I thought you were talking about what Tom might yet add to his resume. Missed you telling me he likely won't. Glad to see us agreeing on the points then. Excellent. And when you even suggest Brady playing to 50 it's not really in keeping with that agreement. Like saying, "But suppose he grows an extra head." It's just not going to happen. No one has ever come close to that, let alone approaching it with anything in the tank that can be taken seriously.
I've largely been addressing the GOAT myth that goes hand in hand with the media driven need for a "great one"
Do you believe that Gretsky is "the great one?" It's off- and on-topic. Like your frequently mentioning athletes in other sports implicitly suggesting the implied claim of a strong analogy is valid, between great players of other sports, and any correlation between them and hardware/rings.
or, better yet, "GOAT" to be playing now and looking at the reality of the player and that golden aura that was crafted by ESPN.
In fairness I was taking the list as presented and reordering it while noting other great qbs were off the board of that consideration because of the time cut-off. I've never said Brady is the second best qb of all time. I've largely considered him the second best of his generation, until recently. He's gained for me the way Jabbar's extended greatness gained for him with me.
What I've actually said is that I think he and Peyton are a push, that Brees could be a serious competitor for his generation as well. Green Bay has a qb who might be as good as either and none of them are the GOAT.
And while you once put Montana solidly in the lead more recently in our exchange you said you'd take Brady now over Montana in his prime.
So who are you suggesting you'd take ahead of Brady again?
Graham's the GOAT. With the NFL, getting longer in the tooth than the AAFC ever did, the question is posed because now we have seen a number of Graham-type performances of utter dominance by quarterbacks, that we have to wonder, who was/is the best ever at the position? QBs influence the games'/'s outcomes more than any other single player. It's a natural question.
And Graham is the only obvious choice, because Graham led his team to so many championship games, firstly, and that Graham won so many of them, more than anybody else. The game has changed in many ways, like baseball, but also like baseball, the fundamental conflict of a football game has not changed . . . since the advent of the forward pass. Graham dominated the conflict, between the offense and the defense, two armies clashing directly with each other dozens of times per game, where the forward pass is a possibility.
Calling Graham the GOAT is like calling the Beatles, or Elvis the GOAT. They are the GOATs because they were first. They discovered/invented the species, like Gretsky did. They were the firsts, to do any number of both strategic and tactical things, now taken for granted, for their ubiquity.
To make the case for anybody else would involve some sort of "Madden" like video game imagination, and nobody can argue something like that firmly. Graham knew how to win championships, and Plan A is to first get to the championship, and that, Graham did each season of his career, and Plan B is to win the championship game, and Graham did that more than anybody else to play the position.
It would help if you wouldn't wait this long between postings. I consider and post as I come to a thing. You wait a week or better and it's a cold trail. I recall you repeatedly stating I was disparaging Brady, which is a peculiar charge from someone who thinks I hold him at number two on my all time list.
I thought so too, and that's why I inquired.
And I think your Brady at 40 over Joe in his prime is a prime example of homerism over logic, given you also say you don't actually expect Brady to miss that wall sooner than later (and who knows, it could be this year
I specified a whole Brady in my question.
) to name a couple of points.
Both of those positions are incongruous at worst and strained at best.
So who is on your list, 1-10?
The question is, who's going to win the game?
Nick mentioned that if he had to pick a QB for one play, to win the championship being assumed, he'd go with Elway. My question is, one game, not one play.
I know Joe's 4-for-4. And I know that during his whole prime years (what NFL players are truly healthy every game?) he was a 1-to-1-to-1.25-to-1, or a little less than a coin-flip, underdog to win the NFL championship, any given season. I'm assuming that I'd get that Joe. Meanwhile, I could also opt for Brady today, at 40, instead. I assume that he's whole, and that his odds of being injured in the championship game are the same as they are today, which is about 14-to-1 against anything happening at a season-ending severity level or worse. I discount it to ten times more likely, which is about 1-and-a-half-to-1, or 3-to-2 against, or, for EV purposes, this is him playing three-fifths of a game.
Brady's won two of the last three NFL championships, IOW he's on a roll, right now. Odds that Joe will be on a roll? Coin flip, 50% chance, and if he is, then yes you win, but Brady's batting average in SB wins recently is 2-for-3, or 66.6% truncated winning percentage.
The question is who's going to win the game. Is that really "homerism?" Brady literally, just orchestrated the single greatest comeback in the history of the NFL championship game. He's got the hot hand. Why do you think this is unreasonable, illogical, "homerism?"
