Well it's official: Tom Brady, #1 Quarterback in NFL History

[TruthSeeker]

So, basically a nobody?

It's generally considered to be an average player or possibly just below an average player.

 

[IcyPatriot]

 

[StockingAnarchyNumber12]

Need to give it to Brees too. Hes phenomenonal.

 

[Tony2046]

So, basically a nobody?

Better than that. 20 JAGs were Super Bowl champs last year. So a pretty valuable bunch of guys if you ask me.

 

[glm]

Even though it's celebrating Tom, I still don't trust PFF in the slightest

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Jordan would’ve demanded $100,023

Actually, it was Red who demanded it.

 

[Doublebase]

Bruh, never assume what you think I have or haven’t seen. I know the game! Again, I already gave MAJOR RESPECT to Russell multiple times. He’s definitely in my top 3 along with MJ & Kareem (although my personal favorite big man of all time is Olajuwon for multiple reasons), but MJ is the only “little guy” (relatively speaking) who dominated in the land of giants WITHOUT HIS OWN DOMINANT BIG MAN, changed the game internationally, kept other HOF players/teams from winning rings in a far more competitive league (80s-90s-00s were/are FAR more advanced than the 50s-60s) & went 72-10 with THAT ‘95-‘96 roster!! Plus, he’s one of (if not the only player ever) to win DPY AND THE SCORING TITLE IN THE SAME SEASON. And 9x All-DEF!! AT 6’6! In the 80s-90s era. Playing ALL 82 + games!!!Do you know how impressive that is??!?

At 6'6" Michael Jordan came into Chapel Hill running a 4.6 forty, he left running a 4.39. This guy was a pure athlete, a natural athlete that took it several steps further by WORKING HARD. Forget how high he could jump and keep himself in the air - this guy could run - and do it while dribbling the ball. I don't think I've seen anything quite like it since. Lebron James ran a 4.4 but he doesn't glide up and down the court effortlessly like Jordan did with the ball. The guy was a total unstoppable freak. And he added so much size and strength as he got older, he really couldn't be stopped anywhere on the floor. He could do everything, and do it better than everyone else. Consistently.

 

[patsfan13]

Bill Russell too was a Extraordinary Athlete. While in college he was the 7th ranked High Jumper in the World and ties the 1956 Gold medalist in a meet in California. He
also ran the 440 in 49.4 sec, this mind you in 1955. For a 6'10" person this is otherworldly.
This combined with a sports IQ that I have only seen matched by Brady, and few others. make him the greatest team athlete I have seen in my lifetime.

Jordan is certainly a great player and athlete but Russell dominated his sport like Brady dominated his. He also put more teammates in the HOF than any other player. HE made EVERYBODY he played with better.

 

[Actual Pats Fan]

Bill Russell too was a Extraordinary Athlete. While in college he was the 7th ranked High Jumper in the World and ties the 1956 Gold medalist in a meet in California. He
also ran the 440 in 49.4 sec, this mind you in 1955. For a 6'10" person this is otherworldly.
This combined with a sports IQ that I have only seen matched by Brady, and few others. make him the greatest team athlete I have seen in my lifetime.

Jordan is certainly a great player and athlete but Russell dominated his sport like Brady dominated his. He also put more teammates in the HOF than any other player. HE made EVERYBODY he played with better.

Bill took both an intellectual and psychological approach to the game.

He psyched everybody out. He's got more in common with Auerbach than people realize.

 

[1960Pats]

Bill took both an intellectual and psychological approach to the game.

He psyched everybody out. He's got more in common with Auerbach than people realize.

There was an SI article that got into Russell's psych-out games. I'll see if I can find it.

 

[1960Pats]

There was an SI article that got into Russell's psych-out games. I'll see if I can find it.

Below is the article from SI 0n October 25, 1965. This goes exactly to the point that APF was making in his post. And it's Russell himself.

The Psych...and My Other Tricks

As they begin pursuit of their eighth straight title the stars of the world champion Boston Celtics are beginning to show their age, are more injury prone and have lost one of their longtime key colleagues, Tom Heinsohn. They will have to rely, more than before, on their savvy and cunning. The biggest star of them all tells how he uses such tactics to intimidate and bamboozle his opponents.

The first thing I am not about to do is look up the definition of psychology in the dictionary. Why bother? I mean, dictionaries are nice and all that, but did old Daniel Webster ever have to stand there at the top of the key and define five sweating monsters rushing down at him? He did not. Well, then.

I will not confuse you with Webster's words, because my definition of psychology is something else again, and I have been practicing it for a whole flock of years now and I ought to know. In my psychology you wear short pants and tape and sneakers, and this is the kind of thing you do:

Say I am standing next to a rookie who has just come into the game—some hotshot college All-America who is not yet used to his rookie role. The action is swirling all around him, and I say to him, casually, "Hey, what's the matter with you, baby? Don't they ever pass that ball to you? What are you, a nothing on this club?" Oh, yeah, they laugh it off. But you can see them thinking about what you said.

