When discussing the clutch records of athletes like Matt Ryan and LeBron James in the past, I've brought up the idea of looking at Tom Brady's playoff record in reverse chronological order to highlight just how much of our opinions on athletes can be defined by what they do early in the "big moments" of their career. Just for fun, since we're all trying to figure out what this round of playoffs means for the legacies of guys like Ryan, Joe Flacco, and Peyton Manning, let's actually go through year-by-year and see what opinions might have cropped up with regard to Tom Brady if we flipped his 13-year career on its head. I promise that I will only be as jaundiced in the descriptions as most people would be about the likes of Ryan and Manning. You can play along with his playoff game log here.
2012
Record: 1-1
Career-to-date: 1-1
Brady makes his playoff debut and easily dispatches the Texans at home, but despite the fact that his Patriots are heavy home favorites against the Ravens, New England loses when they fail to produce in the red zone. Brady shows his inability to handle pressure situations when he mismanages the clock at the end of the first half and has to settle for a field goal, a problem that should hopefully go away when he matures. The Patriots have a shot late in the game, but an ill-timed Brady interception2 puts New England's title hopes to rest.
2011
Record: 2-1
Career-to-date: 3-2
Although Brady takes a leap forward and makes his first Super Bowl, his performance during the playoffs leaves a bit to be desired. Brady runs up his stats against the lowly Broncos and Tim Tebow, throwing for six touchdowns and 363 yards. In the AFC Championship Game, Brady throws two picks against the Ravens and posts a passer rating of 57.5, but his defense bails him out with the famous strip of Lee Evans in the end zone and the Billy Cundiff missed field goal. And despite a stretch of hot play in the second quarter, when he sets a consecutive completions record, Brady comes up short when his team needs him most in the second half, failing to connect with Wes Welker on a long would-be touchdown and failing to protect a lead inside four minutes of the fourth quarter. Brady almost literally hands Eli Manning and the Giants the Super Bowl.
2010
Record: 0-1
Career-to-date: 3-3
In a shocking upset, Brady's Patriots lose as 9.5-point home favorites to the Jets, who befuddle Brady while sacking him five times and forcing an early interception to set the tone. It's Brady's second playoff loss as a heavy home favorite in three years.
2009
Record: 0-1
Career-to-date: 3-4
It's another crushing loss for Brady, who appears to have never recovered after blowing the lead in the Super Bowl and failing to hit Welker with the game on the line. He turns over the ball four times, including three times on the first four drives, as the Patriots fall to 2-3 at home in the playoffs under Brady.
2007
Record: 2-1
Career-to-date: 5-5
The ultimate regular-season superstar comes up short yet again on the big stage. After a stunning 16-0 season earns Brady his first MVP award, a mediocre playoff run ends in failure for the Patriots. Sure, Brady beats up on the AFC South at home, as he throws for 262 yards and three touchdowns against the Jaguars, but what happens when the competition gets tougher? He throws three picks against the Chargers in the conference championship and only wins because he's playing a guy on a torn ACL. And while Brady manages to finally beat the Giants for the first time in Week 17, he still can't beat them when it really counts, as the perfect team falls just short. Brady can only muster a measly 5.5 yards per attempt as he endlessly checks down and scores just 14 points.
2006
Record: 2-1
Career-to-date: 7-6
Can Tom Brady ever beat a Manning brother? First, it was Eli. Now, it's big brother Peyton getting into the act, as the Colts launch a dramatic comeback in the AFC Championship Game to produce a 38-34 victory. Again, Brady beats up on the league's weaklings before playing worse in each successive game; he throws for 212 yards and two scores against the Jets, but then has another three-pick game against the Chargers in a contest where the Patriots only pull the game out after the Chargers try to return Brady's final pick deep in the fourth quarter and Troy Brown manages to strip the ball loose. In that AFC Championship Game, Brady fumbles a snap into the end zone that's recovered for a touchdown wouldn't a clutch player be able to hold onto a snap? He also gets a pick-six to eventually go up 21-6 heading into halftime, but the Patriots blow a 15-point lead and lose when Brady fails to come through with a lead on third-and-4 inside of three minutes, giving the ball to Manning and setting up a game-winning score. Is he ever going to have a big drive when his team really needs it?
2005
Record: 1-1
Career-to-date: 8-7
Yawn. The book on Tom Brady's already been written. Sure, he throws for 201 yards and three touchdowns against the Jaguars at home in an early-round victory. Who doesn't beat up on the weaklings of the AFC South? When he has to travel on the road to play the Broncos, though, Brady puts up an empty 341 yards as he throws two picks, including one in the Denver end zone that Champ Bailey returns 99 yards to the 1-yard line on a drive that would have given New England the lead. The Patriots never recover.
At this point, Brady's playoff reputation is something resembling Peyton Manning. He's the guy who beats up on weak links and never shows up when his team really needs him. He's got various maladies: He can't beat the Giants or can't beat a Manning brother, he chokes when his team is a huge favorite at home, he can't produce a drive to kill off a game, he's distracted by his model wife. In what approximates a full season, Brady's line is good, but not great: 363-583 (62.3 percent completion percentage), 3,998 passing yards, 31 touchdowns, 19 interceptions. That's too many picks for a guy who averages only 10 interceptions per year. Antsy New England fans call for Bill Belichick's head because they want a head coach who has proven he can win Super Bowls.
And yet, despite the fact that you "know" Tom Brady, that he's the guy who can't come up with the big win, that he's just another quarterback who looks better in fantasy football than at the helm in the real thing, Tom Brady goes 9-0 in his next nine playoff games and wins three Super Bowls. He throws 11 touchdowns against three interceptions. He beats teams on the road. At home. As a favorite. As an underdog. He produces incredible, game-winning drives that will stand the test of time and redefine his legacy. Bizarro Simmons undergoing a dramatic downward spiral that somehow takes him from hosting a show on ESPN to living in Charlestown and bumming cigarettes outside of Store 24 has to laugh off years of columns about how he'll never be stupid enough to bet on Tom Brady when it really matters. Brady's career culminates with an incredibly gutsy performance against the Raiders at home in the snow, when he leads his team to a narrow victory before winning the next two games and claiming his third Super Bowl title. His legacy secure, Brady rides off into the sunset victorious.3
So, with that all in mind, you should take two things away from this silly exercise. First, what a quarterback does in the playoffs at the beginning of his career isn't any more meaningful than what he does in the middle or at the end of his career. You don't win an extra half Super Bowl if you do it before you turn 25. Second, you don't "know" what a quarterback is going to do in the playoffs because of how he's previously performed in the playoffs. We have 15 games over seven seasons saying that Tom Brady's a playoff flop, and that information means absolutely nothing in determining how Tom Brady would play in the future. Looking at the games under the proper chronological order says just as much: We had nine games suggesting that Tom Brady was unstoppable in the playoffs, and afterward, we've had 15 games implying that he's actually just like any other good quarterback in the postseason. That he's "been there before" means nothing, just like it did in 2001, when Brady made it to the Super Bowl and won it without having been there before. He's still capable of screwing up and making mistakes, as Sunday showed. He's also still capable of being great and winning a Super Bowl. The truth isn't quite as satisfying as a one-word label like "clutch" or "unclutch," but football's a lot more complicated than one-word labels. It deserves better, and just as the likes of Manning and Ryan are demeaned with overly simplistic stories about their playoff performance, so is Brady.
smiley?
Pretty spot on. 
