Kieran Shannon: It’s hard to think of anyone who has defied the odds like evergreen Tom Brady

Tom Brady's doing it for his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, much to the same level as he did for the New England Patriots for almost two full decades. AP Photo/Matt Ludtke

It’s one of the quirks and quandaries of US team sport that any argument over the greatness of any of its protagonists has inherent limitations for Americans and everyone else alike.

Too often Stateside commentators hail the achievement or ability of a player, coach, team or owner as “the best in all sport”. As if there is nothing else outside of the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB or the USA itself and something like European soccer is non-existent or merely trivial, although there is an increasing awareness of the merits of Messi and indeed their own Mia Hamm since the turn of the millennium.

But it can work the other way in how the rest of the world can underestimate just how remarkable some of those American sportspeople are.

For the most part we can appreciate a LeBron James or any other NBA superstar because their sport is more than an American sport. It is truly international. The NBA might be based in America but people from all over the globe play in it as well as follow it. Most countries have their own national team. It is an Olympic sport with its own world championships. The USA may usually end up taking gold but an Argentina, Spain, or France could rattle them, and at some stage have beaten them.

Baseball, while not quite having the same spread, especially in Europe, also has considerable diversity. No less than 28% of the 2020 MLB were born outside of America, with the Dominican Republic alone providing more than 100 current players. This summer the Olympics will feature a baseball tournament. It’s big in Japan, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Cuba, not just California.

American football, in contrast, is solely, well, American football. Only 3% of current NFL players were born outside the States.

The world might be watching this Sunday night but it doesn’t play it.

And so, while the cynics and non-believers can’t quite grasp that the US is more like a whole continent than a mere country, or comprehend the complexity and bravery of what it’s like to be a quarterback having to scan that field and fire that ball while a herd of opponents try to smash you, that nagging question hovers: If the rest of the world doesn’t play the sport, can an American football player be considered, well, world class?

It is at this point we can safely contend that Tom Brady can. Indeed this year has underlined that he’s not just world class but one of the eight wonders of the world.

Brady was born the same month Elvis died, which means he’s now 43, older than what Elvis was when he died. Yet here he is, about to play in his 10th Superbowl, reminding everyone, including one former collaborator by the name of Bill Belichick, that he is still the King and undeniably the GOAT.

It’s hard to think of anyone who has defied the odds and Father Time like this. We’ve had boxers and goalkeepers compete and win into their mid-40s, from Archie Moore and George Foreman to Dino Zoff and Gianluigi Buffon, but other than that, hardly anyone, not at the level of significance and magnificence as Brady anyhow.

Michael Jordan maybe doesn’t get enough credit for some of the numbers and performances he put up in his 40s, but no one can dispute the guy who suited up for the Washington Wizards was only a shadow of the guy who played for the Chicago Bulls.

Even Christy Ring packed it up for Cork at 43 after a seventh consecutive campaign falling short in Munster. Yet here’s Brady, doing it for his new team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, much to the same level as he did for the New England Patriots for almost two full decades. Never has longevity and greatness rhymed so well.

The stats tell some of the story. During the regular season he recorded 4,633 passing yards, the third most in the NFL this season and the fourth-highest in his 21-season career, and throwing 40 touchdown passes, the second most in the league this season. In the playoffs then he has outduelled some other all-time veterans and greats such as Drew Brees and Aaron Rogers to take a team that were 7-9 last season all the way to only their second ever Superbowl.

But in Brady the Bucs got more than an incredible quarter-back; they got one of the greatest winners and leaders in all of sport — American, global, it’s all the same on this one — history.

Early in the season Jenna Laine from ESPN detailed how Brady exhibited Klopp-like affection as well as Keane and Kobe-like admonishments to extract and demand greater levels of performance from his team-mates.

A fourth-choice running back, Ke’Shawn Vaughn was beyond himself not just for scoring a touchdown off a Brady pass in a comeback win over the Los Angeles Chargers but also because Brady ran over and said: “I love you, Sneak!” Vaughn must have thought: “What? The GOAT doesn’t just know me but my nickname?”

Other team-mates in contrast were subjected to tougher love. One of the first things Brady did upon signing for the Bucs last March was call their centre, Ryan Jensen. Within five minutes he’d told Jensen that he can’t stand it when his centres have sweaty backsides because they lead to wet hands and bad passes. Jensen would have to put towels and baby powder inside his pants. “It’s been an adjustment, having a towel down the rear side,” Jensen said, “but if that’s what Tom wants and that’s gonna help him be a better quarterback, then I’m gonna do what I have to do.”

At training camp he continued to set the tone for the season. At the very first scrimmage he hollered, expressing his displeasure at how slow his offence ran into the huddle. Right there was their introduction to what his old team the Patriots meant when they talked about culture and leadership — someone calling out what is and what shouldn’t be tolerated around here.

“That was kind of a new thing for us.” Cameron Brate said. “It’s something that over the years was probably a bad habit [of ours], so he got on us pretty good about that.”

It’s not like he won’t tolerate mistakes. If anything he accepts and stresses that mistakes are part of the game. “If we ran a bad rote or it was incomplete, [Brady would say]: ‘Hey, don’t worry about it. We’ll get the next one,’” Brate noted. “He’s really encouraging when you had a good catch or you ran a good route. But there’ve been times when he’s kind of gotten on guys if it’s not up to the standard we’re hoping for. I think he does a good job balancing the two.”

The way Brady has this season added to his legacy does not diminish Belichick’s or the Patriots’. But it does vindicate his decision to leave them. It was an astonishing act of courage, adventure, and self-belief. Even someone as obsessed with winning as Kobe Bryant chose to stay in Los Angeles in his final years, his desire to be a one-career, one-franchise man outweighing his yearning for a sixth ring.

Brady already has six rings but he wanted a crack at a seventh. He didn’t want to be a regretful Roy Keane wondering what a few seasons at Real Madrid would have been like.

“If I don’t go, I’ll never know what I could have accomplished,” he wrote in the Players’ Tribune last spring, aged 42. “Wanting to do something is different from actually doing it. If I stood at the bottom of a mountain, and told myself I could scale the highest peak, but then didn’t do anything about it, what’s the point?”

After climbing all those mountains, he again only saw mountains. Now he’s just one step from its summit again.

A GOAT indeed.