Decent but not great. He never played with any truly great RB or receiver (save a depleted Moss). That’s impressive.
Besides talent, he’s also stoic. You didn’t see him getting overly up or down during the Super Bowl. He’s a good fourth quarter killer. Tom Brady seems to be able to take the sport in stride, no matter what luck brings his team. 4 Super Bowls over a 14 time span, including after a 10 year drought where he got there twice anyway? IMO he is now officially the greatest QB ever.
Belichick, I think, has shown that you don’t really need to spend tons of money on a “star” RB or WRs if have a great offensive line, a great QB, and a great defense. In the salary cap era, your money should go to the offensive and defense lines first as skill positions are generally overpriced.
Think of it as NFL Moneyball.
Tell that to all the complainers when he let off that string of F-bombs on the side line.
There seems to be increasing evidence you don’t need to draft a big name RB or pay a lot for one in free agency. Picking them is a crap shoot in the first place, and you can get good service lower in the draft.
Off the top of my head and not on the Patriots, Arian Foster was undrafted. Justin Forsett had a good year. He was a 7th round pick. The Saints did pretty well by Chris Ivory and Pierre Thomas (both undrafted) while stud draft picks Mark Ingram and Reggie Bush were relatively disappointing.
Belichick seems to have figured out that high round draft picks on RB or big time free agency money have a low ROI. He even got Blount for near league minimum in free agency. But that realization alone does seem to prove he’s a real thinker and has more than a little to do with Brady’s success.
So Brady/Patriots wouldn’t have been better with a top class RB or receiver? That seems very unlikely. Brady is also one freak play away from having five rings, if not six. And no matter how good the coach is, the players still need to,execute and Brady does that time and time again.
Sure, if you’re simply adding a top player it makes the team better, but with the salary cap, you’re not adding, you’re trading. You replace their RB or WR with a higher paid player, you have to replace someone else with a lower paid player. Maybe you lose a good DB or LB to afford the star, is that a positive tradeoff?
I know sweet fuck all about Gridiron football, but I do know sports generally. From what I can read in this thread, the gentleman concerned is a player who consistently performs well on every play and does not proffer up poor plays. In short, you can rely on him to deliver whats needed on every play, instead of some outstanding passes or throws, punctuated with below par ones.
Many great players often those called boring, in most sports did that. Ruthless and reliable consistency is a brilliance all of its own, it does not give the opposition any leeway and places them under pressure to perform, which causes them to crack. You saw that with Pete Sampras in tennis, Glenn McGrath in cricket, and Xavi and Xabi Alonso in soccer, rarely flashly, always reliable.
Brady no doubt is among the greatest ever QBs. His vision of the field, recognition of defenses and coverage schemes, intelligence, and highly accurate arm are his greatest skills.
Do we remember that at the beginning of his career it was an injury to Bledsoe that gave Brady his initial opportunity? If Bledsoe doesn’t get hurt, who knows how long it would be before Brady gets his chance?
I rank Brady above Manning and Favre and Marino, and right up there with Graham and Unitas and Montana as the greatest.
This. Watching the pocket collapse as he calmly steps forward out of the scrum and throws a laser is very cool to see. He seems to put alot of faith in the OLines ability to give him time.
Yes. But for that freak catch he’d have another SB ring and a perfect season on his resume - which would make it hard for anyone to rank him short of first place all-time.
As stated, in the salary cap era, its a tradeoff. I look at my own Atlanta Falcons - great, great skill players, but the tradeoff was that they skimped on the OL and DL (and secondary) and look where that got them.
And lets look at this another way, Brady is one stupid playcall away from having a 3-3 record in the SuperBowl and vast number of fans and commentators wondering if the early 2000s were more of a fluke.
I rate Brady as a great QB, but I’d put him behind Peyton Manning (but likely ahead of Favre).
Depending on who you get, yes. A Terrell Davis type doesn’t help Brady?
And even without the win on Sunday he has been consistently been one of the best. He’s ahead of everyone but Montana I think.
Brady is also 1 improbable, ridiculous catch (Tyree, Super Bowl 42) and 1 wide open overthrow (Welker, Super Bowl 46–Welker catches that and New England runs out the clock) from being 6-0. Many people claim New England should have lost this year’s Super Bowl but for a stupid play-call, but Seattle wouldn’t have been in position to make that bad call but for another improbable, ridiculous catch. If you’re going to strip away 1 win due to improbability, you also have to strip away 2 losses. As it stands, he’s reached the Super Bowl 6 times and won 4, has more TD passes than anyone in Super Bowls, and has done so without a Jerry Rice caliber receiver, or even a Sidney Rice caliber receiver for all but one. He’s also never had much of a running game to assist him.
I think Brady’s best asset as a QB is that he has been in a system that plays to his strengths. Belicheck, like Urban Meyer or Nick Saben, has a system down that makes mountains out of molehills of players. Look at how their WR corps has done with 2nd and 3rd tier players.
How about game winnings kicks made by his kickers in the Tuck Rule game and missed kicks by Indianapolis Colts kickers in AFC Championship Games? Brady has had plenty of good luck in his SuperBowl victory years. It’s not just bad luck in his losses.
FTR, it’s Belichik, not Belichek. Not trying to scorn anyone or be a pedant, but I see a lot of misspelling of his name.
Come on now, that is crazy talk. For a while, sure, they dueled it out as to which was better, but 99/100 people will tell you that it has clearly settled in Brady’s favor.
Career Winning Percentage
Brady: 77%
Manning: 70%
Playoff Wins
Brady: 21* (72%) – *NFL record
Manning: 11 (46%)
Head-to-Head Games
Brady leads 11-5
SB Wins
Brady: 4
Manning: 1
I could go on…
I think its crazy talk to compare two players in a team game on simply wins. In baseball, we’ve well gone beyond the notion that Pitchers are to be compared by their Win/Loss record. Maybe one day we can do that in American football as well.
Manning is the better QB based on the passing numbers (and DVOA) and it really isn’t super close, IMO.
And if you don’t really want to get into the nitty gritty of stats, I think former QB Tim Hasselbeck says it well:
You make good points, so maybe it’s not “crazy talk.” 
It’s hard to eliminate my homerism on this issue.