It rarely ends well for the great ones — let alone the almost-great ones like Drew Bledsoe.

Jim Brown quit pro football at age 29, after eight rushing titles in nine seasons and an MVP performance in 1965, forever remembered as the most dominant ballcarrier in NFL history. John Elway led his team to back-to-back championships, winning Super Bowl MVP honors in the last game of his career. Jerome Bettis won his first and only Super Bowl ring, also in the last game of his career, in his hometown of Detroit.

Those are the lucky ones — so few and far between that they stick out like anorexics and designated drivers at a Cold, Hard Football Facts tailgate.

Mostly, it ends the way it probably ended for Bledsoe on Monday Night Football, in a 36-22 loss to the Giants.

The ineffective, aging Bledsoe, blessed with the mobility of a beached whale and the decision-making skills of George Costanza, was benched in humiliating fashion in front of millions of fans for unproven backup Tony Romo.

It's Romo who will start for the Cowboys when they visit Carolina for another nationally televised game, this one Sunday night on NBC. But the Romo-Bledsoe debate is likely to continue for at least 10 more weeks. The 3-3 Cowboys remain very much alive in the weak and wide-open NFC East. Bledsoe may be past his prime — which was never too prime to begin with — but Romo hardly seems like the answer. Heading into the loss to the Giants, he had attempted just two passes in four NFL seasons.

But a bigger debate swirls around Bledsoe here in the twilight of his career, one that will live well beyond this season: Does Drew belong in the Pro Football Hall of Fame?

There should be no debate. In fact, the answer is as short and as sweet as a Halloween candy corn:

No.

The truth is that Drew Bledsoe is not a Hall of Fame quarterback. It’s easy to arrive at answers to the most pressing pigskin issues of our time when you argue the case in front of the ghoulish hanging judge of gridiron legacies, the Cold, Hard Football Facts.

The study
When it comes to Hall of Fame consideration, many pigskin “pundits” weigh their opinions and cite isolated anecdotes. This is a failed strategy.

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We followed a more effective course: We considered the case with all the emotion of a cooler full of stiff, dead striped bass.

We compared Bledsoe’s career numbers to those of all seven Live Ball Era (1978 to present) quarterbacks who have earned a place of honor in the Hall of Fame: Troy Aikman, John Elway, Jim Kelly, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Warren Moon and Steve Young. We also included in the comparison the three active quarterbacks who have all but assured themselves a spot in the Hall of Fame already: Tom Brady, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning.

That gave us a solid group of 11 quarterbacks to include in our comparison. The careers of each player in our study began in 1978 or later, what we call the Live Ball Era. It was in 1978 that the NFL set new rules to open up offense, and the passing game in particular. Passing stats have since shot up dramatically. The league-wide passer rating in 1977, for example, was 60.7. Last year, it was 80.1.

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