Another day, another person with a keyboard saying Tom Brady isn’t a good quarterback anymore. In other words, Wednesday was just par for the course when FOX Sports’ Chris Chase went to work.
Chase provided his top 10 reasons the New England Patriots QB won’t be very good anymore, all of which are based on historical stats of quarterbacks aged 39 or older.
We’re not about to sit here and say there’s no chance Chase is correct. Football is dangerous, and Brady technically is old in athlete years. Furthermore, no one’s ever really successfully accomplished what Brady is trying to do at his age: play, and do so at a consistently elite (or even good) level.
Then again, that sounds exactly like the type of challenge that has motivated Brady for his entire career; the hurdle he’ll inevitably leap just to take pleasure in watching people pick their jaws up off the floor.
Chase uses things like No. 3 — “Only four quarterbacks in the history of the NFL have started 10+ games in a season after turning 39 and finished with a QB rating better than 85.0” — to prove Brady probably won’t be elite next season or very good in any seasons following. And that’s a great stat.
But we’d remind him that the lowest Brady’s rating has ever been in a full season was 85.7 in 2002, as a 25-year-old second-year starter who won nine games and led the NFL in touchdown passes. We’d also bring up that the last time Brady was even close to that 85.0 benchmark was in 2013, and the Patriots still went 12-4 and advanced to the AFC Championship Game.
Brady followed that 2013 season with 97.4 and 102.2 ratings, his fourth Super Bowl championship and his fifth consecutive trip to the AFC Championship Game in his late 30s in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
In other words, Chase very well could be on to something, but we’re not about to count out Touchdown Tom just yet.
All stats via Pro Football Reference
Thumbnail photo via David Butler II/USA TODAY Sports Images
