I haven't been paying any attention, at all, to the NFL this season, so I'm sure this topic has been discussed to death. But Brady's season may be the single most legacy cementing performance I have ever seen from a QB. At his age to go to a new franchise with seemingly no impressive foundation, and not only put up gaudy stats but lead them to what is already their 2nd best season ever. The "product of Belichick" factor was always looming over Brady's legacy, and he has completely crushed it this season. He's now officially the GOAT in my book.
I was a little suspect of them this season... only one quality win (earlier in the season against the Packers), and they looked overmatched in all their other games against quality opponents. They did get on a roll towards the end of the year against some crappy teams... but sometimes that's what it takes to gain confidence. His stats did get slightly inflated due to those games. They made an excellent comparison that this season is very similar to Brett Favre's first year in Minnesota and Montana's first year in KC. Both those teams reached the conference chamopnship game, but lost. Lets see if Brady can do what they couldn't... will be very tough to beat a very complete Green Bay team.
Belichick did nothing in Cleveland and did nothing with Bledsoe. The only good season he every had without Brady was with Cassell, but they still didn't make the playoffs. Brady on the other hand, has only missed the playoffs once in when he went 9-7 in second season starting. In his 18 playoff seasons, he's only failed to advance in the playoffs 3 times. So he's 3 times more likely to go to the superbowl and twice as likely to win the superbowl than he is to lost in the first round. How crazy is that. To add, Brady is instant culture since no one will ever question him on a team.
What Manning did in Denver was pretty similar. In Manning's first year, they went 13-3, and their offense went from scoring 309 pts the season prior to 481 with Manning. For comparison, the Chiefs this year scored 473. In Manning's 2nd year, they made the Superbowl and their offense scored a ridiculous 606 points. Tampa Bay this year, by comparison, went from 458 pts to 492 pts. Brady's largest impact was on defense by not throwing 30 interceptions like Winston, taking the defense from 449 pts to 355 pts.
