How long have we been talking about whether Tom Brady is too old? No one ever seems to get tired of this topic, but this year there is a new take on it. There are two aging quarterbacks headed to both the AFC and the NFC Championship games—Tom Brady, age 41, for the Patriots in the AFC, and Drew Brees, age 40, for the Saints in the NFC. And to make things even more complicated, these quarterbacks are “old enough to be the fathers” of the quarterbacks for the opposing teams in each league, Patrick Mahomes, age 23, for the Chiefs in the AFC, and Jared Goff, age 24, of the Rams in the NFC. What this means for Brady and Brees and what this might mean for football in general is one of the hot topics being debated as the Championship games approach.
Andrew Beatop and Jonathan Clegg of the Wall Street Journal report that the wins of the games this weekend are not just about which teams go to the Super Bowl, and they also “make a statement about the league’s future direction.” These writers don’t believe that what is at stake in these championship games is just about aging or about skill, they think that what is on the table is whether there will be a change of style brought in by younger quarterbacks. According to Beatop and Clegg, this change of style is a huge change for football: “Brady and Brees have ritualistically carved up defenses for years in the most diabolical way, peppering opponents with precise and traditional attacks. Mahomes, the Chiefs’ quarterback, and the Rams’ Goff have invaded the league’s elite by playing completely differently. They star in explosive offenses that renounce the same norms that Brady and Brees mastered en route to Super Bowl wins.” There is definitely a different style between the two older quarterbacks headed for these championships and the younger ones, but will this new style dominate or will the wins be divided between the players that Beatrop and Chegg call “the shockingly nimble fogies” and the “free-wheeling youngsters”? Are these games about age or talent—or even both?
CBS Sports writer Sean Wagner-McGough, like the Wall Street Journal sports writers, see this years’ championship games as not “just a battle between the top-four scoring teams in football. It’ll also be a battle of the old vs. the new.” Wagner-McGough sees the conflict between old and new/young as exciting as the Wall Street Journal writers do, but in a different way. In his opinion, the match is “a doozy.” Wagner-McGough compares the match up between Mahomes and Brady to the match up between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Anyone who knows anything about Star Wars understands that this sports writer also sees these championship games as epic. His analysis of the NFC match up is focused on statistics, strategy and talent. In his ranking of the four quarterbacks playing this weekend, Wagner-McGough puts Mahomes as the top quarterback, Brady comes in second, Brees is third and Goff is fourth. Even though he does not say so, his ranking of the four quarterbacks who qualified for the championships and his thoughts about each game’s match ups suggest that talent is more important to him than whether age is a factor in these games or the future of football. As he says about Mahomes: “ Mahomes is the best quarterback on the planet right now. He’s so much better than the second-best quarterback on the planet that his lack of postseason experience is rendered completely insignificant. He belongs on top of the list, above two future Hall of Famers, one of whom might be the greatest quarterback of all time. And it’s not particularly close.” There is no shortage of talent among these four quarterbacks, and these games promise to be very exciting! We will see on Sunday what they mean for the teams, individual players and for the NFL.
As many reporters have said, both the AFC and NFC championships will most likely to be high scoring games .What the scores will look like, who scores and what all of it means is anyone’s guess.
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