If the Patriots win the Super Bowl, how couldn’t he be the best?
4 rings in 7 years, undefeated, records all over the place…what more?
Double Post
Terry Bradshaw won 4 rings and 6 years and he’s not even close to the best ever. I think people toss around best ever really easily. Like everybody says the Patriots have to be the best ever team if they win the superbowl. I don’t think that’s true. Just because you have the best season ever doesn’t make it the most talented team ever. Like now hardly anybody considers the '72 Dolphins the best team ever, that’s usually the '85 Bears or '89 '49ers.
Now that doesn’t mean that Brady or the Patriots aren’t the best ever, but most of the reasons I’ve heard given aren’t the best. Personally I think Favre is the best QB of all time and Brady has a way to go to pass him. Take a look at the time in the pocket Brady had against the Jags, Favre would annihilate any team that gave him that much time.
No, sorry, it’s too soon. He deserves to be in the conversation, for sure, but the best ever? I wouldn’t call anybody that after seven years.
Depends on what you mean by “best.” If it’s “best quarterback for whatever the duration of his career was,” then yeah, I’d have a hard time arguing with that.
If “best” is defined in terms of career totals, though, it gets cloudier because there are all kinds of ways to define that. Favre seems likely to hold the records for most yards, TDs, consecutive starts by a QB, wins by a QB, etc., for quite a while. Hell, if Favre comes back next year, he’ll likely get the record for consecutive starts by a player at any position.
On preview: What Snarky_Kong and Marley23 said.
I think he’s only keeping those records warm for Peyton Manning.
He’s the best QB ever who’s ever appeared pants-less on Saturday Night Live.
How’s that? 
I dislike the Tom Brady knob-schlobbing as much as any non-Pats fan, but IMHO, the ultimate measure of a team leader at the Qb position is championships and wins, not yards, TD’s, etc.
In that respect, Brady at least deserves to be considered in the top three, if not the best. Especially if they run the table this season, that would pretty much seal it for me.
I’m still holding out hope for Carson Palmer, but…he plays for the Bengals…
Championships are everybody’s ultimate goal, but nobody wins a title on his own. Brady plays for a team with a much better defense than Palmer does. And there’s no sane way to argue that a QB like Trent Dilfer or Mark Rypien is better than Dan Marino, for example. Sometimes I think people overrate championships as a measure of greatness.
If QBs are measured by championships, then Bart Starr’s 5 titles in 7 years has to be in the conversation, as well as Otto Graham’s 7 in 10 years (with WW2 service thrown in).
Maybe if it was just one SB win, but Brady’s about to have what, four? In seven years?
That’s pretty ridiculous, and while I agree that the Pats are a pretty complete TEAM, Brady is very Montana-ish as a QB. Not too flashy (although he put up some gaudy numbers this year), but all the intangibles and leadership qualities you look for.
Bradshaw would rank higher than Marino in my book due to championships, although Marino was clearly the better pure passer and his stats demolish Bradshaw’s.
Teams win championships. Individuals do not.
Brady is a good quarterback; his statistics show that. Of course, it helps that he plays for a very good team, as denoted by the number of championships they have won. But just as Bart Starr was not the sole reason the Packers were champions 5 times in 7 years (Lombardi, anyone?), Tom Brady is not the sole reason that the Patriots may manage 4 championships in 7 years.
Most people consider Johnny Unitas a better quarterback than Bart Starr, despite the fact that the team he played for never managed as much greatness. By contrast, few people consider Terry Bradshaw to have been a “great” quarterback, just a pretty good one who played for an awesomely talented team.
Personally, if you want a quarterback who should be considered the “greatest” on the basis of all the evidence, I hate to say it, but I’d put Joe Montana in that category. That was one dude you did NOT want to see behind center if you were on defense.
I really cracked up when the DB for Jacksonville commented after the game that he wasn’t very impressed with Brady’s performance (26-28 with 3 TDs) because he was mainly throwing short passes and “anyone” could go 26-28 if all they threw were short passes.
Really dude, anyone?
One thing I’ve noticed about Brady (and, in turn, the team in general), is that he rarely appears to be desperate. You seldom see him running around in the pocket, trying to make some kind of Doug Flutie “Hail Mary” miracle play. Along with other great QBs, I get the sense that Tom has the whole thing under control.
I’m not throwing them out entirely. I’m saying they aren’t the be-all and end-all of measuring a player’s greatness. In an individual sport, it’s different. In a sport where everybody plays both sides of the floor, like basketball? Maybe. But not in a specialized sport like football, where the most important players (QBs) will never play a down on defense or special teams. There are too many other factors that go into winning.
Brady never looks desperate because most of the time he’s got all day to throw. The Pats’ offensive line is great.
I know that the whole “best” thing is always debatable, but Brady, should NE win the SB, is getting pretty close.
Of course a single player doesn’t win championships, but (good) QBs are always the leaders. I agree with **blondebear ** in that he is in control.
Maybe one SB can be a fluke, 3 (maybe 4) ain’t.
Should he win, what ELSE would he need to do to be the best?
Possible. But Favre’s already done it. It only takes one play for a QB to get Theismanned.
Not to mention that while Otto Graham played football, he went to the championship game every single year. He won 7 in 10 years, and lost the championship the other 3 years. I doubt we’ll ever see another 10-year career like that.
Keep playing well and winning titles. Even then, it’s hard to compare different eras. He could be the consensus Best, but it’s not like he can do anything to close the debate forever.
Yeah, that’s always true. But if he stays healthy I think Manning breaks all of Favre’s records.
I was just thinking about this. While being on a great team makes winning easier, it also makes it harder to show greatness. There are at least 2 other quaterbacks in the league right now that I think would have done better than Brady on the Pats this season, but you can’t really fault his play. They’ve won ever game, it’s not his fault the rest of the team makes it so he doesn’t have to be amazing. He should move to the Bears, that’d show his greatness if he lead them to a superbowl.