I came into this thread, bored last night. Saw the SOS. Same old really bad memories glorifying the early careers of now known elites, even if they actually didn't even have an early career like in the case of Rodgers elite bench riding. Colts fans were ripping dicks off for early Manning, Bears fans think he was born elite.
My favorite is "it". "He has it", "He doesn't have it". Fun for fans to make those early predictions, some take it too far and think their predictions are fact and then allow their early predictions to cloud their judgement from then on.
Grossman has "it", it was just a bad game in his virtual rookie year, he'll pull it out.
IMO elite is determined towards the end of a career, definitely not at the start of a career. It is definitely not determined from cloudy fan memories. And to a large point is judged against other players of the time period, there are HOF QBs that wouldn't do squat in today's NFL.