So he's top 5 in some stats, top 30 in others, 7th in passer rating, and has done all of this across two decades of football with changing rules and is number one in Super Bowls won, NFC Conference Championships, and Super Bowls made.
So tell me, you estimate it, how many Super Bowls does Belichick win and get to without Brady? I want to hear your estimate. We literally have a massive number of comparisons of other extraordinary teams that couldn't even win 1 Super Bowl. As well as the crazy dynasties that dominated their era that did not equal Brady.
Yet somehow Brady was just the luckiest QB in history because he had the best teams and coaching? No other QBs had equally good teams and coaching over the years to be able to equal what he did? Chuck Knoll 20 years in Pitt? Tom Landry in Dallas? Bill Walsh in Frisco? But somehow it's just Brady's lucky teams that somehow won even though no one else has been able to replicate this with other supposedly better QBs? Or were they all just worse coaches than Belichick?
You can toss this thinking around all you want. Brady has done something unprecedented. And your "luck" or coaching or defense argument doesn't hold much water because plenty of players had extraordinary coaching, players, luck, and the like around them, but still couldn't get done what Brady got done.
No. You don't need to be number one in any QB category. Dan Fouts had the passing yards record for years. Not one Super Bowl. Troy Aikman barely rates as a QB, yet he's a Hall of Famer who was a great QB for his time. He knew how to lead.
That's Brady. He knows how to win and lead a team to a Super Bowl if you put quality pieces around him better than any QB in history. Most even amazing QBs can barely get it done even with far superior teams around them.
It's a weak argument on your part. I wish we had a magic machine because I'd bet money you take Rodgers or Peyton or Elway and put them with Belichick and the Patriots during the same period, they don't win as often as Brady. Brady has excellent regular and post-season stats. But what he seems to have more than the others is a knack for winning tight games and an absolutely never die attitude, never break, never give up drive to win. Patriots have literally never won a Super Bowl by big points. But the one thing they've always had that has put them over others more often than not is Tom's ability to take the lead and close games.
Anyway, it doesn't matter what you think. As far as the the NFL is concerned, Brady is the best to ever do it. He's untouchable in that position at this point. He's pretty much set the standard for QB greatness for future generations. You want to be the best, you gotta match Tom Brady. His stats and his championships.
I've always said Brady is a very good QB. There's no question and I give him his due. But he's not the best ever. The stats don't bear it out. For my money, there are a few QBs that are/were better and you mentioned them, namely Rodgers and
Manning for sure. QB's these days don't call their own plays, so we can't compare to those days, but that leaves us with only TD's, INT ratios, and TD/INT ratios plus some others. If he was the GOAT, he would lead in a number of those categories I listed above. He does not, but others are rated higher and Rodgers is the best ALL TIME in a couple of them and much nearer the top in others.
Winning championships is a team accomplishment, not a QB accomplishment. The QB gets the glory, but it's the team/coaches around him that make it work and give him the chance to be successful.
It IS luck for any player to land in the perfect situation for him to achieve at the highest level. It was luck that teams passed on him 198 times for him to be selected by NE. That's not planning or skill, it's BS luck and nothing else.
He's had great Defenses that bailed him out and/or set him up with a short field for the team to win throughout his career and they won SB's because of them. It was his good luck that they beat us. Luck that our OC called a bonehead play when
we were on the goal line. It wasn't Brady who won it, but the Defense that did.
The old saying the Defense wins championships is true to a large degree and Brady has been the beneficiary of playing on teams with good Defenses most of his career.
