Grieb milestone to be last of its kind

Adam Markowitz
Friday June 3, 2011

It almost went as a blip on the screen in the San Jose SaberCats' 55-49 loss to the Georgia Force in Week 11. Mark Grieb became the fifth quarterback in the history of the AFL to throw for at least 40,000 yards. The 358 yards that the longtime signal caller for the SaberCats had on Saturday night brought him to 40,121 for his historic career.

Grieb would surely tell you that his milestone meant absolutely nothing, especially considering the fact that his SaberCats are now 5-6, have lost four games in a row, and look nothing like a playoff team, let alone a team that had played in back to back ArenaBowl games before taking a hiatus in 2009 and 2010. However, what we need to realize here is that we will almost certainly never see a quarterback get to this 40,000 yard plateau again in the history of the Arena Football League.

In terms of active quarterbacks, the next quarterback in line in terms of passing yards is John Dutton, who has 33,567 yards. But let's be real with Dutton here for a second. He'll be 36 years old at the end of this season, and he is going to be coming off of a season ending injury this year. In all likelihood, he is going to need to play two more full seasons, if not more, to get to this illustrious mark.

I could probably give you 10 guesses as to who is the next active career leader, and you won't get it. Ryan Vena. That's right. Ryan Freaking Vena just became the 29th quarterback in the history of the AFL to throw for at least 10,000 yards.

Think about that for a second. Ryan Vena has 10,132 passing yards in his career. Mark Grieb has 40,121, almost four times more yards. The next most likely candidates to get the job done is Tommy Grady, who is 26 years old and has just a year and a half's worth of experience at this level, and Nick Davila, who is also 26 years old and has the same AFL experience. They have 7,432 and 8,079 passing yards for their respective career.

Grady has averaged 285.8 yards per game in his career. Davila is at 310.7 yards per game. We would need to see Grady play in 140 totals games, or 114 more games to reach 40,000 yards, while Davila is on a clip to reach 40,000 yards in 129 total games, or 103 more.

Assuming that he stays healthy for the rest of this season, Davila would be at 33 games, and he would need 96 more to reach the coveted 129 mark. That's at least five more full seasons and into a sixth season to get the job done.

Let's be real for a second. If Davila keeps up at this pace, don't we think that at some point, the UFL, the CFL, or one of these others leagues would come calling for him? And unless the AFL can start ponying up more than an alleged $400 per game (or a supposed $1,000 per game for a "marketing player"), would you blame him if he wanted to head to a different league?

Other quarterbacks might end up winning three ArenaBowls again (though that isn't all that likely either). Others might end up with more passing touchdowns in an individual season or more passing yards in an individual season. Others might beat him in terms of quarterback rating and completion percentage (though right now, he ranks No. 3 and No. 5 in those two stats respective all-time in the AFL). However, just like the 300 game winning pitchers in baseball, the 40,000 passing yard quarterbacks are a thing of the past.

Enjoy this moment, AFL fans. Mark Grieb is of the likes of a quarterback that we will probably never end up seeing again.