SIDE NOTE: Not going to consider any pre-integration player as the baseball GOAT. Sorry, Babe. If pressed and not given time to think about it I’d choose Mays; not as a good a hitter as Williams (who was?), but a game-changing defensive player at a key position (and a guy who almost incidentally led the league in steals several years running).
Well, that’s what prompted my OP. Immediately after the SB, there was a lot of talk about how “you can’t deny that Brady is the greatest QB of all time now, he’s won 4 Super Bowls”, and I’m sure that if Seattle had won they would feel they had one of the best defenses ever (I hear Seattle players were saying it during the first half).
Obviously if Seattle had won, it would have been seen as a validation of their defense by some people. So I was wondering if Lynch had been handed the ball and broke across the goal line and scored, how a play that didn’t involve Brady or Seattle’s defense would have changed people’s views.
I personally don’t think Brady’s legacy would change that much if he’d lost the SB in the last minute. I can’t stand the New England Patriots but I have to admit he is a great quarterback. Greatest ever? Well, I don’t really get into comparing different players and saying this one is better than that one. It’s not an individual sport, there’s 21 other guys on the team that have a lot to do with your ability to put up numbers and win games. But Brady is definitely up there among the best, as much as I hate to admit it.
Back in the day everyone played on gridirons far more affected by the elements than we see today.
One more thought: I think much of this debate is really fueled by the shortcomings of sports journalism. Probably for no other reason than to fill column inches and airtime, I think it is impossible for someone to win a championship and then not have sports “journalists” start bogus arguments about GOAT or whether someone is the most underrated (whatever) in sports.
Can you imagine if journalists from other fields acted like this? “John Boehner: most powerful Speaker evah!?” “Obama: best president since Lincoln?!” “Motor Trend Car of the Year: can any car ever be better than a VW Golf??”
I have no horse in this race, but if someone sticks a gun to my head and demands that I build a team around “the greatest QB of all time,” I’m going with Joe Montana.
Seattle runs it in with Lynch:
The Seahawks defense is still the greatest ever.
Tom Brady is still the greatest qb ever.
Smart people know better than to make drastic conclusions based off on one play. That’s why the 2007 Patriots are the best all-around football team to ever step on a football field.
Depends what you call the best. If you want to just look at stats, then you could probably find a team from the leather helmet days that allowed the fewest points or yards.
But the players are so much bigger and stronger and faster today. Dick Butkus was considered a monster in the 70’s; he’d just be average height and weight for an MLB today. Do you seriously think that the 85 Bears, magically plucked out of 1985 and given a few weeks to practice against modern offenses, could do as well as any good defense today, let alone Seattle’s? Do you seriously think that if Seattle’s defense was magically moved back to 1985, they wouldn’t pitch shutouts, and probably score enough points off fumbles, safeties, and pick sixes to not even need much of an offense?
For that matter, who do you think would win if the undefeated 1972 Dolphins played the winless 2008 Lions?
Life long Bears fan here. With that said…
No team will ever be able to compete with nostalgia of the 85 Bears when it comes to best defense EVAR! Even if another team comes along with a better defense it will never be acknowledged as such. Much like the Dolphins perfect season. Yeah, the Pats didn’t have a “perfect season” but won more games in a row against much better teams than the Dolphins did. Perfect Dolphins would get crushed by the Pats in their worst years since Brady/Bel.
I’m as tired of hearing about the 85 Bears as I am about the Dolphins perfect season.
Brady is the GOAT IMHO.
I’m a Bills fan thus am contractually obligated to loath Pats by principal and will deny saying this.
Brady gets my vote.
Question for you numbers guys. Pre and Post salary cap is a concern. How much of Montanas team was churned by free agents and cap hits? I’ll use my Bills 4 consecutive SB years. Common wisdom around here is the team would have been blown to bits if they had to get under the cap.
Any validity?
[Disclaimer: If my aunt had testicles, she would be my aunt with a weird deformity. Not my uncle. See, just because she has testicles does not mean she has a prostate gland, narrow hips, nonfunctioning breasts, etc. Big picture, folks, big picture. And yes, I know I said I was only going to say this once, but some of you just…don’t…seem…to…get…it! Well, I hope you do now. Thank you.]
See, here’s the thing for me…discussions about GOAT, like most sports discussions, don’t seem like debates so much as ironing out what the proper sacred inviolable status quo is.
