Better than all the rest...
"Is Tom Brady the best QB ever?" by Dan Shaughnessy | Globe Columnist, January 20, 2013
.... Professional sports loves “best” debates. Here in New England, where the best local franchise will play the Baltimore Ravens in Foxborough on Sunday night with a ticket to Super Bowl XLVII at stake, we have been graced by several bests.
Ted Williams was the greatest hitter who ever lived. Bill Russell is the most prolific winner (11 championships) in the history of team sports. Bobby Orr is mentioned (alongside Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky) any time puckheads argue about the best hockey player of all time.
And then there is the Patriots’ Tom Brady — the fourth horseman of our sports Mount Rushmore and perhaps the greatest quarterback of all-time.
Our Tom has vaulted over career-long rival Peyton Manning. Like any great quarterback, he is going to be measured against John Elway, Dan Marino, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Otto Graham, and Slingin’ Sammy Baugh.
But Brady is in the discussion now and forever. He is almost, without argument, the greatest football player of the 21st century, and if he can deliver two more victories in the next two games, he is going to ascend to the top shelf of the quarterback’s trophy den.
Twelve years ago, he was an anonymous sixth-round draft pick (No. 199 overall) backing up Drew Bledsoe for Bill Belichick’s inaugural 5-11 Patriots team. Today he is a sports star and global celebrity inching toward the Muhammad Ali/Michael Jordan pantheon. Winning championships, selling Ugg boots, married to the wealthiest supermodel on the planet, Brady is our new millennium’s Jock Kennedy, a Camelot Quarterback with a chance to lead his team to a sixth Super Bowl. No quarterback has led a team to six Super Bowls.
Brady threw three touchdown passes in last Sunday’s playoff win over the Houston Texans. He has thrown 41 career TD passes in playoff games, third on the all-time list behind Montana (45) and glory hog Brett Favre (44). Favre, Montana, and Manning are the only quarterbacks with more postseason passing yards, and Brady needs only 227 yards today to move to the top of the heap.
Brady already has more postseason completions and victories (17) than any other quarterback in the history of the league. Among quarterbacks with 15 playoff starts, he has the highest winning percentage of all-time (17-6, .739).
The regular-season numbers deliver the same message. Brady’s lifetime winning percentage is .777 (136-39), easily the best of the Super Bowl era. He ranks fifth in career touchdown passes and probably has enough seasons left to threaten all of the leaders except Favre.
What separates Brady from Favre and other gunslingers is his extraordinary protection of the football. Last week’s zero turnover performance against Houston is typical of what we’ve come to expect from Brady. In 2010-11, Brady set an NFL record with 358 pass attempts between interceptions.
In 2012, Brady threw for 34 touchdowns with 8 interceptions. In 2010, it was 36 and 4. In 2007, Brady threw 50 touchdown passes with only 8 interceptions.
This is taking care of the football. It is what usually separates winners from losers in the NFL.
There is not much chest-thumping about any of this in Foxborough. Bill Belichick is not a man given to public introspection. In the moments after last Sunday’s easy win over Houston, when the Hoodie was asked about his 12-year playoff ride with Brady, the coach answered, “I don’t know. I think right now the focus is just happy to win this game and get on to Baltimore. We can reflect back on some other years some other time.’’
This is not simply Belichick being typically obtuse. The coach is clever and careful. He knows it’s a mistake to put a ribbon on a package that is not ready to be wrapped. He also knows that you are only as good as your last championship. The Patriots have not won a Super Bowl since beating the Philadelphia Eagles in Jacksonville eight years ago.
After starting his playoff career with a 10-0 record and three Super Bowl championships, Brady is a rather pedestrian 7-6 in playoff games and 0-2 in Super Bowls.
QB-12 has also struggled against the Ravens in playoff games. Brady has five interceptions and only two touchdown passes in the two playoff games against Baltimore (a 33-14 loss in 2010 and a 23-20 victory last year).
“It’s never easy,’’ Brady said when asked about the Ravens. “There’s not an easy throw and there won’t be an easy throw this weekend. I think they really challenge you.’’
A lot of things are unspoken in Foxborough. But anyone who knows Brady and Belichick knows what is at stake regarding their respective legacies. Losing the Super Bowl to the New York Giants in Glendale, Ariz., shocked the undefeated Patriots in 2008. The Patriots succumbed to another late-game rally by the Giants in last year’s Super Bowl.
“Believe me, I have thought a lot about that myself,’’ Brady said Friday.
Bitter defeats make it easy to stay humble. Now there is a chance to get back, a chance for redemption, a chance to join Montana and Bradshaw as the only quarterbacks to win four Super Bowls. It starts Sunday night when Brady has a chance to win his sixth AFC Championship.
Meanwhile, he will continue to dodge the “legacy” question.
“To tell you the truth, I really don’t think about any of that,’’ Brady said this past week. “I’m just trying to win a football game this week.
“I really love playing football, so I think a lot of my time and energy is spent focused on trying to help this team win and trying to be a good teammate and a good leader. I take those things very seriously.
“I try not to buy into what people say or think. I just live my life and certainly enjoy being the quarterback of this team.’’
