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Is Tom Brady a top 5 QB all-time? (1 Viewer)

yes/ no

  • Yes

    Votes: 91 75.8%

  • No

    Votes: 27 22.5%

  • Other

    Votes: 2 1.7%
  • Total voters
    120
Joe T

Joe T

Footballguy
Think the answer is cut and dry?  Think again.

Tom Brady is a great QB and in the group of best of all-time, but is he solidly in the top 5?  If you look at NFL MVPs, he is behind Manning (5), Unitas (3), and Favre (3), and tied with Steve Young (2), Kurt Warner (2), Aaron Rodgers (2), and Joe Montana (2).  In that group alone, he is probably 7th or 8th and that group does not include the likes of Marino, Elway, Bradshaw, Brees and others.

In all-time passing yards, Brady is 5th behind Manning, Favre, Marino, and Brees.  In touchdown passes, Brady is again behind Manning and Favre and tied with Brees.  If you went on career passer rating, Brady would be 6th behind Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Romo, Steve Young, and Peyton Manning.  Statistically speaking, Brady is not solidly in the top 5.

Then comes the question of playing for the Patriots who have been found guilty of cheating by the NFL twice.  This tarnishes most of the team accomplishments that Brady has been part of as a Patriot.  Given a level playing field, there is no way to know how many games he would have won.  So you really have to throw out most of the wins and losses because the results are really unknown.  And the other quarterbacks in the discussion didn't have the ill-gained advantages that Tom did on the field of play.

I think he is a borderline top 5 QB of all-time, but the cheating has me leaning toward pushing him to 6th or 7th on the all-time list.

 
I can't stand the Patriots or Tom Brady and when they go back to their 1-15 days with an empty stadium I will do many happy dances. That said, I don't see how you could say he's not.

 
GoFishTN said:
I can't stand the Patriots or Tom Brady and when they go back to their 1-15 days with an empty stadium I will do many happy dances. That said, I don't see how you could say he's not.
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I said he is borderline.  Which is true.

 
Maybe. It is one of the great tragedies of our time that we'll never know how good he might have been without cheating.

 
This should be public so we can basically discredit anyone who votes no on anything/everything moving forward.

I hate the Patriots/Brady/BB, but I'm not a maroon. 

 
Remember when LT2 was the consensus #1 fantasy pick every year even though he had never actually finished as the #1 scoring fantasy RB at the time?  Brady doesn't have to be first in any statistics to be one of the best if not the best.

I don't think there are any statistics that could convince me that Brady isn't one of the best ever.  Nor any scenario, really.  He's been a game manager when his team has needed a game manager, and he's been a "carry the team on your back" stud when the team needed a "carry us on your back" stud.

The ONLY argument that I think could be of any merit in arguing that Brady isn't one of the greats is if you argue that the Pats are all Belichick and we've never seen him play without an all-time great coach behind him.  That's a tough chicken and the egg argument to make and you could probably make the opposite argument with regards to whether or not Belichick is actually an all-time great without Brady, but it's the only approach that would be plausible if your intent was to argue that Brady is not an all-time great.

Signed,

Dolphins fan who hates the Pats.

 
TheAristocrat said:
If you don't have him in your top three (maybe even top two), your ranking is garbage.
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If he hadn't cheated, I would probably agree with you. But this is sort of like Barry Bonds where we know he was a great player, but where would he be ranked all-time without cheating?

 
Yes easily.  Think of his stats with real WRs for his career and not just a few years.

Anyone saying no is kra kra

 
Joe T said:
If he hadn't cheated, I would probably agree with you. But this is sort of like Barry Bonds where we know he was a great player, but where would he be ranked all-time without cheating?
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No it's not.  Let's not pretend that it was a huge jump in stats one way or the other.  He played just fine last year (about the best year he's had) with all eyes on him, and I guarantee all balls to league standards. 

 
KarmaPolice said:
No it's not.  Let's not pretend that it was a huge jump in stats one way or the other.  He played just fine last year (about the best year he's had) with all eyes on him, and I guarantee all balls to league standards. 
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Yes, but that wasn't the only time the Pats were caught cheating. One offense might be understandable.

 
As much as I can't stand the dude (but I do respect how good he is), I will have to say yes. I'd be willing to go top 3.

 
I immediately want to say yes, but then you think of all those other great QBs and throw in the cheating, and it's less clear. Bottom line is these things are too subjective to arrive at a definitive answer, and it's impossible to compare QBs from different eras. A more interesting question is whether he's the best QB of the last 20 years. I can't decide if it's him or Manning. I lean Peyton because of how he revolutionized the position and was basically the OC on the field, but then Brady has all the Super Bowl wins. Several of which may be tainted. So who the hell knows.

