How Drew Brees Can Put Tom Brady's Legacy Into Perspective

Two of the NFL's greatest quarterbacks ever go head-to-head Sunday, and they have much more in common than just the gaudy numbers.

The quote from the coach is two decades old but should sound familiar to anybody who knows Tom Brady’s origin story: “Henson probably has a stronger arm. Athletic-wise, Henson probably has the edge.” Henson, of course, was Drew Henson, Brady’s teammate and quarterback rival at Michigan. But the coach who said it was Purdue’s Joe Tiller, and he was comparing Henson not to Brady but to the man he called “our Drew:” his own Drew Brees.

Brees faces Brady on Sunday in a matchup of two of the best quarterbacks ever. Peyton Manning will always be the quarterback we most associate with Brady. But Brees is the one who can best help us understand him.

We see them now, near the end of their careers, and marvel at how long they have lasted. But the best way to understand why their journeys lasted so long is to go back to how they began. Brees and Brady were both overlooked Big Ten quarterbacks who needed time, opportunity and the right coaching to get here. They were not overlooked because coaches were dumb, but because their finest qualities are not easy to spot on the practice field or in the weight room: accuracy and poise under pressure, and the ability to process information quickly with large angry men bearing in on them. Brees and Brady are still standing because they could both absorb hits and avoid them—and because mental acuity lasts longer than physical gifts.

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Neither player is among the top five quarterbacks in the NFL anymore. There were moments this season when both looked like they were in the lower tier. But the qualities that were so hard to spot 20 years ago carry them still. For both, greatness lies in the throws they usually don’t make—late and over the middle, into double coverage, to the linebacker who is lurking underneath. They are such masters of quick decision-making and execution that it can be hard to evaluate their teammates. Is Bucs rookie Tristan Wirfs really a dominant pass-blocker, or is Brady so good at dissecting defenses and throwing quickly that he makes his linemen look better than they are?

Brees was lightly recruited and Brady was drafted late because of perceptions about their ceilings. Surely, the thinking went, quarterbacks bigger than Brees and more athletic than Brady would ultimately be better. Yet Brady and Brees have proven that a smart, driven quarterback can actually rise higher and last longer than a more physically gifted one. It is harder to scout brains than the rest of the body, but that is how NFL teams should evaluate the quarterback position: First figure out if a prospect has all the mental traits, and then ask if he can develop the physical ones.

In the public conversation, Brady faces two opponents this weekend: One who will not be on the field at the same time (Brees), and another who will not be in the stadium at all (Bill Belichick). Brady-Belichick is a bizarre subplot to a subplot that shouldn’t hang over this Tampa Bay playoff run but does. Whatever happens in this game, you can be sure that in the ensuing 48 hours, somebody will talk about the effect on Brady’s “legacy”—how he either won a big game without Belichick or failed to do so.

This is part of the fun. It is also silly, and to understand why, look not at Brady or Belichick, but at Brees.

You don’t hear many people wondering if Brees can win without Sean Payton, which is funny because Brees had the chance and didn’t. Brees played in 59 games with the San Diego Chargers before joining the Saints, and his numbers (80 touchdowns, 53 interceptions, 62.2 completion percentage) were just O.K. His team played one playoff game in his three years as a starter and lost it.

Brees’s career since then is one of the best in NFL history. It also cuts against the argument that Belichick created Brady. Brees had a steady climb from good to great, and he would have had it whether he stayed in San Diego, went to New Orleans or went to Miami to play for Nick Saban. The more he played, the more he learned how to solve the puzzle that each play presents. Brees is not a product of Payton’s system; he is the master executor of it. Payton is not just the beneficiary of Brees’s accuracy and guile; he expertly exploits it.

Brady won a Super Bowl in his first season as a starter, and then won another in his third and again in his fourth. But that is misleading; he rose to all-time great quarterback at a similar pace to Brees. Brady did not finish in the top two in MVP voting until 2007, his sixth full season. (He won it that year, and two more times since.)

There are many reasons why the “Brady or Belichick?” question fascinates us. Their Patriots were so good for so long that it felt supernatural. Brady (the 199th pick in the draft) and Belichick (the fired head coach of the Browns) were both unlikely candidates to dominate the NFL until they did. And of course, there was the spying scandal, the football-deflating accusations, the secrecy of the Patriots' operation and the widespread perception in the NFL, fair or not, that something was amiss in New England. The Patriots’ success was simultaneously obvious and mysterious. The complicated wiring of an NFL team played a role, too—so many parts must move in concert with each other that it can be hard to figure out who is powering the operation.

The argument is fun, but Belichick and Brady ultimately won so much that they rendered it meaningless. A team cannot win six Super Bowls and play in nine unless it has great coaching and great quarterbacking. And here, too, Brees can put Brady in context. As great as he is, as much as he has won, he has only played in one Super Bowl. He does not “need” another one any more than Brady needs to show he can win without Belichick. Both quarterbacks are smart enough to understand their place in history is firmly established—and both are driven enough to go after the next like it’s their first.