Pro football in the 1950s kicked off with an immediate shakeup—the NFL and the All-America Football Conference would merge, adding the Cleveland Browns, the San Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts to the league. The Browns would win the NFL championship immediately in the 1950 season and continue to dominate the rest of the decade, trading titles with Detroit and eventually ceding their dominance to Baltimore. The constant across all of these successful teams was their superb quarterback play.
Just as the teams changed and conferences aligned and shifted, the quarterback position would evolve, and the NFL would take its first steps into what we know now as a passing league—mostly off the backs of just a few men who pushed the game forward to levels never conceived of at the time.
Below, you’ll find the five best QBs of the 1950s, with Johnny Unitas at the top (even though he started his career halfway through the decade). At the point in time when each of these men hung up their cleats, nearly all of them would hold almost every meaningful career passing record as they constantly leapfrogged each other’s stunning stat boxes.
Of course, the ’50s also saw Topps and Bowman both making pro football cards, which led to some of the most iconic rookie cards and collections of Hall of Fame players in the sport’s history.
https://ripped.topps.com/the-greatest-qbs-of-the-1950s-and-their-cards-to-collect-culture/
