First, an explanation:
Tom Brady is the most accomplished quarterback among the 1,036 men who have ever managed to make an NFL quarterback jump. He has won six Super Bowls. On Sunday, he will play in his 10th, which is the most unlikely since the first, which was 19 years ago and at a time when most people still thought of him as Drew Bledsoe’s starter.
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 first few paragraphs. Even if Patrick Muhammad and the Chiefs win this one, and Muhammad gets a third of the way to Brady, and even if Muhammad ends up matching or exceeding that number someday, Brady will remain a memory 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 hairy emoji like GOAT does. The most accomplished, All Time has (never) will have the same timbre as the Greatest Of All Time. And here’s the question: it’s easy to confuse them or think of them as synonyms. Are not. The thing is, most men who have held the position would prefer to be remembered as Brady will be remembered.
Even if those guys were (or are) better quarterbacks.
(During 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 New England cities – to say nothing of Boston itself, which would fill my email with rage in the coming days.Fortunately, they have taken a brief sabbatical year, temporarily, to deify Brady.Instead, we will surely hear from both fans of the Buccaneers in time.
“You’ve seen what he’s done this year,” Tampa coach Bruce Arians said earlier this week. “You have seen what he has done all his career. You saw what he was doing in Green Bay [to win the NFC Championship]. What can I add more? “
Yes, Aryans learned all year long what Bill Belichick knew (and he might even admit if he poured a pint glass full of pentothal sodium) every day since September 23, 2001, the day Mo Lewis almost went break Bledsoe, the day Tom Brady jogged for the first time. old Foxboro Stadium as QB1 for the first time: you want to win a football game, hand over the keys to Tom Brady. You will win the football match. He has won 230 of 299 games as an NFL quarterback. He is 33-11 in the playoffs. It is a winning percentage of .767.
The most accomplished quarterback of all time.
But it’s him better?
He’s better than Aaron Rodgers, who has the best quarterback rating of all time (104.3), throwing spirals so perfect for the image that they look more like art than athletics, he can run a bit, who has done a lot of his damage to the relentless time of the NFC North, and who is a 126-63-1 not as terrible as a starter?
His career, pound for pound, is better than Peyton Manning, who won two titles, made four Super Bowls playing for four different head coaches, owns five regular-season MVPs to Brady’s three, who is recognized as a savior of the position and I spent 15 years as an undisputed favorite among fantasy football owners and who is behind Brady in fourth place on the QBR list, 96.62-95.71?
We also deleted the files from this argument. Before Brady, Joe Montana was the undisputed designated as MAAT, and he could make an equally compelling case for the GOAT since he had 4 for 4 in the Super Bowls, as he was the undisputed king of his generation (and by the way ,, served as a hero and idol for a child growing up in San Mateo, California, named Thomas Edward Patrick Brady). Brady overtook Montana in the single category; would you list it higher than the other?
Two more names from the history books:
John Unitas won three championships (two in the NFL, one in the Super Bowl) for 14 seasons. He was 118-63-4 in 176 years as a foal. At a time when even the big quarterbacks routinely got completion percentages below 50% and had more options than TDs, Unitas had tremendously modern-looking numbers: 54.7% finishes, a TD-INT rate. of 287-246. His QBR (78.20) is the 71st of all time, but of the 70 he had ahead of him only Fran Tarkenton, Roger Staubach and Bart Starr were his contemporaries; he was decades ahead of his time.
And what about Starr? Brady broke his five-title record. Starr was the most essential Packer, even if it was the Green Bay game that won his mythology. Jerry Kramer, who blocked Starr all those years, once said, “If the old man,” who would be Vince Lombardi, “dreamed of something called” Packer Aerial Attack “instead of” The Packer Sweep, “that Starr it would have set records that no man would be able to touch ”.
Also receiving votes: Drew Brees … Dan Marino … Steve Young … Otto Graham … Sonny Jurgenson … Staubach … John Elway … YA Tittle … Terry Bradshaw … Dan Fouts …
Some others, perhaps. And, perhaps, if we could organize a Punt, Pass & Kick contest for all ages, we would be able to better calibrate it and judge it better. But of the 1,036 quarterbacks who have taken snapshots in the NFL, only one has won six titles, with No. 7 on deck. Only one is the MAAT. Is it also the GOAT? Probably not. Ask him out well if he is no longer absorbed in the connection.