Superb Owl is today.
I hadnât kept up with any handegg for the last few years, but today I learned Tom Brady is making his 85th superbowl appearance, with a different team too. Iâm impressed he keeps winning even without the rest of the Patriots team/coaches/system/etc.
Same. I was very wrong about Tom Brady.
Looking back historically there were many instances where the Patriots were without him, and they were still a very strong team. The quarterbacks that backed him up looked great, and when they left the Patriots, they stunk it up.
Bill Belichick has had some success without Tom Brady. Tom Brady never played for anyone else outside of college, where he was not that amazing.
Given that evidence it was not unreasonable to believe that most of the success of the New England dynasty was due to the coaching. Tom Brady just happened to be the guy. And he was very good, but there was no reason not to believe that had another capable quarterback been in that position, and stayed healthy, they could have done just as well.
That turned out it really was Brady being great. Welp.
Brady wasnât exactly great this year! Iâd say more like sufficient.
Stats arenât everything, but he was 9th this year by both passer rating and QBR. Halfway between⌠Cam Newton of the Patriots at #28 and Rodgers at #1.
This says more about passer rating than it does about the players. Certainly the factors that go into calculating passer rating are correlated with winning. Lots of yards, touchdowns, no turnovers, high completion percentage, etc. However, there is a lot more that goes into winning at NFL football that is not reflected there. The biggest thing is that it doesnât give the QB any credit for running plays even though they may or may not play a large part in reading the defense and helping them be successful.
Okay, I see now my previous comment wasnât quite correct. While he won with a new team, he didnât completely leave behind everyone from the Patriots to do it.
He reportedly urged the Bucs to bring in former Patriots team-mates Rob Gronkowski and Antonio Brown, as well as Leonard Fournette, and the trio shared Tampa Bayâs four touchdowns as they eased home in Super Bowl 55 after leading 21-6 at half-time.
Yeah, I think there was definitely an advantage from getting the gang back together, at least partially, in a year such as this. Less training camp and less practice definitely gives an advantage to having a veteran squad who already have good teamwork with each other.
It also canât be overstated how much the defense won this particular game, as it often does. Yeah, Brady put the points up on the board, but the real contributor to the victory was KC not putting up hardly any. You swap the quarterbacks in this one game, and itâs likely the result does not change.
Two other relevant conversations on the Internet that seem to be happening right now.
One is that some people are calling Brady not just the best QB of all time (canât argue with that) but the best athlete. Thatâs just preposterous. There are plenty of athletes in individual sports well ahead of Tom Brady. Serena Williams, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer, Rod Laver, Tiger Woods, Jesse Owens, Car Lewis, Usain Bolt, etc. Of course the true greatest of the great is Muhammad Ali.
Now Tom played a team sport, but even sticking with team sports,g he is not the best of the best. Michael Jordan is clearly ahead of Tom, and Wayne Gretzky is clearly ahead of them both. Iâd also argue that Bo Jackson was actually the greatest, he just was unlucky with injuries and was not on the greatest teams. In team sports we put a lot of value into athletes who have long careers. There are many who were incredible for a brief period, but that isnât enough to get big numbers on the career stats that people use when deciding about the hall of fame and such. If we ranked athletes only based on how good they were at their peak, Tom wouldnât do so well in the GOAT conversation.
The second conversation is how this relates to racism in the NFL specifically. Black players have been kept out of the QB position, and even now the position is predominantly white. This goes down to the high school level where racism plays a part in guiding kids into different positions that they are likely to remain in for their entire career. If that racism wasnât there, does Tom Brady even get his job to begin with? How many great not-white QBs have we missed out on, and continue to miss out on? Kaepernick still canât get a job.
So compared to other great athletes in other positions and in other sports, in addition to the usual white privilege, Tom Brady had additional white QB privilege that kept a lot of non-white athletes out of the QB seat, and therefore gave him less competition with which to win his trophies.
He has also had a great financial privilege. His very wealthy partner certainly helps. Very often he chose to take a lower than market rate salary in New England so that the team had more money to spend making the rest of the team better. Other players, especially not-white ones, have to take all the money they can get, and theyâre right to do so. But because of the salary cap, that made their teams less competitive, and harder for them to win championships.
TL;DR: Tom sucks, but still the greatest QB ever (so far). Nowhere close to greatest athlete in team sports, and certainly not all sports.
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Honorable mention for Secretariat.
Also, this guy real Super Bowl MVP. He got on camera! Normally the broadcast cuts away before you even get to see them.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=n5OmqA5t6lI
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Iâm not sure how anyone can be the greatest athlete when they only spend half the game on the pitch. Sure, basketball and hockey switch out players, but itâs not even close.
I donât mind a team athlete being considered the best athlete ever, but in the case of quarterbacks, you canât even compare them to anyone else on the pitch at the same time as them. With soccer, everyone but the keepers are using the same kinds of skills. Same with almost every other team sport, although cricket and baseball have the bowler/pitcher role.
With American football, Tom Brady is really competing for âbestâ against 31 other guys, and he never goes head-to-head against any of them.
Meanwhile Serena Williams has 23 majors where she had to win the most points for 7 matches in a row, directly competing against the entire field of the best in the world at her sport.
Tom Bradyâs not even in the conversation.
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Yeah, I talked about that guy elsewhere.
Fans used to run on to the field with somewhat great frequency due to lax security, but also for fame. At some point, I donât know when, they instituted a rule that TV would cut away, to remove the fame incentive, and they upped security. That greatly reduced fan on the field incidents.
However, now that everyone has a camera at all times, do you care if the TV doesnât show you? You get the fame no matter what! I expect to see an increase in both incidents and security.
I also saw those âTom Brady: GOAT of GOATS?â takes as well, and they are truly fucking preposterous.
Great point about not being on the field half the time. You know what else is interesting is that itâs not 50/50 in football. How good the defense is, and how good the QB is, will determine how much they play!
A great defense always wants to get off the field quickly, unless they get a pick 6 which keeps them on the field again. A good quarterback, depending on the game state will either want to go down the field and quickly score, giving them less playing time, or slowly go down the field, maintain extended possession, eat the clock, and eventually score.
The impact that has on the career stats has to be significant. A QB with a large amount of touchdowns might seem great, but they could actually be bad at slow marches down the field. Those slow marches are often good for winning. A better QB could have worse stats and better strats.
Are your staff all fully vaccinated?
Ok, you can have 10 people in the room with no masks or anything.
Are they not fully vaccinated?
Ok, you have to have masks and distance, but you can have 20 people.
No, you did not read that wrong.
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Happy pride month everybody.
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Itâs touchdown day.
7/14/21.
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Also known as âThe Day of the Sevensâ 
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