I think this comment comes off as homerish: "Brady is one of the best ever but a lot of his greatness is predicated on the system. He doesn't have the arm strength down the field and can't run a lick but he is a master at dinking and dunking and his accuracy and mental game are off the charts."
These are things you said that downgrade Brady.
1. Brady's greatness is predicated on the system.
Rebuttal: what great QB doesn't have a system? Manning has one, Montana had one, Rodgers plays a variant of a pretty famous one in GB.
2. Brady doesn't have arm strength to throw downfield.
Rebuttal: Where did you come up with this? Most NFL experts and scouts see Brady as having a very strong arm. When Mayock had the ESPN Sports science guys measure velocity at all spots of the field, no one had a stronger arm than Brady.
3. Dinking and dunking.
Rebuttal: This was true of Brady when he was young, his first 2 or 3 years. But in his 4th year, he jumped to the top of the league in long throws, and YPA and YPC, and he has stayed there his whole career. In recent years, his long bombs have gone way down, but this also coincided with the fact that he hasn't had one single WR threat downfield post-Randy Moss. How was Brady's downfield arm when Randy Moss was around? Pretty damn good.
Although this wasn't a completion, have a look at the video and look at his arm strength:
65 yards downfield on a line, pinpoint accuracy, and also thrown across the field which probably makes it an 80 yarder.
Just wondering you're old enough to have watched vintage early 1980s Dan Marino? Because if you're ooing and ahhing at Rodgers release and accuracy and arm, I don't think he's nearly as good. Then again, no one was as good as Marino. Not Manning, not Brady, not Montana. But the other 3 guys had elements to their game that Marino didn't. Marino, for instance was easily flustered.
As for running out of the pocket, it's a great weapon in the arsenal. It is just one weapon however. There are other parts of the game that are just as useful. Like pocket awareness. Brady and Marino are the two best I've ever seen when it comes to that. Then there's quick release. Marino is the best. Then Manning and Brady and Rodgers. Montana and Brady share a trait that Manning doesn't have, and which Marino possessed little of. Rodgers hasn't been in enough pressure situations to know how he'd it'll play out. Montana and Brady were capable of collecting themselves when things were going bad, and they knew when to press and when to take a sack, when to make a big play, and hen they needed to keep their teams in the game. Manning has simply gone haywire and done stupid stuff way too many times in his career. He is not nearly as bizarre as Favre, but Manning is up there when it comes to that.
I believe in the other Patriot thread we already had a discussion about stats, so I am not impressed by the fact that Rodgers has all these numbers early in his career. The NFL changed in 2006 and prevented all the jamming and grabbing that was going on 10 yards downfield. Everyone's numbers went up, not just Rodgers's. In fact, you can compare all the QBs from that point on and Rodgers's numbers don't jump out at you. But I'm not big on QB stats regardless since they tend to miss the biggest picture of all, like scoring points and touchdowns. QB stats don't account for the QBs part in that.
At the end of the day, the fact that you think Brady is a product of the system, that Brady is a dinker and dunker, that Brady has a weak downfield arm, tells me that you were mightily impressed by the fact that he was drafted in the 6th round, and no matter what the guy did or does, he could never rise to the highest level in your eyes.
