Tom Brady is winning his bout with Father Time, but Cris Collinsworth believes the latter has got a few shots in on the future Hall of Famer.
Brady will enter his 20th NFL season at age 42. He’s led the Patriots to four of the past five Super Bowls — winning three — and New England is primed for yet another deep postseason run in the upcoming campaign. So despite what the Rob Parkers of the world might insist, there’s no way Brady has started to decline, right?
Not to fast, says Cris Collinsworth.
“I don’t think you get to 40-whatever he is, 41 1/2, 42 years old and you don’t decline in some way,” Collinsworth said Thursday on FS1’s “The Herd.” “I mean, Tom Brady used to be able to throw a ball about as far as anybody in the league. Now, there are some guys — the Michael Vicks of the world — that really were off the chart with how they could throw it, but you go back to 2007 and some of those balls that he (Brady) threw to Randy Moss would take your breath away. Probably the one I remember most was in the Super Bowl where they were getting beat and he sort of moved at the end of the game — they’re behind, have to take a big shot. Moved slightly to his right and threw one back across the field and the guy made a really nice play on or it could have been the greatest play in Super Bowl history and that thing had to go 65, 70 yards in the air.
“So, has he declined? Of course, he has. But if you’re declining and winning Super Bowls, that’s pretty good, right? Howie Long used to say that as your physical elevator starts to go down, your mental elevator starts to go up and I think that’s true for Tom Brady, too.”
As much as Patriots fans won’t want to admit it, Collinsworth is right. The “Sunday Night Football” voice in a roundabout way simply is stating Brady is past his prime. This by no means is a slight at the six-time Super Bowl champion, who still ranks among the top signal-callers in the league.
Where Brady separates himself is his ability to adapt. While past quarterbacks took a sharp dive off “the cliff” once their skills started to decline, Brady has refined his game. The Patriots tend to opt for quicker and shorter-range passes these days, and Brady has mastered New England’s new-age offense. You could even make the case his overall pocket presence is just as good, if not better than it ways years ago.
So yeah, Brady has declined in a sense that he’s no longer uncorking deep balls on a somewhat regular basis. But in terms of his overall game, the Patriots QB still is among the best of the best.
