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Tampa (AP) - Tom Brady is unique.
Nobody in the NFL has ever won seven Super Bowls - they're a game away.
He already has six championship rings, more than anyone in the history of the National Football League.
Ten times the most important football game in the world?
Only he has.
Brady is also the oldest quarterback who has ever won a Super Bowl and can now set his own record at the age of 43 as the playmaker of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night (0.30 a.m. CET, ProSieben / DAZN).
In short: Tom Brady from San Mateo, California is a living sports legend.
"If you don't look up to people like Tom Brady as a young athlete, you're crazy," said Patrick Mahomes.
He's the Chiefs' 25-year-old quarterback, defending champion, and the better player in the eyes of many American football experts.
Still, he can't stand a comparison with Brady.
Mahomes for his part comes after the success last year against the San Francisco 49ers on a Super Bowl victory and now the second participation.
But he would still have to come into the championship game at least four more times to be able to draw level with Brady's victories if the Chiefs win again.
The quarterback with the second most appearances behind Brady, John Elway, comes in at five.
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“If you've been consistently good for such a long time, then you have my admiration.
It is so difficult to win in this league, to be there for so long, that fascinates me, "said the German NFL professional Jakob Johnson of the German press agency.
In his first year in the league he played with Brady for the New England Patriots and said, looking at the future of the NFL: "I don't know if there are enough years left for someone to repeat a run like that again."
US media allow themselves all sorts of gimmicks with Brady's career yield before the 55th Super Bowl.
ESPN, for example, calculated that he was involved in 18 percent of all Super Bowls.
If you ignored his first year as an NFL professional when he was still a substitute, and missed the 2008 season due to injury, he had reached more than half of all Super Bowls during his playing time.
“I didn't sit there 20 years ago and thought I would be 43 and play football.
That would be a lie, ”said Brady at the beginning of the week.
The truth also includes: Many teams didn't trust him to have a career in the NFL, let alone the quality of a Super Bowl quarterback.
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Because when Brady was allowed to be selected by the teams in the NFL talent exchange, the Draft, in 2000, they decided on 198 other players before him.
Seven quarterbacks were rated better before the New England Patriots secured him with the then new coach Bill Belichick.
What happened next is sports history.
In the second year regular strength Drew Bledsoe injured, Brady was allowed to play and also kept his place in the Super Bowl, although Bledsoe was healthy again.
As a blatant outsider, the Patriots won against the St. Louis Rams in February 2002 and have since brought the Vince Lombardy Trophy to Boston five more times, with Brady at their head.
The Patriots fans loved the Brady / Belichick duo for their incredible dominance, but in the rest of the country both suffered less well.
Also because of scandals such as balls with insufficient air pressure or spied opponents and their proximity to ex-US President Donald Trump.
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The only constant discussion in the pubs and sports shows on television was whether one would have achieved all the successes without the other.
Well: Brady made it to the Super Bowl in the first year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers because of the corona pandemic in a season without preparation games.
The Buccaneers have not been in the playoffs since 2002.
The Patriots, on the other hand, missed the playoffs for the first time since the 2008 season - the season Brady was injured.
That answers the question for most.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210203-99-282060 / 2
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