Defying the odds: Tom Brady's unprecedented run of eluding Father Time
Tom Brady has put up some astounding numbers during his 18-year NFL career.
He has five Super Bowl wins and eight appearances in the big game; thirteen Pro Bowl appearances; three MVP awards; four Super Bowl MVP awards; two hundred twenty-three regular-season wins; five hundred fifty-eight total touchdown throws. The list goes on and on and on.
But how about this number, one that perhaps illustrates the New England Patriots star quarterback's greatness more than any other: Ten thousand, two hundred sixty-nine.
That's the total number of passes Brady has thrown - the regular season (8,805, fourth all-time) and the playoffs (1,464, first all-time) combined - since entering the league as a sixth-round draft pick in 2000. Somehow, there's not a single sign of decline from the five-time Super Bowl winner.
The 41-year-old Brady has stared into the eyes of Father Time and refused to blink.
Joe Montana, Brady's childhood idol and arguably his biggest rival for the GOAT label, threw 6,135 passes before hanging up his cleats. Hall of Famers John Elway and Dan Marino? The former reached 7,901 attempts before succumbing to the rigors of time, while the latter was done after throwing just over 9,000 passes.
How about Peyton Manning? Brady's longtime rival and the NFL's king of stats managed 10,407 passes but looked like a shell of his former self at the end of his career as his neck injury drained the last vestiges of his arm strength.
Even the NFL's all-time iron man, Brett Favre, struggled through injuries in his final season to boost his career attempt total to 10,960.
Brady could surpass Favre's all-time attempts mark this year if he stays injury free and New England makes another deep playoff run, one of life's inevitabilities along with death and taxes. And he'd do so as one of the frontrunners for the MVP award - which he currently owns - not as a broken down version of his former self like Manning or Favre.
It's ludicrous that Brady is about to leave every other Hall of Famer in his dust, but even that's not enough for the uber-competitive passer.
"I would love to play five more years," Brady said in the epilogue to his "Tom vs. Time" Facebook series. "It will be a challenge for me. I don't think it’s going to be easy ... but I think I can do it."
The legend is primed to enter uncharted territory. The most effective any quarterback has been beyond age 40 is probably Warren Moon, who tossed 25 touchdowns and nearly 3,700 yards at age 41 in 1997. He then struggled in 10 starts the following year and ended his career after two seasons as a backup.
That's it. That's the apex of playing QB beyond the age of 40. Brady's poised to shatter that precedent.
He's already proven capable of reworking his game as he's faced a natural decline in his physical skill set.
After Brady's stats took a hit, by his lofty standards, from 2012 to 2014, he's been on maybe the best three-year run of his career, which includes his age-40 season. Here are his averages from those two periods, per Pro Football Reference.
| Years | Age | C% | Yards | TD-INT | YPA | Passer Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012-14 | 35-37 | 62.5 | 4426 | 30.7-9.3 | 7.2 | 94.4 |
| 2015-17 | 38-40 | 65.0 | 4300 | 32-5.7 | 7.9 | 105.0 |
Aside from his yardage total - which was inflated by a career-high 637 attempts in 2012 - Brady has somehow, like a fine wine, gotten better with age. He's winning regular-season MVP awards (2017) and Super Bowls (2016) at a time in his career when most other Hall of Fame passers were trying either to stave off the death curdle or were already sitting at home on their couch.
Interested in Montana, Marino, or Elway's stats from ages 38 to 40? Well, tough luck, because all three retired at 38. Montana tossed 3,000 yards and 16 touchdowns in his final year but also posted the fourth lowest yards-per-attempt average and the third-worst passer rating of his illustrious career.
Marino was even worse in his last campaign. He threw just 12 touchdowns to 17 interceptions on 369 attempts, by far the worst interception percentage of his 17 seasons, and posted a career-low passer rating of 67.4.
Elway fared the best, going out a Super Bowl champion in 1998 after recording the best passer rating of his career. But he was carried by the Broncos' all-time great rushing attack in the playoffs, including an AFC title game in which he completed just 13 of 34 passes with an average of 5.09 yards per attempt.
Meanwhile, Brady threw for a record 505 yards in the Super Bowl defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles this past February, just one year after he engineered the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history to earn his record-setting fifth championship against the Atlanta Falcons.
Brady is shattering our notions of what is possible for a quarterback to do in the twilight of his career.
Whether he can achieve his goal and play to age 45 while maintaining his elite level of play will be one of the NFL's most intriguing storylines moving forward. Yes, Father Time is undefeated - but Brady is arguably giving it the biggest battle in sporting history.
(Photos courtesy: Getty Images)