Tom Brady is and has always been a better quarterback than Peyton Manning. He is more talented and has carved out a better career for the following reasons:
1. More Super Bowl appearances, 5 to 2
2. More Super Bowl rings, 3 to 1
3. Single-season TD record
4. Manning played almost his entire career with an elite WR, and sometimes two, between Wayne and Harrison; Brady had a few seasons with Randy Moss and now the two-headed tight end monster but has otherwise done it with spare parts.
5. When I watch the Patriots, and I’m almost always rooting against them, I constantly have a feeling that they’re unstoppable on offense, that they are going to score on every drive, and that Brady is simply going to get it in the endzone no matter what. I don’t feel that when I watched Manning with the Colts or Broncos. I don’t fear Manning marching down the field like I fear Brady.
So there you have it… Brady is both the Joe Montana and the Dan Marino of our generation. Manning is a distant second.
You wrote that last paragraph just to get me to grit my teeth.
Do you mean #5 or the sign off? #5 is actually the only argument I’d be sympathetic towards because I actually do feel that way at times.
The sign-off.
Tom Brady has had… let’s be charitable and say “a much better offensive line” over his career than either Marino or Montana pretty much ever did. I’d put Marino’s arm up with Brady’s, but his and Joe’s scrambling abilities are far superior to Brady’s. Young was a better scrambler and had almost as good of an arm.
A better comparison to Brady is Aikman plus Elway, maybe.
Gotcha.
I was using the terms more in regards to their legacies. Montana is the winner, Marino the compiler. I missed most of each guy’s prime, but that is always how I’ve had them described to me by old timers and it seemed that Brady and Manning was taking a similar path, with Brady as Montana with all the Super Bowls and Manning as Marino with all the records. It’s not a perfect, analogy, mind you, and doesn’t take into account more legitimate assessments of their ability and career.
Because he was picked in the 7th round, Brady has always had a certain underdog, scrappy sentiment about him, even though he’s built in the mold of traditional quarterbacks… tall, strong-armed, precise, quick-release, slow-of-foot.
I have no idea what this tells us, but when Bill Walsh was remaking the 49ers from a 2-14 team into a perennial champion, the only part of the team he didn’t completely remake is the O-line. John Ayers, Keith Fahnhorst, Fred Quillan, and Randy Cross were already on the team. (Walsh traded for Dan Audick in 1981.)
It tells us that he secretly wanted Montana to die on the field. A warrior’s death.
Don’t forget: he also has better coaching and better intel.
The fact that he’s dumber than Peyton means that he has fewer doubts causing him to choke in any given big game.
Peyton represents the apex on the quarterback intelligence curve. EVERY quarterback is dumber than him, and many of the coaches, and all of the announcers.
Think of it in gaming terms: For completing passes, Peyton gets to use his intelligence bonus, while Brady gets to use his charisma bonus.
Smart? Trent Dilfer was Phi Beta Kappa in college. He has a Super Bowl ring, too!
Grumblegrumble stupid Trent Dilfer ruins every conversation about quarterbacks. A pox on the 2000 Baltimore Ravens, I say!
Pat Haden (of the Rams, in the 70s) was a Rhodes Scholar.
(Which, of course, reminds me of this from Cheers:
Woody: Dr. Crane, what kind of pavement are they putting on the street here?
Frasier: I have no idea, Woody.
Woody: I thought you said you were a Roads Scholar.
Fraiser. Ah, yes. I must have been absent that day.)
Maybe you don’t pick him after due consideration. But I think you forgot somebody.
I wouldn’t pick Favre over either of these two guys, opposite day or not. But I also don’t consider him to be a true contemporary of them. Favre’s peak was much earlier.
Favre had a cannon of an arm, and was a crazy scrambler, and could manufacture a drive, and was tough as nails.
He just wasn’t any of those things as good as anybody else I’d compare him to, except the tough as nails part.
Still, if I couldn’t have Steve Young or Joe Montana or Dan Marino, I’d take Favre over Elway or Aikman. Maybe not over Brady or Manning, but I’ve never really seen enough of Brady or Manning play without a functional offensive line.
The ability to make something happen while a 300 pound dude is about to rip off your head and you have no pocket to speak of, that’s something I *know* Favre had. Not as consistently as some of those other guys, but he had it.
Elway and Aikman both seem to have legacies that outsize their actual on field accomplishments. Favre as well, but his on field accomplishments likely dwarf theirs, especially if you subscribe to the football-reference.com ideology that gunslingers and interceptions aren’t nearly as bad as they are often made out to be.
Elway dragged three badly flawed teams all the way to the Super Bowl (where they got their heads handed to them by far better teams), before he finally had enough support to win those last two. Aikman won three times with teams that had great O-lines, a truly great running back, and superb receivers. I’m not saying Aikman is Trent Dilfer but I don’t think he’s in the conversation with Montana, Elway,or Marino.
Going into sportscaster mode, where all that matters are intangibles and the ability to win The Big One, Brady’s clearly not as good as Eli.
As a Chiefs fan, I got the full experience of John Elway’s career and I’d argue that his legacy is well-deserved. Elway possessed all the qualities Patrick ascribes to Favre above but played the game with an intelligence that Favre couldn’t match, and as Mike says, he made his team better than they should have been. Perhaps the only quarterbacks I’d put in front of him are Montana, Peyton, and Brady.
I’m not saying Aikman is Trent Dilfer but I don’t think he’s in the conversation with Montana, Elway,or Marino.
I don’t think we can say Aikman is Trent Dilfer.
But he’s as close as any other Superbowl winner to Dilfer. Seriously, of all the players that were ever overrated, Aikman is … like… the king. The exemplar. We never got to know if Aikman could manufacture a drive, because he never had to do it on his own.
Football is going to soon, if it hasn’t already, reach a point where you can’t compare players of the common era with players of even 10 or 15 years ago.