Belichick's 'prove it' time table.

[skinnydog]

McNair won the league MVP that year. If can’t acknowledge he was better than Brady in 2003 after arguing Brady was elite in 2003 because he was third in MVP votes, we have nothing to talk about.

In 2003? You couldn't name another QB you would want other than Brady? Not Steve McNair? Not Brett Favre? And don't forget the late 90s and early 2000s were devoid of quality QBs and the league was still defensive minded. Brad Johnson and John Kitna were top QBs in the league in 2003.

You are romanticizing Brady early career.

Yeah, in2003 you could tell Brady was elite. even then I’d have taken Brady over any QB except Manning.

 

[BobDigital]

I am sorry he wasn't elite in 2003. That is rewriting history. He was a very good QB, but he wasn't elite yet. You are pointing to one game. Where was that eliteness when the Pats beat Cleveland 9-3 or Dallas 12-0 or Miami 12-0 that season? He was showing flashes of eliteness, but he wasn't there yet. The guy worked his ass off to get there.

Brady in 2001 was already better than Drew Bledsoe pretty much day 1, who was at least an average QB. He ended the year with the 6th highest QB rating (higher than Peyton Manning's mind you) and finished 13th in TDs while missing two games. If he had gotten 3 more (assuming he played the other 2 games lets say) he would have been tied for 9th. He took an offense that was ranked 25th last year and helped make it the 6th ranked offense. He took a team that had been 5-13 and helped bring them to 14-3 for the rest of the year, including their first super bowl title.

Was he the only reason all these things happened? No. Was he the only reason the offense was better? No. Is he the only reason an offense which averaged. 17.3 PPG the their year and 10PPG the first two games he took over averaged 25.1 PPG the rest of the regular season? No.
But he was a large part of the reason why.

The fact is Bledsoe was a 3 time probowler before Brady took the helm and was a probowler the year after (even though Brady should have made it over him). And Brady was better than a guy who was often put among the top 10 QBs in the NFL at the time in his first year. A year in which he made the pro bowl. The next year he led the league in TD passes, while throwing less interceptions than guys who had less TD passes in the league, and less interceptions than most of the QBs who made the pro bowl over him that year. Frankly it was a snub.

While Brady wasn't the GOAT or the best QB in the NFL in years 1 or 2 he was elite very quickly. Maybe his stats and the offense wasn't the best early on, but that isn't where they invested their money and draft picks. The defenses on those teams were fairly stacked at the expense of the offense. And BB could do this because he had a good OL, a good coach, players that were scrappy and 'good enough' along with Brady who made a group that overall was pretty below average very good. He was able to score in 2003 when they really needed it, but besides that he knew they could manage the game.

By the end of 2003 Brady was already the best QB in the NFL. The Panthers super bowl is something neither of them pulled off in that kind of spot.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Brady in 2001 was already better than Drew Bledsoe pretty much day 1, who was at least an average QB. He ended the year with the 6th highest QB rating (higher than Peyton Manning's mind you) and finished 13th in TDs while missing two games. If he had gotten 3 more (assuming he played the other 2 games lets say) he would have been tied for 9th. He took an offense that was ranked 25th last year and helped make it the 6th ranked offense. He took a team that had been 5-13 and helped bring them to 14-3 for the rest of the year, including their first super bowl title.

Was he the only reason all these things happened? No. Was he the only reason the offense was better? No. Is he the only reason an offense which averaged. 17.3 PPG the their year and 10PPG the first two games he took over averaged 25.1 PPG the rest of the regular season? No.
But he was a large part of the reason why.

It can't be any easier to see the direct correlation of the 2001 offense after adding Brady; the change is immediate. The offensive ppg supports it; stats support it; win/loss supports it. And they all support it in such a dramatic way, it's just dishonest to argue otherwise. Rob and other kool-aid drinkers act like this 5-13 team averaging a dismal 16 ppg even with a decent QB in Bledsoe...was just suddenly activated into "we can be better than this because we believe in ourselves!" mode. They credit Brady for some of the success but act like he is still just one of the improvements rather than the franchise altering player he was the moment he stepped in. To lead that offense to 25 ppg screams of elite player. It's like they can never just acknowledge that their perception about the team was wrong in 2001.

