game was profound.



The very next season, Indy quarterback Peyton Manning went out and rewrote the record books, with 49 TD passes and a 121.1 passer rating that was nearly 10 points better than any that had come before it. The league-wide passer rating, meanwhile, jumped from 78.3 in 2003 to a record 82.8 in 2004.



The records have remained under assault since then: Tom Brady broke Manning's TD-toss record with 50 in 2007, while posting the second-highest passer rating in history (117.2). With less fanfare, Drew Brees set a record with 440 completions in 2007. And, as noted above, NFL quarterbacks are poised to rewrite the record books in countless categories here in 2008, while newcomers have bucked tradition by easily performing at high level.



But today's high-flying newcomers and record-setting veterans aren't better quarterbacks than players of the past. They just have advantages their predecessors never enjoyed back before the Golden Age of the passing game."



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