It is finally here. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The big reveal, so to speak (I kid. I kid). The final name of the 25 best Patriots of the last 25 years was the biggest no-brainer in the history of Earth. Even I couldn’t screw that up.
As a refresher, the top 10 went as follows:
10. Mike Vrabel
9. Devin McCourty
8. Adam Vinatieri
7. Tedy Bruschi
6. Logan Mankins
5. Ty Law
4. Vince Wilfork
3. Richard Seymour
2. Rob Gronkowski
As for the honorable-mention types, I considered Rob Ninkovich, Matthew Slater, Patrick Chung, Sebastian Vollmer, Jerod Mayo, Dan Koppen (26th), Kevin Faulk, and David Andrews. But you didn’t come here for that. You came here for the top guy.
1. Tom Brady: Imagine being so great at your job that it just becomes assumed that you’ll perform to that level every single week, rain or shine, hurt or not, surrounded by talent that was - for stretches - less than the peers that you were competing with? And yet, more often than not, elevating those players - and his team - to greater heights? That was what was expected of Brady from about 2003 on, and somehow, with that incredible weight, he delivered like few in any profession ever have or ever could.
“…by 2003, 2004, we won games with Tom Brady,” Bill Belichick said in 2016. “Then from 2004 on, not only did we win games because of Tom Brady, but every week, he was the focal point of our opponents. It was, 'We gotta stop Tom Brady, and what's our game plan to stop Tom Brady?' That's the real greatness. When they're doing something to stop you, and there's a target on your back, and you're still producing at a high level. I always say Tom wasn't great; he wasn't even really good, but he became great."
Trying to sum up his two decades in New England is a near impossibility. For instance, even with the best of the best on this list, it wasn’t always easy to find more than a few defining moments. But for Brady, there weren’t too many run-of-the-mill performances, especially as he matured as a player. Oh sure, there were those random games where he would be rendered ineffective and start getting mad and swinging big because why not, I guess. However, one game rarely became two, which is just another example of his greatness. You see, Brady would be so disappointed by that failure that he would exert every ounce of his being to make sure he didn’t taste that the next time out. You could feel that emanate from him, and we were just asking him questions at the podium.
“We hate losing,” Brady said back in 2014, but really, it could have been any day. “It’s a terrible feeling. It’s a terrible feeling around here. It’s a quality of life issue I think we all face when we lose.”
Funny thing is, I’ve seen plenty of players - some of the best - smile and joke and laugh after a defeat. Brady? Maybe it happened, but I never witnessed it. Darrelle Revis described Brady’s desire to win as a “sickness,” and the number of stories about that legendary competitiveness - i.e., win or else - are everywhere. He’s thrown board games off walls, changed rules on the fly, and turned simple things, like early arrivals, into battles of wills (Rodney Harrison drew the line at 5:30 a.m.).
“There was a part of me that was a psychopath out there,” Brady recalled. “I was extremely hyper-competitive every day. I didn't just feel like, 'Let's get to Sunday and now is the time.' Like, every day was the time. Every day is the time to give your best, and even if it's just practice, do your best in practice, and I learned that in college. If I didn't do my best in practice, I wasn't going to play on the weekend, because there was no entitlement."
That is one of the many, many reasons Brady ascended from a 6th-round pick to a three-time league MVP, six-time All-Pro (3x 1st, 3x 2nd), and seven-time Super Bowl winner (six with NE). Every season, he was intent on proving himself all over again, to teammates, to his unrelenting coach, to the opposition. Hell, to anyone who ever doubted him…ever (including the league vis-a-vis Deflategate. Hell hath no fury like Brady in 2016). In fact, Brady went so far as to create criticism in his own mind.
“I wish you would say, ‘You’re trash, you’re too old, you’re too slow, you can’t get it done no more,’” Brady said after his 6th SB win. “And I’ll say, ‘Thank you very much, I’ll prove you wrong.’”
He did that after he left Foxborough, but this time he had Belichick in his sights. And while that doesn’t add to Brady’s legacy for the purpose of this list, it did - in the minds of some - set the record straight about who mattered most to the wins and losses when he was the QB in New England.
"When you see 'Patriot Way' in the dictionary, it's going to have Tom Brady's pic next to it,’ Danny Amendola said during Brady’s first year in Tampa. “None of those coaches threw any passes. None of those coaches caught any passes. None of those coaches made any tackles. They got guys in the right position because they watch a lot of film and they spend all their time at the facility. But Tom Brady is the Patriot Way, and that's the reason why Tom Brady's in the Super Bowl right now and the Patriots aren't."
