Tony Dungy Puts Debate On Tom Brady And QB’s To Rest: ‘This Is Actually Old News…There’s No Way To Rank Players From Different Eras As To Who Is Better..It’s All Subjective’

Tony Dungy Puts Debate On Tom Brady And QB’s To Rest: ‘This Is Actually Old News…There’s No Way To Rank Players From Different Eras As To Who Is Better..It’s All Subjective’

Hall of Fame and Super Bowl champion head coach Tony Dungy was recently a guest on fellow NFL Hall of Fame and Super Bowl champion Shannon Sharpe‘s Club Shay Shay podcast.

What gained some traction after the episode release was this part of the segment:

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Sharpe asked Dungy about a ranking the coach had from “several years” ago on which quarterback was the most difficult his teams he coached had to defend, ranking Brady as sixth on that list.

“First of all, I don’t think you can rank across generations anyway,” Dungy said. “And so I said, I’m not going to do that and I’m not going to go by statistics or whatever. I’m going to go by who was toughest on me. So now I got to start, I’m never putting Tom Brady ahead of Peyton Manning so the best it can be is two, because Peyton was my guy.”

That’s understandable because, obviously, Peyton played under Dungy’s leadership with the Colts and they won a Super Bowl together.

“So, the highest he could ever get is two,” Dungy said. “Then I start thinking of, okay, who gave me real problems? John Elway. You could do everything right, have the perfect defense, he’s going to move around and make something happen and kill you and he killed me enough, he was difficult. Steve Young was the same way. Those mobile quarterbacks. So, that’s who I put ahead of Tom. Aaron Rodgers, John Elway, Steve Young, guys who could move. Not to say Tom wasn’t great, he is great. But, that extra dimension meant something to me. So, that’s why I would only put him as six. Just my opinion.”

Tony Dungy on Club Shay Shay podcast

Boom. There’s the whole quote from that part of the segment.

We live in a soundbite culture where a quick part of a quote is taken out of context just for clickbait to get hits. Just sayin’.

So because of that, people took a quick bite from the whole context of what was said and ran with it, including Brady himself who had some fun with it (note: Dungy actually wasn’t the coach of the 2014 Colts team Brady was referring to):

Dungy was quick to clarify this:

“This is actually old news—from several years ago,” Dungy said in a Twitter post retweeting a SportsCenter graphic. “As I said then there’s no way to rank players from different eras as to who is BETTER. It can’t be done. It’s all subjective. But if you’re talking longevity and sustained excellence no one has done that better than Tom.”

Dungy gave credit to where credit is due, giving props to Brady.

And Coach Dungy knows a thing or two when it comes to game planning against other quarterbacks, so much respect.

Of course, there’s fun to be had with all these rankings but let’s keep the main thing, the main thing and realize that it really is subjective.

Oh and a quick fun fact if you didn’t know, now you know: that, per the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Dungy was the first African American coach to win a Super Bowl! That’s major. And Dungy is now doing his thing as a NFL analyst with NBC Sports’ Sunday Night Football games.

In the meantime, Dungy and his family are raising money for the Salvation Army and you can help! Dungy also shares a special greeting from his family to yours during this season: