When it comes to American Football, it feels like for those outside of the States, the position they all love the most is the Quarterback position and when it comes to the quarterback position there are very few names bigger than Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. Today we’re going to be analyzing the long careers and the rivalry of two of the MVPs of the last two decades in the NFL.
Personally, I feel like the obvious place to start is to compare their honors, though this may unfortunately seem a little bit one sided, starting with Super Bowls. Tom Brady has 7, including 5 Super Bowl MVP awards. Aaron Rodgers has 1 Super Bowl, in which he was the MVP. Next, NFL MVP awards, Brady has 3 with 2 NFL Offensive Player of the Year awards. Rodgers trumps him on that one, with 4 NFL MVP awards, however he has 0 offensive player of the year awards. Between them they have 25 Pro Bowl appearances, 15 for Brady and 10 for Rodgers.
Now some ‘Quarterback Specific Stats’. Firstly, both have won awards for being the NFL Passer Rating Leader, twice for Brady and four times for Rodgers. They have also both been awarded for being the NFL Passing Touchdowns Leader, 5 times for Brady and twice for Rodgers. Rodgers holds a couple of records in the NFL, he has the highest Single season passer rating of 122.5 from the 2011 season, he has the most consecutive passes without an interception at 402 and lowest career interceptions percentage at 1.4%, he also has the lowest interception percentage in a season at 0.3% in the 2018 season.
For Brady however, he has a few more, he has the most career quarterback wins, 251, the most career passing attempts, 12,050. The most career passing completions at 7,753 which is 100 more passes than Rodgers has even attempted. The most career passing touchdowns at 649 and the most career passing yards at 89,214. There are more but let’s not go into it. Aaron Rodgers doesn’t deserve this disrespect. But there’s no denying that Tom Brady is the Goat. At 39 years old however, there is still time for Rodgers to get his hands on some of these records.
We have been lucky to have witnessed some great battles and some not-so-great battles between these two absolute juggernauts of the Football world. The last battle between the two was in September 2022 when the Packers played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. A game that would prove to be a battle of defenses. Rodgers put up 27 completed passes of his 35 attempts, for 255 yards, two touchdowns, one interception and one sack. The two touchdowns were on the Packers first 2 possessions. While those stats are pretty great it was the defense that helped him claim the 14-12 victory over his rival, Brady.
Over their years they have faced each other 5 times and while Brady does hold the advantage with 3 wins to Rodgers 2. Rodgers taking the W most recently won’t be forgotten by Brady. These men have grown to respect each other massively and while Brady is known as the golden standard for post season football, it’s fair to say that Aaron Rodgers will undoubtedly go down as one of the greatest regular season quarterbacks of all time.
Look, I understand that it’s quite hard to compare these two quarterbacks, of course we love Aaron Rodgers, he has been with the Packers through thick and thin and has led us to a Super Bowl victory in 2010, which was the first since 1996! We owe a lot to Rodgers and he has give us plenty of good times over the years, but there’s a reason that Tom Brady is often seen as the greatest of all time (GOAT), the man has more super bowls than every single team in the NFL, the list goes Tom Brady with 7, then the New England Patriots & the Pittsburgh Steelers tied with 6, followed by the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers with 5. That is just outrageous.
With all that being said, we have the potential for a few more quarterbacks to get their name etched into the history books. One that comes to mind if we follow the Brady’s timeline is the New England Patriots QB, Mac Jones. He was drafted in the first round of the 2021 draft. Filling Tom’s shoes is a very big responsibility and not one that many would be eager to take. Knowing that the Pats are out of competition for the time being, betting punters can stay ahead for the new season’s sports betting promos available in Massachusetts.
While Tom Brady has already sort of retired once, when the day comes that both of these men retire from Football, it’s going to be a sad day for the sport. Both of them have given everything for the game and while it’s true they will be leaving the game a lot differently, they have made so many people happy over the years and we may never see other players reach anywhere near their heights. So I would just like to say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to both Brady and Rodgers for all the good times and the bad.