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Brady best ever?
Brady’s been drawing comparisons to Bradshaw and Montana for awhile now, and if he leads the undefeated Pats to victory tonight, he will join their ranks as the only QBs to possess four Super Bowl rings.
If you were judging the greatest quarterback of all time based on Super Bowl rings alone, then, Brady would have a 1/3 shot at taking the title. But actual stats always eclipse Super Bowl rings. Otherwise, Dan Marino wouldn’t even be in the conversation. But clearly he has to be: In 242 regular season games he completed an astonishing 4,967 passes for 61,361 yeards and 420 touchdown passes. He won the MVP in 1984 and made the trip to Honolulu 9 times. Compare that with Brady’s (thus far) 112, 2,294, 26,370, 197 career line, and one quickly sees that Brady needs a few more snaps from under center before the “greatest ever” talk begins.
And if one considers Super Bowl wins to be the most reliable adjudicator of QB greatness, what Super Bowl win was greater than Joseph William Namath’s guarantee in Super Bowl III: “We’ll win the game. I guarantee you.” Not only did he and the Jets take down a Colts team that was touted as “the greatest football team in history,” but his performance solidified the AFL’s legitimacy. Namath took home the MVP, and the win made him the only QB to start and win a national championship in college and start and win the Super Bowl.
