He/she roots for a team with a feminine name. Need I write more? Different eras. Montana's stats compared to his contemporaries are probably better than Brady's compared to his contemporaries. I have seen both play on plenty of occasions and I believe Montana was the better player. Baugh, Graham and Unitas are the three old-timers who merit serious consideration for top 5 lists.
As much as it pains me to say it, Brady is the most consistent QB I have ever seen. Based on the difference in rules though, if Montana played now he would be the better of the two.
I think Brady becomes the first QB to be a starter for 5 SB's if he gets there this year, right? I loathe him, but that would be amazing.
The greatest of all time? Come on! Not even close. No question he is great though. A lot of factors go into debates like this though. Not just SB wins. I will say out of the 4 teams left, you have Brady (A HOF), Manning (who is on fire), Smith (who had the best game of his career yesterday) and Flacco (who is terrible). So likely Brady gets to his 5th SB at least.
It would be interesting to see Brady's comparable stats if he had a receiving corps the like of Jerry Rice, John Taylor and Dwight Clark to throw to for 8-10 years. We can debate this forever, and probably will but really it is an unanswerable question. It's just a matter of appreciating greatness when it occurs.
You wrote that as if Clark and Taylor are Hall of Famers. Montana won two Super Bowls with a Clark and Freddie Solomon receiving duo. Good players, but not great ones. Brady has thrown to Wes Welker, Randy Moss, the two current TE/WRs, Deion Branch and Troy Brown. I don't believe Montana had a significantly better group of pass receivers than did Brady through the years. Most rings- Bart Starr 5 Sid Luckman 4 Terry Bradshaw 4 Joe Montana 4 Otto Graham 3 (would be 7 if counting AAFC titles) Johnny Unitas 3 Troy Aikman 3 Tom Brady 3
No but that's because I view his SB wins as being tainted because of Spygate. Even though it was mainly on Belichick doing this, Belichick stealing opposing defenses signals is a huge benefit to Brady and of course Brady kept hush-hush about it, thus taking advantage. Its the same to me as when ARod took steroids. He didn't need to do it given his talent level but he still did it and it forever taints him much like how spygate taints the Pats SB wins.
If you want to contemplate the different eras, 49ers played without a salary cap and retained superior talent for a longer period of time.
It is irrelevant to this discussion. There is absolutely no way to determine if Montana would have experienced more or less success if he played in another era. Same deal with Brady. What we could say is that Montana played well for two different franchises and even won playoff games with Marty Schottenheimer! as head coach.
Don't you think the Colts results this year prove how valuable Peyton Manning is ? Remember when Cassel had to replace Brady, they still had a positive season!
Huge difference, Cassell was in that system for y6ears and has since taken KC to a div title so he could play. NE was off a 17-0 season, Indy was off a 10-6 season and expected to get worse w/ Peyton and Indy didn't have any competent QB play all year. They got better QB late in the year w/ another bad QB and won some games.
Absolutely. With Manning the 2011 Colts are an 11 win team. Without Brady the Pats in 2008 still won 11 games with a terrible QB. The only reason Cassel played well last year was because he was back in the Charlie Weis system. He's likely to lose his job next season if the Chiefs bring back Orton.
They werne't an 11 win team w/ him healthy in 2010- he aged another year and his team aged another year- how were they going to win 11? and don't give me the injury excuse b/c in '10 the packers had more and in '11 the Giants have had a ton. W/ Peyton they probably win 8-9 games, w/ any comptent QB they probably win around 8.
I was just going to make this point myself, I would have to say if he wins it all he has to be at the top or second to Montana, only because while it's true Montana had great players around him , the teams he faced to get to the SB were also loaded, that's why I would put Montana ahead of him. Could Brady face the Giants, Cowboys, Redskins, and come out on top like Joe did I don't know but those were some classic games.
To be fair he won TWO Super Bowls w/o Jerry Rice and John Taylor(an average WR who looked better playing opposite Rice) and dwight Clark was not a great WR
On the other hand, there was a lot less parity in the league back then, so the teams Montana beat in the playoffs were generally good. Still, I think they are about as comparable as you can get. Still looking forward to the day Brady gets the Leonard Marshall shot in the back rocket into the next zip code hit.
