Tom Brady to retire from NFL after 22 seasons

[y*so*blu]

Just in case anyone is wondering about the actual status of Tom Brady after 34 pages of... whatever this was. 

"I understand the speculation about Tom's future," [Brady's agent Don] Yee said. "Without getting into the accuracy or inaccuracy of what's being reported. Tom will be the only person to express his plans with complete accuracy."

Brady's father, Tom Brady Sr., told KRON4 News in San Francisco that his son is not retiring, despite the reported news.

Edited January 30, 2022 by y*so*blu

[scottishpatriot]

I wonder if the Chiefs' stunning loss will factor in. Would he feel like he needed another year if Mahomes went to three and won two in his first four starter years?

 

Or more likely he is long past making comparisons. Time was and is the only enemy. 

[HDsportsfan]

1 hour ago, scottishpatriot said:

I wonder if the Chiefs' stunning loss will factor in. Would he feel like he needed another year if Mahomes went to three and won two in his first four starter years?

 

Or more likely he is long past making comparisons. Time was and is the only enemy. 

I would have to go along with your second comment. TB could give a rats hiney about all the outside noise.

Edited January 31, 2022 by HDsportsfan

[AngusMcFife]

21 hours ago, lancerman said:

Your argument is just bad dude. Like not for nothing the entire premise is basically you deciding there is only one criteria and rigidly sticking to it and then ignoring the overwhelming case he has for himself. It's an extremely iffy subjective standard you are placing to make a disqualifier. It's not even an evaluation. You just wanted to find one argument you could use to dismiss the whole debate. 

Even the details don't hold up. You used All Pros. Okay....  that's an award that writers literally vote on and give. Like I said, those same writers got together at the end of two different decades, got to consider all the evidence and criteria they had, and said Brady was the best QB over the guys they gave All Pros and MVP's to during those years. That's literally the source of your evidence disagreeing with you. 

No they didn't. The All Decade voters are the HOF voters, the All Pro voters are from the press.

Get your facts straight before attempting to make a coherent argument. 

The HOF voters lost all credibility when they waited 3 years to induct Terrell Owens IMO.  

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Also contextually, it also is designed to penalize Brady for playing in a golden age of QB's despite the fact that in the hardest era for a QB to standout he still outdid everyone in history. 

Poor premise. This isn't the "golden age of QBs", it's the age where the passing rules have made it much easier to play QB in the league. 

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Like Jordan couldn't even string together two consecutive MVP seasons, how would his career have looked if Magic, Bird, Kobe, and Lebron all had the cores of their career coincide with his peak? Because Brady had pretty much all of Manning, Rodgers, and Brees careers line up well within his career, and then had guys like Farve and Warner playing a good solid chunk in the first half, and then the last 4 years had Mahomes (and is the reason Mahomes is lacking two rings). And that's just super elite guys. Let alone the Bens and Rivers of the world.

Yeah, well it seems that you agree with me, Brady wasn't really any better than many of his peers over the course of his career. 

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The best players during Jordan's peak were Hakeem, Malone and Barkley. Those guys are really good. But it's not like he his peak years were lined up with anything close to what Brady did (and Brady won more titles than him and only has 2 less MVP's). He was fortunate he took off after Bird and Magic declined and before Kobe took off and Lebron entered the league.

Your basketball knowledge is not impressive. Jordan's peak began in 1986-7, so it obviously coincided with those strong Lakers and Celtics. 

[AngusMcFife]

15 hours ago, seminoles1 said:

Led the league in yards (by a lot), TDs (by a lot), and QB rating (to be fair, Young would lead had he been healthy) over that 4 year period. 3x All-Pro, 3x MVP, 2 SB appearances and a SB win. I don't think you've mentioned efficiency stats once so far, and once I bring up someone way counter to your point, suddenly you bring up efficiency? Not only moving the goalposts, but you're also wrong.

I'm not moving the goalposts at all. Based on DVOA Favre's dominant stretch wasn't really that dominant, and I think DVOA is a stat that should factor into the analysis (not the be-all-end-all, though). 

