First, an explanation:
Tom Brady is the most successful of the 1,036 men who have ever had a headache as an NFL defender. He won six Super Bowls. On Sunday, he will play in his 10th, which is the most unlikely since his first, which was 19 years ago and at a time when most people still considered him a place for Drew Bledsoe. .
For the next hundred years – maybe for the next thousands, maybe forever – it will be impossible to write NFL history without including Tom Brady’s name in the first two paragraphs. Even if Patrick Mahomes and the bosses win this, and Mahomes gets a third of the way to Brady, and even if Mahomes gets to match or exceed that number one day, Brady will remain a memorial of excellence and the ultimate goal of anyone who plays, trains or cares about football: winning championships.
There is a problem with this designation.
MAAT doesn’t have a nice gentle emoji like the goat does. Most accomplished, All Time does not have – will never have – the same ring as the greatest of all time. And here’s the thing: it’s easy to confuse the two or think they’re synonymous. They are not. The fact is that most of the men who played this position would be rather remembered as Brady will be remembered.
Even if those guys were – or are – better defenders.
(For the 18 years prior to this, the next thing I should do is prepare for the influx of emails from Fairfield and Springfield, Montpelier and Providence, Bangor and Manchester, and hundreds of other charming Newfoundland cities. England – to say nothing of Boston itself – which would fill my email with rage in the next few days. Fortunately, they took a short – if temporary – sabbatical from Brady’s deification. Instead, we’ll hear for sure. from both Buccaneers fans in a timely manner.)
“You saw what he did this year,” Tampa coach Bruce Arians said earlier this week. “You saw what his whole career did. You saw what he did in Green Bay [to win the NFC Championship]. What else can I add to that? ”
Yes, the Aryans learned all year what Bill Belichick knew (and might even admit if he poured a bottle full of sodium pentothal) for each day, starting on September 23, 2001, the day Mo Lewis nearly broke Bledsoe. , the day Tom Brady first entered the old Foxboro Stadium as QB1 for the first time: you want to win a football game, give the keys to Tom Brady. He will win your football match. He won 230 of 299 games as an NFL defender. He is 33-11 in the playoffs. This is a .767 winning percentage.
The most perfect defender of all time.
But it’s him The best?
He is better than Aaron Rodgers, who has the best defender rating of all time (104.3), who throws spirals so perfect as to resemble art more than athletics, who can run a little, who has done so much damage in the tireless bad weather of NFC North and who is a not so terrible 126-63-1 as a starter?
His career, pound for pound, is better than Peyton Manning, who has won two titles, made four Super Bowls playing for four head coaches, holds five regular-season MVPs over Brady’s three, who is he recognized as a scientist of the position and spent 15 years as an undisputed darling among the owners of fantasy football and who stands right behind Brady on the fourth place on the QBR list, 96.62-95.71?
Let’s dust off the archives for this argument as well. Before Brady, Joe Montana was unquestionably designated as MAAT and could support an equally compelling case for GOAT because he was 4-for-4 in the Super Bowls because he was the undisputed king of his generation (and, not coincidentally, , served as a hero and idol for a certain child growing up in San Mateo, California, named Thomas Edward Patrick Brady). Brady moved from Montana to the singles category; did you list it above in the other one?
Two more names from the history books:
John Unitas has won three championships (two in the NFL, one Super Bowl) in 14 seasons. He was 118-63-4 in 176 years as Colt. At a time when even big quarterbacks typically achieved completion percentages below 50% and had more options than TDs, Unitas had some extremely modern numbers: 54.7% completions, a TD-rate. INT of 287-246. His QBR (78.20) is ranked 71st of all time, but of the 70 ahead of him, only Fran Tarkenton, Roger Staubach and Bart Starr were contemporaries; it was decades ahead of its time.
And what about Starr? Brady broke his five-title record. Starr was the most essential Packer, even though Green Bay’s running game won the mythology. Jerry Kramer, who blocked Starr all those years, once said, “If the Old Man” – that was Vince Lombardi – dreamed of something called “Packer Aerial Attack” instead of “The Packer Sweep,” Starr would be set records that no one could touch ”.
Also receiving 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, perhaps, if we could organize a Punt, Pass & Kick competition for ages, we would be able to better evaluate this and judge better. But of all the 1,036 defenders who took pictures in the NFL, only one won six titles, number 7 on the deck. Only one is MAAT. Is he also a GOAT? Probably not. Ask him out well if he is no longer absorbed in the connection.