All The Ways That Tom Brady Is Football’s GOAT

After Tom Brady and the New England Patriots beat the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, we examined Brady’s place in the pantheon of all-time quarterbacks. Ultimately, we concluded that he was, at worst, the QB co-GOAT alongside Peyton Manning (in the regular season) and Joe Montana (in the playoffs).

That was in February 2015. All Brady has done since then is throw for 31,050 more yards and 219 more touchdowns, and win 83 more games — 70 in the regular season and 13 in the playoffs — along the way to three more titles and two more Super Bowl MVPs … including both of the last two in Sunday’s victory by his Tampa Bay Buccaneers over the Kansas City Chiefs. Those six seasons alone would be better than almost any other quarterback’s entire career, but for Brady they represent less than a third of his total resume.

As the NFL’s all-time leader in QB wins, touchdown passes, championships won and Super Bowl MVPs, Brady has long since erased any doubt that he is the greatest in history at football’s most important position. All we can do now is rattle off the many different dimensions by which Brady is, in fact, the best ever. For instance, he is the Super Bowl-era career leader in total QB value over replacement (based on our QB Elo value metric, representing the number of yards a QB generated relative to an undrafted backup),¹⁹ beating Manning and Drew Brees. He’s also the career playoff leader, topping Montana:

And we’re just scratching the surface of the entire scope of Brady’s GOAT stats. As part of that second leaderboard, he is the king of Super Bowls in particular. Among all-time QBs in the big game’s history, nobody has produced more value over replacement in a Super Bowl career than Brady:

Some of that owes to sheer volume, since Brady has started a record 10 (ten!) Super Bowls, spanning 20 seasons. A few others on the list — namely Montana, Terry Bradshaw and Kurt Warner — have had better per-game or per-play Super Bowl performances than Brady after we adjust for schedule and era. But in addition to the career record, Brady owns the seventh-best title-game performance ever — for his eye-popping numbers in Super Bowl XXXVIII — and three of the 11 best ever. In other words, Brady hasn’t been a mere Super Bowl “compiler,” even though he might also be the only player in history you could even accuse of being such a thing.

Speaking of adjusting for the dreaded “compilers,” let’s say we want to modify each QB’s total career value by mixing in his peak performance as well, in the manner of baseball’s JAWS metric (which averages together a player’s career value with the total from his best seven seasons). Brady also comes out as the best ever in that regard — since his peak value was only marginally behind Manning’s tally from their respective top seven seasons:

In terms of literal peak value — who was the absolute best in their very best season? — Brady also has that covered. His 2007 season, which saw him set a new single-season record for touchdown passes (aided by the incomparable Randy Moss) and lead one of the most dominant and influential offensive attacks in football history, ranks as the most valuable quarterbacking campaign of the Super Bowl era according to QB value over replacement:

And as my colleague Ty Schalter pointed out in our Super Bowl LV live blog, each chronological half of Brady’s career has been Hall of Fame-worthy in and of itself. Both the early-career and late-career versions of Brady made at least six Pro Bowls, one All-Pro first team and five Super Bowls, with three wins coming in the first half of his career and four wins in the second. If we split Brady into two separate careers, the first half would rank 17th in total value over replacement since 1966, and the second half would rank 12th.

In other words, Brady’s career is hiding not one but two of the top 20 quarterbacks in modern history inside of it! That’s also true if we split his career up by even- and odd-numbered seasons — “Even-Year Brady” would be the 17th-most valuable QB of the Super Bowl era, while “Odd-Year Brady” would rank 12th:

Of course, Brady wouldn’t be in the position to make those lists twice without completely tearing up the aging curve we once thought was unavoidable for older quarterbacks. Before he came along, few QBs had ever even been functional after turning 40, much less great. And none was a starter at all by 43, Brady’s current age. Yet Brady has ignored all of that history, setting new single-season QB value records for quarterbacks at ages 40, 41, 42 and 43. In fact, with an improved supporting cast, he was better at 43 than he’d been at either age 41 or 42:

Maybe the scariest thing of all is that Brady isn’t done yet. “I’m coming back,” he told CBS’s Tracy Wolfson when asked about his future plans on Sunday. “You better believe it.” With the Bucs already looking ahead at bringing back most of their championship core for a repeat bid, Brady should get the chance to add even more to his history-defying numbers … not that he needs it in order to become the GOAT — a ship that sailed a long time ago.