We Interrupt This Antonio Brown News Orgy to Remind You How Good Tom Brady Is
It’s been a tumultuous few days. An astronomical black hole of Antonio Brown news, rumors, reports, videos, reactions, releases, signings and accusations from which no other news can escape. And it’s been a full time job just trying to stay on the event horizon in order to keep from getting sucked in and crushed into a singularity. (Thanks, Science Channel!) But it seems like as good a time as any to get back to a little business as usual. Just as a palate cleanser. A sorbet of other football talk. For my own sanity, if for no other reason.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned this incredible little chart, courtesy of the House Elves who work in ESPN’s stats department:
Advertisement
And I remarked that this is the new standard for measuring Tom Brady’s transcendent excellence. That he has so lapped the field, that you can no longer compare him to any other single quarterback one-on-one. You have to group them together now. In the way they used to pit Andre the Giant against a tag team of two or three guys, just to make it a match.
Well part of the flaw with that comparison is that it includes Andrew Luck who, through no fault of his own, bless him, had a short career with significant lost time. Which begs the question how Brady would do against two Hall of Famers. Two guys who led the same dynasty to Super Bowl titles. Just to make it interesting, what if we picked two guys who each retired with the highest career Passer Rating ever? Just so long as they’re both still in the Top 15 all time. And let’s make sure at least one of them is still discussed as the GOAT by a substantial number of people.
How would Brady stack up against two QBs with resumes like that if we stacked them together to form a Great Quarterback Voltron? I’m glad you asked. Because someone (not me obviously) did just that. And the results are almost incomprehensible.
Again with the Dr. Ian Malcolm:
Montana and Young each played 15 seasons to Brady’s 20 and counting. They combined for 3 fewer wins and 39 more losses. Or to put it in perspective, if you subtracted all of Joe Montana’s career wins from Brady’s total – just the wins, not the losses, that would leave Brady at 105-70, .600. Which averages out to 10-6 over a full season. Again, that’s if you take away all of Montana’s success and not his failure. It would give Brady a Winning % of just .050 less than the previous biggest winner in the sports history.
But what really shocks me is Brady having a higher Passer Rating than those two. Even allowing for different eras and the fact that 7 of the top 10 in that category are still currently active because quarterbacking is easier than it was in the 1980s and 90s, that still blows my nips off. Especially when you consider Montana and Young were throwing to, at various times, Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens, Dwight Clark, John Taylor, Brent Jones, Freddie Solomon, Roger Craig and JJ Stokes, just to name a few. Brady had a couple of seasons of Randy Moss, Rob Gronkowski and a buffet of really good slot guys. For him to have topped the Passer Rating and career totals in every category save for Passing Yards against two of the great QBs of all time combined, is maybe the only metric we need to put his achievements into some kind of perspective that our brains can grasp.
Advertisement
Imagine how good Brady will be if he’s throwing to Antonio Brown. Dammit all. I guess I can’t stop. Back to him shortly, I’m sure. But this was fun for me.
[h/t @BostonSportsInf]