Brady is the Greatest QB Ever

When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to see people arguing on twitter with Seth Joyner that Joe Montana is better than Tom Brady. [If you don’t follow Seth, I highly advise] I joined Seth in proclaiming Brady as the best ever. I thought my buddy at the bar last night was the only person still thinking that Montana was the best ever.  My buddy even went so far as implying that Jerry Rice is only the best ever WR because of Montana.

Brady_MontanaHere’s the newsflash: Joe Montana is no longer the greatest quarterback in NFL history. I didn’t think he was yesterday, but people could argue Montana’s four Super Bowl rings had him at the top of the class. As of today, Tom Brady has his four rings and a plethora of other stats in his favor.

Tom Brady has been to two more Super Bowls then Joe Montana.

Tom Brady has lifetime Quarterback Rating of 95.9 / Joe Montana has a lifetime Quarterback Rating of 92.3

Joe Montana has a lifetime completion percentage of 63.2%. Brady has a completion percentage of 63.5%. Brady has maintained that higher completion percentage while throwing 1,777 more passes.

Brady has a better Interception percentage than Montana while attempting 1,777 more passes. Brady is intercepted 2.0% of the time. Montana was intercepted 2.6% of the time. If my math is correct, Montana’s interception rate is 30% greater than Brady’s.

5.1% of Montana’s passes were touchdowns. 5.5% of Brady’s passes are touchdown.

Montana had to get rid of the ball quicker and avoid sacks better than Brady, right? Nope. Montana was sacked on 5.5% of his pass attempts. Brady is sacked on 4.8% of his pass attempts. That’s 15% LOWER than Montana’s sack rate.

Montana does have a better playoff QBR than Brady and better TD%. Brady has a slightly better postseason completion percentage and a lower postseason INT%.

Montana has 31 4th Quarter comebacks. Brady has 35. Montana has 33 game-winning drives. Brady has 46.

Montana played under Bill Walsh, who might be the greatest offensive coach ever. Tom Brady plays under a defensive-minded head coach

Joe Montana played with the greatest wide receiver ever, as well as John Taylor, Brent Jones, Dwight Clark, Tom Rathman, and Roger Craig.

Tom Brady has played with a collection of misfits with zero stability. This year he relies on Edelman, Amendola, and Gronk. Gronk is a beast, but I’m not sure the other two guys are anything special on other teams.

Below is also a list of the players Brady has thrown TDs to, as of Nov. 2013. Thanks to this article on SB Nation.  The number in parenthesis is the number of TDs thrown to the receiver as of the writing of the article:

Deion Branch (24)
Troy Brown (15)
Kevin Faulk (10)
Christian Fauria (13)
David Givens (12)
Daniel Graham (17)
Rob Gronkowski (39)
Aaron Hernandez (18)
Randy Moss (39)
David Patten (16)
Ben Watson (17)
Wes Welker (34)

Also surprising is that 35 of the players on this list caught less than five Tom Brady touchdowns:

Sam Aiken (2)
Danny Amendola (1)
Tom Ashworth (1)
Chris Baker (2)
Kyle Brady (2)
Reche Caldwell (4)
Larry Centers (1)
Cam Cleeland (1)
Alge Crumpler (2)
Andre’ Davis (1)
Corey Dillon (2)
Aaron Dobson (4)
Tim Dwight (2)
Marc Edwards (2)
Heath Evans (1)
Doug Gabriel (3)
Terry Glenn (1)
Donald Hayes (2)
Chad Jackson (3)
Bethel Johnson (4)
Chad Johnson (1)
Charles Johnson (1)
Brandon Lloyd (4)
Laurence Maroney (1)
Matthew Mulligan (1)
Patrick Pass (1)
Antowain Smith (3)
Donte Stallworth (4)
Brandon Tate (2)
David Thomas (1)
Kenbrell Thompkins (4)
Shane Vereen (1)
Dedric Ward (1)
Jermaine Wiggins (3)
Danny Woodhead (4)

’nuff said. Unfortunately, yes, the greatest ever does wear Uggs.