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``Tom was a great player before he got great players around him,'' said Fox analyst Jimmy Johnson. the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins. ``Now that he's got great players around him, he's something that I've never seen before.''
No one has seen the kind of season Brady and the New England Patriots have had to this point. But all of it — including the record 50 touchdown passes and the unprecedented 18-0 record — will be replaced by the perception of failure if the Patriots do not beat the 12-point underdog New York Giants at the University of Phoenix Stadium on Sunday night.
Only the 1972 Dolphins (17-0) have gone undefeated and untied through an entire season. The Chicago Bears went undefeated during the 1934 and `42 regular seasons but lost in the NFL title game both years.
``This is the biggest game of all of our lives,'' said Brady, who already has three Super Bowl victories and two MVP trophies. ``We're going to be remembering this game for as long as we live, win or lose. We're either going to have great memories of this experience or we're going to look at it truly as a missed opportunity.''
The same can be said of Brady's individual place in history. With a loss, he stays near the top. But a victory begins or at least strengthens the argument that Brady is better than all the rest.
Better than Sammy Baugh and Otto Graham. Better than Johnny Unitas and Bart Starr. Better than Terry Bradshaw, Brett Favre, Dan Marino and, yes, maybe better than Joe Montana, aka ``Joe Cool,'' the only three-time Super Bowl MVP — until at least later Sunday night.
A victory would move Brady into a tie with Montana and Bradshaw for most Super Bowl titles by a quarterback. It also would match the number of pre-Super Bowl NFL titles won by Green Bay's Arnie Herber in the 1930s and Chicago's Sid Luckman in the 1940s. The Packers' Bart Starr won a record five NFL titles, including the first two Super Bowls.
`Montana is the greatest'
Among those who aren't ready to anoint Brady as the best, the consensus seems to be that he must win Sunday night's game and maybe another Super Bowl before he can surpass Montana. Even Brady, who grew up in the Bay Area watching Montana win his Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, doesn't think there's anybody who can dethrone Joe Cool.
``Joe Montana is the greatest of all time, and he always will be,'' Brady said. ``I looked up to Joe Montana. Joe and Steve Young were my two favorites because they were the 49ers quarterbacks. Those guys are the best.''
Some beg to differ. One of them is Montana.
``(Brady) has the ability and he has a lot of time left, so he will probably pass everybody,'' Montana told the New York Daily News. ``I never like to say the `greatest of all time,' but when he is done, he will be the best one who ever played. ... If Tom keeps going and if they keep the team together, he will blow everybody away.''
Quarterback wasn't a glamorous position when the league was formed in 1920. Lined up in the single-wing formation, the quarterback essentially was a halfback who took a short toss from center and ran with the ball. A decade later, the passing game began to blossom.
Two of Green Bay's Hall of Famers were at the forefront of that change. Herber was joined by Don Hutson in 1935, forming the league's first explosive quarterback-receiver duo. In Hutson's second game, he caught an 83-yard touchdown pass from Herber. The league took notice, and both positions were never the same.
The advent of the modern ``T-formation,'' in which the quarterback moved under center to speed up the offense, changed the game and the position further.
Baugh was the gifted athlete running the formation in Washington. Luckman was the short, plumpish field general operating the Bears' version. Chicago coach George Halas brought in Clark Shaughnessy, a former University of Minnesota athlete, to create the first ``T-formation'' offense that put the receiver in motion before the snap of the ball. The Bears won the 1940 NFL title, beating Washington 73-0. Luckman threw only six passes, but the T-formation quickly spread throughout the league.
``Sammy Baugh was really the quarterback who took the `T' and popularized it,'' said Joe Horrigan, a vice president at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. ``Then the Bears had that 1940 season and won the championship game 73-0. It made the Bears big news, and the big news about the Bears was they were using the `T-formation.''