My perception was wrong. Back in 2001, I thought Brady wasn't so great but more of coachable guy who was a little more mobile, and though less physically gifted, could read defenses a little better. A lof of that had to do with the media and a lot had to do with dismissing the idea an unheralded late round draft pick might actually be the straw that stirs the drink, rather than some next level coaching that, frankly, has never existed to that degree in pro sports. Now it's obvious that Brady was just an outlier immediately when he stepped on the field; if he were throwing to Marvin Harrison, Edgerrin James, Dallas Clark, etc, perhaps the perception would have been quite different. But he was throwing to Troy Brown, Christian Fauria, and David Patton. 25 ppg? Brady was elite in 2001, 2002, 2003, and every year of his career. That is also the time when the perception of "the system quarterback" emerged, a underestimation of Brady's abilities, which have never been as tangible as some other QBs.

 

[lancerman]

Top 10 isn't elite. He was very good QB in 2003 in a league where there weren't a lot of good QBs. That doesn't make him elite though.

I think you really don't understand the general concept in the NFL of elite then.

Lamar Jackson 2019:

Completion Percentage: #9
Passing yards: #22
TD's: #1
YPA: #11
Rate: #3

He had exactly two top 5 stats. based off the statistics we used and he was unanimous MVP. The only stat he led in was the same as Brady in 2002. Not a soul would say he wasn't elite.

 

[Rob0729]

Because he immediately transformed the franchise from a sad sack of lifetime losers and propelled them to the greatest dynasty of all-time 1.0

Brady won 3 Super Bowl titles in his first 4 seasons with 2 SB MVP's. He wasn't some stiff otherwise either; he led the NFL in TD's in 2002 and passing yards in 2005. He was a multi-season pro bowler in earlier part of his career as well.

And Belichick had nothing to do with it? People forget there was a serious debate after the 2001 season on whether the Pats should trade Bledsoe or Brady and there a lot of rational sane people saying to trade Brady.

Brady was good his first few years. He wasn't a great QB yet. He certainly wasn't elite. And the era where defenses won championships and the Pats won their first two Super Bowls primarily on the backs of their defenses. To say it was Brady that was the difference between winning the Super Bowl and fighting for a playoff spot in 2001 and 2003 is re-writing history.

 

[Rob0729]

I think you are completely bonkers! Quarterbacks make coaches. I'm not talking about a quarterback with simply the most arm talent. When you combine a great talent + a great leader loved by all + an unquenchable fire + a relentless desire to be great you get a goat!! To say we could have simply won with another guy is unfair. Doubt you get a single teammate from the SB 36 team to agree with your take.

Quarterbacks make coaches today. Not 20-30 years ago. Look at Joe Gibbs. Did Doug Freaking Williams make Joe Gibbs? Parcells won two Super Bowls without an elite QB, but with elite defenses. There were plenty of great coaches of the past that didn't have great QBs.

The Belichick/Brady dynasty started in an era where defenses still won championships. You didn't elite QB to be a great coach back then. I would argue that at least. small handful of other QBs in the league could have won with Belichick and the Patriots in 2001 and 2003.

 

[Rob0729]

Brady was in the top 3-4 QBs in 2003 and yes that is elite. Was he better a few years later? Yes, but the league was becoming more of a passing league too. Nice cherry picking a few scores. Brandy also threw for the 6th most yards in the league that year And they put up 25+ points many times. And the one game I pointed to was the SB and when when the pressure mounted he delivered.

I don't think Brady was a top 3 QB in the league in 2003. The numbers certainly didn't show it. In 2003, the Pats were 14th in the league in points scored (averaging 21.8 PPG) and the defense has something like 3-5 TDs themselves which go into that number. Meanwhile the Pats were #1 on defense only allowing 14.8 PPG with the second best defense giving up 16.3 PPG.