Maybe the best quarterback.
Ever.
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UPDATE: Patriots pounded by Ravens
Maybe not the best.
Ravens bring an abrupt end to Patriots’ season
This should not be a huge shock. The Patriots were good this year,
but they were not Super Bowl good. A lot of it was mythology. New
England was artificially inflated by the pathetic AFC East, a weak
conference, and the perfectly timed implosion of the 11-1 Houston
Texans. Houston’s fold enabled the Patriots to get to the AFC title game
without playing a legitimate playoff team. The Patriots finally found a worthy rival Sunday and it was bloody.
This was a beatdown. The Patriots wound up being exposed, just as the
Texans were exposed.
????????
WTF? Sports guy singing a different the morning after a loss? They must assume you meat-heads can't remember a thing on a day-to-day basis.
Also see: At Boston bars, excited Patriots fans leave deflated
More tears:
"Earl Weaver, 82, influential, combative Orioles manager" by Bruce Weber | New York Times, January 20, 2013
NEW YORK — Earl Weaver, the Hall of Fame manager who brought pugnacity and pragmatism to the Baltimore Orioles dugout, leading the team to five 100-win seasons, four American League pennants, and the 1970 World Series championship, and tormenting a generation of umpires along the way, died early Saturday. He was 82....
Mr. Weaver was among the most influential managers in modern baseball history, and among the most combative as well. His imperiousness as a leader made battles with his players as frequent as those with umpires.
Aware that the outcome of any season might rest on the outcome of any game, and that the outcome of any game on a play, a pitch, or an umpire’s call, he marshaled a scholar’s familiarity with the rule book, a statistician’s data, a psychologist’s motivational skills, and a heckler’s needle into a relentless advocacy for the Orioles....
He managed the Orioles as a pragmatist rather than as a hunch player, drawing on his observations during a two- decade career in the minor leagues, first as a good-field-no-hit infielder and later as a manager. Mr. Weaver relished hitters who could get on base and hit the long ball, starting pitchers who could go deep in a game, and fielders who could steal runs.
“Pitching, defense, and the three-run homer,’’ was Mr. Weaver’s stated formula for winning ballgames.
Mr. Weaver’s Orioles featured a number of great players — including the Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Eddie Murray, and Jim Palmer — but knowing that depth helped win pennants, he was a shrewd roster builder.
His game strategy was built around treasuring each of his team’s allotted 27 outs and protecting them by eschewing conventional gambits like the sacrifice bunt and the hit-and-run. And he is often credited for his pioneering use of statistics in the dugout.
Long before computer analyses and sabermetrics (the study of baseball statistics) became integral to managerial strategy, long before the so-called Moneyball era that championed on-base percentage and slugging percentage as crucial measures of a player’s value, Mr. Weaver recognized that baseball’s traditional measures of success — batting average, earned run average, and the like — were insufficient for his purposes.
He knew, for example, that certain hitters fared better against certain pitchers and that sometimes weak hitters were better against some pitchers than stronger hitters were. So he kept tabs on, among other things, how each of his hitters had performed in the past against individual pitchers on opposing teams.
The weak-hitting shortstop Mark Belanger was often sent in to play when Jim Kern, a fireballing relief pitcher for Cleveland, Texas, and others, was on the mound: Inexplicably, Belanger hit .625 against him in his career....
With a sandpaper voice, a taste for beer (he was twice charged with drunken driving), and a tense, competitive manner, Mr. Weaver was a crusty personality, though he had a sharp wit and a well-developed sense of mischief.
Once when outfielder Pat Kelly was irritated that Mr. Weaver was not giving him enough time for a pregame prayer meeting, he said, ‘‘Earl, don’t you want us to walk with the Lord?’’ Mr. Weaver replied that he would rather have Kelly walk with the bases loaded.
Most fans will remember Mr. Weaver for his tirades against umpires....
The Orioles promoted him to manager in 1968 and won the American League pennant the next year, winning 109 games during the regular season.
To the astonishment of all, however, they lost the World Series to a team widely believed to be inferior: the so-called Miracle Mets....
In 1970, the Orioles won 108 games and did win the Series, defeating the Cincinnati Reds. And in 1971, they were American League champions again — but lost the Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The Orioles lost to the Pirates again in 1979, dropping the Series in seven games after leading by three games to one....
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"Stan Musial, 92; one of the greatest hitters in baseball" by Mark Feeney | Globe Staff, January 20, 2013
Stan Musial, “Stan the Man,” who was the National League’s preeminent player in the decade after World War II and whose 22 seasons playing the outfield and first base for the St. Louis Cardinals earned him a place in baseball’s Hall of Fame, died Saturday evening at his home surrounded by family, according to the Cardinals. He was 92.
Mr. Musial had been in declining health for several years and had Alzheimer’s disease, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported....
For all that Mr. Musial may have approached perfection, he never had a mystique, the way his slightly older counterparts Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams did, or the somewhat younger Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. Mr. Musial played far from the New York media spotlight. He had no hallowed statistic attached to his name, like DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak or Williams’ .406 batting average in 1941....
Wasn't that a time when players with darker skins were not allowed to play?
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