3 reasons why Tom Brady is a more impactful athlete than Michael Jordan

It’s 2025, but the debate on who was the more impactful player between Tom Brady and Michael Jordan still rages on. They are considered the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) athletes of their respective sports by fans, but who between them made more impact is a point of contention.

Both came in as relative unknowns, and by the time they left, the scenario of the sport was changed forever. Brady and Jordan’s impact on developing America’s two favorite sports is undeniable.

These two set the benchmark for the future generation of players. Hundreds of players have walked through the doors of various stadiums across the country since then. Despite a few coming close to displacing Brady and Jordan (Patrick Mahomes in the NFL, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James in the NBA) from their throne, fans, whether they are 15 or 51, still consider them the GOAT.

Tom Brady played far longer than Michael Jordan

Both the NFL and the NBA are hard sports to get into. Nearly 99% of athletes start training and polishing their skills in school. After school, they switch over to college, and only a select few can make it into big programs spread across the country.

NFL and NBA teams then comb out players via the draft and select only the best of the best athletes. Both Tom Brady and Michael Jordan passed through all three stages, but their paths were different.

The Prospect Star system (a metric to measure an athlete’s skill set) wasn’t invented when Brady and Jordan passed high school. However, Jordan was the better athlete. After finishing school, top basketball colleges such as Syracuse, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Duke recruited him, but he decided to join the Tar Heels.

Jordan dominated the college scene with the UNC, earning the ACC’s Freshman of the Year award. During his three seasons with the Tar Heels, Jordan averaged 17.7 ppg on 54.0% shooting and added 5.0 RPG and 1.8 APG. He was drafted third overall by the Chicago Bulls in 1984.

Despite showing his skill and class, the Bulls never managed to string a championship-winning team until 1991, defeating the Los Angeles Lakers. They went back-to-back-to-back, securing the first-ever three-peat in NBA history. However, shortly after winning his third ring, Michael Jordan announced his retirement from basketball in October 1993 due to losing interest in the game but later revealed the death of his father played a big part.

Jordan returned to the Bulls in 1995, and the following season won his fourth ring and secured his second three-peat by winning the NBA title in 1997 and 1998. He retired once again by making his second comeback in 2002 as a Washington Wizards player that lasted for two seasons.

On the other hand, Brady only faced rejection. Unlike Jordan, he didn’t have a great build and was rather lanky to be a quarterback. Despite harboring the dream of playing for South Carolina, they didn’t give him a chance, and neither did the local college in Los Angeles close to his neighborhood.

Brady finally landed at Michigan but was the fourth or fifth choice in the quarterback depth. It took him four years to become the starter for UM, but underwhelming athleticism depleted his draft stock. He was close to going undrafted until the New England Patriots, who selected him 199th overall in the sixth round as a benchwarmer in 2001.

After an uneventful rookie year, Brady got his big break after Drew Bledsoe suffered a season-ending injury. Brady took over, went 11-3, and won his first-ever Super Bowl. Two more Lombardi’s followed in the next three years, but he waited nearly a decade to win his fourth. That doesn’t mean the Patriots and Brady didn’t play in the Super Bowl during that 10-year gap. They reached the big game twice but lost both times to Eli Manning’s New York Giants.

Fifth and sixth rings came within the four years before he left to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers due to tension between him and head coach Bill Belichick. In his first season, Brady bagged his seventh Super Bowl win, etching his name into the history books to become the GOAT.

Tom Brady’s longevity far exceeds that of Jordan’s. There’s no denying that Jordan secured two three-peats, an extremely rare feat, but he had to take a break in between and get his head back in the game; that took him two to three years. Brady kept going. Even after the two Super Bowl losses, the Patriots kept pushing for more without any break. From 2001 to 2019, the Patriots won the AFC East 17 times and 9 AFC Championships (in total, Brady won 10, he won one NFC Championship with the Buccaneers in 2020).

Brady played until he was 45 (2023). Jordan also retired after reaching 40, but the seven years he missed at the height of his NBA career definitely pale in comparison to Brady’s longevity at the highest level.

Tom Brady had tougher competition compared to Michael Jordan

Brady played in an era right after John Elway, Joe Montana, and Jim Kelly had retired, and future Hall of Famers Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, Kurt Warner, Philip Rivers, and Aaron Rodgers were making massive noise in the NFL. These weren’t the only players Brady went up against week in and week out.

Legendary players such as Rey Lewis, Warren Sapp, Ed Reed, and Jonathan Ogden in his early years and then Andrew Luck, Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Joe Burrow in his twilight years became his opponents.

Despite playing for more than two decades, Brady managed to keep himself relatively injury-free even though the quarterbacks always get hit the most in a football game. He followed a strict diet to maintain his physique despite his limitations as an athlete.

Tom Brady changed football for the better

Football may be America’s most favorite watched sport right now, but the scenario was different back in the 1970s until the mid-2000s. Basketball ruled the market because of Jordan’s heroics in the NBA and on the world stage by winning the gold with the USA team. Basketball was slowly leaving football behind, like baseball did in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

Baseball was the first American sport to hit global status when several other countries picked it up and they learned the sport. The same happened with basketball when Jordan played for the Bulls, and by the time he retired, nearly every European country had formed a basketball league, contributing to the growth of the sport.

However, the NFL remained rooted in the US and its adjacent few countries like Canada, Mexico, and Brazil (South America). Brady put football on the global map during his playing career, and now the NFL is the most profitable sports league in the world, even though NBA players earn more than football players.

The NFL is also one of the most watched sporting events during its regular season, and this was possible because Tom Brady and the Patriots appealed to not just the US citizens but also the world audience. Brady also changed the landscape of the game for the better.