I totally agree. Brady is a lot closer to Montana than Manning. Manning is a system quarterback ( his system, but a system all the same). He does the exact same thing every game. When teams have time to prepare for him, he doesn't look nearly as good. What happened to Manning in last year's superbowl would never have happened to Brady or Montana.
Those people probably value Bill Belichick. I've seen Brady have a horrible season, the Pats run the ball, and still win. I've seen them win without Brady period. And they always win. Nobody always wins anymore. Belichick has something to do with it.
Brady's also had some pretty medicore/average super bowl performances... Its pretty obvious that there's no way the Pats are this good/this long with just Brady and no Belicheck (whereas vice versa, BB possibly finds a way to make a mediocre QB serviceable, just like he won 11 games with Matt Freakin Cassel).
Teams have had 15 years to prepare for Manning. They have week to prepare for him in the playoffs, just like any other game. 2 weeks for the Superbowl. A whole offseason for Game #1 of the season - if there was ever a time to see a preparation effect, he should suck most in Game #1s. This goes back to the other thread: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=262249 Manning rarely ever had the defenses or coaching geniuses that Brady has had. That meant if Manning ever had a mediocre game, his teams most likely lost. Brady can get away mediocre performances here and there. That's not to say Manning is better than Brady - but he's generally had to carry teams more than Brady has.
Apparently you forget that Montana lost a playoff game 49-3 one time. And Brady has looked bad over several losses over the last few years (and sometimes looks mediocre in "wins").
Montana has 11 touchdowns and 0 interceptions in 4 Superbowls. He had an average rating of 127.8. Brady has 13 touchdowns and 4 interceptions in 6 Superbowls with 2 coming two nights ago. He has an average rating of 95.3 during those 6 trips. Manning has 3 touchdown and 4 interceptions in his 3 trips with an average rating of 81. Even during the SB that he won, his rating was on 81.8 with only one touchdown and 1 interception.
If that is the playoff game I am remembering... Montana was knocked out of that game by the Giant's Jim Burt, who destroyed him on a rush up the middle. Hard to blame Montana for that one.
Brady is a good teammate http://m.espn.go.com/nfl/story?storyId=12272310 New England Patriots*quarterback*Tom Brady*won a 2015 Chevy Colorado for his Super Bowl XLIX MVP efforts, but he plans to give the truck to safety*Malcolm Butler.
Actually, Montana got knocked out after it was already 28-3... so, yeah, I'm saying he's a part of that loss.
Yes, if the only criteria is how you do in the Super Bowl, then yes Montana is the greatest of all time... and everybody else is in a different class alltogether. The point is that all these guys have a case against the other two... each relies on a different aspect of the game to make them great (Montana had superb supporting casts, Brady has the superior coaching, and Manning has the edge on god-given QB attributes).
No worries... I used to follow the niners back then so I was basing solely on an aging memory that didn't remember when we was knocked out of the game. I also vaguely remember a fumble (Roger Craig perhaps?) that also took the steam out of the team. But that all said... I'd still put Montana up against Brady... but either one could be argued as the greatest NFL QB... certainly the greatest I ever saw. Hopefully I will get to see another great one where Texan's colors before I retire to the great sidelines in the sky...
I have Montana above Brady too... mainly because Brady (due to no fault of his own) has always been on Belicheck-coached teams, and despite all the wins/accolades/SB appearances, I never got the same awe-inspired feeling watching Brady.
Games W/L Cmp% Yds TD Int Rate Manning 24 Games 11-13-0 63.96 6800 38 24 88.5 Brady 28 Games 20-8-0 62.42 7017 49 24 88.5 Montana 23 Games 16-7-0 62.67 5772 45 21 95.6 If you look at the playoff stats, they are closer but Brady and Montana beat Manning in touchdowns to interception ratio by a pretty big margin. Another thing to factor in is that Manning and Montana had big time wide receivers for almost all of their careers in Rice and Wayne. Brady only had Moss for a couple of years, and we know what happened when they got it going.
Both games Brady set up game winning drives for the lead, only for the Pats defense to allow the Giants to have miracle catches, and thus the resulting score. He did what he had to do when it mattered to put the Patriots in position to win, the defense didn't.
Was it Brady's job to stop Eli on those drives? Isn't Bill Belichik supposed to be a defensive genius?
