Tom Brady: Is the New England Quarterback Still Hall of Fame-Worthy?

Great players often play on great teams. While players are voted upon individually, history indicates that players are often enshrined in groups, and the coattails of elite players often carry players to Canton who might not have arrived on their own steam. For every Bart Starr and Jerry Kramer, a Paul Hornung slips in.

For every Franco Harris, Joe Greene and Jack Lambert, a Lynn Swann gets past pro pigskin's velvet rope.

The selection process for the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a curious one, with discussions held in secret by 44 media members. These writers sit around a table, perhaps eating chips and drinking soda, while they lord over the resumés the careers of professional athletes, deciding which will get the stamp of validation.

While the process has its flaws, it is a process, albeit an imperfect one for a difficult and thankless task.

Parsing a player's contribution to a football team, from the other gaggle of contributors is nearly impossible.

Even the most technically fluent media types would have trouble dissecting one player's accomplishments from the other 10 on his side of the ball, from the other 45 on his roster and from the system implemented by his coaching staff and organization.

Even thinking about such an undertaking makes my head hurt, and I consider myself to have a nose for this sort of thing.

But let's try. Let's see if we can incise an active player's career, stretch its entrails across a veritable desk and see if its stuff is worthy of Canton. Why should the fun be limited only those 44?

Why should such an aristocracy be limited to those in the media?

Let's discuss Tom Brady. 

By league rule, the New England Patriots quarterback won't be eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame until five years after his retirement. But his enshrinement into the Living The Dream Hall of Fame appears to be a lock. The 44 selectors could put him in this weekend, and the quibble over such a move would be negligible.

The only question would be whether the bronze bust of Brady's likeness had long hair or short.

The California native meets Canton's historically pertinent standard. He has played in and won multiple Super Bowls. Great players stuck on bad teams have been traditionally overlooked by the selectors.

Probably it's because they react to Super Bowl rings in the same way that twentysomething blonde women react to engagement rings, with excessive hand-fluttering and screaming. Arguing with a person in such a state is typically futile business.

No man has started more Super Bowls than Brady has at quarterback, and only John Elway has started as many, five. His seven Pro Bowl selections over a 12-year career represent a standard of excellence.

Yet some suggested that by losing a second Super Bowl, his candidacy for Canton was in jeopardy, as if the New York Giants were scatological debris in Brady's punch bowl.

When an NFL Network analyst was asked about Eli Manning's own Hall of Fame candidacy, he said a quarterback couldn't will a team to the Super Bowl by himself, but Tom Brady very nearly did that in 2011.

Of the five teams Brady piloted to the big game, the 2011 team was easily the worst, featuring a defense that had to work its a** off to be average and a running game that barely averaged four yards per carry.

While his defense was surrendering field goals and 400 yards per game, Brady was doing everything he had done for the last three years, throwing a disproportionate number of balls to Wes Welker, the whitest of white receivers.

That made way for tight end Rob Gronkowski this season, who might qualify as the second whitest if were to measure for such a thing.

While other players have been shuffled off the Patriots roster since the mid-2000s, Brady remains under center as his legacy remains under the microscope.

And now for a counterpoint: If only we could have removed Tom Brady from his team for an entire season and measured how "(P - t), where P equals the Patriots and t equals...well, you know.

How would that team have fared independently? Supposed we were to witness this in 2008. And  If that team were to finish with 11 wins, would that be conclusive evidence to the notion of Brady as an interchangeable part in a dynamic offense?

Would that expose Brady as a system guy?

What if we were to discuss the wretched AFC East? Could we hold that against him as well?

Aside from the recent resurgence of the New York Jets, the teams in that division have been...let's say underperforming. Only in Matt Cassel's stand-in 2008 season did another team manage a winning record.

Aside from the Jets' recent successes, every divisional foe since then has finished the season at .500 or worse. Ironically, the Indianapolis Colts left that division in the league's 2002 realignment to beat up on their own sorry slate of teams in the AFC South.

And those big game-winning drives for which Brady receives so much credit? Meh. In Super Bowls 36 and 38 (sorry, I'm not typing out all of those Roman numerals), Brady drove his team 53 and 31 yards respectively. Those are more like wedge shots than drives. While those are notable under pressure, they're hardly heroic.

Having said all that, those points don't generate enough noise to keep Brady out of Canton, nor should they. And consider Brady's status as a transcendent entertainment icon.

No, seriously.

When's the last time you got so mad about another dude's hair? I remember a certain Jets quarterback from the late 1960s that occupied so many media minutes and magazine covers, albeit less reluctantly. That guy also won a Super Bowl. That guy, Joe Namath, also got in the hall.

Last Sunday, Tom Brady lost a Super Bowl. He cried. He answered a few questions from the press. And while his legacy might have been on shaky ground, even for a moment, he managed to find his way out of Lucas Oil Stadium. He still shared an embrace and a kiss with his supermodel wife.

Some busts are better than others.