Tom Brady is the most successful quarterback among the 1,036 men to ever snap as an NFL quarterback. He has won six Super Bowls. On Sunday he will play in his tenth, which is the most unlikely since his first, which was 19 years ago and at a time when most people still considered him a placeholder for Drew Bledsoe.
For the next hundred years – maybe for the next thousand, maybe forever – it will be impossible to write NFL history without including Tom Brady’s name in the opening paragraphs. Even if Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs win that title, and Mahomes makes a third of the way to Brady, and even if Mahomes one day hits or exceeds that number, Brady will stand as a monument to excellence and to the ultimate goal of anyone who plays, trains or cares about soccer: winning championships.
MAAT doesn’t have a cute furry emoji like GOAT. Most successful, All Time doesn’t have the same sound as Greatest Of All Time. And here’s the thing: it’s easy to confuse the two or take them as synonyms. You are not. The fact is, most of the men who have played this position would rather be remembered as Brady will be remembered.
(In the 18 years before that, the next thing I had to look out for was the influx of emails Fairfield and Springfield, Montpelier and Providence, Bangor and Manchester, and hundreds of other charming New England towns – not to mention Boston itself – are preparing what would fill my email with anger for the next few days. Fortunately, they have a short – if also taken a temporary sabbatical to idolize Brady. Instead, we’ll surely hear from both Buccaneers fans in due course.) « You saw what he did this year, » said Tampa coach Bruce Arian at the beginning this week. « You saw what he did all his career. You saw what he did at Green Bay [to win the NFC championship]. What else can I add? »
Yes, Arians did learned year-round what Bill Belichick knew (and perhaps would even admit if) for every day since September 23, 2001, the day Mo Lewis Bledsoe nearly broke, the day Tom Brady trotted for the first time He poured a pint glass of sodium pentothal) Old Foxboro Stadium for the first time as QB1: If you want to win a football game, give keys to Tom Brady. He’ll win you the soccer game. He has won 230 of 299 games as an NFL quarterback. He is 33-11 in the playoffs. That’s a 0.767 percent gain.
Is he better than Aaron Rodgers, who has the best quarterback rating of all time (104.3), who throws spirals so perfectly that they’re more an art than athletics? who can walk a little, who has done so much damage? the relentless bad weather of NFC Nord, and who’s a not so terrible 126-63-1 as a starter?
Is his career, pound for pound, better than Peyton Manning, who won two titles, won four Super Bowls for played four different head coach, who owns five regular season MVPs, to Brady’s three, who is recognized as a connoisseur of the position and spent 15 years as the undisputed darling of fantasy football owners and who sits just behind Brady in fourth place on the QBR -List, 96.62-95.71?
Let’s dust off the archives for this argument as well. Prior to Brady, Joe Montana was the undisputed agent as MAAT, and he was able to make an equally compelling argument for the GOAT as he was 4 on 4 in Super Bowls as he was the undisputed king of his generation (and not by chance) served as hero and idol for a specific child who grew up in San Mateo, California under the name Thomas Edward Patrick Brady. Brady overtook Montana in one category; Would you list him higher in the other?
John Unitas won three championships (two in the NFL, one Super Bowl) over 14 seasons. He was 118-63-4 in 176 years as a Colt. At a time when even big quarterbacks routinely had completion rates below 50 percent and had more picks than TDs, Unitas had some terribly modern looking numbers: 54.7 percent completions, a TD-INT rate of 287 to 246. Its QBR ( 78.20) is the 71st of all time, but of the 70 before him, only Fran Tarkenton, Roger Staubach and Bart Starr were his contemporaries; He was decades ahead of his time.
What about Starr? It was his record of five titles that Brady broke. Starr was the main packer, even if it was the Green Bay running game that earned its mythology. Jerry Kramer, who had blocked Starr all these years, once said: « If the old man » – that would be Vince Lombardi – « came up with something called » Packer Aerial Attack « instead of » The Packer Sweep « , Starr would have it done setting records that nobody can touch. ”
Also received votes: Drew Brees… Dan Marino… Steve Young… Otto Graham… Sonny Jurgenson… Staubach… John Elway… YA Tittle… Terry Bradshaw… Dan Fouts… </ A few others maybe. And if we could maybe put together a punt, pass & kick competition for the ages, we could better assess and judge it. But of all 1,036 quarterbacks who snapped snaps in the NFL, only one won six titles, with seat 7 on deck. Only one is the MAAT. Is he also the goat? Probably not. Ask him if he cares.
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