And once again, Brady still had less INTs. That's even more amazing.
His INTs that year were definitely very impressive.
In 2004 he had Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne & Dallas Clark.
And Edgerrin James, an All-Pro RB that season. It's a lot easier to pass when you have such an elite running threat, something Brady obviously didn't have.
See the poster above.
Moss didn't even lead his own team in receptions, Welker had 112 of them.
Which makes complete sense because Welker is the go to guy on shorter routes. So naturally he's going to have more receptions. We're talking about TDs tho. Look at the number of TDs. Face it, when it came time to put points on the board, Brady was locked in on Moss who put up just under 4x more TDs than the second place guy on the team.
Manning never had the luxury of throwing TDs to a player that could chew up almost any corner in the league just by jumping. Remember those routes Moss would run where he'd go into the endzone, Brady would just toss the ball up high and Moss would jump for it. That play was almost undefendable. You either let Moss outjump you, or you knock him down and its pass inter.
When Manning hit his record year he couldn't do that and he
had to use his weapons evenly. He even hit Stokley for 10 TDs. Wayne had 12. Harrison had 15. Then some guys with 5, 6, etc. No one even close to 23.
Face it, Brady had a scarily elite receiving unit that he could use to march down the field whichever way he wanted, and when it came time to get the TDs, he had
the most dominant receiver in the game catching almost half of the touchdowns he used to set that record.
So whereas Manning set his record in less attempts/less games, using his offense more evenly and making stars out of guys like Brandon Stokley, Brady got to throw 23 touchdowns to Randy frickin' Moss!
Face it folks, Brady was clearly gunning for that record hard that year. And he did it by continuously looking endzone to arguable the single greatest WR ever to play the game, who
also set a TD record that year! Not a coincidence. Must be nice to have a receiving corps so good that you can ignore guys like Welker, Stalworth and Gaffney when it comes to TD strikes and throw 23 to one guy, who happens to be probably the single most talented and athletic WR of his era, if not all time.