AFL was a passing fancy
The 1960s and the birth of the American Football League sparked another change in the quarterback position. The AFL built its reputation around throwing the ball. A lot. And the more the AFL threw the ball, the more excited fans became.
``It made the NFL take a longer look at its traditional philosophy of 3 yards and a cloud of dust,'' Horrigan said. ``It showed not only the effectiveness of the forward pass, but also the effect it could have on the fan base.''
Quarterbacks got better. Receivers got faster. The two leagues merged, and, again, the quarterback position was never the same.
By the late `70s, defenses were catching up to the offenses. Realizing the importance of the passing game to its popularity, the NFL made two radical rules changes in 1978. Defenders no longer could make contact with receivers beyond 5 yards of the line of scrimmage, and blockers could extend their arms and open their hands.
A year later, Bill Walsh, the man who popularized the high-efficiency West Coast offense, took control of the moribund 49ers. On draft day that year, he selected a scrawny kid from Notre Dame in the third round. A guy named Joe Montana.
Montana retired following the 1994 season, but his torch still hasn't been passed. Favre won one Super Bowl, lost another and has collected just about every career passing record out there. Marino held most of them before Favre, but he never won a championship. Troy Aikman was the first before Brady to win three Super Bowls in four years, but even he said, ``When I retired from the Dallas Cowboys, I knew there wasn't a case to be made for me being the greatest quarterback ever.''
Gil Brandt, the Cowboys' vice president of player personnel from 1960-88, said the two greatest quarterbacks in history are active players. He said Montana is third.
``I think you have to evaluate the list from year to year,'' Brandt said. ``And this year, I put Tom Brady at the top, Peyton Manning second and Joe third.''
Horrigan laughs when he hears people complain that there aren't enough good quarterbacks in the league today.
``That's just not true,'' he said. ``The problem is we are spoiled because we are seeing so many great quarterbacks. There are quarterbacks who were perceived as great quarterbacks 20 years ago who wouldn't even come close to making a team today. The talent level coming into pro football right now is unprecedented.''
The ratings go up
Aikman often points to Roger Staubach, his Hall of Fame predecessor in Dallas, and the league's passer rating system to illustrate just how far the quarterback position has progressed. A perfect rating is 158.3.
``When Roger Staubach retired, he had the best career passer rating in NFL history, and it was 83.4,'' said Aikman, who considers Montana the greatest QB he's seen. ``Anymore, 84 isn't even a good game. Now, you see quarterbacks with ratings over 100, like it's nothing.''
Eight of the top 10 and 16 of the top 20 career leaders in passer rating were active in 2007. Manning is No. 2 (94.7) behind Young (96.8), while Brady is fourth (92.9), just ahead of Montana (92.3). So what makes Brady among the best quarterbacks, if not the best quarterback ever?
``I always talk to Bradshaw about it and I preface it by saying, `Now Terry, I know how great you were,' but Tom Brady knows it all when it comes to that offense,'' Johnson said. ``He knows where all the open receivers are. And he has that quick slide to be able to avoid the rush. And then you put him in the shotgun formation and he's so good, he can get rid of the ball and complete the pass even with a free rusher coming at him.''
Patriots receiver Randy Moss, the former Vikings star, said Brady's greatness goes beyond physical attributes such as his slide in the pocket, the great arm strength and soft touch required for him to complete 68.9 percent of his passes and throw only eight interceptions in 578 attempts this season.
``He's the greatest quarterback to ever play this game,'' Moss said. ``And when you have a guy like Tom leading your team, teammates are willing to do anything by all means necessary to make things happen.''
Brady has accepted the kind words with grace this week. Soon, it will be time to actually play the game.
``I'm a little worried because a few years ago, I remember Joe saying, `Well, if Tom ever goes for his fourth Super Bowl win, Terry and I are going to kidnap him,'' Brady said. ``I'm hoping they don't kidnap me. I'm hoping I can be there and we can try to make the fourth Super Bowl as memorable as the first three.''
