Sep 24, 2016 4 min read

If you want to get a dirty look, suggest to someone under, say, the age of 40, Tom Brady isn’t the greatest quarterback of all time. If you’d prefer a punch in the mouth, suggest it to anybody in New England.

I’ve gotten plenty of dirty looks and a dirty tweet or two just for suggesting he might be overrated. I wrote a few years ago I wouldn’t trade Ben Roethlisberger for him. At the time, the differences in their ages was a factor, but it was and still is because I have always thought Roethlisberger would be better playing for the Patriots than Brady would be playing for the Steelers.

I’ve watched a lot of quarterbacks and I’ve never seen one get more time to throw to more wide open receivers than Brady. He has rarely been asked to make a difficult throw.

I’ve also never been smart enough to articulate why I think Brady is a very good – OK, great – quarterback who benefits from playing in an ingenious system that has taken advantage of the NFL’s rules that put defensive backs at such a disadvantage.

Then along comes Jimmy Garoppolo, the third-year guy who was handed the job of Patriots’ quarterback when Brady was suspended for doing something that also may have fattened his individual and team statistics – cheating.

Garoppolo started the first two games of the season and put up super-human numbers. I’m way too tired to look it up, but I’d bet it would be really hard to find an NFL quarterback who completed 70 percent of his passes for 489 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions in his first two starts.

That’s what Garoppolo did against the Arizona Cardinals and Miami Dolphins before injuring his shoulder. He has a passer rating of 109.7.

Those are ridiculous numbers even in this Era of the Ridiculously Easy Completed Pass.

Mark Shofield, a former small college quarterback, wrote a piece for the Washington Post that explains Brady’s greatness:

“One core passing concept the Patriots use is the Tosser concept, a two-man design where both receivers on the same side of the field run slant routes. If the coverage – particularly an inside linebacker – jumps the inside route, the quarterback throws to the outside slant. If the defense keys in on the outside slant, then the quarterback can target the inside route.”

How many times have you seen Brady complete one of those slants to a quick, little wide receiver, who tacks on an extra five to 10 yards after the catch?

The obvious question is why doesn’t everybody do this? In the copycat NFL, that is a major mystery.

Brady’s success is not.

• Of course, the Patriots went to 3-0 with a rookie quarterback last week. Jacoby Brissett’s numbers weren’t all that spectacular, 11-for-19 for 109 yards with no touchdowns and no interceptions.

Playing the Houston Texans helped. So did a pretty good New England defense.

Brock Osweiler was the Texans’ quarterback. He threw the ball 41 times, completed 24 for 196 yards with no touchdowns and one interception. After an in-depth analysis of Osweiler’s stats, I discovered he averaged less than five yards per pass attempt. That’s a lot of dinking and dunking with no YAC (yards after the catch). It’s less than 15 feet per attempt.

There’s a good chance you were farther than 15 feet away from your TV when you watched the game.

So it’s not just the system that has made Brady the greatest quarterback of all-time in the eyes of many. The players around him have had something to do with it to.

And, oh, yeah, Bill Belichick.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.