Jared Goff has landed in some pretty strong company on a fresh all-time quarterback list, and the number beside his name says plenty: No. 47.
NFL Throwback on YouTube rolled out a top-100 ranking of the best QBs ever, and Goff checked in between two Eagles icons, Donovan McNabb at No. 48 and Randall Cunningham at No. 46. That puts the Lions quarterback seventh among active passers, which lines up with the kind of placement he’s usually getting in 2026 QB conversations.
For a player whose game still draws plenty of debate, a top-50 all-time slot might raise eyebrows. But the deeper you look, the more the ranking starts to make sense.
NFL Throwback pointed to Goff leading all of football in passing yards since 2017 and noted that he “hasn't stopped playing at a high level.” The video also highlighted his Super Bowl trip with the Rams and his work leading Detroit and its high-octane offense into what the ranking called their “best era since the 1950s.”
The raw career numbers back up the case, too. Goff, now 31 and turning 32, sits 27th all-time with 39,622 passing yards and 25th with 256 touchdown passes. He also has 90 regular-season wins, leaving him within reach of becoming one of the 21st, 22nd, or 23rd quarterbacks ever to hit 100 victories, depending on whether Patrick Mahomes, who has 95, or Josh Allen, who has 88, gets there first.
His resume includes five Pro Bowl selections, and the source makes the point that those weren’t empty consolation spots the way some AFC quarterbacks piled up before the league dropped the Pro Bowl game. Even with alternates and replacements in the mix, getting to five Pro Bowls is still a meaningful accomplishment.
Another era-spanning metric from Pro Football Reference also puts Goff in the mix, though not yet anywhere near Canton. Their Hall of Fame Monitor has him 51st among quarterbacks who debuted after 1955, with a score of 54.7. The average Hall of Famer sits at 110, so Goff still has work to do if he’s chasing that level.
The ranking also draws a clear line between “very good” and “Hall of Fame.” In NFL Throwback’s order, Hall of Famers start showing up around No. 30, where Dan Fouts lands. Goff at No. 47 feels like high-end Hall of Good territory, with a case for the lower end of Hall of Very Good.
He wasn’t the only former Lion to make the cut. Daunte Culpepper came in at No. 91 and Jeff Garcia at No. 81, though their Detroit stints didn’t exactly move the needle.
Together, they went 1-14 with the Lions, with Garcia playing in 2005 and Culpepper appearing in 2008 and 2009. Culpepper was also one of the quarterbacks who started during the 0-16 season.
Further up the list, Earl Morrall checked in at No. 65 and Dave Krieg at No. 68.
Morrall arrived in Detroit in the Bobby Layne trade and went on to find success elsewhere, winning an MVP and multiple championships, including one with the undefeated 1972 Dolphins, for whom he started 11 games during that run. Krieg’s lone Lions season came in 1994, when he started seven games and helped the team reach the playoffs with 14 touchdown passes, three interceptions, a career-best 101.7 passer rating and a 5-2 record.
Current Lions quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell also made the list at No. 73. He never played for Detroit, but he has been with the organization since 2021 and is often credited with helping revive Goff’s career in Detroit.
The names Lions fans probably wanted to see most were the old franchise anchors: Bobby Layne and Matthew Stafford. Layne landed at No. 27, sandwiched between Len Dawson at No. 28 and Warren Moon at No.
- Stafford came in at No. 23, between Jim Kelly at No. 24 and Josh Allen at No.
Both of those quarterbacks have already built Hall of Fame cases. Stafford, after winning a Super Bowl and regular-season MVP with the Rams, will eventually get there. Layne’s success came mostly in Detroit, where he picked up multiple First-Team All-Pro selections and helped deliver multiple NFL championships.
And there’s a little extra weight to Layne’s place on the list, considering the long shadow of the No. 50 and his infamous curse. Fifty years after that alleged curse supposedly expired, Detroit has had remarkable stability at quarterback. When Goff takes his first snap in Week 1, it will mark 18 straight seasons with either Goff or Stafford as QB1 in Detroit.
That’s 18 consecutive years with two quarterbacks NFL Throwback now has inside its top 50 all time. Goff’s already there, and he still has plenty of runway to climb closer to Layne and Stafford if future rankings keep moving his way.
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