I don't know how you can say Brady was elite but the Patriots offense was average in scoring.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Imagine having an avatar that makes of fun of an over-the-top, dishonest radio personality, but then being even more of a caricature yourself.

 

[Rob0729]

Please...I really want to understand what you mean by “Belichick did cultivate Brady.“ Can you be specific?

Did Mike McCarthy cultivate Rodgers? Did Any Reid cultivate Mahomes? Has Belichick cultivated Stidham? Kevin O’Connell? How about the brilliant offensive minded Kliff Kingsbury? Bledsoe sure had a lot of physical talent...no cultivation? Brian Hoyer sure looked like a moron in KC this year...hasn’t he been listening to the coach too?

See, this is the thing...you can only make your arguments by vague statements with no basis in reality. That’s always been the problem with the “magic dust” narrative about Belichick and Brady. Is there a single documented, specific event, fact, or story you can cite that explains how Belichick “cultivated” Brady in the sense that Brady was in any way different from any NFL player who has ever been drafted? (No). You would never say that another quarterback was “cultivated” by his coach; you would never say Belichick “cultivated” Lawrence Taylor.

“Weis slowly rolled out the offense to make him feel comfortable and build his confidence in his position. I am sure that was under the direction of Belichick.”

Where is your source for this? Can you cite anyone with direct knowledge? Virtually everything I’ve read is clear that Brady did a lot of his own film study and ran his own extra practice sessions with backups. There is zero evidence that the Patriots treated Brady any differently than any quarterback on any other football team, though you seem to think rather bizarrely that Brady might not have made it in the NFL with another team, despite that the Patriots provided the same basic coaching and guidance to Brady as all their QBs, similar to what most any team would. There was no special program, special system, special secret lessons, special training plan.

The fact that Belichick did have the team be defensive focused and not putting pressure on Brady to win the games week in and week out probably benefitted him early in his career.

Oh yes...a team that had lost 13 of its 18 games under Belichick, ranked dead last, 32 of 32 in teams most likely to win a SB in the 2000s, according to that Sporting News article in 2001 we all used to cite. The 2001 defense wasn’t elite. Throwing a young quarterback into an objectively horrible offense with virtually no playmakers.

Let’s give Belichick credit for drafting Brady (even though he, like anyone, did know what he was getting, he used the pick wisely), carrying him on the roster year one, promoting him to backup, and then sticking with him over Bledsoe, which was both wise and very ballsy. Those are things a coach does. A coach doesn’t make players or transmute skills to them. We don’t need to deify Belichick and make unproven claims to appreciate him and appreciate what he did to support Brady.

You do realize that Brady was a sixth round pick and spent his rookie season as QB #4 on the Patriots' depth chart behind Michael Bishop? The guy didn't come into the league a finished product like Mahomes or Rodgers (and Rodgers sat for a number of years).

And you are totally misreading what I am trying to say. I am saying Belichick created an environment for Brady to grow into the roll. It still takes Brady to have the talent and the drive get there. And he did do it for Hoyer, Garoppolo, Castle, Stidham, etc. And theiir success or failure was not based on Belichick not trying to put them in the best position possible to succeed, but based on their talent.

An you do realize Belichick blew up the team after the 2000 season and totally retooled it for 2001? He inherited the 2000 team. It wasn't his players and they couldn't do what they wanted to do especially the QB. Bledsoe was totally wrong QB for the system that Belichick and Weis ran back then. Watching Bledsoe try to throw screen passes and short crossing pattern passes was painful to watch. He was a strong armed, seven step drop passer which is not what the Pats' system needed.

 

[1960Pats]

The debate Between Brady and BB was never who was more important in my mind. That was always Brady. The question is, can each hold on to their GOAT legacy without the other? In my mind Brady has already proven he can be successful without BB, not that he needed to. Anyone know knows anything about football should know it isn't the coach that puts you over the top and wins the big games, that is the QB (when it happens repeatedly... with very few exceptions). While winning a super bowl would be nice, making the final 4 is good enough considering his age and where he is in his career. He should have proven to everyone now that he isn't just a product of BB. Not that he ever was. But anyone who denies it now looks foolish.