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Yes, I can. He missed 2008 and was recovering from his ACL injury in 2009 (still put up a top 6 season), and then back to dominating in 2010. Over the time frame, Brady was dominant. His top 4 seasons top all others.

I just don't see it that way. I asked for a time period that Brady was utterly dominant, and you gave me a time period where:

Brady: 2 All Pros, 0 2nd team All Pros (missed 1 season)
Manning: 3 All Pros (missed 1 season)
Brees: 3 2nd team All Pros
ARod: 1 All Pro, 1 2nd team All Pro

You can quibble with the awards, of course. But I think it is pretty apparent that Brady was not elevating himself above his peers. At his absolute best and most dominant, Brady was about as good as the other top QBs in the league. 

Compare that to other GOATs: LT had 8 All Pros in 9 years, Jerry Rice had 10 All Pros in 11 years, Reggie White had 6 consecutive All Pro seasons.

That is what dominance looks like by GOATs. 

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We've already discussed Manning and Brady for those years. Brady was better in 2011 and 2012 than Manning was in either 2008 or 2009, but because of narrative, Manning won MVP in those seasons and Brady didn't. Brees was way better in 2009 alone than Manning, but the Colts starting 13-0 won him MVP.

Manning post-neck surgery was not as good as Manning pre-neck surgery, I'll give you that.

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You also continually dismiss team success as essentially irrelevant yet don't acknowledge that team success is just as vital to winning these media awards as individual success, not to mention Manning being a media darling. To prove me wrong, tell me why Manning won MVP over Carson Palmer in 2005, Brees, Kurt Warner and Philip Rivers in 2008, or Brees, Rivers, Aaron Rodgers and Brett Favre in 2009.

Well there are different numbers you can use. Going off DVOA or VOA and DYAR or YAR: 

Manning was slightly better than Palmer in 2005.
Manning, Brees, and Rivers are all about equal at the top of the league in 2008
Manning and Brady are at the top of the league in 2009

So evaluating those players is question of how you think they are performing relative to the strength of the team around them. 

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Then once again, Favre has to be your GOAT. No argument against him, at least in the modern era. Randomly deciding efficiency as being important to knock him, which is still wrong as noted earlier since Favre led the league in passer rating over that 4 year time frame, doesn't change that based on your own established criteria.

Manning led the league in DVOA and DYAR convincingly from 2003-2006, I think that is a much more impressive stretch. No one else was in his stratosphere except Carson Palmer briefly challenged him in 2005. 

 

[AngusMcFife]

10 hours ago, AJG said:

That's not true. Aside from a couple statistical anomalies from Cam Newton in 2015 and Matt Ryan in 2016, he was the best QB between 2015 and 2017. Also, why do these multiyear streaks have to be consecutive? For example, if you take out 2009 when he was coming off of a major injury, those 3 other seasons he played in 2007, 2010 and 2011 were about as dominant as you can get. And there are other ways of measuring dominance. For example, let's look at some of the success the offenses he lead had between 2007 and 2012:

• 2007: #1 highest scoring offense in NFL history at the time
• 2010: #7 highest scoring offense in NFL history at the time
• 2011: #10 highest scoring offense in NFL history at the time
• 2012: #3 highest scoring offense in NFL history at the time

That's 4/5 consecutive seasons he played where he lead the 1st, 3rd, 7th and 10th highest scoring offenses in NFL history. I mean, how can you look at those stretches and not see how dominant this guy was?

Given scoring and offense has been continually rising since the mid-2000s, it is not surprising that some of the highest scoring offenses would be those Patriots teams. Those offenses looked really impressive until... 2013, when Manning destroyed the record books. 

I guess when it comes down to it, if you ask me which QB had the greatest career its easily Brady.

But if you ask me who played the QB position at the highest level at their peak, it isn't Brady and Brady isn't that close to the top. 