Quick, greatest boxer of all time! Muhammad Ali. Bam, just like that. Quick, greatest basketball player of all time! Michael Jordan. Piece of cake. Greatest stock car racer? Richard Petty. Like, duh. It works the other way too. Biggest golf choke ever? Was Greg Norman at the Masters, now it’s Jean Van De Velde at the British. What cost the '86 Red Sox the World Series? Bill Buckner’s error. What cost Michigan’s Fab Five the championship? The Chris Webber timeout. No need for tedious searches, no need to analyze, hell, you don’t even have to think. It’s been carved in stone years ago, and that’s how it is, end of (nonexistent) discussion.
It’s exactly like that for greatest quarterback, too. Up to the Super Bowl, the issue of who the GOAT QB is was settled. Joe Montana. Because Championships Are The Only Thing That Matter (which was codified long before Montana came along), and Montana, the most critical element of the 49ers’ famed West Coast Offense, retired with four. (I always wondered why Terry Bradshaw never got any consideration, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for someone to dope that one out.)
Brady throws a wrench into things, to be sure, but it’s not like this hasn’t happened before. Remember when Mike Tyson went on an absolute tear and some promoters were genuinely afraid that he really was invincible (thereby making it impossible to drum up hype for his fights)? Luckily after Razor Ruddock he’s looked more like Dan Hibiki than Balrog, if you catchy my drift, and the Ali faithful could rest easy once more.
In any case, I’m predicting this ends one of three ways:
- The media bleats Deflategate, Spygate, Tuckgate, Snowgate, BustedPerfectSeasongate, CouldaWouldaShouldagate, and OnlyGotAChanceBecauseDrewBledsoeGotKnockedOutgate, over and over and over and over and over and over and over until everyone throws up their hands and declares Montana the winner and still champion.
- Brady is now the GOAT, but with an asterisk, three tildes, five carets, ten semicolons, eighteen backslashes, thirty-six dollar signs, fifty hashtags, and ninety-seven smiley faces.
- Never Mind That, What Really Matters Is Who Was The Greatest QB Of All Time Before All These Sissy Rule Changes. (There’s a good chance that this puts Bradshaw back in the mix, but that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.)
As for Super Bowl 49, I think we’re all forgetting one critical factor: karmic balance. See, that miracle catch, without which Seattle would have lost the ball on downs and Brady would only need to take one kneel-down to ice it (I think…I spent most of the day playing video games) kept the Seahawks in it but also burned up a lot of goodwill. Now, the Giants had that whole “ensure that ESPN keeps talking about the '72 Dolphins for the next five thousand years” thing going for them, so their goodwill was just about unlimited. The Seahawks didn’t have this luxury. No matter what, something was going to go wrong for them at the goal line, and even if it wasn’t necessarily something as back-breaking as a turnover (and then failing to get a safety and nail a winning 55-yard field goal in the final play of the game, something the Giants could’ve done with their eyes closed), there was no doubt that blowing their wad on The Catch 2.0 doomed them. So, realistically, the only way the could have pulled it off would be if Brady completed the perfect season. And that’s a whole 'nother can 'o worms there, my friends, because that means that he has 4 rings AND put an end to one of the most enduring and beloved NFL talking points of all time.
Unless, of course, we can reverse the result of the Seahawks’ one Super Bowl win so that the Broncos beat them, which would have certainly given them enough goodwill to overcome the Patriots regardless of any other circumstances. But see, that means the Broncos now have three Super Bowls. And one of them without John Elway! Like, can the league survive such an upheaval? The Buccaneers’ Super Bowl was jarring enough, good lord.
So, to answer the OP: Sure, why not. 
I agree with you, but that’s what makes this question so fascinating. One play, from the half-yard line, completely changes the narrative. Not a 50-yard Hail Mary miracle, but a half yard. If Lynch crashes in with a TD, Carroll and his second SB win may be on their way to the HoF some day, Seattle may be creating the foundation for an an all-time dynasty, and Brady and the Pats lose 3 Super Bowls in a row, winning none since Spygate (and all of their wins before that by a mere 3 points–so if the Spygate cheating gave them any kind of advantage, how are we to assess their wins?), and without the Deflategate advantage, their latest cheat, they lose yet again…the questions about their legacy gain weight, and Brady might be considered an all-time great, but a bit tarnished.
Now, Carroll is derided and may well forever be remembered as the idiot coach who threw away a Super Bowl, Seattle may well have seen the end of their dominance (who knows how such a loss will affect them?), and Brady and the Pats are lauded, with Deflategate at least de-emphasized as any kind of prior factor, since after all they won anyway…
Both are simplistic analyses–so I’m agreeing with you–but it’s fascinating how dramatic the shift in the narrative likely is as a result of a single play from the half-yard line. [spock]Fascinating].[/spock]