As society continues to progress through the new decade with the hope of brand new beginnings, football fans have been met with what seems like the most constant of all variables — Tom Brady winning another Super Bowl.
Coming off of his seventh Super Bowl victory, winning championships in three different decades, Brady is already considered the greatest quarterback to ever play football. However, with this recent accomplishment, many have begun to craft the narrative that Brady may just be the greatest athlete of all time.
Now while I will never deny Brady his status as one of the world’s greatest and most successful team sport athletes, Brady is definitely not the greatest athlete of all time…well at least not by my definition of the word.
Along with being the oldest player to ever win a Super Bowl ring, Tom Brady has appeared in 10 Super Bowls throughout his 20 seasons as an NFL quarterback, twice as many as any other starting quarterback in the league’s history. These accomplishments, along with a multitude of others including three regular-season MVPs, five Super Bowl MVPs, and 14 pro bowl selections, make the case for Brady being the greatest team sport athlete a fairly one-sided conversation.
However, I can’t overlook the fact that football is still a team sport that requires not only Brady to execute well to achieve success. Even though Brady was awarded the Super Bowl 55 MVP, I can’t honestly say that his performance was the most valuable to his team’s success that night.
The Buccaneers defense held the Kansas City Chiefs offense to a total of nine points that night. This was the biggest surprise of the Super Bowl, considering the Chiefs offense is undoubtedly one of the league’s best, led by a premier talent in quarterback Patrick Mahomes and esteemed head coach Andy Reid.
Without that performance from the Buccaneers defense, along with the help he received from his skill-position players and offensive line, it’s hard to say whether or not Brady himself could have carried his team to victory at the age of 43.
Athletes that participate in individual sports like tennis and boxing have no one but themselves to rely on when facing an opponent. This makes the sustained success and dominance of athletes like Serena Williams and Floyd Mayweather a lot more impressive as opposed to the team success Brady has received.
Also, these athletes are objectively in better shape than Brady due to the differing physical demands of their sports. And while I’m not trying to discredit the amount of time Brady has spent training, playing the quarterback position has allowed Tom Brady to remain at the top of his game because being a physical specimen is not needed to be a successful quarterback.
Even when compared to other team sport athletes such as Lebron James and Derek Jeter, Brady fails in comparison to their physiques. So while Brady might match or even be superior to them from a skill standpoint, when looking at everything that encapsulates a great athlete, Brady simply does not meet the criteria.
