LA Rams: 5 greatest quarterbacks in franchise history

The Rams NFL Franchise has had some incredible quarterbacks over the years. But who tops them all?

As I began to dive into the LA Rams’ history of quarterbacks, I began to realize I may have taken on a larger project than initially expected.  The LA Rams have had a total of 172 quarterbacks throw at least one pass for the team, according to Pro Football Reference.  Obviously, for the sake of ranking the top five quarterbacks in LA Rams history, we don’t really care about the majority of those.

That still means that there were a lot of quarterbacks to weed through.  If we remove those with less than 500 pass attempts, that narrows the candidates down to 18 quarterbacks.  I think that’s a good number, so let’s roll with that.  Even still, this includes former LA Rams quarterbacks, Zeke Bratkowski and Bill Munson, both of whom recorded more interceptions than touchdowns in their short LA Rams careers.

That criteria also includes former quarterback Parker Hall, who had a 9.3 percent interception rate, the worst of any of those with over 500 pass attempts.  I think we can safely remove these three from consideration as well.  So that gets us down to 15 quarterbacks.

Single season passing leaders

Interesting little nugget here, of the top 15 all-time single-game passing yards leaders, four of them belong to LA Rams quarterbacks: Vince Ferragamo, Jared Goff, Matthew Stafford, and Norm Van Brocklin.  Norm Van Brocklin threw for 554 yards in 1951, a record that still stands today.  Are all or any of these guys in my top five?

Also, Matthew Stafford’s single-game total came while he was with the Detroit Lions, should the fact he’s played only one season with the LA Rams be taken into consideration when measuring him against others, such as James Harris, who played three seasons with the LA Rams and posted the best winning percentage of any of the remaining 15 quarterbacks?  I’m not a fan of “wins” being a quarterback stat but to a certain extent, this should be taken into consideration, right?

While on the topic of wins, what about league championships or Super Bowl wins?  The LA Rams have two quarterbacks with a Super Bowl win: Kurt Warner and just a season ago, Matthew Stafford.  The LA Rams also won NFL championships (before the NFL Super Bowl era) in 1945 and 1951, with quarterbacks Bob Waterfield and Norm Van Brocklin.

Here is another trivia nugget for you, Bob Waterfield was actually the starting quarterback in the 1951 NFL Championship (he was also the kicker); however, after completing only nine of 24 passes, with two interceptions, he was replaced with Van Brocklin.  Van Brocklin entered the game and completed four of six passes, including a 73 touchdown pass to Tom Fears in the fourth quarter, putting the LA Rams up 24 – 17 and securing their second NFL Championship.

I think I’ve teased long enough here and now let’s get into my top five All-Time Rams Franchise quarterbacks.