Luck be a Brady

 So Tom Brady is apparently calling it quits (maybe ... or not ... yes, definitely), and all the Blob has to say is, why so soon? Three more seasons, he hits the 25-year mark and is eligible for the senior discount at Ponderosa.

OK, so I already posted that joke on another platform. And it's not that good, anyway.

In any case, if this truly is it for No. 12, he leaves as the undisputed No. 1 of all time, although the soreheads are floating a different narrative. Some of them are saying he's not the GOAT, but the LOAT --, as in, "Luckiest of All Time."

I've got news for those folks.

He's both.

This is because greatness and luck have the same father, always have and always will. The great ones make their own luck, but often it arrives with no assembly required. The great ones are great because they know what to do with it when it does.

And so, yes, Tom Brady lucked out in the Tuck Rule game, when the zebras turned a fumble into an incomplete pass. And he was lucky Pete Carroll had sawdust for brains and dialed up a pass on the 1-yard line in Super Bowl XLIX instead of just giving it to his human battering ram, Marshawn Lynch. And he was lucky the Atlanta Falcons decided "Naw, we ain't gonna run no clock" when they were up 28-3 with a quarter and a sliver to play in Supe LI.

Thing is, it wasn't the Falcons who drove the Patriots to 31 points in the last quarter and overtime of LI to steal the game. And it wasn't Pete Carroll who completed 37-of-50 passes for 328 yards and four scores to bring the Patriots back from ten points down in that Super Bowl.

I believe it was Tom Brady who did all that.

And it's not like he's the only lege who knew what to do when luck came calling, either. 

The 49ers' Joe Montana, remember, caught a break when Tim Krumrie -- the key to the Bengals' pass rush -- went down with a gruesome leg injury in the first of Montana's four Super Bowl wins. And is Terry Bradshaw of the Steelers missing one of his four rings if the Cowboys' Benny Barnes doesn't get flagged for pass interference in Super Bowl XIII, or if Jackie Smith doesn't drop a sure six in the same game?

Luck opened the door for both greats. And both made the plays necessary to walk through it.

So is Tom Brady the greatest of all time, with his seven rings and 876 nautical miles  passing and eleventy-hundred touchdown passes? Or was he just lucky?

Yes.

And, yes.