Cases for the G.O.A.T

  I hadn’t been watching much pro football this season. My favorite New York Giants crashed from an 11 win playoff season last year to the second-worst team in the league this year with a paltry three wins which got both the coach and general manager fired. When the Giants are playing poorly there isn’t much about football that interests me until the playoffs start.

  This year’s playoffs was unlike most years. Perennial playoff teams like the Seahawks, Cowboys, and Packers dropped off the radar and new teams like the Titans, Bills, Jaguars, and Rams made it back to the playoffs after years in the doldrums. A constant over the last decade has been the appearances of the New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. The teams have only missed the playoffs eight times this century. The Pats and Steelers had the best records in the AFC. Everyone was expecting a titanic AFC championship game between the twountil the Jacksonville Jaguars pulled off a playoff upset in Pittsburgh and even gave the Patriots all they could handle in the AFC championship game before losing 24-20.

  The Patriots took on the Eagles in this year’s Big Game (I would call it the Super Round Dish or the Great Bowl but those terms are copyrighted by the NFL) where they lost to the Eagles 41-33. The game was decided by the Patriots being unable to stop the Eagles offense after getting their first lead in the game late in the fourth quarter and the Eagles managing to force a Tom Brady fumble after getting the lead back with two minutes left. This was a deserved Eagles victory as they played better than the Patriots on offense, defense, and special teams despite playing backup quarterback Nick Foles after losing starter Carson Wentz late in the regular season. I have to confess to rooting for the Patriots to win because as much as I dislike Patriots owner Robert Kraft I root for the success of their coach Bill Belichick due to his roots as the Giants defensive coordinator in their first two Super Bowl seasons. Belichick’s defense was miserable on Sunday and was almost bailed out by 40-year old quarterback Tom Brady who was nearly as unstoppable as the Eagles and nearly pulled the victory out with his 505 passing yards and four touchdowns.

  This was the Patriots third ‘Big Game’ in four years. I believe the country was suffering from ‘Patriot Fatigue’ because there was as little buzz leading up to this game as I can remember in the past 20 years. One storyline in particular that caught my attention was the debate over whether Brady would supersede Michael Jordan as the team sport G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time) with a sixth NFL championship title or whether he had already superseded Jordan. You can find a couple of topical articles here and here.

  The reason the sixth championship held so much importance for Brady’s side of this debate was because Jordan was on six championship teams which is held to be the gold standard although Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also was on six championship teams and super role player Robert Horry won seven rings with three different teams. At his current pace and longevity LeBron James will retire with the all-time NBA scoring record and is on a streak of leading his teams to seven NBA finals in a row but continually finds his acceptance as the greatest basketball player of all time challenged by his only having half of Jordan’s championships because his teams have lost five of the eight finals he has been in.

  Since Brady did not get his sixth championship on Sunday the GOAT debate has been muted until the fall in favor of the supreme performance of the Eagles. I would be comfortable saying Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time and leave it at that. He has been in a record 8 NFL championship games and was a key part of his team for all of them. Both Brady and Jordan were fortunate to be on teams that were well run with championship caliber rosters for them chase their championships with. I don’t subscribe to Jordan being the greatest NBA player of all time (my vote goes to Julius Erving with Kareem and Wilt Chamberlain also ahead of Jordan) but when it comes a choice of having one player to be on your team in a must win game I couldn’t argue with Jordan. The Jordan GOAT argument is not just based on his six championships – it is based on his six championship in his only six finals appearances with six NBA Finals Most Valuable Player awards in an eight year span where Jordan missed a season and a half in his first retirement. Brady’s five championships over 15 years are amazing but only in last year’s victory over the Falcons did he conduct a game winning drive and that one ended in a running touchdown by James White – not a touchdown pass. Brady’s other four championships were decided by late field goals and defensive stands. I’m not trying to lessen Brady’s impact but he simply does not have the signature touchdown drive like Joe Montana did in 1989 against the Bengals, much less Jordan’s signature championship winning shot against the Jazz in 1998. The thing that is missing from Jordan’s pedigree is any film clips of him as the defeated party in a championship series which compares well against the clip of Brady having the ball stripped from him on Sunday while trying to lead the Patriots to a go-ahead score or being pummeled by the Giants in the other two championship games he was defeated in. The closest we can come to similar Jordan video was his 1995 playoff series against the Magic when he still had his thicker baseball body and dribbled the ball off his feet for turnovers late in the deciding game.

  The argument for Brady and James as the greatest team players of all time is based on longevity and I fell has a large part I the desire of fandom to want to believe they are witnessing the greatest of all time. Jordan’s case is rooted in the perfection of his championship pedigree – six Finals, six Championships, and six Finals MVP awards. The person who gets the short shrift in this argument is Bill Russell of the Celtics who played 13 season, made the finals 12 times, and won 11 championships. The NBA Finals MVP award is named after Russell but his 11 championships in 13 years is so beyond anything ever accomplished in team sports that it just cannot be put into any context and is largely set aside as an anomaly so we can believe that six championships is the gold standard. For this day and age Jordan is still the greatest but the true GOAT has to be Russell who only misses my list of all-time greats because I never saw him play.