OT: Is Tom Brady the greatest QB of all time?

Wasn't Brady a fourth round draft pick? He's definitely the greatest bargain of all time.

He was a 6th round draft pick, lol.

Tom Brady gets paid 14.8 million. Russell Wilson only was paid 0.8 million.

Brady could be earning 20mm, but he agreed to take less than market rate in order to leave the Pats with more salary cap room - just so he could be where he was last night. Because that is the type of class act that he is, unlike those classless goons playing for the Seahawks. It was bad enough when the receiver who shamelessly used a ref as a human pick on Revis then taunted Revis on the sidelines on national TV, as if he beat him like a man instead of the scumbag that he is, but then the Seahawks started a fight at the end of the game just because they were done.

Idolators! Do not worship the false god Brady. So sayeth th Juicemane the final PROPHET of the LORD mane thy GOD.

Do not listen to the Dugan mane for he and his system are of the advarsary LUCIFER mane. So sayeth the LORD mane

I caught the tail end of a documentary on TV recently about a QB that played for the Oilers (whoever they are) in 1992, some match he was in against another team I can't remember name of was talked about quite a bit. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?

Not even close.

He throw 2 INTs last night. His team would have lost if not for that INT at the end. He threw short passes all night. 6.6 yard avg per pass vs Wilson with 11.8 yard avg. I would have given the MVP last night to Edelman or even Butler with the game saving INT over Brady. I'd give more credit to Belichick then Brady. But both or good.

Belichick is like the NFLs version of Nick Saban or Urban Meyer.

Second greatest after Joe Montana.

Probably the best in accolades. Still had a few seasons left so we will see.

It is hard to place him over great QB's like Montana or Staubach. He's definitely one of the best though.

He has as many Superbowl rings as Montana and has been in 2 more. Brady broke the record for the most Superbowl TDs in history.

One other thing to keep in mind is that Brady has played during an era of team parity, which makes his achievements all the more remarkable. Guys like Montana and Staubach played on great teams that stayed relatively intact year over year, before free agency and salary caps made rosters much more fluid. The Pats team that won the Superbowl last night only had two players (Brady and Wilfork) who were even around the last time the Pats won the big game.

Now Belichick is one hell of a coach too, but it doesn't matter how good a coach is if he doesn't have the guys to execute. Belichick coached the Browns years ago and had a losing record. Brady's ability to put the ball on the numbers from 40 yards away gives a coach a lot of options. The Pats went to the playoffs during several seasons where they were picking up scrubs off the street to play as receivers and corners and they could get away with it because they had such a damned good QB.

He's in the conversation, but its hard to place him relative to quarterbacks of different era's. I think its even hard to make a clear choice of him over Peyton Manning, Brett Farve, or Dan Marino much less throwing in the Staubach's, Tarkenton's, Montana's, Young's, Elway's, and Unitas's of the past. As trivial as it is, I think the whole spygate thing and this deflategate stuff casts a bit of fog on his legacy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying he isn't, I'm just not willing to say he is either.

Way to go Brady. Good game plan.

I don't know if it possible to name Brady, or anyone else, as the single greatest of all time. Too many variables to truly compare. I think he is the greatest of this time period just like Montana was the greatest of his time and Unitas and so on.
Certainly has to be somewhere in the top 5 of all time, just not sure where.

I would agree mostly with Dolfan. As a pure thrower, most of the others are superior (Manning, Farve, Marino, Montana, Young, Bradshaw etc.). His poise and his game management brings him in to the conversation (consider his # of 4th quarter come-from-behind drives). For my money, not the best, but a first ballot HOF for sure.

PS -- hate the Pats, esp. Belicheat.

I'll grant he's a future hall of famer, and one of the best of his era. But all time? No.

Any and all of them are only as good as there team or their competition.
Consider how much different that whole game would have been in Brandon Browner was still a Seahawk? (and the other three guys not playing hurt)
Their Secondary would have been much tougher, the receivers would have had to fight much harder to get open. And on the other side, coverage would have suffered...
Or consider if that Gronkowski or Endleman was playing for the Seahawks?
Everyone gets so fixated on that one guy who just thows the ball, but someone has to catch it!!! Great receivers can make a QB look better, and a great RB can take pressure off the receivers, and a great defense can give them confidence to be as agressive or conservative as they want for the situation.

Easily in conversation for top 3. He also did it in salary cap era which is much harder.

pension king Manning and Marino havent won anything get them the fuck out. Manning may be the worst post season qb ever.

^^^^ Jim Kelly?

The most dominant qb against his peers was Otto Grahm. 7 titles in ten years.

at least Jim Kelly won playoff games and got to the super bowl 4 times. Its hard to gauge Otto Graham because it wasn't even the NFL when he was playing but it's definitely impressive. The whole thing is subjective.

or maybe it was the NFL for Graham but pre superbowl era...it's amazing that in the super bowl era Cleveland hasn't ever made it.