It is also true that adding a QB does more to instantly impact a team than adding a coach. Coaches take time to build their program, and the Pats are definitely in a rebuild right now. So the question is, how long does Bill have to turn this Pats team around and what would qualify him as proving that he is rightfully considered the GOAT coach without Brady. People talk about winning SBs, but that is really hard. Particular if you don't have a great QB/coach combo like KC does right now. But there must be some kind of of threshold that we can use for BB. Here is mine and you can tell me what you think.

Year 1 - Nothing. You shouldn't expect anything from a coach year 1 in a rebuilding team. They had cap and QBs issues. This was a 'balance the books' year. I don't think it should be held against BB.
Year 2 - Make the playoffs. Perhaps not in the old 6 team format. But with 7 of 16 teams making the playoffs in the AFC, this should be expected. The Pats have now worked out any cap issues, have had their bridge year and are now prepared to implement what they discovered some of their needs to be. Anything short of making it in should be considered a disappointment for the GOAT coach. Even if he is blown out round 1 that would be fine.
Year 3 - Make it too the division round. At this point you should have found your QB, got the talent and scheme infused. Have sorted out any coaching issues you have, and even if some left your contingencies should be in place to cover it. Ideally by this time you have your QB in year 2-3 and they are now able to make the push to get you past round 1. Being bumped off in round 1 is generally not acceptable at this point anymore, though in some weird cases it might be, if the team that beats you ends up representing the conference or something. But if that happens you need to at least not get blown off the field.
Year 4 - Make the conference championship game. After 4 years of rebuilding there is no excuse for a great coach to not sniff the CCG once in that time. An alternative is to make the final 8, if the team that beats you wins the conference.
Year 5 - Make the final 4. No more excuses. Doesn't matter who you play. You are now 5 years in and your team should be built and ready to beat anyone but the first seed, assuming you didn't claim it. Your seed should be high enough that you can avoid playing the harder teams and so you should not be tripped up. No more excuses. Make it now.

That is how i see it with BB. Injuries of course can derail things, but after 5 years without Brady if we don't see the final 4, it more than fair to question the legacy of Bill as the 'GOAT'. How would you measure it though?

When BB first came here he had 3 rings on his fingers by year 5 and had renamed his boat 3 times. I'm not expecting anything close to that now.

 

[Rob0729]

Brady in 2001 was already better than Drew Bledsoe pretty much day 1, who was at least an average QB. He ended the year with the 6th highest QB rating (higher than Peyton Manning's mind you) and finished 13th in TDs while missing two games. If he had gotten 3 more (assuming he played the other 2 games lets say) he would have been tied for 9th. He took an offense that was ranked 25th last year and helped make it the 6th ranked offense. He took a team that had been 5-13 and helped bring them to 14-3 for the rest of the year, including their first super bowl title.

Was he the only reason all these things happened? No. Was he the only reason the offense was better? No. Is he the only reason an offense which averaged. 17.3 PPG the their year and 10PPG the first two games he took over averaged 25.1 PPG the rest of the regular season? No.
But he was a large part of the reason why.

The fact is Bledsoe was a 3 time probowler before Brady took the helm and was a probowler the year after (even though Brady should have made it over him). And Brady was better than a guy who was often put among the top 10 QBs in the NFL at the time in his first year. A year in which he made the pro bowl. The next year he led the league in TD passes, while throwing less interceptions than guys who had less TD passes in the league, and less interceptions than most of the QBs who made the pro bowl over him that year. Frankly it was a snub.

While Brady wasn't the GOAT or the best QB in the NFL in years 1 or 2 he was elite very quickly. Maybe his stats and the offense wasn't the best early on, but that isn't where they invested their money and draft picks. The defenses on those teams were fairly stacked at the expense of the offense. And BB could do this because he had a good OL, a good coach, players that were scrappy and 'good enough' along with Brady who made a group that overall was pretty below average very good. He was able to score in 2003 when they really needed it, but besides that he knew they could manage the game.

