I know that you’re not denigrating Brady. My issue is the reasoning around this hypothetical stuff. Your take is better than most of them, but I still strongly disagree with the thought process.
Mine is based on real-world experience, a general philosophy about opportunity and the little things that make a huge difference, and the history of success in an environment like the NFL. As for my take others, I find the whole Brady v Belichick argument truly dumb and a prime example of the corrosive nature of social media and talk radio. If any fans on the planet have ZERO reason to complain, it's the fans of the Patriots.
What we just saw won't be repeated.
Brady went to Michigan, and after moving up the depth chart by his junior year, suddenly freshman Drew Henson, the #1 QB prospect in the country, became the 1A starter breathing down Brady’s neck; boosters pressured Carr to play Henson. Brady platooned both seasons despite being much better than Henson. That was cited as a major reason Brady dropped in the draft.
It would be easy to play the what-if game right here. If Henson chooses any other school, Brady is a much higher rated prospect.
But it doesn’t stop there. He gets drafted into the NFL in the late rounds, mainly due to the unlucky Henson situation, to a team that already has three quarterbacks, including a consensus top-5 franchise icon, and should he get a chance, he’s going to have to lead an offense with no pro bowl talent. The team was 5-13 and averaged 17 ppg in the games he was on the sidelines as a backup.
This is why the what-if game with Brady is absurd. He was dealt such a bad hand as it was, and he came out of it as the winner. So shifting to “What if he was drafted by the Colts or Eagles or Browns” seems to greatly miss the point. He was already in one of the most against-all-odds scenarios possible.
That's all a testament to Brady's desire and grit, but to my point, irrelevant. You can't get a chance that's not given to you, by others or by circumstance. Frank Herbert's "Dune" was famously rejected more than a dozen times. Tolkien couldn't get anyone to look at his gigantic Lord of the Rings, until one guy decided to break it into 3 and give it a shot - and then it was voted the best of the 20th Century. This is true all over the place in life, and sports is the most fickle of all.
"What if" isn't a game of denigration - because when those chips fall your way, you have to make the most of it, but even for those who can and do, those chips HAVE to fall their way.
If the refs don't call that tuck play? Brady played his role beautifully, but are you going to argue that he carried the Pats in '03 (4 ints against Manning) and '04 (3 ints, blocked kick against Ben)? I was at the Titans ice bowl game. Defense won it. Defense shut down the Colts the following week. The Superbowl showed Brady in all his glory, though (I was there in Houston), but what is it looking like if Adam misses that kick?
The '04 SB was a true team win. McNabb threw for 120 more yards than Brady, but the D picked him 3 times (and got a fumble). Brady did his job, protected the ball, made all the throws, even to Vrabel, in front of a very hostile crowd (we were outnumbered by Eagles fans at least 3 to 1, and they were really nasty).
So there's dynasty #1, and you could see the emerging greatness of Brady - but so many plays, single plays, going the other way, including a call rarely seen and 3 Adam V specials (snow bowl, Rams SB, Panthers SB), and just tremendous Defensive efforts - shutting down Manning repeatedly, multiple ints, out-toughing the Titans...to say nothing of avoiding catastrophic injuries ( I mean, look what happened to the D when Harrison broke his arm in Houston?)....and where are we?
Now let '05-'14 go as history scripted it, and we're wondering if Brady is Marino instead of Montana.
The point is, there are moments that have to go just right to get to the top in any given situation, and many times, those are out of an individual's control, particularly in sports - and can define a career. A missed extra point, a ground ball through a first baseman's legs. Watch the Ali doc just made and you'll see that even there, it took a last gasp to put his name in stone forever. I stil think that if he fought Foreman in the US, he might have died in the ring.
Brady is both blessed and a blessing - a blessing to the fans, no doubt, with sustained greatness longer than seems humanly possible, and blessed to come onto his path with coaches who saw something and had the guts to act on it (see Dune above), the good fortune of have Drew taken out of the equation long enough, players like Ty Law, Milloy, Rodney, Willie, all coached by a defensive genius, the coolest kicker in the world...and still, a couple of truly lucky breaks.
Between Henson sinking his draft value and then being drafted into what amounts to a worst case scenario due to the Patriots QB situation, the idea of theoretically raising the bar even higher seems like a bizarre idea.
Brady was going to make it. He wasn’t lucky. Inches didn’t decide this. It was going to happen. The only questions were when, where and how. We know this is hindsight, and that’s fine. Brady is one of the biggest outliers in sports history. His determination, confidence, and relentlessness is almost impossible to describe. He was always going to be great.
I don't subscribe to Randian Galt theory, so I disagree. Nobody is "always going to be great." It's always a combination of desire, talent, opportunity, and luck - and the latter two ingredients are not in the individual's control.
