After besting the prematurely nicknamed "Greatest Show on Turf" St

After besting the prematurely nicknamed "Greatest Show on Turf" St. Louis Rams, Brady came into 2002 with the title of defending champion and Madden 22 coins the starter in Week 1. Over the course of his 22-year career, he was the starter in 20 of them (we'll get to his doomed 2008 season later) and made rounds 19 times out of his 20 regular seasons. 2002 was the only season in which Brady didn't play in the January game, ending 9-7, but falling in a three-way tiebreaker for divisional play the following year, which instead led the Jets to the postseason. It was in this early era Brady who was viewed as game manager, although his 28 touchdowns in 2002 will be his highest score in his career up until Randy Moss showed up half more than a decade later. This would also Brady's final season in Madden where he'd be rated less than 90.

Despite not making the playoffs the year before, Brady would kick off his 2003 campaign by squeezing into in the club for players aged 90 or more in Madden to be the first time. The game that year was dominated by cover star and cheat game Michael Vick, but if you needed a reliable pocket player, Brady was the top option. In the real world, Brady would return to the Super Bowl that season and triumph in a thrilling final quarter to beat the Carolina Panthers, whose Jake Delhomme was rumored to be the next Brady. But that was short-lived. In 2003, despite two Lombardi trophy awards by then, still no one knew how high he would set the bar one day.

Making the transition into truly elite business, Brady would kick off the defensively-minded Madden 2005 as one of the top players of the game and make the Patriots an essential team to play online head-to-head competition when players were eagerly awaiting the chance to try the all-new Hit Stick on defenseless ball carriers. Brady would later beat in the Super Bowl the Donovan McNabb- and Andy Reid-led Eagles in the Super Bowl, clinching the Patriots' arrival as the next NFL powerhouse.

It could also turn out to be Brady's last Lombardi for several years, despite two utterly disastrous failures in years to come. In the end you'd be able to buy Mut 22 coins declare him a Hall of Famers. As the late, legend Chris Wesseling often said of Brady the possibility of dividing his career into three pieces and if each part represented a different player, each would be included in the Hall of Fame. Brady's continued success was being written about in the mid-aughts.