By Eric Valentine
For the past 22 years—more accurately, the past 22 NFL seasons—quarterback Tom Brady had played well enough to be considered by nearly every football expert/historian/Monday morning quarterback the GOAT. The acronym stands for four simple words: Greatest Of All Time. And after somewhat sheepishly announcing his retirement last week, the no-doubt future Hall of Famer will see his legacy grow even more. Because every story evolves over time into something larger than it ever really was.
Consider me and my opinion the anomaly, the outlier, or just a football fan who’s got it all wrong. But I don’t consider Brady the greatest quarterback of all time, not even close. And if you bear with me a bit, you’ll see that I’m the guy who’s actually got it right.
- First the case for why Brady is the GOAT. He retired holding records for:
- Passing yards (96,969)
- Passing touchdowns (707)
- Game-winning drives (67)
- Fourth-quarter comebacks (51)
- Super Bowl wins (7)
- Super Bowl Most Valuable Player (5)
- NFL Most Valuable Player (3)
- Overall wins (277)
- Hottest wife (former supermodel Gisele Bündchen)
- After his last Super Bowl win, he got astoundingly drunk on a boat and threw the 7-pound, 22-inch Super Bowl Lombardi Trophy perfectly and safely from the dock to a boat his teammate was on.
And it’s important to note career accomplishments that don’t exactly show up in clean numbers, such as:
- In his first Super Bowl win, he was a rookie and 24 years old (a record).
- In his first Super Bowl win, his team was the clear underdog.
- In one of his Super Bowl wins, his team was trailing 28–3 at halftime (a record comeback).
- In his last Super Bowl win, he was the underdog and 43 years old (a record).
- In the 2019–2020 season, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a record of 7–9. In 2020, when Brady became a Buccaneer, his team won the Super Bowl.
- In the 2021–2022 season, this his last year, Brady nearly beat the team (Los Angeles Rams) who made it to the Super Bowl. And he did it by tying the game at 27–27, after trailing 27-3 after halftime.
There will never be a career like this again. But there will be a quarterback like this again.
Brady was drafted in the 6th round after graduating from the University of Michigan where he ended his career as the backup quarterback. While getting drafted by an NFL is a great accomplishment, doing it in the 6th round means that all the football experts who are getting paid to win football games considered nearly 200 other players to be better than him. I mean, can that many NFL minds all be wrong? (Colin Kaepernick doesn’t say a word, just turns the page with one hand and face palms with the other).
The late pick in the draft is because Tom Brady just wasn’t a physically impressive quarterback. He had good height (6’4”) but was thin and gangly. I’m certain I could beat him in a foot race. It’s true he had a fairly strong and accurate arm, but it was nothing extraordinary and at one point in his career he and his team got busted for deflating his team’s footballs just enough so he could grip the ball better. That’s cheating.
And finally, although Brady had success in college when he was the starter (he went 20-5) and even led the team to a couple come-from-behind wins, Michigan was always considered a defensive team with an offense that relied first on—not passing—but running the football effectively. In the NFL, Brady took over a team that was also known for its defense, as well as its head coach Bill Belichick—the GOAT of NFL coaches. The two times Brady’s backup quarterbacks took over for a significant amount of time while Brady recovered from his injuries, they had significant success and qualified for the playoffs. Both the backups were offered mega contracts the next year by other teams.
In other words, Brady wasn’t even the best player on his college football team and landed on an NFL team with a now legendary (and still not retired) coach who could simply win games no matter who the signal caller might be. So when the question asked is: Who’s the greatest of all time? Answering Tom Brady means you have little understanding of what makes a football player great.
But what’s the other data say? How many Super Bowl wins and MVPs and [insert fave stat here] do the other great NFL quarterbacks have? Very little and very few in comparison to Brady. No one even comes close to accomplishing what he accomplished. And when you tally up the amount of All-Pro or high-draft-pick talent of Brady’s teams compared to other great NFL quarterbacks’ teams, no one even comes close to accomplishing what Brady did with so little talent around him.
There will never be a career like this again.
To declare that Tom Brady is not the GOAT is not a sign of disrespect to the quarterback nor a failure to understand the game. Rather, it is the ultimate sign of reverence to both.