Tom Brady Says Wins And Losses Are Only Stats That Matter

If you are a Patriots fan, or even just an NFL fan, you have probably heard the talk surrounding Tom Brady, and his elite status over the last couple of days. This was started by Pro Football Focus’ Sam Monson, who posted an article about this a week ago.

In the article, a lot of advanced stats are used, which shines a light on something that has become a “problem” in sports debates over the last few years. Instead of simply using the simple statistics to measure the effectiveness of certain players, we go to these advanced stats to decide an argument. I personally am a fan of these stats, so I am not saying that we should completely banish them. But as Brady himself said yesterday, the only stat that matters is those wins and losses.

From Jeff Howe of the Boston Herald:

"“I think people pay to watch the games on TV because there’s a scoreboard,”Brady said. “I mean, I think that’s what it’s all about. If there was no scoreboard, people wouldn’t tune in and watch. I think that’s what it’s all about. There’s only one stat that matters. That’s because the competition in the NFL is very high, extremely high, on a daily basis. You’re competing. I think some individuals compete against other guys and some compete against themselves.“Even if you don’t have someone to compete against, if you’re the type of person that competes against yourself, you’re always going to get better because there’s always competition. The guys that I have been around that find ways to do that and motivate themselves, those are the best players. They don’t have to wait for a Sunday in September to find out if they’re competitive. You figure that out in March. You figure that out in February, at the end of February, when no one else really is working, the competition that you have inside of you and how that is going to really help your team and build your team to be more competitive. That’s all infectious.“You can’t sit here and compare one year to another year or compare this player to that player. I think winning games is the most important thing certainly for this organization. When you come here, you learn that pretty quickly. Whatever matters to you as an individual, it’s far distant from what the team goals are, and the team goals are one thing, to score more points than the other team.”"

Winning games is the only thing that matters in this league. Because as Brady says, that is why we watch the games. We don’t watch them to see how well a left tackle does on third and long situations. We don’t watch them to see how a safety reacts to deep posts routes. Hell, we don’t even watch them to see elite quarterbacks like Brady work their magic. The sole reason we tune in to these sporting events, is because there is a winner, and there is a loser.

And we should judge quarterback’s success based on this because they have a big say in whether or not their team wins or loses the game. Yes, football is a team sport, and if Brady didn’t have a good team, he wouldn’t be winning all of these contests. But much like LeBron James can control the Miami Heat’s destiny, Tom Brady can control the Pats’. And when you look at the number of wins and losses that he is responsible for over his career, I think we all can agree that is a damn good quarterback.