Tom Brady: Why People Need to Relax and Realize He's Still Tom Brady

Three Super Bowl rings. Two Super Bowl MVPs. Two regular season MVPS. NFL-record 50 touchdown passes in a single season. Reaching the AFC Championship game with Reche Caldwell as your No. 1 receiver. Two minutes away from the first 19-0 season in NFL history.

You would think to take away from all these accolades, Tom Brady would have to single handily blow the Super Bowl by throwing six interceptions and no touchdowns while completing under 40 percent of his passes.

Well, apparently compiling a passer rating of over 90 while completing a Super Bowl record 16 consecutive passes is enough to diminish all that Brady has ever accomplished.

He’s now too old. He lost the clutch gene. He’s too Hollywood. He’ll never make another Super Bowl.

So let’s get this straight. Tom Brady brought a team with the NFL’s worst statistical defense—the worst defense to ever make it to the Super Bowl—threw for the second most yards in NFL history, tied a playoff record with six touchdown passes in the divisional round against the Broncos, came within one dropped pass of winning his record-tying fourth Super Bowl and he is now suddenly “past his prime.”

I realize that Patriots fans are upset, I’m one of them.

They were once again defeated in the Super Bowl on a fourth quarter touchdown drive by Eli Manning. All they’ve been hearing for the past few days is how great Eli Manning is and how he has dethroned Tom Brady as the NFL’s incumbent Mr. Clutch.

This may be true. Eli might currently be the NFL’s best late game quarterback. It might be just me, but to acknowledge Eli’s outstanding play doesn’t mean we have to take away from Brady’s.

Brady is coming off one of the best seasons of his career. He threw for 5,235 yards and 39 touchdown passes, had a quarterback rating of 105.6 and did all of this without a legitimate deep threat.

Where did people get the idea that he is on the decline? Do people realize the team he took to the Super Bowl had Julian Edelman as a key defensive contributor?

Brett Favre played at a high level until he was 40 years old. I don’t know if Brady can match what Favre did, but I believe he can play at an elite level for another 3-4 years. What AFC team has the firepower necessary to compete with a quarterback of Tom Brady’s caliber?

By no means did Tom Bray play one of his best games in last week’s Super Bowl. By no means did he play one of his worst, either.

There are no signs of Brady slowing down. If you say there are, I don’t know what games you’ve been watching.