Brady has broken ahead of the "best ever" q back conversations on the national sports shows. :wink: I will sleep well tonite!
Brady is one of the best, but Joe Montana never lost a Super Bowl and Joe Montana never threw and interception in a Super Bowl. Joe still has the highest QB rating for a Super Bowl QB. Golden Joe with his 5 rings is still the best ever.
Brady was one horrific play call from Pete Carroll away from a SB record of 3-3. Now he is 4-2.. Montana was 4-0 , I believe. Here's another stat Brady will never equal. I don't think Montana was ever intercepted in a SB game. Ever. Not even once.
Brady is justifiedly one of the best QB's of his era, no doubt and certainly in the conversation for a top 10 all-time QB. But yesterday didn't put him at the head of the class because his "team" won the Super Bowl. Is he better than Otto Graham, Bobby Layne, Roger Staubach, Johnny Unitas, Bart Star, just to name a few who played in a much rougher league.
I don't have a dog in this hunt honestly but I don't see how Brady doesn't stack up with those old time greats with his accomplishments. And we are talking very different era's with very different athletes. My heroes as a child were the 72 Dolphins but later we all learned of the cocaine and drugs that were rampant in that time frame. Not the perfect athletes I thought they were. Top this off with the athletic specimens of today versus yesterday, Butkus may have ripped your right ear off and enjoyed the moment but he would have Nike treads on his chest where the running backs ran over him in today's NFL. The game speed and size of this era is nothing like our hall of fame players faced. Hell the defensive ends run faster 40's than the receivers did in the 70's with an added one hundred pounds.
I'm thinking that if you took Butkus and gave him today's nutritional and weight training regimens and had him attend all the off season sessions that today's players attend, and he'd still be an intimidating force in today's game.
Yeah I'd have to say it's unfair to say that a player from another era can't measure up to a modern player, the game has changed, the training has changed. I know a guy who played at Texas and for the Joe Namath Jets and said he hardly ever worked out with weights and that the Jets weight room was barely there. Jesse Owens vs Carl Lewis vs whoever is the greatest today? You can't tell me that if Jesse Owens had grown up today with as Mike said modern nutrition, training methods and equipment that he wouldn't still be one of the greatest ever. Also I can't even imagine he stats that a guy like Montana or Otto Graham would have put up with today's defensive rules, back in Otto's day the defenses were allowed to do so much more than they can today. I think Joe and Otto would have completed a few more passes if their WR's got to play with today's rules. But Brady is a great QB, one of the best of his era, maybe the best of his era.
and when Unitas went out on the field, he was on his own. I wonder if he would have called the quick slant at the goal line? :wink:
IMO, discussions about the "greatest" this or that are manufactured by the talking heads for subject matter. Note that, almost without exception, they focus only on the current generation and most often focus on the "player of the day", in this case, the QB on the SB winning team. If Seattle had won, Brady would have been an afterthought, and the heads would be promoting Russell Wilson as "possibly" the greatest dual-threat QB ever. To paraphrase what George said above, as well as Brady played, he was not in control of the outcome. He was not on the field when the outcome was sealed. He did not win the game as much as Seattle lost it. These conversations lack historical perspective. Great players are great in their day and forever beyond. The "greatest ever" doesn't exist in reality, only in the perspective of the individual. Joel will argue that Brady is the best QB ever because Brady is his guy. As much as I dislike Brady and Bellichick, I respect their accomplishments and believe they both are great. Neither is the greatest ever, but then again neither is Montana, Vince Lombardi, Otto Graham, Jim Brown, etc. They all share in that rare and elevated status of greatness, which by itself is an elite status. Someday, both Brady and his coach will be in the Hall of Fame, and their greatness will live forever, like all the other enshrined members. For me, the discussion ends at the entrance to the Hall. Argue on, gentlemen and ladies. :wink:
From my point of view the best ever doesn't matter at all. What matters is that a player is or isn't elite. And Brady is in the elite category for sure.