@Londonguy that 1992 Oilers (who are now the Tennessee Titans) QB was Warren Moon. He's a Hall of Fame QB, but not in the top 10 greatest. It was a time when black qb's were still a rare breed. He ran the now defunct run and shoot offense. The thing about him is they wanted to turn him into a reciever when he went to the NFL so he by paseed the NFL and played in the Canadian league, won a bunch of awards came back to the NFL had a very respectable career.

I think you can make a strong case for Brady - probably stronger than anyone else. But heck - Marino was terrific although he was only in the super bowl once and lost. It's a team game so I don't think you can go by super bowl wins to rate individual players. But Payton Manning certainly is not as good as his playoff record is horrible and his record in bad weather anytime isn't very good. Most of his career he played indoors! Brady played his home games outside in New England - and you have to think his stats would be much better if he played in a better weather home field. The best to me? Brady, Marino, Unitas, Farve and Rodgers. But there are others in the running, too - but nobody named Manning.

I think Rodgers needs a few more years to realistically be in the picture

Ive watched Brady since his start in Michigan.....im not a brady fan but lets face it if Tom wins one more super bowl their will be no debating it...he will be the greatest to ever play his position

1. Joe Montana (4 for 4 in Super Bowls, everyone always talks about how he had Jerry Rice, but let's not forget he won two Superbowls before Jerry was on the team.
2. Tom Brady (4 superbowls, but 2 Super Bowl losses, and has Spygate and Deflategate hanging over him, I think to a lot of people he will never pass Montana. I do think he's the clutchest QB ever).
3. John Elway (5 Super Bowl appearances, 2 superbowls, didn't have help throughout most of his career)
4. Peyton Manning (greatest regular season QB ever, has all the QB records, but comes up short in playoff time).
5. Tie between Dan Marino and Brett Favre

I can't decide, but I do think Marino had the strongest arm of probably anyone.

Montana, Unitas, Favre, and Elway all rate ahead of Brady in my book. To me those are all guys who would have won on any team.

For #5 I'd choose between Young and Brady. Peyton Manning ' s post season mediocrity will always hurt his legacy.

Why no Drew Breeze? Mind blowing stats and though he is 6-5 in the playoffs, he had 24 td's vs 6 int's. Dude is a passing machine. Could have used a little more help (ala Marino)

favre is probably my fave qb of all-time but he cant' be rated in the same level as Montana or brady. too many bad plays in key situations during playoffs. you could count at lease 2 int's coming your way if your were on the defensive end. of course you still have to catch those hard nasty throws.

I have nothing but respect for Peyton Manning. That guy literally carried Indy on his back some years when the defense was atrocious and the running game suspect. The reason that Manning has thrown more yards in his career than all but one QB ever is that he was forced to.

Having said that...

Manning's inability to win the big games and to cope with bad weather really tarnish his legacy for me. He plays best when he can throw using precision timing routes, which is tough to do when the weather sucks or when you are playing tough defensive teams in the playoffs who are being allowed to rough up your receivers. He also always needs max protection around him to perform at his best and tends to get rattled if he gets hit too many times, which is why Indy and Denver both devoted a lot of resources to putting strong lines around him.

I didn't see Unitas play, but he's gotta be in the top 5. I'm gonna take Marino and Favre out, I'll slid Unitas at 4, and Manning at 5.

@Dugan- that Baldwin guy talks a lot of trash, but unfortunately for Seattle he didn't back it up in the Super Bowl. Revis shut him down. His stat line: Wait for it, Wait for it, 1 catch for 3 yards. The only catch he had was a fluke because the ref basically set a pick.

Ranukam give it up with deflate gate its bunk and its Patriots aren't even going to get fined. Mike Kensil is the exec who had a grudge against Pats cooked up this whole thing and his ass will most likely get fired, you clearly don't understand what was Spygate was but regardless they were better after that. Keep looking for boogeymen and excuses why the Pats and the Pats win, or just go with they are coached better and play better. Weird how no one is making a big deal about Atlanta pumping in noise during other teams offensive drives (oh wait they sucked this year so no one cares). Indy didn't play and basically threw games for Luck but no one mentioned that.

Brady has broken Montana's post season records and isn't done yet but no one is denying Montana was great he also did

have no salary cap. Once again there is no real determination on which QB was the best, so I don't have any real problem with any list. Favre was great but his last few years kind of made people forget how good he was.

Lol no way.

Montana never lost a Super Bowl. It took Brady six Super Bowls to match Montana's stats from four Suprr Bowls. Montana ranks #1 hands down.