By the end of 2003 Brady was already the best QB in the NFL. The Panthers super bowl is something neither of them pulled off in that kind of spot.

Brady was more suited for the Pats' offense than Bledsoe. Didn't make him better right off the bat. Bledose was a deep ball passer with seven step drop. The Pats were trying to run a quick pass offense with shorter routes. Bledsoe was awful at it. It would be like asking James White to become a power back who only rushed between the numbers. Or asking Troy Brown as be a down the field burner X WR.

And Brady wasn't best QB in the NFL in 2003. He led the 14th best scoring offense in 2003.

 

[Rob0729]

I think you really don't understand the general concept in the NFL of elite then.

Lamar Jackson 2019:

Completion Percentage: #9
Passing yards: #22
TD's: #1
YPA: #11
Rate: #3

He had exactly two top 5 stats. based off the statistics we used and he was unanimous MVP. The only stat he led in was the same as Brady in 2002. Not a soul would say he wasn't elite.

Psst! Lamar Jackson is a running QB. What made him special in 2019 was the fact you never knew whether or not if he would pull down the ball and run for 20 yards. In 2019, he had 1206 rushing yards (6th in the entire league in rushing) and 7 rushing TDs which made him one of the top RBs in the NFL that season. That is what made him special. He was a mediocre passer in 2019 and if he was judged based just on his passing, he would have been considered mediocre. In fact, Jackson was more dangerous on the ground than he was in the air.

 

[1960Pats]

Bill has nothing to prove.

This ****ing fan base is obsessed with getting an answer to an irrelevant, stupid question.

I agree that Bill has nothing to prove. The same goes for Tom. Anyone who doesn't see that is as blind as a bat. I'm just thankful that they came to the Pats together. All Pats fans should be.

As to the fan base being obsessed with getting an answer to who's best, I think if Tom were retired instead of on another team we probably wouldn't be making those comparisons.

We had them during the Bledsoe-Brady Wars, the Milloy (they hate their coach) baloney and when Big Sey was traded. It's just human nature to debate the merits of any move, let alone losing the GOAT QB.

 

[BobDigital]

Brady was more suited for the Pats' offense than Bledsoe. Didn't make him better right off the bat. Bledose was a deep ball passer with seven step drop. The Pats were trying to run a quick pass offense with shorter routes. Bledsoe was awful at it. It would be like asking James White to become a power back who only rushed between the numbers. Or asking Troy Brown as be a down the field burner X WR.

And Brady wasn't best QB in the NFL in 2003. He led the 14th best scoring offense in 2003.

It is the coaches job to put his players in the best situation to succeed. If BB decided to try to make Bledsoe play in a way that wasn't to his strengths that is on BB. If the truth is that Brady 'fit better in the system' than that is something that makes look worse.

I don't care how the scoring offense is ranked in and of it itself. It's good information to know, but it doesn't automatically mean anything one way or the other. For instance it doesn't adjust for your opposition that year. For instance in 2003 the Dolphins had the 3rd best D, the Bills had the 5th and the Jets had the 8th. They played each twice. They also played the Cowboys 2nd best D. The Eagles 7th best D. The Broncos 9th best D. So half of their games were against top 10 defense out of 32 teams. They were an outdoor team as opposed to a Dome team, that hurt their offense substantially, considering they had a few games in very bad conditions that year.

Now look at the help Brady had in 2003. His running game was 6th worse in YPG and 3rd worse in YPA. So he didn't get any help there. He also had one of the worst WR cores in the NFL. It wasn't as bad as 06' but it was still one of the worse that year. His OL above average, but that was it. Frankly the cast was probably among the bottom 10 all things considered, and he faced one of the harder schedules that year. And he still had the 12th best scoring offense. These things only took a few minutes too look up btw.

In the 2003 season he became the best QB. No one has to agree if they don't want to. I'll stand by what I said again. In that super bowl in that spot, no one QB currently in the game would have been able to do what he did against the Panthers at that time with that cast around him after the defense which had most of that team's talent and salary let him down.

