Tom Brady - Goat or overrated?

I agree. Had they played for Larry Toner rather than Bruce Rollinson they might have gone somewhere with their careers.

RSM, you should have noticed by now that nobody on this forum agrees with your assessment of Brady, and probably not many other football fans do either. That likely means one of two things: Either you are the most astute evaluator of NFL quarterbacks on the planet and beyond the understanding of the rest of us, or you're just wrong.

And if you're going to designate Bill Russell as the greatest of all time because he won the most titles, it's odd that you would denigrate the NFL quarterback who did the same thing.

I  sigh when I hear someone say that Bill Russell was the greatest basketball player all the time, or even the greatest center. When you look at the personal statistics in his matchups versus Wilt Chamberlain, it's embarrassingly one-sided. Granted, that's partly because Chamberlain was the offensive focus for his team while Russell was not, but still.
 Bill Russell was a great rebounder, great passer, great defender, and energetic. But he was an average offensive threat. When you are choosing the GOAT you have to have somebody who excels in all categories, like a Chamberlain or Jabbar.


And when people choose what they think to be the all time best basketball team and include Russell I have to wonder why. The reasoning for Russell is generally that he was a winner because he made everyone around him play better. But when you have a team with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan or whomever, you don't need anyone to make them play better. They  do it themselves

If offensive stats were the barometer for being the GOAT at that particular point in time (I guess we'd call it a GATPIT instead of a 🐐?), it's hard to argue anyone other than Chamberlain was the most dominant, then AND now.

But if the barometer is contributions to champions, he falls short.

Damn... He was incredibly dominant offensively though.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_career_achievements_by_Wilt_Chamberlain

I recall us putting together some combination of metrics to settle a similar debate a few years ago.

To your point, it's not ALL about championships, but it's also not all about stats.

If we equally weighted stats and championships, it would be interesting who would rise to the top.

I would go with me being the most astute evaluator of what qualifies to be a GOAT.

I don't mind discussing things with you, but it is really getting old when you continue to purposely misconstrue what I have written.  I have never denigrated Brady for his accomplishments, I said he was an Elite NFL QB and might have the most accomplished career.  I also wrote that I wouldn't make him the GOAT and that other QB's could have accomplished what he did had they been in his position.  So now if one disagrees with Brady being GOAT, that is denigrating him?  For Chrissake,  you sound like either a Bostonian or a Mater Dei hack.

The main difference between Russell & Brady is how they did when they had an opportunity to win a title.  Russell won 11 titles in 13 years, was 11 - 1 in title games with the loss coming in his 2nd year in the league.  Brady was 6 - 3 in title games (and oh so close to being 4 - 5) with the losses all coming in the prime of his career.  In fact, all of Brady's titles came either at the beginning or end of his career, with a 10 year drought when his statistical numbers were at the best.  If someone is going to be crowned as the single greatest player in their sport, is it too much to ask for them to win a title in their prime when given multiple opportunities to? 

It isn't just about the number of titles to be GOAT, but that has to be a big part of the equation, otherwise, why are they keeping score?  And every time we bring this up, you go off on some rant about "is Robert Horry being better than Magic because he has more titles?"  The answer is of course not, when we are talking about GOAT, the titles apply to players who led their team, not those who were part of it.  A GOAT has to have incredible leadership skills and obviously be the best player on his team.  Kobe and Fisher won the same number of titles at the same time, but Kobe led the team.  Kobe could be in the discussion for GOAT (even though he isn't GOAT), but Fisher isn't even in the discussion.

Choosing Michael Jordan over Russell for GOAT of the NBA is reasonable, for going 6 for 6 in titles in the era he did can be considered as great as what Russell did.

There is only 1 greatest player of all time in the NFL.  The bar to be that person must be set incredibly high and one of the ways that bar is set is to evaluate the results a person got when playing for a title.  As far as NFL QB's go, Brady falls well short of Bradshaw, Montana & Aikmen in that concern.  That doesn't mean he is a lousy QB, there is a middle ground, but in that regard, he comes up short.  Further, there are and have been dozens of other QB's in the league over the years who could have gone 6-3 in the title games Brady was in.

The Lakers teams of the 60's were good and Philly had Chamberlain, the most dominant player ever, so while there were less teams, there were a few hurdles at the end of the road every year.

Of course, the Lakers had the misfortune of having Elgin Baylor, one of the most talented non-winners the game has ever seen.  Anytime you can retire only to see your team reel off 33 straight wins, you need to realize you might have been the problem.