Okay so whoever wants to do the maff, or research the stat, do it... but by consensus, Brady is the GOAT (at this writing :/ )
I understand that we're comparing at a specific snapshot in time, and I'm not even going into that. Holding Bledsoe's clipboard, winning the SB and everything that went into that, then playing a full (and not terrible) non-SB season in 2002 = Brady's first three.
What can I say, slow starter.
Jimmy G played in a couple games. That's it. I mean, this isn't even apples and oranges, it's tourniquets and ball bearings are something, no wait, those can be united by the concept of a sling... it's plastic pill-holders and thumb drives. It's too unrelated to even measure. And that's before adding that you're talking about an unproven guy (at this point in time) and a very, very proven guy, the most proven guy ever.
The only calculation is when Brady becomes something other than the best possible option going forward.
History says there is a date certain. There are some greek fates (I believe these are called the Norns,) whose tasks were, respectively, to spin a strand measuring a football career, to measure this strand, and to cut it. I think I got that right. Nobody knows how much strand is left for Brady.
Abe Vigoda has been getting picked in dead pools since the mid-70s and it took until 2016 when tragically nobody picked him because everybody assumed that either (a) he was already dead or (b) that he would never die. They were sick of chasing the fool's gold that was Abe Vigoda.
So, this upcoming season, for all we know Brady falls off a cliff, looks addled every play, throws 25 interceptions, etc. I would characterize this as a very low, if non-zero, possibility.
Leaving aside this very low tail result, what we are really talking about re: Garoppolo is whether he's better than Brady now (or within one year.) IOW, we're using this "through 3 years" ruse as a proxy for real considerations. The only other real-life consideration is whether Garoppolo is ready/willing to forego a big payday to have a shot of being an heir apparent after a long period of clipboard-holding. This looks very unlikely, if we consider it through the lens of Garoppolo's self-interest, the lens most likely to yield a useful projection.
There is no quarterback on the roster, in free agency, coming out of the draft, or elsewhere in Heaven, Hell, and Earth that one can sanely project to surpass TFB. This is a very unusual circumstance, and a difficult one to "talk football" about. You're really looking at a sui generis quarterback. So playing games with this or that window of time is something less than significant.
As of right now...? I think Brady's doing okay . I actually think he will do okay for at least another season.
That being the case, what becomes of Jimmy G is purely up to Jimmy G, unless BB is supremely confident about what he's seen and wants to somehow come to a mid-level deal to lock him up... but what does that look like? Locking him up for 5 years at a low-to-medium salary, while he waits for something bad to happen to Brady? Seems really unlikely.
Don't get me wrong, I liked what I saw of him in the few plays on which we saw him play. Nice problem to have, sucks if you're in love with Jimmy G. He'll end up in another uniform, barring the catastrophic.
