“Tom Brady retires: NFL legend walks away as the GOAT after 22 seasons”
I kinda wish he wasn’t the GOAT because he always seemed to me like kind of a douche. Maybe they can plant some steroids in his locker and banish him from the GOAT discussion, ala Barry Bonds.
I found it much easier to like Tom Brady, and even root for him, once he was separated from Belichick and Aaron Rodgers took over the position of douche #1
That’s a good point. I was actually pulling for the Bucs when Brady got #7.
Don’t they say steroids can cause deflated balls?
I’ve never liked how vulturous the press can be on getting the scoop on these retirement announcements and not letting the guy gracefully announce on his own terms. After every Super Bowl it seems that a player is absorbing the ultimate victory someone has to immediately ask them if they’re going to retire now in fear of missing being the first to report.
To answer your question about Otto Graham, Scoop:
Bill Russell won 11 NBA titles in 13 years. And made the Finals in one of the two years he didn’t win. Also, he won two NCAA titles right before joining the NBA, so that’s 13 championships in 15 years. Not to mention the Olympic Gold.
So while he was in the championship final only 14 out 15 years, I’d still argue that;s; even more impressive.
If it’s true, then, unlike Peyton Manning, Brady’s last game of his career was a loss.
And his last pass as a Patriot was a pick-6
National Review sends me emails with news notifications. I got one today about Tom Brady. It included this line:
“He is almost guaranteed to be inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame.”
Almost? What would have to happen for him not to be inducted? I suppose if some kind of “Me Too” scandal broke. But it would almost have to be Cosby bad.
The only thing that could possibly do it is a cheating scandal of some kind. It’s unlikely that deflategate would keep him out. It’s have to be something much worse than that. Otherwise, he’s obviously a lock. There are those who argue that if the Hall were restricted to only one member, it would be Brady.
Good thing he’s never been associated with any cheating.
(relax, I’m joking, humorless Pats fans)
Eight rushing titles, when no one else has had more than four? Jim Brown is still the “one member” Hall of Famer.
Maybe the greatest American athlete ever. The football you know. he’s also considered one of the best college lacrosse players ever. And in high school, he tore it up at track to the extent that his coach thought he might be the next Rafer Johnson if he went in that direction. Never played basketball after HS but still good enough to be included in the center court games at the Ruckers- the ones with Wilt, The Hawk, and Roger Brown. And,as I recall , the only non-boxer athlete Muhammed Ali showed no eagerness to fight when it was proposed. Not a nice person but one totally badass athlete.
Brady is probably primus inter pares in a QB group including Graham* (7 championships, never failed to get to the championship game in his 10-year career, 81% wins in the NFL, 8.63 per attempt, etc,), Unitas, Montana, and Manning. But Brown is out there by himself among running backs. Even Barry Sanders’ old man thought so.
*People generally forget about this guy when they talk all time QBs.
He would also be my choice.
Many point to Brady’s ten super bowl appearances, with seven wins, as the ultimate measurement. I don’t agree. Yogi Berra won more World Series than anyone, but that does not make him a greater player than Babe Ruth.
It’s difficult to compare Brown and Brady. There’s no real common ground. Jim Brown was great athlete. Tom Brady is a man with a highly developed skill.
That said, to respond directly to your Brown stats: Brady has won seven super bowls and no other QB has won more than four.
Hard for those pre-67 QBs to win a Super Bowl, before there was such a thing.
Not that related, but I was thinking how lucky Browns fans were. From 46 to 65 (I moved to NE OH in 61) they got to watch either Graham or Brown every year with the exception of ’56. Then I thought about Yankees fans with either Ruth or Gehrig or both for almost 2o years, But the prize has got to go to le Grand Nord Blanc: Rocket Richard and Jean Beliveau from ’42 through ’71, ten together, for Montreal. Beliveau and Richard both won Cups their last year, Beliveau pulling off an almost-singlehanded upset of the Orr-Espo-Cheevers Bruins in the Semis. and the Rocket for the fifth consecutive time. Almost 30 years with two of my all-time top six players. Btw, Beliveau is on 10 Cups.
But it was also much easier for Jim Brown to win rushing titles in a league with 12 teams, compared to today’s 32. As I said, it’s difficult to compare such unalike players in such unalike eras.
To me the most impressive thing about Jim Brown is that he did what he did even though the other team knew full well how often he would get the ball. It’s not like it was a surprise when his number was called.
And despite that, they still couldn’t stop him.
As for Otto Graham, he won his seven titles in leagues with 8-12 teams. That’s another thing that makes Brady’s rings so impressive. He led his team to be the best of 32 teams, and had to keep winning through multiple levels of the playoffs. In every year he won the NFL title, he won at least three post-season games. All together, he won 35 post-season games, including 22 in Super Bowl seasons alone.
Assuming approximately equal teams, the chances of winning one post season game are about 1 out of 2. The chances of winning three are 1 out of 8. That’s what makes Brady’s accomplishments so unbelievable. The odds of winning even a single super bowl in a 32 team league with three or four levels of playoffs are not good. If you play 16 years and make the playoffs every year, you might win two. That’s pretty much what happened to Peyton Manning, although many say that he was the best ever.
The chances of winning seven … well, that record may well last forever. Assuming you make the playoffs every year, the chances of winning 7 titles in 20 full seasons with a 12.5% chance each time are less than 1 in 100. And the real odds would be slightly longer, because you probably won’t make the post-season every year. (No matter how good you are, shit happens. You team has problems. You get injured. Whatever.) And the odds become much longer still when you figure that it’s not even likely that a given player could even last 20 full seasons in the first place.
But Graham does have a literally unbreakable record, if I remember right. He played in the league championship game every single year of his career. Has any other athlete ever done that in any major team sport?
The greatest American athlete ever? What about Jim Thorpe? I’m kidding, of course. Talk like this is a waste of barstools. I wouldn’t be surprised if Time magazine gave out an award like this. Which would strike me as one pretty good reason to unsubscribe. I mean, assuming I’d ever be a subscriber in the first place.
Maybe they are thinking about Deflategate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflategate
Or maybe they are thinking of that old adage about being caught with a dead liver or a girl’s boy or whatever it is. I don’t follow sports.
T.B. could go full O.J. and be red-carpeted into the Hall of Fame. O.J.’s bust remains in Canton where it has resided since ’85. He’s also in Highmark Stadium’s Ring of Fame. O.J. even tweeted as, “Yours, Truly” from a suite in Highmark Stadium before the kickoff of the Bills game versus Miami on 10/31/21.
. . . or, maybe not. Other outlets pushing back on this, saying no decision has been yet made.
It’s hard to place any journalistic doubt with ESPN’s prefix headlines of, “Source:” or “Sources:” with regards to a breaking story. One has to “high-point” this breaking news regardless of the “catch radius.”