Tom Brady: Game Manager

Sure enough, as predicted, Bill Simmons is back on his feet and in the tank for his beloved Tom Brady. This time he actually has the audacity to proclaim the man the 2005 NFL MVP:

Here's my criterion for an MVP in any sport: Remove the player in question and replace him with an above-average player. What would the team's record look like?

Under this criterion, you can rule out Shaun Alexander. Replace him with someone like Reuben Droughns and I still think Seattle goes 10-6 or 11-5 with that cream-puff schedule. Besides, if Alexander were truly the most valuable player in football, don't you think Seattle would have re-signed him by now? Do you think the Giants would be going into the offseason with Tiki Barber unsigned? What about K.C. with Larry Johnson? No and no. I can't give someone an MVP whose own team doesn't care whether he's signed. That's ridiculous.

You can rule out Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James, too. Replace them with an above-average QB (let's say Mark Brunell) or an above-average RB (Rudi Johnson) and the Colts are still 10-6 or 11-5 with their defense and all those offensive weapons. As for Barber, I might have voted for him a week ago, and only because that Giants team would have been 6-10 or 7-9 with an above-average running back in his place (let's say Domanick Davis). But after watching them get kicked around by the Skins last week, I don't think they're a championship-caliber team -- it's hard to imagine the Giants having a league MVP when they probably aren't getting out of the first round.

That leaves Tom Brady. If you replaced him with someone like Jake Delhomme or Drew Bledsoe, the Patriots would have been 1-7 after eight games. I'm telling you. He held them together when they were banged-up and ready to roll over. And in a similar situation, sure, maybe Manning would have held the Colts together … but the fact remains, only six teams have a legitimate chance to win the Super Bowl (Indy, New England, Cincy, Denver, Chicago and Seattle) and only one of those six teams is in that position because of one guy and one guy alone. Not only did Brady hold the fort when the injuries kept piling up, he raised his game to another level and pretty much carried them for two straight months. Now that's an MVP.

Now, hang on a second. This is the same Tom Brady that I saw hanging his head on the sidelines after his team was completely demolished in week 9, right? At home? And didn't the team that he lost to have a pretty good QB, too? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Okay, I will admit that Tom Brady is a good QB, and he had a good year. Probably, in fact, his best ever (more on that later on). But MVP? Of the whole league? Let's look at that.

First of all, I agree with the whole "ditch the RBs" sentiment. The Broncos and the Chiefs have already demonstrated that you can by and large plug and play with 'em without significant drop-offs. Occasionally you will see RBs that are truly extraordinary, like Barry Sanders or--dare I jump on this bandwagon?--Ladanian Tomlinson (actually, at one point I was going to write an article on how LT was overrated, too. I mean, the best RB ever and he's 6th in the league in rushing yards? Ah, well). Sean Alexander and Tiki Barber are fine backs, but replaceable.

So how about the QBs? Simmons says that the Pats are 1-7 at the midway point without Brady. With Brady, they were an impressive 4-4. But their schedule was brutal, says Simmons! Well, maybe so, but that's hardly an argument for Brady when he's just losing to those brutal teams. Let's see, how many teams did the Pats beat in the first half that finished with a winning record? One: Pittsburgh. As a matter of fact, the Pats didn't start winning consistently until their defense came around, which is the same story as the last several years.

Now on to the numbers. I know, I know, I'm not supposed to bring up Tom Brady's numbers. Such a thing is blasphemy in the Church of Tom Brady Worshippers. But the year Mr. Brady leads the league in passing efficiency (Ha!) you can be sure that his devotees will be trumpeting that fact. In the meantime...

Okay. Brady did lead the league in passing yards, while 4th in attempts. That's noteworthy, and well done to the man. He had to come out slinging the ball much of the year to make up for his shaky defense. But he only finished 6th in passing efficiency. Sure, passing efficiency is an imperfect metric, but if you're going to make that argument, then make the argument! Why is Brady more valuable than the 5 QBs ahead of him in that statistic? The 5 are these: P. Manning, C. Palmer, Large Benjamin, M. Hasselbeck, and M. Bulger. Okay, we'll throw out Bulger. The other 4 are all pretty worthy of consideration, methinks. Their teams had an average record of just over 12-4. (Let's see here, 12 is better than 10, right? Okay, just checking.)

Now, you can argue until you're blue in the face about who had better talent surrounding him, but just do this instead: throw away the individual names, and remember that Brady was surrounded by the two-time defending Super Bowl champeens. The other guys were not surrounded by the two-time defending Super Bowl champs, and yet still managed to post higher passing efficiency numbers and lead their teams to better records.

The hilarious thing about this whole bit, though, is that BS inadvertently gives up the game a little later on in the article while attempting to criticize someone else:

My favorite dumb announcing phrase of 2005: "Game manager." This started back in the early Tom Brady years (when the analogy made sense) and somehow morphed into a way of saying something nice about a crummy quarterback. As in, "maybe David Garrard can't carry an offense, but he's a game manager -- he'll manage the game for you." In other words, Garrard sucks. It's kind of like when the Indians spent four million on Jason Johnson this week and the GM explained it by saying, "He eats up innings." In other words, he sucks.

Uh-huh, I see. So when people call Tom Brady a "game manager," they're somehow describing some subtle attribute of his that makes him a great quarterback, but when they use that term on someone who is, on the other hand, NOT Tom Brady, they're just nicely saying that he sucks.

Okay, Bill. But here's the thing. The last few years before 2005, Brady has finished in the #8-10 range in QB efficiency. That's remarkably consistent, but not exactly among the elite passers in the game, is it? So what does that make him? A "game manager." Exactly.