 

[BobDigital]

Can someone please explain to me why a post that should be about Bill Belichick (the current Patriots head coach) was moved to the 'Tom Brady' Forum? I don't understand how that works.

 

[Rob0729]

Yeah, in2003 you could tell Brady was elite. even then I’d have taken Brady over any QB except Manning.

But that wasn't the opinion of every (or possibly almost any) non-biased, non-Pats fans in 2003.

I still think people are looking back at 2003 with the eyes of now knowing Brady is the greatest of all time and not what really happened. The Pats were clearly a defensive team in 2003. They won most of their games on defense and not offense.

It is the coaches job to put his players in the best situation to succeed. If BB decided to try to make Bledsoe play in a way that wasn't to his strengths that is on BB. If the truth is that Brady 'fit better in the system' than that is something that makes look worse.

I don't care how the scoring offense is ranked in and of it itself. It's good information to know, but it doesn't automatically mean anything one way or the other. For instance it doesn't adjust for your opposition that year. For instance in 2003 the Dolphins had the 3rd best D, the Bills had the 5th and the Jets had the 8th. They played each twice. They also played the Cowboys 2nd best D. The Eagles 7th best D. The Broncos 9th best D. So half of their games were against top 10 defense out of 32 teams. They were an outdoor team as opposed to a Dome team, that hurt their offense substantially, considering they had a few games in very bad conditions that year.

Now look at the help Brady had in 2003. His running game was 6th worse in YPG and 3rd worse in YPA. So he didn't get any help there. He also had one of the worst WR cores in the NFL. It wasn't as bad as 06' but it was still one of the worse that year. His OL above average, but that was it. Frankly the cast was probably among the bottom 10 all things considered, and he faced one of the harder schedules that year. And he still had the 12th best scoring offense. These things only took a few minutes too look up btw.

In the 2003 season he became the best QB. No one has to agree if they don't want to. I'll stand by what I said again. In that super bowl in that spot, no one QB currently in the game would have been able to do what he did against the Panthers at that time with that cast around him after the defense which had most of that team's talent and salary let him down.

You do realize that the Pats scored 12 points each vs. Dallas and Miami at home? Yes, those teams had good defenses, but scoring 12 points in a game is going to lose you most games. The Pats won those games. Why? Because the defense held both those teams to ZERO POINTS.

Here are some of the other games that season:

• The Pats scored 9 points vs. Cleveland.
• Zero points vs. the Bills the first time they played.
• The offense also scored 10 points vs. the Giants (Ty Law had a pick 6 to get them to 17 points.
• They scored 17 points against Washington and one of the TDs was near garbage time where they were down by two scores with a little over two minutes left in the game.
• The second Miami game, they scored 13 points in regulation and another TD on their third possession in overtime.
• The first game vs. the Jets, they scored only 14 points on offense (McGinest had a pick six to get them to 21 points).
• The second Jets' game, the Pats scored 16 points on offense (Samuel got a pick 6 to bring them to 23 points)

I listed nine games where the Pats' offense scored 17 points or less in the regular season. Those are poor showings by the offense. And you can add the 17 points vs. the Titans and the 22 points vs. the Colts (despite the defense turning over the ball six time and forced the Colts to lose possession on downs twice with both cases being four downs and out and caused a safety) in the playoffs.

And will stand by what I said. The Pats had a top 10 all time defense in 2003 and that is why they went 14-2 and won the Super Bowl. The offense wasn't good enough to do it without an all world defense. Brady was not nearly as good as you want to make him out to be.

 

[BobDigital]

Anyway, to move off the Brady thing. Which this post is not about; BB having 5 years to rebuild his program seems more than fair to me. No other coach as far as I know has been given 5 years in a long time. Can anyone think of one? All but 7 of the current HCs have been at their current team for 4 years or less. The only one of those coaches that has been with their team longer that hasn't run a super bowl is Mike Zimmer for the Vikings.

