For a time it might have seemed like it would never happen. But it has.
We have seen the last of Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. on an NFL football field.
It’s the end of the greatest career in NFL history. And it almost had one last act that was more of the same of what he did for 22 years.
Brady’s rise from being the 199th player selected in the NFL Draft to this point is well-chronicled. Now that his career is over, it’s time to recognize his standing as the greatest to play the game, something borne out certainly by the numbers but also by how he got to them.
Tom Brady retires holding every big NFL passing record, throwing for 84,520 yards (over 4,000 more than Drew Brees in second place) and 624 touchdowns (53 more than Brees in second place) along with big playoff records starting with playoff wins (35) and games started (47) and extending to passing yards (13,049) and touchdowns (86), including the Super Bowl record for yards in a game with 505 in Super Bowl LII. He is also both the youngest and oldest quarterback to win a Super Bowl.
Also remarkable is how few interceptions he threw relative to his peers – he threw 203 interceptions, which translates into a single-digit average per year with a high of 14 (three times). Compare that number to how many interceptions the other quarterbacks with over 500 career touchdown passes threw: Brees (243), Peyton Manning (251), Brett Favre (all-time leader in career interceptions with 336). The only one who might have a more remarkable ratio when it’s all said and done is Aaron Rodgers, who has thrown just 93 and is still active and is fifth in career touchdown passes with 449.
But let’s dig a little deeper into a few of these numbers. The fact that he continued to play at an elite level right up to the end at age 44 just adds to his legacy. It’s one thing to play for a long time and climb an all-time list or two from so many years of good-not-great numbers or even so-so numbers, but Brady did nothing of the sort.
Brady played five seasons after turning 40 on August 3, 2017. Over those five seasons, he threw for 22,938 yards and 168 touchdowns against 51 interceptions. Only 90 quarterbacks in the history of the game have thrown for more yards in their entire career, and only 73 quarterbacks have thrown more touchdown passes in their entire career than Brady did after turning 40 years old.
After turning 40, Brady also went 10-3 in the playoffs with two of his seven Super Bowl wins. The ten wins are more than all but ten other quarterbacks who have ever played the game have in their entire careers, a group likely to one day be joined by Patrick Mahomes (eight playoff wins thus far) and possibly Russell Wilson (nine).
More than his numbers, though, Brady retires as the greatest because of his play in big games. His 35 wins are more than double that of second-place Joe Montana, but with them come numerous big moments.
There was the first one, in Super Bowl XXXVI, when he drove the Patriots for a game-winning field goal after starting inside their own 20-yard line with no timeouts left and the heavily-favored Rams having all the momentum after rallying back from being down by 14. No one will forget the late John Madden saying that the Patriots should just play for overtime when the possession began.
There was the AFC Championship game in the 2005 season, where Brady led the Patriots to a dominating win over the Steelers to advance to Super Bowl XXXIX and then won their second straight and third in four years.
There was a memorable regular season matchup with Brees and the Saints in 2013, where Brees put the Saints ahead with under four minutes to play and the Saints subsequently added a field goal, only to see Brady lead the Patriots back for a game-winning touchdown with five seconds left to keep the Saints from going to 6-0 on the season. It’s one of many times Brady led a late drive for a game-winning score or even a key score before halftime.
There was Super Bowl XLIX, where Brady had come under fire and was up against what some were hyping as the greatest defense ever. All he did was complete 37 of 50 passes for 328 yards and four touchdowns with no interceptions, leading two big drives that put the Patriots ahead before the memorable interception by Malcolm Butler sealed their fourth Super Bowl win.
No one will forget Super Bowl LI, where Brady led a rally from being down 28-3 late in the third quarter for the Patriots’ fifth Super Bowl win. Brady set a Super Bowl record with 466 passing yards, which he would break a year later, and with this, any doubt that Brady is the greatest to play the game was put to rest.
But he wasn’t done. The following season, things didn’t look good for the Patriots in the AFC championship game against Jacksonville and their top-notch defense. Brady wasn’t fully healthy, the Jaguars were clearly out-playing the Patriots with Blake Bortles playing like someone whose future was on the line, and then Rob Gronkowski was knocked out with an injury late in the first half. Jacksonville led 20-10 in the fourth quarter, then Brady did it again by leading two big touchdown drives with a number of big throws to Danny Amendola to give them a seemingly improbable 24-20 win before losing in Super Bowl LII.
He did it again in the AFC championship game in Kansas City a year later before another Super Bowl win, and in his first season in Tampa Bay had a storybook run to a seventh Super Bowl title.
Sure enough, Brady had one more magical moment in what would be his final game. He rallied the Bucs from being down 27-3 in the third quarter in Los Angeles, only to see the Rams drive quickly in the final seconds to get a game-winning field goal as time expired.
The final numbers tell a lot of the story of Tom Brady as the greatest NFL player ever. The big moments tell an even bigger part of it.