How Tom Brady Compares Himself to Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky

Tom Brady is not the type of person to call himself the GOAT. However, he does know that he is up there among the all-time great athletes. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback appeared on a SiriusXM Town Hall event hosted by Jim Gray on Wednesday night and talked about teams passing on him last offseason after becoming a free agent. Brady said NFL teams not signing him is like an NBA team passing on Michael Jordan or an NHL team saying no to Wayne Gretzky.

“It would be a no-brainer if you said, ‘Hey, you’ve got a chance to get Wayne Gretzky on your team,’ or ‘You get a chance to have Michael Jordan on your team,’” Brady said per NFL.com. “‘Ahh, we don’t need him. No thanks, we’re good.’ In my mind, I’m kind of thinking, okay, let me go show those teams what they’re missing. And at the same time, let me go prove to the team that did bet on me, and the team that really showed that they really wanted me and committed to me, that I’m not going to let them down.”

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t pass on Brady, and it led to them winning their first Super Bowl in nearly 20 years. Brady didn’t play his best during the postseason but was good enough to win his seventh Super Bowl. And the interesting thing about this is he won a championship with a torn MCL.

When it comes to comparing the legacies of Jordan and Gretzky, Brady is right up there with the two, He doesn’t have as many MVP as Gretzky or Jordan but has won more championships and has won titles with two different teams. And like Jordan and Gretzky, Brady has put together two Hall of Fame careers.

Now the biggest question for Brady is when will he retire? During Super Bowl week earlier this year, Brady talked about playing past 45 (he’ll be 44 in August). “Yeah definitely,” he said to reporters. “I would definitely consider that. It’s a physical sport, and just the perspective I have on that is you never know when that moment is. …There’s a lot of training that goes into it. It has to be a 100% commitment for myself to keep doing it. I’ve been fortunate over the years.”