All hail Brady for 'ridiculous' feat

TAMPA (Florida) • If Tom Brady did not already occupy a seat at the top table of North American sport's greatest icons, he will now be pulling up a chair.

The 43-year-old quarterback authored another implausible chapter to his age-defying career on Sunday, winning a record seventh Super Bowl as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers stunned the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9.

It was a victory that elevated Brady alongside names like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Babe Ruth, Tiger Woods and Serena Williams - the rare, once-in-a generation athletes whose achievements are expected to stretch long into the future.

Victory in Tampa saw Brady improve a slew of records he owned. At 43 years and 188 days old, he is the oldest man ever to play in a Super Bowl, let alone win it. His victory means he has won more Vince Lombardi trophies than every team in the league, and more rings than Jordan (six) in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

His fifth Super Bowl Most Valuable Player award is two more than his nearest rival, boyhood idol Joe Montana.

And the victory with the Buccaneers means he is only the second quarterback to take two different teams to a Super Bowl title.

But Brady brushed off questions about where he ranks Sunday's victory in his catalogue of success.

"They're all special in their own way," he said after throwing three touchdowns in his 10th Super Bowl appearance.

Other athletes and commentators were in no doubt about Sunday's masterpiece, with some describing it as the greatest achievement of his career.

"It's unbelievable... it's unreal," was Williams' verdict. "I just was watching as much as I could."

Brady stunned the National Football League (NFL) last March by quitting the New England Patriots after two decades. While the Patriots had been the most dominant force in the league then, the Buccaneers had been one of the weakest teams over the past decade.

Tom Brady is just the second quarterback to win Super Bowls with two different teams, after Peyton Manning (Indianapolis Colts, 2006, and Denver Broncos, 2015).

His preparations for the season had also been blown off course by Covid-19, which decimated off-season training last year. Yet he mastered a new offence while the pandemic limited in-person activities, upended schedules, postponed games and infected more than 700 NFL players, coaches and staff - as well as his parents, Tom Sr and Galynn.

"At the age of 43, Tom Brady walked into a season like no other due to a pandemic with new teammates, coaches & in a new conference... and won his 7th SuperBowl," wrote Women's NBA player Chiney Ogwumike on Twitter. "He made one of the hardest things for an athlete to ever do, look easy. GOAT (greatest of all time) is an understatement at this point."

Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians said Brady had a transformative effect on the team.

"He's a winner, man," he told ESPN after the Bucs were crowned champions for the first time since January 2003. "He brought a winning mentality to a really talented team that didn't know how to win."

Former Patriots teammate Julian Edelman speculated Brady had been motivated by talk that the Chiefs' Patrick Mahomes was ready to take over his mantle. The NFL's championship game had been hyped as a battle between Brady, widely recognised as the greatest quarterback of all time, and 25-year-old Mahomes, considered the best in the game today.

But in the end, it was no contest as the Bucs' rampaging defence harassed Mahomes, who threw a pair of interceptions, to bring the Chiefs' title defence to a jarring end.

In a measure of Brady's sustained excellence, consider that he has now sparked not only the most recent team to win consecutive Super Bowls - with New England after the 2003 and 2004 seasons - but also ruined the repeat bids of the last two.

"That's the ridiculous thing about this whole thing. He's gone on for 22 years, whatever year he's on, and can still be so motivated," Edelman told NFL Network. "He can be that same guy, every day, coming to work, motivated. That's the kind of stuff this guy eats for breakfast."

Brady, who earlier said he could see himself playing two more seasons, which would take him up to his 45th birthday, confirmed he is not going anywhere.

"Oh yeah, we're coming back," he said.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, NYTIMES