Or I find someone who is new in the league, and I stand next to him and hack and cough it up. Sometimes I feel I should get an Oscar for this. I know they're watching me out of the edge of their eyes, and they are figuring, "So this is the great Bill Russell. Hell, he's just a tired old cat. And here I am, as fresh as can be." They don't know that I have a reserve tank.

You say these are minor league tricks? Maybe. But you'd be surprised at how often they work. The thing is, you have to pick your spots. Let's say you are playing center opposite Wilt Chamberlain of the Philadelphia 76ers, and it is one hot and heavy game. The score is just about even, and it is the middle of the second quarter—the time when you're most tired before getting your second wind. Tired? Listen, you are so tired that your leg muscles burn, and you know in your heart that Wilt is as tired as you are. But you are both breathing shallowly so as not to give any sign of how you really feel. Now. Wilt is on defense, and he is leaning on you with all of his 250 pounds and you have your mouth up close to his ear and you say to him, pleasantly, "Hey, baby. I never thought I'd see the day when a great big guy like you would be pushing an old man like me around."

So what does Wilt say to you? Wilt says, "Don't give me that old psych, baby." (I have cleaned up that quote. I have also shown that psychology does not work every time. The trick is in knowing who to talk to under the basket.)

I have enough of these situations cataloged inside my head to do a master's thesis on The Psychology of Basketball, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Spook the Opposition. As a matter of fact, this is my thesis, and the next case is a psychological horror story.

This thing first happened years ago. Frank Ramsey, the star of the situation, is in retirement, but we still pull his old trick, often with K.C. Jones in Ramsey's role. Now. Here we have Nate Thurmond, 6 feet 11, of the San Francisco Warriors, who has a dandy little jump shot from about 15 feet out from the basket. He comes barreling downcourt, he stops short and he goes way up into the air off those powerful, springy legs. Things are tough already, right? But to make it worse, because of a switch, Thurmond is being guarded at the moment by little Ramsey, who is just 6 feet 3. Now. Frank has been all over Thurmond like a swarm of gnats, but what is he going to do about that jumper half a mile over his head? Does Ramsey try to jump with Thurmond? He does not. Ramsey runs at Thurmond, full blast. Then, as Thurmond goes up into the air, Ramsey squinches down and runs right under him. He doesn't touch him, just runs right under him, fast and low, going toward the opposite basket.

So here is Thurmond, hanging up there in the air with a head full of terrible worries. Things like: 1) My God, am I going to come down on top of Ramsey and hurt myself? 2) Wait a minute! Ramsey is supposed to be guarding me. Where does he think he's going? 3) How can I hit the basket with all this nonsense going on, anyway?

That was the idea, of course. Then, about the time Thurmond was pushing the ball away, he would suddenly realize where Ramsey was going. Frank was going for the far basket, that's where. And Thurmond knew, with that little stab of pain in his stomach, that if he missed the shot I would probably grab the rebound and fire off a long pass to Ramsey for an easy layup. This situation does not exactly figure to fill a shooter with an overwhelming mood of confidence. It would spook Thurmond something awful.

In our league I promise you that any team can beat any other team on a given night. The difference a lot of the time is all psychological. We use every little trick, every pressure, every mental gimmick we can. And there are certain rules that I live by. We'll call them Russell's Laws.

Russell's First Law: You must make the other player do what you want him to do. How? You must start him thinking. If he is thinking instead of doing, he is yours. There is no time in basketball to think: "This has happened; this is what I must do next." In the amount of time it takes to think through that semicolon, it is already too late.

Russell's Second Law: You got to have the killer instinct. If you do not have it, forget about basketball and go into social psychology or something. If you sometimes wonder if you've got it, you ain't got it. No ****ycats, please. The killer instinct, by my definition, is the ability to spot—and exploit—a weakness in your opponent. There are psychological subrules in this category.

To wit: always try a rookie. If you score on him and he thinks that maybe you scored because you are Bill Russell the superstar, he is yours forever after and you can wear him like a bauble on a charm bracelet.

To wit, further: always try a veteran. In my first year in pro basketball I came up against veteran Johnny Kerr, now with Baltimore. I blocked so many shots on him that first night—perhaps you remember—that he was wild with rage. He was so fired up they had to take him out of the game. That is frustration. That is also psychology. (And I might point out that as soon as he calmed down enough that season Kerr deliberately changed his style of shooting when he played against Boston. That is a kind of reverse psychology.)

Russell's Third Law: Be cute but not cuddly. I mean, you should be nice at all times, but there is a lot to be said for an elbow in the chops when all else fails. This is forceful psychology. Last resort stuff.

