The End of the Brady Era, and a New Way to Think About Quarterbacks

The worst and most accurate observation you can make about Tom Brady right now is that he has the same chance of winning this year’s Super Bowl as Peyton Manning does. Brady’s Bucs might make the playoffs, but only for bookkeeping reasons: Somebody has to win the NFC South—it is, quite literally, in the rulebook. The Bucs are lousy and unworthy of belief, and Brady (who said earlier this year that he sees “a lot of bad football” in the league) surely knows it.

And with that, an era ends. Not Brady’s career, necessarily; we’ll see where he plays next year and then the 11 seasons after that. But for the first time since 2001—yes, 2001—we will enter the playoffs knowing that none of Brady, Manning, Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees will win the Super Bowl. Manning spends most of his time joining brother Eli on a multipronged, money-printing operation. Brees is on his second postretirement job, as an interim assistant coach at Purdue. Rodgers’s Packers are so bad that the only interesting question is whether they will bench Rodgers.

Brady's Bucs might make the playoffs, but they don't look like a Super Bowl contender.

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