Tom Brady has weighed in on one of the sporting world’s most riveting debates.
His vote for the greatest NFL team of all-time goes to the 2007 Patriots.
Purists might argue that a team must win a Super Bowl to be considered the greatest of all-time, and the 2007 Patriots fell just short of that.
Anyone older than 13 remembers the Giants spoiling the Patriots’ perfect season that year, aided by David Tyree’s unlikely helmet catch, in Super Bowl XLII.
It might seem like Brady is providing internal bulletin-board material to motivate the 2015 Patriots (8-0) to do even better than the 2007 team.
But Brady said this two years ago when he talked to Gary Myers of the New York Daily News, via CBSSports.com, for a book Myers was writing on the rivalry between Brady and Peyton Manning.
This nugget is coming out now as part of the proliferation of story lines arising from the first meeting between the Patriots and Giants since the Giants beat the Patriots again in Super Bowl XLVI.
Photo: Tom Brady talks about how past Super Bowl losses to the Giants won’t have any bearing in Sunday’s game. pic.twitter.com/Nh7Te80nb4
— Mike Reiss (@MikeReiss) November 11, 2015
Brady’s assessment puts the 2007 squad ahead of four Super Bowl-winning teams that he led, but while the 2007 Patriots didn’t get the rings, they carried more of a fear factor than any of those championship teams. They also were more dominating than the Patriots have been in their unbeaten run this season.
Brady threw 50 touchdown passes in 2007. He has 22 at the halfway point this season. Randy Moss tied an NFL record with 23 receiving touchdowns that year. Future Hall of Fame wide receivers haven’t been part of the Patriots’ formula in recent years. Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski share the team lead with seven touchdown catches apiece.
In 2007, the Patriots led the NFL in yards and points and were fourth in both categories defensively. So far this year, the Patriots are first in points, second in yards and on defense they’re fifth and eighth in those categories, respectively.
The 2007 Patriots didn’t score less than 34 points in a game until Week 9, and that was a showdown at Indianapolis between undefeated teams that the Patriots won 24-20. This year, the Patriots have been held under 30 by both the Steelers and Redskins.
Brady’s INT vs Washington on Sunday was the first/only time #Patriots didn’t score inside the Red Zone all season. 26 TDs, 11 FGs, 1 INT
— Ben Volin (@BenVolin) November 12, 2015
The Giants will be hard-pressed to hold the Patriots under the big three-oh Sunday at MetLife Stadium. Brady is probably salivating at the chance to go up against the Giants’ 31st-ranked pass defense. The Giants aren’t as equipped to stand in the way of the Patriots’ perfection as they were in 2007, and if the Patriots get past the Giants a Week 12 game at Denver and road games against the Jets and Dolphins to close out the season stand as the biggest hurdles to an unbeaten regular season.
Even though the 2015 Patriots aren’t steamrolling the rest of the league like the 2007 edition, if they run the table and win Super Bowl 50, it will be interesting to see which team Brady thinks is the greatest to ever play the game.