Brady's career to me is more along the lines of a Hank Aaron, Tim Duncan, or Novak Djokovic. Truly great, amazingly consistent, but never had that white hot peak where I could say, "Wow, I've never seen anyone play QB at this level ever before." If you compare to a player like LT, for instance, LT changed the game by doing things nobody ever did before and left his opponents in awe. I just don't see that with Brady. 

[lancerman]

45 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

No they didn't. The All Decade voters are the HOF voters, the All Pro voters are from the press.

Get your facts straight before attempting to make a coherent argument. 

The HOF voters lost all credibility when they waited 3 years to induct Terrell Owens IMO.  

Poor premise. This isn't the "golden age of QBs", it's the age where the passing rules have made it much easier to play QB in the league. 

Yeah, well it seems that you agree with me, Brady wasn't really any better than many of his peers over the course of his career. 

Your basketball knowledge is not impressive. Jordan's peak began in 1986-7, so it obviously coincided with those strong Lakers and Celtics. 

Okay let’s say 86-87. He had one MVP. Magic won the MVP the year before and the 2 seasons after. So Jordan had 1 and Magic had 3 in that period. So Magic was clearly viewed as the more important player. Jordan also wasn’t winning **** until 91 which meant he needed Bird and Magic to leave their peak. Aka Jordan was not in fact the dominant player when better players were still around. 
 

You do realize the AP writers vote on the All Pro and HOF and All Decade. By and large it’s mostly the same writers. 
 

Like I said you don’t have a real argument. You just set up and arbitrary standard to disqualify one guy so you wouldn’t have to engage with his actual case. It’s low effort 
 

 

[AngusMcFife]

2 minutes ago, lancerman said:

Okay let’s say 86-87. He had one MVP. Magic won the MVP the year before and the 2 seasons after. So Jordan had 1 and Magic had 3 in that period. So Magic was clearly viewed as the more important player. Jordan also wasn’t winning **** until 91 which meant he needed Bird and Magic to leave their peak. Aka Jordan was not in fact the dominant player when better players were still around. 
 

You do realize the AP writers vote on the All Pro and HOF and All Decade. By and large it’s mostly the same writers. 
 

Like I said you don’t have a real argument. You just set up and arbitrary standard to disqualify one guy so you wouldn’t have to engage with his actual case. It’s low effort 
 

 

Peak performance is not an arbitrary standard when evaluating a player's career. It's why people like Gayle Sayers and Terrell Davis are in the HOF. 

I'd say there are 3 primary categories to evaluate the greatness of a player:

1. Peak performance
2. Longevity
3. Team success

Brady is clearly legendary at 2 and 3, but IMO his peak is not as high as some other QBs. 

I personally think peak is extremely important when considering GOAT. I found it disgraceful when the HOF let in guys like Art Monk or Jerome Bettis. Compilers. 

If you want to argue that peak isn't that important, go ahead. Or if you want to argue that Brady had an incredible peak that no QB could match, go ahead. 

But don't tell me peak performance is an arbitrary standard, that's obviously false. 

[AngusMcFife]

24 minutes ago, lancerman said:

You do realize the AP writers vote on the All Pro and HOF and All Decade. By and large it’s mostly the same writers. 
 

I just cross checked a list of the HOF voters and the AP voters.

Out of the first 18 HOF voters, 4 were on the AP list. 

You can do the rest of the list if you want, but that's not a good percentage for you. I think the overall percentage is higher, but still I think under 50% just doing a quick scan. 

[AJG]

18 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

Given scoring and offense has been continually rising since the mid-2000s, it is not surprising that some of the highest scoring offenses would be those Patriots teams. Those offenses looked really impressive until... 2013, when Manning destroyed the record books. 

Yet despite the rule changes and offenses continually rising, the 2007 Patriots are still the #2 highest scoring offense in NFL history after 15 years, and the 2012 Patriots are the 5th after a decade. But you act like this is not extremely impressive and that new teams are consistently putting up these kinds of numbers.

18 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

But if you ask me who played the QB position at the highest level at their peak, it isn't Brady and Brady isn't that close to the top. 

