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Brady great, for sure, but the greatest? That would be Joe Montana

Tom Brady has become one of the great quarterbacks of all time, but Joe Montana's career still stacks up as the greatest.

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady looks on as his son Benjamin hugs the Vince Lombardi Trophy during a parade in Boston to celebrate the Super Bowl win over the Seattle Seahawks. (AP)
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady looks on as his son Benjamin hugs the Vince Lombardi Trophy during a parade in Boston to celebrate the Super Bowl win over the Seattle Seahawks. (AP)Read moreAssociated Press

TOM BRADY wants to give his latest MVP truck to rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler, and why not? When Butler stepped in front of that pass at the goal line, it revived a debate that appeared doomed moments before by yet another miracle catch and Marshawn Lynch's bull rush to the 1-yard line within the final minute of Super Bowl 49.

Namely, is Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all time?

It's quite an abyss, the distance from greatness to greatest. No one in his right mind - or even Pete Carroll - would argue against Brady's greatness, his four Super Bowl victories and six appearances over a 14-year span as permanent a marker as professional sports can muster.

It's become a hard argument to place Peyton Manning and all his records above him, the debate now a near-perfect parallel to the one that once raged about the relative greatness of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. Peyton has more records but three fewer rings. Brady has four rings but not quite the numbers, and he was, after all, one boneheaded coach's call from exiting Sunday's game on a three-game Super Bowl losing streak.

Then we would be talking about two excruciating interceptions in Sunday's game and his relative ineffectiveness in those two Super Bowls against the Giants and maybe even how he never performed the kind of surgery Joe Montana performed over four Super Bowl victories.

Montana engineered 31 fourth-quarter comebacks in his career, but the closest Super Bowl he played in and won was his third, in the 1988 season. In that one, he moved the 49ers 92 yards and took the lead with 34 seconds left.

All these years later, it still reads like fiction.

But just like the athletes themselves, those who watch and chronicle sports tend to have short memories. There are fewer and fewer alive who saw Gil Hodges play baseball, and his Hall of Fame candidacy is now just a stat sheet, devoid of the leadership and sportsmanship intangibles that are supposed to be factored in.

Sid Luckman, Johnny Unitas, Y.A. Tittle all played when seasons ended after 12 or 14 regular-season games and one in the postseason, when the forward pass was practically a vulgarity, and you could hit everybody everywhere on their bodies and on the field, and no one weighed 350 pounds.

That's why greatness is easy to determine, and greatest is so very, very impossible. What if Wilt played with Cousy, K.C. and those band-of-brothers Celtics teams all those years instead of bouncing from franchise to franchise? What if Russell had landed somewhere besides Boston?

What if it was Manning in New England all these years? Loyalists up there might point out that Peyton is a miserable 2-11 lifetime in Foxborough, but they haven't exactly quieted down for him and let him orchestrate in those games. What if they had? Would he have lesser numbers but more championships? Or more of both?

To me, Brady is better because he's won four of six Super Bowls over 14 seasons with weapons who were neither coveted or feared. Julian Edelman. Danny Amendola? Remember Jonas Gray? LeGarrette Blount, the running back who torched the Colts for 148 yards in the AFC title game, was picked up after he cleared waivers in November.

All through this season you heard the Patriots' offensive line would be its undoing; it wasn't giving Brady enough time; it couldn't establish a running game, etc.

Maybe, too, Brady, at 37, was petering out.

And those were Patriots fans.

And then it ends with Brady setting Super Bowl records for pass completions and winning a third MVP against the league's best defense - with a little help from Carroll and his staff.

Credit his coach, Bill Belichick, as little or as much for all of this as you want. Just as it was once hard for Eagles fans to determine whether Andy Reid's play-calling or Donovan McNabb's decision-making was more to blame for their heartache, it is impossible to assign a percent for the Patriots' success over the years. Except Belichick was not a great head coach until Brady became his starter.

As for being greater than Montana, I can't make those last few yards. I would need to be young enough to not have witnessed Joe's greatness or so old that I would have forgotten it. I am, instead, middle-aged, and he was and remains, my first greatest-ever athlete.

And that's a hard thing to surrender.

But Brady, who grew up watching him, has made a helluva case. He's already been in two more Super Bowls than Cool Joe, each of which the balance hinged on one or two plays. With one or two more drops like the ones that plagued his two losses, he could be Jim Kelly. With two fewer miracle grabs, he could be 6-0. There is also the taint of the Patriots' videotape scandal, which some Eagles fans think was a difference-maker in Super Bowl 39, and the hot air this postseason over too little of it.

That won't affect his greatness. Or probably, any serious debate over whether he is the greatest. Time is, and always has been, the greatest factor in that.

Right now, Brady has that on his side. But rest assured, there is a kid out there somewhere, dreaming of being him, gunning for his legacy the way he once did with Montana.

On Twitter: @samdonnellon

Columns: ph.ly/Donnellon