To me Brady stands out particularly because NFL football is a hard fucking sport to play. It's brutal on your body and your mind. Most NFL players' careers last 5 years tops. And most of them never even sniff the Super Bowl, much less win it. So the fact that Brady lasted for more than TWENTY years and won SEVEN Super Bowls, more by himself than any single NFL team as a whole, feels like a powerful "GOAT of all GOATS" argument. The others are great, too, but the difficulty curve to do what Brady did in a sport like football is very steep.

>>151507923
I'll never understand the people who thought the league loved Brady and the Pats. No, the league office hated Brady and the Pats. Goodell hated Brady, Belichick, and the Pats because they kept getting in the way of the Mannings, especially Peyton, whom Goodell REALLY loved. Peyton was the real Golden Boy of the league, and as you say, the league literally changed the rules to help him out.

If Brady and the Pats had been the Golden Boys, they would have been treated... well, like Mahomes and the Chiefs are now. They were never treated like that. Brady was never the Golden Boy. Everything about his GOAT status he earned fair and square.

I realized that in the last few years and it's really made me respect Brady even more.