Brady's career to me is more along the lines of a Hank Aaron, Tim Duncan, or Novak Djokovic. Truly great, amazingly consistent, but never had that white hot peak where I could say, "Wow, I've never seen anyone play QB at this level ever before." If you compare to a player like LT, for instance, LT changed the game by doing things nobody ever did before and left his opponents in awe. I just don't see that with Brady. 

Who are your top QBs then? Could you please list the QBs and their peaks and where you would ranks them? For example, where would you rank 2003-2005 Manning, 2007 and 2010-2011 Brady, or 2011-2012 and 2014 Rodgers? (assuming those are what you would consider their peaks)

[lancerman]

36 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

Peak performance is not an arbitrary standard when evaluating a player's career. It's why people like Gayle Sayers and Terrell Davis are in the HOF. 

I'd say there are 3 primary categories to evaluate the greatness of a player:

1. Peak performance
2. Longevity
3. Team success

Brady is clearly legendary at 2 and 3, but IMO his peak is not as high as some other QBs. 

I personally think peak is extremely important when considering GOAT. I found it disgraceful when the HOF let in guys like Art Monk or Jerome Bettis. Compilers. 

If you want to argue that peak isn't that important, go ahead. Or if you want to argue that Brady had an incredible peak that no QB could match, go ahead. 

But don't tell me peak performance is an arbitrary standard, that's obviously false. 

It is an arbitrary standard if your argument is you needed a sustained peak that is unbroken as the best player at your position that is unbroken or you can't be the GOAT. You are arbitarily making it a disqualifier to knock a guy out of the running to avoid 

If you want to talk about peak, I could very easily say 2007 is the best QB season ever (and it 100% is in the running along with Marino 84 and Manning 04), but then you're just going to hold the injury in 08-09 against him to say "well 07-10 wasn't an unbroken peak period because of his injury getting in the way so I get to not call him GOAT". Likewise I could go to 15-17 where Brady was MVP level each year and really the only difference between him and the MVP was his team got injured in 15 and he had a suspension in 16 that knocked him out of the running. 

But it's a dumb argument for a disqualifier. No QB is the best QB year in and year out each year, just like Jordan didn't win MVP ever year. Brady had an argument for best QB in the league in 07, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21 and was arguably top 3 in 03, 05, 11, 12, 14, 20. 

It's an arbitary disqualifier so you don't have to consider his actual case. It's just trying to end the argument so you don't need to engage with anything else and it's pretty mediocre. Especially at position like QB that is influenced so much by supporting cast that all the regular season accolades you are bringining up are determined by that. Brady was pushing his team to win rings with Branch and Edelman when you absolutely would never expect any QB to put up All Pro numbers with those guys. Whenever Brady was healthy and had a upper tier receiving cast 07, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21 he put up incredible elite numbers and either had an argument for top in the league or was at a minimum top 3. 
 

It's an abritary standard when you are 1. judging it by single metrics like all pros, 2. saying it has to be consistent through a continous stretch of years (only Farve would pass that metric for more than 3 years and he sure as hell isn't the GOAT) and you are usuing your limited definition as a DQ. 

So yeah you are defining it in an arbitrary way (that conveniantly is used to ding Brady) and you are using your arbitrary definition of peak performance to say "nope he doesn't meet my definition so he 100% can't be the GOAT".

Like I said, it's a bad argument, it's a subjective one on yoru part, and the way you are using it is arbitary. You do not want to have a discussion. You are just trying to reverse engineer a subjective standard you created to avoid one. And I'm not the only one calling you out on it. 

 

[lancerman]

41 minutes ago, AngusMcFife said:

I just cross checked a list of the HOF voters and the AP voters.

Out of the first 18 HOF voters, 4 were on the AP list. 

You can do the rest of the list if you want, but that's not a good percentage for you. I think the overall percentage is higher, but still I think under 50% just doing a quick scan. 

The All Pro voters change every year. They are still AP writers, like most of the HOF voters. Also looking at 1/3rd of the list is not that great of a method. And again you should probably see the problem with using an award that writers subjectively vote on anyways and can only look at the regular season (you know, the part where you don't go through a gauntlet of playoff caliber teams)

Plus even if I assumed that your math held up the whole way through, you would still come out to oughly 25%-33% of HOF voters being AP voters which is pretty sizeable. Not that it matters because they are all writers and peers anyways.