 
No worse than #3. But for me personally, can't ever be #1 (even if he gets to 5 or 6) where he's spent his entire career in an organization neck deep in cheating allegations. Where there's smoke there's fire.

 
Otto Graham

Bart Starr

Johnny Unitas

Joe Montana

Terry Bradshaw

Tom Brady

Troy Aikman

Sid Luckman

John Elway

Peyton Manning

I have no problem if others ratings are different.  Mine are generally skewed to championships, but not completely.  Unitas is a bit of an exception given that he basically doubled the stats of other hall of famers of his era.  Imagine if somebody did that in today's game.

Oh, if Brady gets another championship he will jump two in my ranking, maybe three.  I might not bounce him over Unitas because of the cheating, but 5 championships puts him in rarified air, I might have to run him up to number 2.  Damn fine Q.B. Flawed sportsman, but damn fine Q.B.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah I'd say the best QB in NFL history is Top 5 all time

if Archie Manning had just pulled out a few times dude probably wins 10 Superbowla

 
Actually, thinking about this, I would have to credit Brady a bit more if he wins another.  One has to acknowledge that in the expanded league one has to overcome more to get to a championship than in the old days.  One more and I'd bump him to #2 on the list.

 
I think top 5 easily.  The stats, the titles, the MVPs...they're all there.  Had his run during the salary cap era where the league tried to create talent parity.  Sure, some of the other guys didn't have the pass-friendly rules to their advantage, but we could come up with a list of pros and cons of each era for a QB to play in (e.g. video analysis, specialization, year-round training).  Perhaps it all washes out.

But one thing that jumps out with Tom: When his teams finally got knocked down, they rarely went out like a (female dog).  They usually went down swinging, with Tom often in the middle of it.  2009 and 2012 vs. Baltimore jump out at me as bad exits and maybe 2005 and 2013 vs. Denver to lesser degrees, but he doesn't have anything like the 49-3 drubbing like Montana did vs. the 1986 Giants or the Elway Super Bowl embarrassments.  Or Marino's 62-7 loss to Jax to end his career.  Maybe that's a testament to the Pats rather than Brady, but I don't think they can be decoupled so easily.  In any case, he and his teammates put up a fight to the very end much more often than not.

 
Joe T said:
Yes, but that wasn't the only time the Pats were caught cheating. One offense might be understandable.
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The other time the Patriots were punished for cheating was right at the start of Brady's best year, statistically speaking.

:shrug:

 
This is silly. Does John Elway lose points for playing on a team that twice got caught abusing the salary cap? Does Terry Bradshaw lose points for playing on a team full of roid users? Does Montana lose points for Jerry Rice admitting to illegally using stickem his whole career? Does Favre lose points for pounding painkillers and sending out pics of his junk and destroying his phone? (Where's his suspension for that. Oh yeah, I forgot. That only merits a fine. At least for him.)

Anyway, all this getting caught cheating is nonsense. If people want to say Brady's on field performance was not Top 5 based solely on that, so be it. Although that would take a really convincing argument for folks that want to go there. 

31 other owners and the league office wanted to crucify NE and wanted a pound of flesh for crimes against humanity. It's pretty clear the league could have suspended Brady pretty much for no reason at all, at least that's what the court seemed to think.

So if Brady ends up with the most passing yards, the most passing TD, and the most SB rings, would he still not be a Top 5 QB for some of you?

 
I don't know how to begin to sort all of those QBs.  You could try sorting them a bunch of different ways, maybe even a couple of them would distinguish themselves, and I still wouldn't be sure you are right.

 
Anarchy99 said:
This is silly. Does John Elway lose points for playing on a team that twice got caught abusing the salary cap? Does Terry Bradshaw lose points for playing on a team full of roid users? Does Montana lose points for Jerry Rice admitting to illegally using stickem his whole career? Does Favre lose points for pounding painkillers and sending out pics of his junk and destroying his phone? (Where's his suspension for that. Oh yeah, I forgot. That only merits a fine. At least for him.)

Anyway, all this getting caught cheating is nonsense. If people want to say Brady's on field performance was not Top 5 based solely on that, so be it. Although that would take a really convincing argument for folks that want to go there. 

31 other owners and the league office wanted to crucify NE and wanted a pound of flesh for crimes against humanity. It's pretty clear the league could have suspended Brady pretty much for no reason at all, at least that's what the court seemed to think.

So if Brady ends up with the most passing yards, the most passing TD, and the most SB rings, would he still not be a Top 5 QB for some of you?
Click to expand...
Love the bizarre Favre analogy. Gotta sprinkle a little crazy into your homerrific rants to give them that extra zip, otherwise what's the point?

 
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