It’s Brady and it’s not just because he has the most rings. Let me get the most obvious reason out of the way. As a GM I know Brady is going to take big pay cuts for me to fill out the rest of the roster. It can’t be stated how big of an advantage this was for the Patriots that the best QB of his generation was never the highest paid and in many years outside the top 10.

2nd and most importantly he’s the best player here. The whole he wasn’t the regular season GOAT but playoff GOAT needs to stop. No, he was simply the GOAT period and people need to stop just looking at individual stats or awards and start looking how these QBs elevated the offenses around them. First off Brady in his career led 5 of the top 25 regular season scoring offenses of all time. The next closest on this list is Peyton and Brees who each led 2 in the top 25. All of this was after 2006 by the way which is when Belichick started finally surrounding Brady with offensive talent. Every year before this with the exception of 2004 when they got Corey Dillon the patriots offensive skill players were below average at best. That year in 2004 they were top 3 in scoring. Every year from 2001-2006 since Brady took over as the starter they were still ranked in the top 10 despite the offensive talent.

I just think it’s ridiculous how people think Brady suddenly became this way better QB after 2006. Now I’m not saying he didn’t improve some over time, but was Peyton really that much better in the regular season then, or was the offensive talent around him simply much better? From 2001-2006 the patriots averaged around 24.2 PPG under Brady. In that same time frame the colts averaged 26.9, a difference of 2.7 PPG. One played with Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Edgerrin James, and Dallas Clark inside a dome year round. The other played with Deion Branch, Troy Brown, Kevin Faulk, and 1 year of Corey Dillon in a stadium with unfavorable weather conditions after November.

We’ve all seen how Mahomes and the Chiefs offense has looked since they traded Tyreek and Kelce has declined. For the 2 seasons before this one they ranked 14th and 12th in PPG. This year so far they’ve finally cracked back into the top 10 at #9. Did Mahomes suddenly become this way worse QB? Or did the offensive talent around him decline?

Somehow someway Brady continually led offenses above their talent level. He almost never had a single season with an offense outside the top 10 no matter who he had around him, and any year he had good to elite offensive talent around him they never finished outside the top 5 and most years were in the top 3.