Edited January 31, 2022 by lancerman

[AngusMcFife]

5 minutes ago, AJG said:

Yet despite the rule changes and offenses continually rising, the 2007 Patriots are still the #2 highest scoring offense in NFL history after 15 years, and the 2012 Patriots are the 5th after a decade. But you act like this is not extremely impressive and that new teams are consistently putting up these kinds of numbers.

Who are your top QBs then? Could you please list the QBs and their peaks and where you would ranks them? For example, where would you rank 2003-2005 Manning, 2007 and 2010-2011 Brady, or 2011-2012 and 2014 Rodgers? (assuming those are what you would consider their peaks)

Sure, I'd go (chronologically):

Sammy Baugh: Revolutionary player. From 1940-43, had an 11-INT season, set the all time league best yards/punt, was an elite passer. 

Otto Graham: whole 10 year career was elite, but had amazing 3 years stretches from 1947-49 and 1951-53. 

Johnny Unitas: 1957-60 was peak, probably still best overall QB from 1961-67

Joe Montana: Difficult to say, peak was probably 1987-90. Like Brady, Montana was a winner, was consistently excellent, but did not have a white hot peak. 

Dan Marino: 1984-1986 might be the greatest QB play of all time

Peyton Manning: 2003-2006 might also be the greatest QB play of all time

Tom Brady: Peak was 2007-2012, but was not clear cut above his peers Manning, Rodgers, and Brees. 
 

[AngusMcFife]

7 minutes ago, lancerman said:

If you want to talk about peak, I could very easily say 2007 is the best QB season ever (and it 100% is in the running along with Marino 84 and Manning 04), but then you're just going to hold the injury in 08-09 against him to say "well 07-10 wasn't an unbroken peak period because of his injury getting in the way so I get to not call him GOAT".

Yeah injuries are part of the game. Manning had a neck-injury caused him to lose his ability post-surgery but you don't see me factoring that in his case. 

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Likewise I could go to 15-17 where Brady was MVP level each year and really the only difference between him and the MVP was his team got injured in 15 and he had a suspension in 16 that knocked him out of the running. 

Yeah I don't see it. I watched him play during that stretch. He was obviously still excellent, but not the same QB he was when he was younger. He deserved his 2017 MVP but he was about as good as Rivers and Brees that season. 

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But it's a dumb argument for a disqualifier. No QB is the best QB year in and year out each year, just like Jordan didn't win MVP ever year. Brady had an argument for best QB in the league in 07, 10, 15, 16, 17, 21 and was arguably top 3 in 03, 05, 11, 12, 14, 20. 

Definitely best in 07, all other years are debatable. To me, being GOAT is not about being about as good as other top players. It's about being clearly better than the rest. 

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It's an arbitary disqualifier so you don't have to consider his actual case. It's just trying to end the argument so you don't need to engage with anything else and it's pretty mediocre.

I have been considering his case, in depth! 

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Like I said, it's a bad argument, it's a subjective one on yoru part, and the way you are using it is arbitary. You do not want to have a discussion. You are just trying to reverse engineer a subjective standard you created to avoid one. And I'm not the only one calling you out on it. 

Ok, agree to disagree. For me personally, if someone asks me "what is the highest level QB play that I have seen (or read about)" Tom Brady doesn't really make the list of the top 5. To me, that is significant when determining the GOAT. 

There are other football players who you can compare this with. Look at how utterly dominant LT, Reggie White, Jim Brown, Jerry Rice were. Brady never elevated himself above his peers like that. But other QBs such as Manning and Marino have done that on a QB level, at least for 3 or 4 year stretches. But as I've shown in a bunch of other posts, I think looking at the statistics backs up my claim that Brady's peak was not exceptional. His sustained excellence was exceptional. 

[StatKing]

Media ruining a special moment. Brady has earned the right to announce it himself.