Brady Is The Best Boston Athlete Ever
The NFL Network is currently running an episode of “In Their Own Words” featuring Tom Brady. This program is to me what “The Notebook” is to your girlfriend; I’ve seen it twenty times already, I know it by heart, but I can’t stop watching it. And at the end, I need a tissue.
After watching it the first time, I mentioned in a post on our world-dominant web log at barstoolsports.com, that one could make the argument Brady is as good an athlete as Boston has ever seen. Well one is. In fact, I’ll go a step further:
Tom Brady is the greatest athlete in the history of Boston sports.
Jamie Chisholm disagrees, but this is not a claim I make lightly; I can back it up. And I can remember the exact moment I first realized Brady might belong at the top of the Boston sports medal stand. It wasn’t a pass he threw or a scramble for a first down. It was a catch he made. But more on that later.
Jamie has correctly identified the only five players who are candidates for this honor: Ted Williams, Bill Russell, Bobby Orr, Larry Bird and Brady. I understand that Brady‘s only played six seasons. So in order to add his likeness to this Mount Rushmore, allow me to assume, for the sake of argument, that he continues to have a productive career. Let’s presuppose that he doesn’t get arrested for conspiracy to gun down his babymama or leave the Patriots to go backpacking through Australia smoking Sumatran Ditch Weed with Lenny Kravitz. Then how do you decide who is the greatest among the Fantastic Five? You answer the following questions:
Who played the hardest position?
With all due respect to Ted Williams, playing quarterback in the NFL is the toughest job in sports by a factor of about ten. Williams liked to point out that the year he hit 406, he made an out 60% of the time. That’s true; but in baseball those numbers get you in the Hall of Fame. If a quarterback fails half that much, he ends up on the bench. Or in NFL Europe. Or worse, with the Arizona Cardinals.
An NFL QB has a disproportionate amount of responsibility that exists nowhere else in sports. He has to make a hundred decisions on every play. He has to know exactly where the 21 other moving parts on the field are at all times. He has to outwit a team of coaches on the other sideline who have spent all week, and in Brady’s case, all year, looking for ways to make him screw up. And he does it against a defense whose highest-paid player earns a living trying to separate the QB’s head from his shoulders. All of which Tom Brady does better than any quarterback of his generation. Oh, yeah, then you have to be able to throw the ball.
Who won championships?
Again, sorry Ted. By any objective standard, Russell is the greatest winner in sports history. He played thirteen NBA seasons and won eleven championships. Plus two in college and an Olympic gold medal. But Russell, through no fault of his own, did all that at a time when the NBA was slightly more popular than the Pro Bowlers Tour. Brady has played his best clutch ball in the pressure cooker that is the Super Bowl, which next to the World Cup and the National Spelling Bee, is the biggest event in all of sports. Russell was like the greatest singer of his time appearing on “Community Auditions.” Brady has knocked the judges socks off on the finale of “American Idol.” Three times.
Who had the best supporting cast around him?
By my math, Russell had seven future Hall of Famers as teammates. Orr and Bird had three each. Who exactly is Tom Brady’s Bob Cousy? Or Gerry Cheevers? Or Robert Parish? Do you know how many Pro Bowlers Brady has had on offense with him in his Pats’ career? Two. Damien Woody and Corey Dillon were each picked as a third alternate once. And in that time Brady, with an offense made up of non-stars, fill-ins, late draft picks and undrafted free agents, has led the NFL in touchdown passes (2002) and passing yards (2005).
Is he a good guy/teammate?
What has this got to do with anything, you ask? Shaddup. This is my agenda, I’ll use whatever criterion I want. And I want my choice to be likable. I wouldn’t care if Barry Bonds spent his entire career in Boston, he wouldn’t make this list. Teddy Ballgame was famous for being a hot head because the baseball writers hated him. But his teammates loved him. And in my book, hating the Boston sports press gets you into heaven without having to go through the metal detector. Russell likewise was known for being mad a the world; but give him a break. People openly tried to keep him from moving into their neighborhoods. Someone once broke into his house and left a sewer trout on his bed. If anything, I don’t think he was angry enough. Compared to how I would have reacted, Russell was Ned Flanders. Bobby Orr is by all accounts the nicest guy to ever play in this town. Bird…I’m not so sure his teammates liked him all that much. I always had the feeling that when McHale had beers with Bird, it was more about his love of beer than any kinship with Basketball Jesus.
Taking nothing away from the other legends, but I think Brady is more beloved by his teammates than any of them. Quarterbacks exist on a different plane than other football players, but Brady is a close to being “one of the guys” as any QB could be. His getting his offensive line into that Visa commercial bears that out, unless you think there are a lot of corporations clamoring for endorsement deals with Russ Hochstein.
How did he do under pressure?
You don’t make this list without coming up big in big moments, and no one has done it like my man Tom. He’s 10-1 in the post season. In his first career playoff game he was 32 for 52 for 312 yards, 238 in the second half. In a blizzard; the first time he’d ever played in snow.
But there was one play in the Super Bowl vs. the Rams that it first dawned on me we were witnessing the Best Ever. On the last play of the game, he spiked the ball to stop the clock. The ball bounced up off the turf and he casually caught it on his fingertips and held it out for a few seconds. On the last drive of the Super Bowl, with the weight of the sports world on his neck, in the same situation that once had Joe Montana hyperventilating in the huddle, Brady stood there like he was holding a balloon at a kid’s birthday party. I’ve watched that replay a thousand times and it never ceases to amaze me.
Whether it’s his preternatural calm, clutch play, lack of superstar teammates, or all-around good-guyness, I no longer have any doubt. Brady is, right now, in the words of Roy Hobbs “the best there ever was.” And he can do the one thing that Chisholm’s other guys can no longer do: Brady can get better.