At least they managed to make a conference championship in 2017, which probably saved his job for a while IMO. He's the only coach that has been at his job for more than 4 years who hasn't won an SB championship. The only SB he ever won was as a position coach with Dallas 25 years ago. Interestingly enough, he is the example you can point to for the minimum amount of success an NFL coach needs to keep his job.

I don't know what that means compared to BB who has already won championships, but I think it is worth noting. If in 7-8 years he has pretty much duplicated what Zimmer has done and nothing more (or even less) I wonder if that will start to change opinions about him as the GOAT coach.

 

[DaBruinz]

I think you are completely bonkers! Quarterbacks make coaches. I'm not talking about a quarterback with simply the most arm talent. When you combine a great talent + a great leader loved by all + an unquenchable fire + a relentless desire to be great you get a goat!! To say we could have simply won with another guy is unfair. Doubt you get a single teammate from the SB 36 team to agree with your take.

That isn't what Rob said at all.

He said that the reason that Brady became Brady is because Belichick put the time and effort into developing Brady in 2000. Whether it was because BB saw something in Brady or out of a sense of loyalty to **** Rehbein, BB kept Brady as the 4th QB that year. That's something you can't deny. And, as Rob pointed out, Brady couldn't even beat out Michael Bishop that year. So people thinking that Brady would have been anything more than a 3rd string or even PS QB on another team is a stretch. And who knows what would have happened if that had been the case.

And when you go back and look at Shula and Noll, they won without the QB with the Greatest Talent, A relentless desire to be great or the QB loved by all. Are you going to tell everyone that Montana made Walsh? That Young made Seifert? No one is going to buy that.

 

[DaBruinz]

Brady was in the top 3-4 QBs in 2003 and yes that is elite. Was he better a few years later? Yes, but the league was becoming more of a passing league too. Nice cherry picking a few scores. Brandy also threw for the 6th most yards in the league that year And they put up 25+ points many times. And the one game I pointed to was the SB and when when the pressure mounted he delivered.

Relying on just YARDS for a QB is like just relying on YARDS to determine how good a defense is. It doesn't paint the WHOLE picture.

Brady had 23 TDs (10th), 13 Ints (17th), 3620 yards (6th), 317 comp (6th), 527 att (5th), 60.2% Comp (13th), 6.7 YPA (12th) and 85.9 QBR (10th) in 2003. That was not Elite. And not Top 3-4.

Players ahead of Brady that year in yards: Manning, Green, Bulger, Hasslebeck, Brad Johnson.
Players ahead of Brady that year in TDs: Favre, Manning, Hasslebeck, Johnson, Kitna, Culpepper, Green, Brooks, McNair.

2003 NFL Passing | Pro-Football-Reference.com

Check out the 2003 NFL Passing Stats and more on Pro-football-reference.com

www.pro-football-reference.com

Sorry, but Brady was very good that year but not ELITE at that point. Unless you wish to continue with some revisionist history.

 

[skinnydog]

Relying on just YARDS for a QB is like just relying on YARDS to determine how good a defense is. It doesn't paint the WHOLE picture.

Brady had 23 TDs (10th), 13 Ints (17th), 3620 yards (6th), 317 comp (6th), 527 att (5th), 60.2% Comp (13th), 6.7 YPA (12th) and 85.9 QBR (10th) in 2003. That was not Elite. And not Top 3-4.

Players ahead of Brady that year in yards: Manning, Green, Bulger, Hasslebeck, Brad Johnson.
Players ahead of Brady that year in TDs: Favre, Manning, Hasslebeck, Johnson, Kitna, Culpepper, Green, Brooks, McNair.

2003 NFL Passing | Pro-Football-Reference.com

Check out the 2003 NFL Passing Stats and more on Pro-football-reference.com

www.pro-football-reference.com

Sorry, but Brady was very good that year but not ELITE at that point. Unless you wish to continue with some revisionist history.

No yards is far from the whole picture, but Brady was doing much more than being along for the ride. But then Brady brings much more to a team than just stats and always has. His drive to succeed and how it influences the players has always been elite, even then.