For 15 Years, Michael Phelps and Tom Brady On Top of the World

Photo Courtesy: Rob Schumacher & Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

By David Rieder.

Sunday evening in Houston, one of the most dramatic reversals in sports history produced a finish for the ages in Super Bowl LI. But after all the confetti cleared, it was a familiar sight on stage: the New England Patriots, still led by head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, lifting their fifth Lombardi trophy since 2002. They had beaten the Atlanta Falcons, 34-28 in overtime.

The Patriots’ streak is one of unprecedented dominance in the National Football League: the team has won one-third of all championships over a 15-year period and finished first in its division 13 times over that stretch.

That stretch just so happened to correspond with the reign of Michael Phelps as the best swimmer in the world.

The Patriots won five Super Bowls, and Phelps went to five Olympics. They played in seven Super Bowls during that stretch, just as Phelps won a record-seven Swimming World World Swimmer of the Year awards since 2003.

Few coaching relationships in any sport last 15 years, but the Patriots have never wavered on Belichick, just as Phelps never split from Bob Bowman. Belichick has been the defensive and game-planning genius that complements Brady’s offensive mastery, while Bowman has been the guiding force and motivator behind 23 Olympic gold medals.

Photo Courtesy: Robert Stanton & Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

To win his fifth Super Bowl, Brady and the Patriots needed to come back from a 28-3 deficit—when no Super Bowl champion had ever before come back to win after being down more than 10. Brady himself had never won a game when down more than 24 points.

But 466 passing yards and five-straight scoring drives later, he pulled it off.

Phelps had pulled off his fair share of miraculous comebacks, and he needed two to keep alive his signature eight-for-eight performance in Beijing in 2008. In almost nine years, history remembers each of them all too well.

First, there was Jason Lezak anchoring the 400 free relay in 46.06—the fastest split in history by six tenths of a second—to overtake eventual Olympic gold medalist Alain Bernard in the final strokes. The swim was something of an out-of-body experience for Lezak, who never swam within a second and a half of that time from a flat start.

The Falcons had a 99.3 percent chance of winning the Super Bowl with 10:25 remaining in the fourth quarter. “Win probability” did not exist in 2008 and still doesn’t in swimming, but the odds of the French beating the Americans to win gold were probably even greater when Lezak and Bernard flipped at the 350.

Five days after that epic relay win, Phelps pulled off a miracle of his own. Seemingly destined for silver in the 100 fly, his final individual race of the week, he managed to throw his arms around for one final, desperate stroke and jam his fingertips into the wall one one-hundredth of a second before Milorad Cavic.

Both dynasties had their down periods—Brady missed a full season in 2008 with a major knee injury and actually went a decade between his third and fourth Super Bowl wins. And then, after his fourth, Brady dealt with accusations that he attempted to skirt the rulebook by deflating footballs in the 2015 AFC Championship Game. He was suspended four games as a result.

Meanwhile, a burnt-out Phelps retired after the 2012 Olympics, but it was two years later that he reached his low point: when he was arrested for DUI for a second time after swerving through the Fort McHenry Tunnel. Phelps was suspended from competition for six months and kicked off the 2015 World Championships team.

But cementing one’s status as an all-time great requires longevity, and the pursuit of longevity demands perseverance and mental toughness. Both of these men fit the bill.

Brady served his suspension to open the 2016 season and then proceeded to have one of his finest seasons ever. Including the playoffs, he lost a single game all year—a 31-24 loss to Seattle Nov. 13 in which he almost pulled off an impressive comeback. That’s it. (He won 14 games, by the way.)

As for Phelps, he swam at U.S. Nationals in 2015 and proceeded to upstage the World Champions in his three best events, the 100 and 200 fly and the 200 IM, as he posted the fastest time in the world for the year on each occasion.

And then in Rio, it was vintage Phelps blasting his underwater dolphin kicks off the turn in the 400 free relay to propel the U.S. to a lead it would never relinquish and then later on pulling away for a two-second victory in the final of the 200 IM.

By the time Phelps swam in his fifth Olympics, plenty of time had passed since 2001, when he broke his first world record in March and then won his first World title that July. Two months after that, Brady took over the job as Patriots’ starting quarterback, and he won his first Super Bowl in February.

Fifteen years later, Phelps was still with Bowman and Brady with Belichick and the Patriots. And both were still on top of the world.

All commentaries are the opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Swimming World Magazine nor its staff.

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Karen Masucci

7 years ago

No comparison .., Michael is the GOAT…

Charity Strate Weaver

7 years ago

Reply to Karen Masucci

Agreed…Phelps does not cheat

Cate

7 years ago

Reply to Charity Strate Weaver

Neither does Brady. If you are going to make that statement, what exactly did he do?

Denise Connolly

7 years ago

Reply to Karen Masucci

Neither does Brady.

Qamar Dogar

7 years ago

No comparison…. Michael phelps is the goat.. Amoung all

Karien Kirkness

7 years ago

Yip, Brady has been top of the USA, not the world! Phelps is the real champion.

Jose Hiran Triana

7 years ago

Hugo te acuerdas!!como yo te ganaba nadando y en la cancha ni hablar.jajajaja!

Jose Hiran Triana

7 years ago

Denise Connolly

7 years ago

Brady is GOAT of all NFL quarterbacks and Phelps is GOAT of all Olympic swimmers. 🙂 Both are champions in my book.

Bill Bell

7 years ago

I agree w/ Denise.
Both are all-tine best in their respective sports but I think Phelps started from a lower base.
He was barely 15 in Y2K and just beginning his climb into adulthood and the ranks of elite swimmers.
Brady on the otter hand had played four years of football in a very elite program (Michigan) and was arguably at lest a “semi pro” by the tine he joined the Pats.
As for “cheating,” it has never been definitively shown that Brady had any role in ‘Deflategate” (right, Komish?) and Phelps never was on the sauce, special or otherwise, while competing.
So…no asterisks after either name in the recordbook.
But the two GREATEST Olympisns are unquestionably The King (Brian Goodell) and Kingess (Tracy Stockwell — err, Caulkins)!

Derek

7 years ago

All I have to say is “GO BLUE!!!”