The numbers, served in bits or seen in total, are beyond surreal. Just glimpse at some playoff records Tom Brady set just this season:
-Brady is the only QB to start in a Super Bowl at age 40 or older – and this is his third time
-Brady is the only QB to start in a Super Bowl in three different decades
-Brady has defeated 19 different NFL teams in the playoffs
-Brady's 10th Super Bowl appearance is more than the Titans, Texans, Jets, Saints, Lions, Jaguars, Chargers, Cardinals, Browns, Bengals, and Panthers combined (9)
-If you chopped his career in half, making two separate careers, Brady would still have the most Super Bowl appearances (5 each), playoff wins (16 and 17), and highest winning percentage (.780 and .757) in history in each career for an NFL QB
Those are the Cliffs Notes, as it would take several servers to save and spit out Brady's Magna Carta-length list of gridiron records, but perhaps he's saved his finest prose for the latter chapters of his football bio. What Brady did in New England was mind-numbing, and while that was the place where he set his Secretariat-like lead on all other NFL QBs for playoff deeds, a look through his forest of Lombardi Trophies sees 2020 may just be the most magical run of his enchanted career.
In New England, Brady was a member of the football equivalent of a Navy SEAL team. The Patriots had a system that cut out fat and added focus, and was run by arguably the best coach in NFL history in Bill Belichick. They make marginal players better and turn selfish players into selfless players, and, despite rarely having the most talented team in the sport, they often have the toughest. Then, consider that Bray ran the offense and Belichick ran the defense, meaning your two crucial leaders were also your hardest workers. Every NFL player tells us teams run from the top-down, and always follow the example set by the team's head coach and its best player – so while we can't marginalize Brady's deeds, he was part of the finest football machine since Lombardi's Packers.
But then he leaves New England, at age 43, near the end of his career and in the middle of a global pandemic that has flipped every facet of life on its head. In a normal season, Brady would be adjusting to a new coach, new system, new players, and a new region. Now consider he's had less than half the reps he'd usually have with his teammates, since there was no training camp, no preseason games, or OTAs. Brady, who relies religiously on practice, essentially walked blindly into this season, sans a summer snap.
And doesn't that make this his greatest act ever as a pro football player? If he wins this game he will join Peyton Manning as the only QBs to win a Super Bowl with two teams. If he wins he will become the only player to win a Super Bowl with an AFC and NFC club. Those are the kind of boxes he will check off. Nothing epic with a win this year, but the fact that he got here is. Seriously, will anyone think of Brady or these Bucs a failure if they lose to that doomsday machine called the Kansas City Chiefs?
Indeed, Super Bowl LV surely matters to Brady, to slay all the dragons he's facing, real and imagined, and add to his laughable lead in Super Bowl rings. But frankly just getting here is impressive enough. Maybe it doesn't make the final score academic. But the fact that he's simply in this game, and is much more than ornamental - as Manning was in his second Super Bowl win - is a salute to Brady's greatness.
And a quarterback who will leave the game with almost all the salient records will best be known for the things that don't end up in the archives - such as reaching this most unlikely Super Bowl, and what it took to get here.
Follow Jason Keidel on Twitter: @JasonKeidel
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