Although I have long had my doubts that Texans’ QB David Carr is a top flight NFL quarterback, I must concede that the deficiencies in the Texans’ offensive line have really not given him a fair chance to develop his skills here. Along those same lines, the Colts’ masterful QB, Peyton Manning, is often unfairly criticized for not being among the top NFL QB’s of all time because his team has never qualified for the Super Bowl.
As Allen Barra explains in this lucid OpinionJournal op-ed, Manning truly is one of the NFL’s all-time best QB’s regardless of whether his team’s limitations in other areas have prevented him from playing in a Super Bowl. Meanwhile, in another OpinionJournal piece on a Colts quarterback, Geoffrey Norman reviews Tom Callahan’s biography of legendary Colts QB, Johnny Unitas, in the appropriately named Johnny U (Crown 2006). Just to give you an idea on how much the nature of the NFL has changed over the past 60 years, Norman reminds us of an anecdote that Callahan passes along about Unitas:

[W]hen [Unitas’] teammate [and star running back] Alan Ameche and his wife bought their first house for $8,000, it was former construction worker Unitas who laid the floor.