Russell's Final Law: Remember that basketball is a game of habit. In getting good at it, we develop certain habits. Therefore, if you make a player deviate from his habits—by psyching him—you've got him.

Right about here I would like to insert another psychological situation. In every game there is a crucial turning point, right? It comes when you are eight points up on the opponent and they have the ball. Now. If they score, they are only six points down. If you score, you're 10 points ahead and you have broken the game open. Right?

If you believe the above statement to be true, you have just been psyched. A lot of players figure this to be true, but it ain't necessarily so. If you start believing in things like turning points, you are lost. You play your best. All the way.

In my own life there are some psychological high points. For example, at McClymonds High School in Oakland, where I began playing the game, I got a quick cram course. It boils down to this: never allow yourself to get angry while playing. In those days we had an all-Negro starting five, and those were explosive days, racially. Our coach, George Powles, knew it and we knew it, and one day before a game he called us together.

"Fellas," said Powles, "I know most high school kids occasionally get mad during games. But remember the spot you're in here. If you get mad and start a fight, it isn't just a fight. It's a riot. And you'll be the ones who are blamed. I'm not telling you not to get mad. But if you do get mad, use it to play better." It has stuck with me through the years.

My first experience with big-time, massive mob psychology came when the University of San Francisco was on its wild, 60-game winning streak in my college days. We were a great team—make no mistake about that—but once we got this terrible "unbeatable" monster idea loose, all we had to do a lot of times was show up at the gym and we had the game won. I remember the Christmas season of 1955 and the Holiday Festival Tournament in Madison Square Garden. These are critical games; careers are made and broken in this tournament. Well, here was UCLA, ready to meet us in the finals. UCLA had to be an awfully tough team to get that far. They were no patsies. In fact, there were those who were saying, "Here is where Bill Russell and San Francisco will get their lumps."

 

[Uptown]

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Uh-oh. TB12 is OUT of Dan Hanzus’s Superstar Club. Deshaun Watson is IN (that playoff meltdown, I guess, put him over the top). Others IN include Andrew Luck, Ben Roethlisberger, and Cam Newton.

Put down your pitchforks, Patriot Nation. Brady could throw 35 interceptions and get benched in Week 9 and he'll still be the best quarterback who ever lived. But winning another Super Bowl in February didn't change the fact that there were some signs of slippage in the soon-to-be 42-year-old's game in 2018. He struggled with downfield accuracy and seemed skittish in the pocket at times. He missed open receivers. He looked ... human.

NFL Superstar Club: Deshaun Watson gets in, Tom Brady booted

 

[SBLIII]

Uh-oh. TB12 is OUT of Dan Hanzus’s Superstar Club. Deshaun Watson is IN (that playoff meltdown, I guess, put him over the top). Others IN include Andrew Luck, Ben Roethlisberger, and Cam Newton.

Put down your pitchforks, Patriot Nation. Brady could throw 35 interceptions and get benched in Week 9 and he'll still be the best quarterback who ever lived. But winning another Super Bowl in February didn't change the fact that there were some signs of slippage in the soon-to-be 42-year-old's game in 2018. He struggled with downfield accuracy and seemed skittish in the pocket at times. He missed open receivers. He looked ... human.

NFL Superstar Club: Deshaun Watson gets in, Tom Brady booted

Don't they have some stupid NFL talk show where they said the Chargers are the safest bet in the AFC? Couldn't take them serious at all after that statement.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

HBO has a great documentary about Muhammad Ali called What’s My Name?

Ali has always been my favorite athlete outside of the Boston world, and it’s a great overview of his career. What’s really amazing is how much his career is similar to Brady’s despite very different athletics, with one being a team sport and the other individual, and the obvious difference in their media personalities.

-Ali came onto the scene as a huge underdog and took down Sonny Liston. Brady took down the Greatest Show on Turf. Both were monumental upsets whereby the two underdogs were the ironic GOATs playing against presumed GOATs.

-Ali then remained champion for several years by defending his title and frankly embarrassing other fighters. Brady would go on to win 2 of the next 3 SBs and remain football’s most esteemed QB.

-Ali was stripped of his title when he refused to be drafted for the war and became a controversial figure and outcast. It took him many years and setbacks (three years of the suspension, losses to Frazier and Norton), before gaining the title back. Brady’s story is eerily similar; 10 years of heartbreaking losses, two “scandals” - broke drought with epic win against the Seahawks.

-Ali won the championship a third time (record) at a nearly unheard of age during that era. Brady also won a record 5th and 6th Super Bowl at unprecedented ages.

-Both won arguably the two greatest matches in their sports. Ali-Foreman and Ali-Frazier, both of the international fights, and for Brady SB49 and SB51. Ali-Foreman (rope a dope) is very comparable to SB51 with its epic turnaround and endurance test.