After All: He's Only 40!

[steve B]

The problem with that reasoning is that none of what a player does happens in a vacuum. There's an entire team, plus the coaching staff, plus the office people and owner. Everything they do affects what happens on the field.

Yes, the individual players have to be good or great. And they all have tendencies, but that only goes so far. Farve was a great QB, but had a tendency to try to force plays and that led to a lot of interceptions.
The Giants beat the Pats twice because they had a tendency to be beatable on long plays especially late in the game. Maybe an over focusing on stopping first downs made the secondary beatable?
I was always surprised that teams didn't try long plays more often against them. Happy, but surprised.
Would you blame Brady for those losses? Of course not.

But that's what happens on other teams, success isn't immediate, so someone, either a QB or coach or someone else is picked as the cause and they're out.
Look at the 49ers. Harbaugh was pretty good for three years, then one not so good year and he's out. The next year they were worse - Bring in another coach, worse still. Blame the QB who was actually just about as good as he'd been the year they went to the Superbowl as he was that year when he was 1-10. Bring in still another coach and QB, and lose everything until one really lucky trade. Is Garoppolo that good? Or were Bethard and Hoyer that bad? Or did Garoppolo simply bring a better attitude and process to things. Or maybe the way the other two guys work best isn't what the coach wanted to do.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think Garoppolo is in for some rough times in SF.


Brady is great, but a part of that has to be due to the team and overall system and the ownership that has the patience to give them the stability to take some risks. (How many other coaches would have survived a 4th and short failure handing the ball to Peyton Manning late in a playoff game? How many other owners would have supported that position and carried on like it was business as usual? )

[Peter_Spaeth]

Of course it takes a whole team and organization to win consistently. That misses the point, and there are no "buts" qualifying Brady's greatness. Nobody in the history of the game, in my opinion, has more consistently made good use of that 3 or 4 seconds you have after the snap to choose a target and throw than Brady. He has won with and without great receivers, with and without strong running backs. And here he is at age 40!!! coming off an MVP season and going to yet another Super Bowl. Nuff ced.