Most successful and greatest are two very different things.

I was unimpressed with his play last night and seriously question him deserving the MVP.


On another not, is a guy "using" a ref anything like a guy pulling another guy down by the ankle?

Thanks GACAclub, appreciate your answer.

"Most successful and greatest are two very different things." -- Ding, ding ding, we have a winner...

Grand1511 - Montana won all his superbowls with pretty much the same team. Way before the salary cap. Brady won his first with NONE of the same players as he won with this year! He made 6 superbowls while Montana only ade it to 4. Win or lose it's incredible to make it into 6, and no other QB has done so. Again, it's a team game so you have to look at other factors besides Super Bowl wins to evaluate who the best player is. Joe is a jerk and for that reason alone I'd take anyone over him!

I guess cheaters do prosper. Bellecheat has cheated his way through his entire career. The Ravens should have been playing Seattle this year and I am not a Baltimore fan but they got ripped off. (it was a Ravens player who tip the Colts defense to check the ball inflation). If the deflated balls were due to weather why were only the Pats balls deflated and not the ones used by the Colts and Ravens. The Pats staff member who deflated the balls on Brady's or Bellacheck's orders has done it before because he knew to go to a room without surveillance cameras. The Pat-ripoffs should be stripped of at least two of their "titles" and Bellecheat should be banned for life like Pete Rose (although Pete never cheated he just had a gambling problem). A $500,000 fine is chump change to him since he make $10,000,000 per year and can deduct the fine as a business expense. The NFL commissioner owes his job to Kraft the Pat-ripoff's owner so nothing will happen. Imaging if Houston of Buffalo got caught cheating like this... there would have been a crucifixion at half time instead of Katy Perry's titties. Look what they did to New Orleans for doing the same thing Cowher did when he was coach of the Steelers but hey waited for him to retire and made an example of an uppity small market team in New Orleans. If I were an owner I would refuse to play them and simply not sell tickets to any game they had with them. If the rest of the players and owners would follow suit that make the point that the rest of the people are tired of the management having two sets of rules; one for big market teams and one for the rest.
I have gone to games in the past and had planned on season tickets next year for one one the close by teams but I'll save my money to go clubbing. The only reason I maintained cable for network TV was for the NFL games but I had dropped cable as of 2/1 and now watch net flicks and that gives me more money for clubbing.
The long and short is I now have more money to go clubbing.
I find all pro and big time college sports disgustingly crooked. Every time I become interested again thinking things had changed another scandal pops up and is quickly dismissed by the powers.

Brady is not fit to clean out Terry Bradshaw's septic tank.

Well tired, when you can back up those shrill, girly, wild and hyperbolic accusations with an actual fact that serves as a piece of hard evidence, you just let us know. ;)

Funny you should bring this up, rick. I vaguely recall a recent article where Brady named Montana as the greatest quarterback of all time. There are several metrics that can be used to determine who is the greatest.
Yet a casual glance at the modern era QB's in the Hall of Fame shows that almost all have won at least some conference championships, if not a (or multiple) Super Bowls. Winning playoff/championship games seems to carry a lot of weight.
Joe Montana has a 4-0 record in Super Bowls, and a 4-3 record in conference championship games. (net 8-3 in the BIG games, a .727 percentage.) Bart Starr (Packers) has the best Championship Game record at 9-1 (.900 winning percentage.) Brady is 4-2 in Super Bowls, and (I think) 6-3 in Conference Championship games, net 10-5, a .667 percentage.
For sure Tom Brady belongs in the list of greats like Montana, Starr, Staubach, Elway, Favre, etal. I'm not ready to catapult him to the front of the list.
When I feel I have more time on my hands, I'll try to dig up the comeback records of all the great quarterbacks. For sure, Brady has come through in the clutch when needed. But so have the other great ones- Elway, Montana, and , yes, Peyton Manning have led some spectacular comebacks. (Lets not forget that Peyton Mannings' 2 different teams have beaten Brady's Patriots in 2 league championship games, including coming back from a deficit of 18 points in Colts vs Pats in 2007.)
I think P. Manning will be enshrined in Canton, but I agree with others that his star will be somewhat tarnished by his playoff record (~.450 vs Tom Brady's ~.750).

For edification of tusclers, I'll post the career quarterback ratings of the top ones. (* indicates in Hall of Fame). Listed from highest to lowest:
P. Manning-97.5,* S. Young-96.8, T. Brady-95.9, *D. Marino- 86.4, B. Favre- 86.0,* R. Staubach-83.4, *T. Aikman-81.6, *D. Fouts-80.2, *T. Bradshaw-70.9

Still no answer on "using" a ref to make a play is better or worse than deliberately pulling a guy down by the ankle after getting beaten?