Joe’s cool, but Brady’s better

That being said, there are two main arguing points used by those who defend the 49ers legend as the best ever are.

The first is, “You can’t compare eras.” Isn’t this essentially what all these types of arguments are ever about? Isn’t nearly every sports-bar discussion related to comparing players from different eras? Comparing players from different times is the definition of sports talk. Once it has been established who are the greatest of their era — and in this case, both Brady and Montana are the best of their generation — you then escalate the argument to best of all time.

If you reject that first argument, which I believe any sane sports fan would do, that leads to Montana defender’s second point, which is kind of related to the first: quarterbacks are protected much better now than then. A common refrain among Montana apologists is, “You can’t touch the quarterback in today’s game. It’s flag football now.”

The only flag football are the yellow ones being tossed by officials for illegal hits on quarterbacks. True, the game is officiated differently nowadays, but really the only difference is whether a flag is thrown — which is all that would have happened that day Jim Burt of the New York Giants knocked Montana out of the 1987 playoffs. Brady gets hit like that now? It’s a 15-yard penalty and maybe a fine for the hitter, but it doesn’t take away the violent hits quarterbacks — and others — still endure.

To make a long story short: I dare you to tell any player in today’s NFL that what they play is flag football.

Montana was easy to defend as the best when compared to the likes of John Elway, Dan Marino or Brett Favre. They were considered contemporaries and the three many would agree deserved to be in the “Who’s best” argument. The mic-drop moment was usually, “4-0 in the Super Bowl.” That Elway-Marino-Favre triumvirate? Combined for three.

But that primitive argument no longer flies. Not when you compare it to a player who is doing things in the Super Bowl that no other player has ever done. How can you say appearing in a eighth championship game — eight! — doesn’t trump 4-0?

I know they say you can interpret statistics any way you want, but there is no arguing Brady’s Super Bowl numbers:

• Seventh appearance: record

• Five wins: record

• 15 career touchdown passes: record

• 2,071 career Super Bowl passing yards: record

Any way you want to parse it, Brady has surpassed Montana. There’s no shame in that. It doesn’t mean that Montana has to stop being revered as a 49ers and NFL legend. As they say, records are meant to broken. Will anyone break Brady’s Super Bowl records? Maybe, and then the arguments can start anew.

***

As the San Francisco Giants prepare to unleash the trio of Evan Longoria, Andrew McCutchen and Austin Jackson on 2018, it invariably leads to recalling the calamity that was 2017.

There is one story line that I simply can’t get behind last year — that if Madison Bumgarner did not have his dirt bike accident, the Giants, somehow, would have been different.

In the strictest sense of it, no, the Giants would not have lost 98 games if Bumgarner was healthy all season. But his availability for a 162-game schedule still would not have had San Francisco sniffing a playoff spot in 2017. He won just four games in 17 starts last season, with a solid ERA of 3.32, just a little off his lifetime average of 3.01.

That would have put him on pace for, what, about a nine-, 10-win season in 2017? Hardly a playoff difference maker.

The problem last year was not Bumgarner’s wipeout. It was a team-wide slump that affected every aspect of their game. This year, the Giants and their fans have to hope 2017 was the exception and not the beginning of the end for this team’s core. Everyone needs to have a bounce-back year in 2018 — from both pitchers and position players — to contend for a playoff spot.

Nathan Mollat can be reached by email: nathan@smdailyjournal.com or by phone: 344-5200 ext. 117. You can follow him on Twitter @CheckkThissOutt.