Amendola saying that took me right back to the field in Houston in February 2017. The Patriots had done the unthinkable, overcoming a 28-3 deficit in the Super Bowl to beat the Falcons in overtime. If you have a postgame field access pass for the Big Game, you end up in the middle of the celebration. As my videographer and I ran onto the field, we encountered a joyous Duron Harmon. I asked him how this was possible. His response, as he put his arm around me, went like this: “Mike, we have Tom Brady. When you have Tom Brady, you are never out of it. I’ve been telling you this for a long time. Tom Brady is the GOAT.”
I’ll give you another example of Brady’s greatness (there are roughly a million), but this one didn’t count in the standings or add to his stats. It happened on August 5th, 2016. Belichick decided to have an intrasquad scrimmage. Brady on one side. Third-year pro Jimmy Garoppolo on the other. The head coach gave Jimmy G the first-team offensive line and Rob Gronkowski. I don’t know if Brady will ever confess that he wanted to snatch Garoppolo’s soul that day, but he did. He went 25-of-25, threw two TDs, and had Belichick not blown a couple plays dead, would have had two more. But it was also how he acted throughout, yelling, screaming, exhorting. It was next level. Team Brady won, and the old vet left no doubt who the man was/is/will always be.
“I think it’s just a way to elevate everybody’s game,” Brady said of his intensity. “It’s a very competitive team, it’s a competitive sport. You’ve got to bring it mentally every day. You’ve got to have an attitude about you. We have a lot of guys on this team that bring that. Trying to push their buttons, I love to do that, and they push it back. I think that gets the best out of everybody.”
"Here is what you need to understand: There is not a guy in the National Football League who loves football more than Tom Brady," Matthew Slater said. "And it's not just that he loves going out on Sundays; he loves preparation, he loves taking care of his body, he loves meetings, he loves film, coaching other guys. He loves every bit of it. And that's what drives him to be great."
Go ahead and try to pick your favorite Brady season. I’m not sure anyone could argue with whatever you decide.
Was it 2001, when the pudgy 6th-rounder led the Pats to an improbable championship? The numbers weren’t eye-popping (18 TDs, 12 INTs), but the end result, after replacing the injured $100 million man in Drew Bledsoe, was. How about 2003, when he finished third in the MVP voting and led the Pats to a second title? In 2005, Brady led the NFL in passing yards (4,110), and in 2006 he elevated a bunch of mediocre wide receivers to an AFC Championship Game appearance.
2007 was record-setting from an individual (68.9%, 4,806 yards, 50 TDs, 8.3 yds per attempt, 1st MVP) and team standpoint (16-0 regular season) but ended just short of the history they were all aiming for. In ‘09, Brady was named Comeback Player of the Year after returning from the torn ACL (and then complications) suffered in week one the year before. He won the MVP again in 2010, throwing 36 touchdowns and just four interceptions (!) and backed it up by throwing for over 5,200 yards in 2011.
There were three more Super Bowl-winning seasons (2014, 2016, 2018) and another MVP (2017). If I had to pick one, it would probably be post-Deflategate Brady. 28 TDs and just 2 picks in 12 starts, then averaged 379 yards per game in the postseason, capped by an SB MVP performance (43-of-62, 466 yards, 2 TDs) in that comeback win over the Falcons.
"Tom's had a lot of great ones,'' Belichick said postgame. "But yeah, tonight was one of them.”
"There were a lot of plays that coach talks about. You never know which one is going to be the Super Bowl winner,'' Brady said. "There were probably 30 of those plays tonight, and if any one of those were different, the outcome could have been different.''
The relationship between Brady and Belichick was mutually beneficial, but when you’re together that long, there are bound to be cracks. The friction was real, despite denials during and after. But the two men appear to have mended fences, and I especially appreciated this from Belichick back in 2023 while appearing on Brady’s podcast.
"Tom talks about how much I taught him in those meetings, but I learned so much from Tom," Belichick said of Brady. "I never played quarterback, and I never saw the game through the quarterback's eyes; I saw it through a coach's eyes. What Tom would tell me that he saw and how he saw it, it was incredible how during the game he'd come off and I'd say 'what happened on that play' and he'd go through eight things that happened...and then you go back and look at the film and every one of those things happened in the exact sequence that he explained it to you on the field coming off. I'm like, 'this guy sees everything.'"
"We had a really good relationship, especially in the film room and talking football and all that, that I'll always treasure. And I learned so much from him, because nobody sees the game better than Tom Brady sees it or saw it, and I was so lucky to learn from him and his vision that - no other coach will get that experience. It's incredible."
Not only did Belichick get to experience that (though it would have been nice if he had lightened up in their final years together so that it didn’t end up as their final years), but we did too. I never want to put limits on what a great player could accomplish, but it sure feels like we won’t see anyone play as long as Brady did at the level he did. He might have been that once-in-a-lifetime story and star, and we had a front row seat for damn near the entire run.
“I never once in my life ever said I wanted to be the best of all time. Ever. I wanted to be the best I could be, period. ... It didn’t matter what the other guys were doing. It mattered what I was doing.”