He missed two full seasons due to injury before playing his final two seasons with the Cheifs. He retired at 38. Of his 11 full seasons as a starter, his team made the playoffs 10 times. Very Brady-esque, no?
Sure. I never argued against Montana and Brady not being similar.
The argument you seem to be making here is that a QB's place in history should be measured by championships while, at the same time, acknowledging the fact that having a strong defense is an integral part of winning championships.
I'm not making one argument and I'm not making that argument or else Jimmy G would be ranked as a better QB than Aaron Rodgers.
Tom Brady has been blessed with an elite defense most years, which has afforded him the opportunity to win as many Super Bowls as he has. Do we agree on that point? That doesn't take anything away from Tom at all because the Patriots probably don't win as many Super Bowls with a lesser QB. He is their MVP. There's no disputing that.
We never disagreed on this. You brought up their strong defense and made it sound like an asterisk on Brady's career. This would be like saying Manny Ramirez was lucky Pedro pitched for the Sox. Both sides still need to contribute and again, I don't know if this is the exact point you're trying to make but having a good defense should never take away from the offensive production.
On the flip side of that argument, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees have not had the luxury of playing alongside top defenses very often. Brees won a Super Bowl in spite of having a below average defense that year. They would likely have more chances to win Super Bowls if they were paired with elite defenses on a year in, year out basis, the same way Tom has. Do we agree there?
I don't like playing "what if" games. As I pointed out, the greatest defense does not always win, it increases your odds. We can only play guessing games based on stats alone when talking about whether or not another QB would have had the same success in Brady's position. One of the reasons Brady is so good is he's mentally tough and as made clear by this last super bowl, does not lose his focus when under the gun (or 25 guns in that case). Could Brees have done that? No idea. We
KNOW Brady can because he did it and has had super bowl comebacks before. Brees can beat a top defense (he did in 2010 against the Colts) but it's fruitless to debate whether he or Rodgers would have had the same performance because there's simply no way to know.
But again, defensive voodoo or not, the offense still needs to get the job done. The defense is a credit to the coaching staff and not a detriment to the strength of the offense.
Take the Chiefs. From 2013 to 2016, the Chiefs' defense was ranked 5th, 2nd, 3rd, and 7th. In scoring, 7th, 16th, 9th, and 13th. They didn't have an offense lead by an elite QB and it shows. Alex Smith is good, but he's no legend and as a team, they couldn't make it to the big game despite being close a few times.
The main point I'm trying to make here is that you can't just measure one player against another based on the number of championships they've won and then call it a fact that one is better than the other.
Agreed.
I actually disagree with this. Nobody wins championships without help, but players can become legends on their own. Jordan and Gretzky are legends because of their ability to do things that the game had never seen before, things that other players simply couldn't do, and they took their respective leagues by storm before ever winning a single championship.
They very same can be said about Brady. Why does it matter whether or not they won a title early in their careers?
The same could be said about Lebron James. Hell, his legend was born before he even graduated from high school. Barry Sanders is a football legend despite having no team success whatsoever. The dude won one playoff game in his entire career, but he could do things on the football field that no other player was capable of.
As you stated before, this is not apples and apples. In football, the cornerstone of the offense is the QB 99% of the time. He's the architect and the shot caller, the Executive VP of Offensive Operations on the gridiron. Basketball and hockey do not function like that, there is not one position with drastically higher importance than the rest. Those are truly team sports (as you pointed out with Gretzky) where one guy can shine but if he doesn't have talent around him, the team will not succeed. The QB is expected to be a leader and a guy the other players look up to rely on. QBs without strong leadership skills or ability to deal with adversity or a challenge never emerge from mediocrity.
My main argument for Brady as the best of all time is consistency. For nearly twenty years, he has maintained (and even slightly improved these past years) a level of play that most players dream of. He's accurate, he doesn't turn the ball over, he's got one of the fastest release times in recent history, and his ability to read a defense is scary. Even Ray Lewis has made mention of that a few times that Brady's ability to see the defense and pick it apart is unreal. Brady is a smart player who strives to prove himself every day and I love a guylike that in any sport.
