Colin Cowherd probably elicited a few double takes Tuesday with his statement about Tom Brady.
"It's official," Cowherd said on FS1. "Tom Brady is the two best quarterbacks of all time."
Wait, what?
Brady is widely considered the greatest quarterback in NFL history, of course, especially now that he's led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Super Bowl LV after winning six rings with the New England Patriots. But the two best QBs of all time?
As Cowherd explains in the video below, you theoretically could cut Brady's career into two halves -- from 2001 to 2011 and from 2012 to 2021 -- and each one, alone, is worthy of GOAT status.
"He has now moved into Wayne Gretzky category," Cowherd said. "To argue he's the best quarterback of all time is silly. You sound ridiculous."
Brady faces a tough task in his 10th Super Bowl appearance, as the Bucs will need to dethrone Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs, who defeated the San Francisco 49ers last year on football's biggest stage.
Doing so would further enhance Brady's legacy, though, while also creating more separation between him and Mahomes in the latter's quest to someday be viewed as the best ever.
"Tom Brady's only debate now -- we're making it up -- is a hypothetical one where we're projecting Mahomes could be better. That's it now. Everybody else no longer competes," Cowherd said. "Some people are projecting, if things go right, Mahomes could get there. That's a hypothetical.
"The only argument now: Was the young Brady better than the old Brady? He has moved into an area where we can only compare him to LeBron (James), Michael Phelps, Roger Federer. He has moved beyond his sport. Now the (Bill) Belichick argument, it was the system, that doesn't matter."
In other words, Brady doesn't need a seventh Super Bowl ring. But it wouldn't hurt.
"It's pretty amazing," Cowherd said. "When you start looking at sports arguments, this one's done: Tom's the best quarterback ever. And then the second-best quarterback ever. Just split up the 20 years."
At this rate, we someday might ask whether Brady represents the three best quarterbacks of all time, because he's showing no signs of slowing down at age 43.
