Why Tom Brady is the GOAT athlete

Tom Brady is the GOAT. He is the greatest of all time, not just in football, but across all sports. If you think this statement is way off base, you’re probably one of millions of opposing fans whom Brady has tortured over the years. If you aren’t sold — if you need to be persuaded — let’s explore a few of the reasons why TB12 stands atop the sports heap.

[Counterpoint: Why Tom Brady is NOT the GOAT athlete]

He plays the toughest position in sports There’s a reason quarterbacks make more money than anyone else. They have the toughest job in sports. Not only does a great quarterback have to do copious amounts of film work — and Brady does, as evidenced most recently by his fourth-quarter dissection of the Chiefs — but they also have to be able to put what they’ve learned in the film room into practice on the field while 290-pound freaks of nature are trying to take their heads off. The position requires smarts, guts, timing, leadership skills, a short memory, toughness and plenty of physical talent. No one combines all of those things like Brady.

He’s the winningest quarterback in history No other quarterback has reached 200 wins. Only Brady can say that. No other quarterback has five Super Bowl titles. Only Brady can say that. The only other player with five Super Bowls is Charles Haley, but only Brady managed the feat with one team. If he wins another this Sunday, he’ll put considerable distance between himself and Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana, the only other quarterbacks with four. Brady’s career winning percentage is an unfathomable .775.  In a league designed to create parity, Brady has won almost four of every five games.

He could easily have eight Super Bowl titles already Brady has never lost a Super Bowl by more than one score. The Eagles played a near flawless game to beat him last year, and the Giants used a few miracle plays — the helmet catch by David Tyree in Super Bowl XLII and a stunning Eli Manning to Mario Manningham pass in Super Bowl XLVI — to best Brady’s Patriots.

He’s virtually automatic at home in the playoffs If your favorite team is in the playoffs and playing the Patriots in Foxborough, don’t make any travel plans for the next round. Brady is virtually unbeatable at home in the postseason. In fact, he’s 20-3 at home in the playoffs, and two of those losses have come to Baltimore, the only team that can be said to give Brady fits in his own building. Otherwise, Touchdown Tom is 20-1 at home in the playoffs. That’s not supposed to happen.

Deion Branch, David Givens, David Patten Those are just three of the wide receivers who made more money than they had any business making thanks to Brady’s excellence. Outside of Randy Moss and Rob Gronkowski, two generational talents, Brady has taken mostly average to good wide receivers and made them great. His precision allowed Wes Welker and Julian Edelman to thrive and turned Chris Hogan into a major threat, just to name a few.

That 2008 season Most observers hold up the 2008 campaign, one that saw Brady tear his ACL in the first game of the season, as evidence that Bill Belichick was the more indispensable part of the Patriots machine, on account of the fact that he managed to get a Matt Cassel-quarterbacked team to 11 wins. I beg to differ. Cassel wasn’t a complete tomato can; he went out and won the AFC West with Kansas City two seasons later with Todd Haley, who can best be described as “not Bill Belichick,” as his head coach. Anyone who saw New England that year knows that Brady’s absence made the Pats a different team. The Steelers, perhaps the AFC foe most tortured by Brady, waltzed into Foxborough and pasted Cassel and the Pats 33-10. That would never, ever have happened with Brady around.

He’s gotten better with age Football, like every other sport, is a young man’s game. It’s also a game that chews up and spits out all but the best, usually in around three years or less. Not only has Brady stood the test of time, but he’s also gotten better with age. Brady’s 10 best seasons by passer rating have all come after the age of 30. As the league has gotten ever more pass happy, Brady has changed with the times and excelled.

He’s taken the Patriots to eight straight AFC championship games Forget about the 13 total conference title appearances he’s made, which is crazy enough in its own right, and think for a second about how good you have to be to guide a team to, at the very worst, a game short of the Super Bowl for almost a full decade. Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky — those guys haven’t done that. LeBron James has, though his streak seems sure to end this year, and basketball is a sport where one transcendent player has always been more effectively able to impose his will on the proceedings.

He's clutch like no one else Great athletes are defined not just by what they do in the biggest games but also by what they do in the most crucial moments in those games. Is there anything scarier in sports right now than being a fan of a team that is up four on the Patriots but just gave the ball back to Brady with two minutes to go? You almost feel like your team is trailing; that’s how good Brady is in crunch time. In his career, Brady has 35 fourth-quarter comebacks in the regular season, nine in the playoffs, and 44 game-winning drives in the regular season to go along with 12 in the playoffs. When the game is in the balance, no one is better than Brady.