Tom Brady shows again he’s greatest football player of all time

But even on a night he spent scuffling without Rob Gronkowski in the lineup, a night he spent watching Julian Edelman throw the prettiest Patriots pbad, Tom Brady once again showed he has the most important talent an athlete can have — the talent for winning. Before beating the more physically gifted Rodgers, Brady had already won far more regular-season games (202) and postseason games (27) than anyone who ever played his position. It was fitting that in Rodgers’ presence, Brady broke a record held by another rival, Peyton Manning, in becoming the first NFL player to ambad more than 80,000 total yards (pbading, rushing and receiving) in his career, postseason included.

“These are all team awards,” Brady protested afterward.

So are the record five Super Bowl trophies, of course. And yet there’s a reason why the only coach in the building holding his sport’s most recently awarded trophy, Alex Cora of the Boston Red Sox, looked like a 12-year-old when he posed for a pregame selfie with Brady, after joining some of his ballplayers for a duck boat ride into Gillette Stadium.

Brady completed the pbad that sealed the deal, a 55-yard scoring strike to Josh Gordon in the middle of the fourth quarter that secured his team’s sixth straight victory and reintroduced New England as a serious threat to win its sixth Super Bowl title — and its third over the past five years.

“He’s had an incredible career,” Rodgers said of Brady, “been the gold standard at quarterback for the better part of two decades and he’s a great player.”

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With the score at 17-17 in the third quarter, Rodgers was winning the box score battle with two touchdowns to Brady’s none and with a pbader rating of 97.4 to Brady’s 85.7. By game’s end, Brady had a 99.0 rating to Rodgers’ 89.2, 294 pbading yards to Rodgers’ 259 and, of greater consequence, 31 points for his team to Rodgers’ 17.

If you believe Brady wasn’t driven Sunday night to avoid going 0-2 against Rodgers — he had lost their only duel at Lambeau Field in 2014 — especially given that this might go down as their final meeting, then you don’t know what makes the greats so great in the first place.

Then you don’t know why Brady didn’t talk to his friend, Rodgers, during the week, and didn’t play along Friday — at the end of a long week hearing about his opponent’s clear advantage in athleticism and arm talent — when news conference questioning veered into a mini-referendum on his supposed physical shortcomings.

Do you ever in your mind wish you could give up some of your arm for Aaron Rodgers’ legs? Brady was asked.

“No, I don’t think about giving my arms up,” he responded.

Would you like to have his mobility?

“I’d love to move as best as I possibly can,” Brady answered. “But God gave me this body and trying to use it the best I can to help us win.”

Brady rarely says much of substance for public consumption, so it’s always a good idea to examine what he doesn’t say rather than what he does. He didn’t mention Rodgers in either answer, and Brady didn’t say he would trade any of his tools for any of Rogers’, either.

Like his Green Bay counterpart, Brady is a one-uniform icon who has beaten all 31 opposing NFL teams in his career. He has some pretty damn good physical ability too.

Belichick helped Brady too by making Patterson his featured running back and advancing his long and decorated history of putting players in positions they didn’t necessarily sign up to play. Brian Flores, the de-facto defensive coordinator, did his part by piecing together a game plan that kept the Packers from even scoring 20 points.

But Brady still had to be Brady in the end and make a play that built a lead even Rodgers couldn’t threaten. In the process, just for punctuation, Brady also beat Peyton Manning.

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Bill Belichick talks about the Patriots’ 31-17 win over the Packers, and praises Tom Brady for becoming the NFL’s all-time yards leader.