Six Super Bowls in nine appearances across 18 seasons.

These numbers alone are staggering without considering all the other accomplishments the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady Patriots have racked up over the years. With six championships, Brady now has more NFL championship rings than any other player in NFL history. Belichick, in capturing his sixth ring as a head coach, ties Bears founder George Halas. Add in his two rings as a coordinator with the Giants, and he’s already blown past them all.

It seems is a constant chicken/egg debate when it comes to Belichick and Brady among those looking to detract from their accomplishments. Did Belichick benefit from having the greatest quarterback of all time for 18 years, or has Brady benefited from working with the greatest coach of all time (and one of the league’s all-time defensive masterminds) for his entire career?

Both of these things can very well be true without detracting from what the pair has accomplished. Because, simply put, there is no other coach/quarterback combo in NFL history who can measure up to the standard Brady and Belichick have set.

Let’s take a look at a few of the more successful duos in NFL history before these two came along.

Bart Starr and Vince Lombardi: 1959-1967

Starr and Lombardi accomplished a still-unmatched five championships in seven years together, which before Brady and Belichick was the record for most championships by a coach/quarterback tandem. The Packer dynasty of the 1960s was incredibly influential, and Lombardi rightfully has his name emblazoned on the trophy given to Super Bowl champions every year.

This is the pair that comes the closest to matching what Brady and Belichick accomplished. But if we’re being forced to choose the more successful pair, we have to take the following factors into consideration:

·         The 60s Packers were playing against significantly fewer teams and a lower standard of competition

·         Free agency and the salary cap, systems designed specifically to create parity in the NFL, did not yet exist when Lombardi’s Packers ran the league

·         Today’s NFL requires significantly more adaptability, in large part because of those first two points

While Starr and Lombardi will forever be remembered as pioneers of the modern league and as two of the greatest champions the NFL has ever seen, what Belichick and Brady have accomplished is undoubtedly more impressive given the circumstances they face in today’s league.

Joe Montana and Bill Walsh, 1979-1988

Over the course of 10 seasons together, Montana and Walsh won three Super Bowl titles. The year after Walsh retired, the 49ers and Montana won another under George Seifert.

Before the later stages of Brady’s career, Montana was a popular pick for the greatest quarterback of all time. But Brady has long since surpassed Montana in just about every metric. Walsh’s contributions to the game, unlike Belichick’s, are primarily on the offensive side of the ball—he’ll forever be remembered for popularizing the West Coast Offense and making significant advances in the passing game.

Ultimately, though, Brady and Belichick now have twice the number of championships this Hall of Fame duo had together.

Otto Graham and Paul Brown, 1946-1955

Graham and Brown actually won a total of seven championships together, but four of those came in the AAFC (1946-1949), before the Browns joined the NFL. The level of competition in the AAFC simply was not comparable to that of the NFL, and there were only eight teams. The Browns won the league championship in all four years of its existence.

True enough that the Browns quickly proved they belonged in the NFL, winning the championship in their first season in the league (1950) and then again in 1954 and 1955, Graham’s final season.

A remarkably successful duo, but just as the NFL of the 1950s and 1960s is not comparable to the level of parity and competition that exists in today’s league, one can hardly place the AAFC on the same level as the NFL in the late 1940s.

Roger Staubach and Tom Landry, 1969-1979

Staubach and Landry reached five Super Bowls together in their tenures with the Dallas Cowboys, an impressive figure to be sure. However, the pair only won two of them. Nothing to be sneezed at, but it can’t come close to measuring up to the six championships in nine appearances that the combination of Brady and Belichick has accrued.

Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll, 1970-1983

Four Super Bowl appearances, four Super Bowl championships. Noll and Bradshaw definitely brought plenty of hardware home to Pittsburgh in their time together. But no serious person is going to put Bradshaw in the same stratosphere as Brady with regard to their greatness.

Bradshaw is a worthy Hall of Famer, but would likely rank in the lower tier of Hall of Fame quarterbacks. Even compared to his contemporaries, he threw a lot of interceptions and had a relatively low completion percentage. Brady hasn’t just been a winner—he’s also been a statistical phenom for much of his career.

I fully understand and sympathize with people being sick of the Patriots winning so damn much. But count me in the camp who believes that decades from now, people will be looking back at what this team has accomplished in awe, and count themselves privileged to have witnessed it.