All of last week Tom Brady was vilified, his legacy in doubt, his integrity impugned, all because of deflated footballs he had used during a 45 – 7 drubbing of the Indianapolis Colts during the AFC Championship Game. All of a sudden everyone became science experts conjuring reasons why the footballs were under-inflated while others would try to disprove those hypotheses. Even Bill Nye The Science Guy (an actual scientist) joined in on the fun. Everyone wanted to harken back to Spy Gate and people wondered whether Brady had won any of his Super Bowl’s without cheating and some even went so far as to wonder whether he should even be allowed to play in the Super Bowl. Legends of the game were calling him a cheater.
What a difference a week makes. Tom Brady won his fourth Super Bowl title and third Super Bowl MVP after defeating the Seattle Seahawks in a 28-24 instant classic, tying him with Joe Montana in both categories for most ever by a quarterback. So the talk this week wasn’t about deflated footballs it was about how Brady has now surpassed Montana as the greatest quarterback of all time. Not only did he tie Montana in Super Bowl wins and MVPs but he made more appearances and broke Montana’s record for most touchdown passes thrown in the Super Bowl. His teammates say this makes him the greatest to ever play the position, Sports Ilustrated’s cover story makes the same claim, Mark Wahlberg didn’t even wait for the confetti to finish falling before making the claim.
The talk from last week seems a distant memory, and was probably an overreaction by the media needed to fill the 24/7 sports news cycle. Calling Tom Brady the best quarterback ever is the exact same thing, an overreaction to the most recent greatness we’ve seen while past greatness fades into the recesses of memory or for some of the younger fans greatness that was never known to begin with. Tom Brady was down right legendary engineering the largest fourth quarter comeback in Super Bowl history, completing 37-50 passess for 328 yards and 4 touchdowns but he also threw 2 interceptions. That’s 2 more than Montana threw in his entire Super Bowl career. Joe Montana has a ridiculous 11 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in his four Super Bowl games and oh yeah he also ran for two more touchdowns. So while Brady may have finally broken Montana’s passing touchdown record on his sixth try he still only tied him for most total touchdowns in the Super Bowl.
Any way you want to slice it Tom Brady falls short of Montana’s greatness. Tom Terrific has a legendary career Super Bowl quarterback rating of 95.3, Joe Cool has an otherworldly rating of 127.8. In those 4 games Montana has 105 yards rushing and 2 rushing touchdowns, Brady has 11 rushing yards and 0 rushing touchdowns in his 6 games. Regular season stats are tougher to compare since the rules of the game have tilted astronomically in favor of the offense and quarterbacks in Brady’s era but even still Brady’s career quarterback rating of 95.9 is just over 3 points higher than Montana’s rating of 92.3. Considering how much more offensively oriented the NFL has become this should be seen at minimum as a draw and one could argue Montana’s rating would easily have been higher than Brady’s if they played in the same era. Some would argue it’s more difficult to be consistently great in this era of parity I would argue the road is much easier now as long as you have a good quarterback. It’s really all you need to be a contender in today’s NFL. When was the last time Tom Brady or Peyton Manning didn’t win their division? You can throw Andrew Luck into that mix now as well. Today all you need is a good quarterback and you’re better than 75% of the league. Montana had to deal with the likes of the 46 Bears defense and the Lawerence Taylor led Giants defense just to get to the Super Bowl.
Montana is a perfect 4-0 and while Brady has 4 wins too, his record is blemished by 2 losses to the Giants. The first loss was his greatest, with an opportunity to duplicate Montana’s 4-0 record and go undefeated in a season (something Montana never did) Brady lost to a 14 point underdog Giants team. Brady broke the single season record for most passing touchdowns thrown that year but only managed to throw one touchdown in falling to the Giants 17-14 and putting to rest any arguments of Brady as the greatest to ever play the position for the moment. 4 years later he would get his rematch against the Giants a chance to avenge his lone Super Bowl blemish and he fell short again this time losing 21-17. Last week Brady finally got that elusive 4th win but he was one all time bad play call away from falling to 3-3 in the Super Bowl. Joe Montana never left it in someone else’s hands to define his legacy he put an exclamation point on every one of his Super Bowl wins.
It’s clear at this point that Brady falls short of Montana in the greatest quarterback debate. The only advantage Brady has over Montana is that he’s been to the Super Bowl 6 times to Montana’s 4. Still no one gives the 2008 Patriots credit as the greatest team of all time despite winning the most games in NFL history because they lost the game that mattered most, Brady lost it twice so why should he be treated any differently.
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