Tom Brady has officially announced his retirement after a week of rumors and two decades of elevating the sport of American football. Whether you loved him as a Patriot, grew to appreciate him as a Buccaneer, or passionately rooted against him as a fan of a forever-bumbling AFC East rival, Brady's accomplishments are unmatched in football and arguably some of the most impressive feats in sports history. We wanted to look back on his storied 22-year career through the lens of his annual overall (OVR) Madden ratings. From no-name rookie to GOAT, here's how Brady performed in Madden each year since he first arrived in the league he would go on to reshape forever. If you're not one for football history, you might also enjoy the year-by-year image gallery of Brady's player avatar in Madden, from his first proper likeness in Madden 2003 all the way up to today.
Madden NFL 01: 57 OVR
In case you haven't heard by now--like if you were living on Mars for the past 22 years--Brady was drafted in the sixth round, 199th overall, by the Patriots in the 2000 NFL Draft. He entered the league as an apparently unremarkable QB, and his debut Madden rating reflected that. Brady threw just three passes that year in spot duties behind Drew Bledsoe, connecting on one of them for six yards. No one--least of all the New York Jets--knew who he would go on to become.
Madden NFL 02: 51 OVR
Perhaps due to his lack of playing time to that point, or maybe due to the darts-on-a-dartboard nature of virtually unknown players in Madden, Brady's overall rating actually went down six points in Madden NFL 02, which coincided with the start of the 2001 season. It wouldn't be long before he would make his proper debut, though, coming in for an injured Drew Bledsoe after the Jets' Mo Lewis clobbered the starting QB and sent him to the bench in Week 3. The rest is history. By the time Bledsoe would be healthy enough to return, he had already lost his job to the young upstart Tom Brady.
Brady would go on to lead the team to an 11-5 record (11-3 as the starter) and--after two wild playoff games against the Raiders and Steelers--lead the Patriots franchise to its first-ever Super Bowl victory. If you know this story, you'll recall that this wouldn't be its last.
Madden NFL 03: 84 OVR
After besting the prematurely nicknamed "Greatest Show On Turf" St. Louis Rams, Brady came into 2002 as a defending champion and the Week 1 starter. In Brady's 22-year career, he was the starter for 20 of them (we'll get to his doomed 2008 campaign later), and he made the playoffs 19 times out of those 20 healthy seasons. The 2002 season was the only one where he missed January football, finishing 9-7 but losing out on a three-way divisional tiebreaker that year that instead sent the Jets to the postseason. It was this early-era Brady who was still seen as something of a game manager, though his 28 touchdowns that season would stand as his career high until Randy Moss showed up half a decade later. This would also prove to be Brady's last season in Madden where he'd be rated below a 90.
Madden NFL 04: 90 OVR
Despite missing the playoffs the year before, Brady would kick off his 2003 season by cracking the 90+ club in Madden for the first time. That year's game was famously dominated by cover star and quasi-cheat code Michael Vick, but if you wanted a reliable pocket passer, Brady was a top-tier option. In the real world, Brady would return to the Super Bowl that season and overcome a dramatic final quarter against the Carolina Panthers, whose Jake Delhomme was being eyed as the next Brady--that would prove short-lived. In 2003, and despite two Lombardi trophies by that point, still no one knew how high he would set the bar someday.
Madden NFL 05: 95 OVR
Venturing into truly elite company, Brady would kick off the defensive-minded Madden 2005 as one of the best players in the game, making the Patriots a must-play team in online head-to-head when players were eager to try out the brand-new Hit Stick on defenseless ball carriers. Brady would go on to defeat the Donovan McNabb- and Andy Reid-led Eagles in the Super Bowl, clinching the Patriots' arrival as the next NFL dynasty.
This would also prove to be Brady's last Lombardi for several years, despite two stunning failures in years to come. But even by then, you'd have been right to call him a Hall of Famer. As the late, great Chris Wesseling often said of Brady, you could carve his career into two--eventually three--portions, and if each portion represented a different player, each would be in the Hall of Fame. Brady's sustained success was still a story being written in the mid-aughts.
Madden NFL 06: 97 OVR
Madden 06 kicked off the era where Brady's Madden ratings would properly reflect his sustained dominance of the league's annual passing totals, even if he went without a Super Bowl victory for a few years (poor guy). With 4,110 passing yards that year, Brady would lead the league in the statistic for the first time in his career. That number pales in comparison to the pass-happy modern NFL totals--it would only be ranked 11th if stacked among 2022 totals--but part of Brady's story is his ability to rise with the times. This wouldn't be his last time leading the category.
Madden NFL 07: 98 OVR
Inching ever closer to his debut in the coveted Madden 99 club, Brady's resume would continue to grow in both virtual and actual football. He remained one of the most dominant players in all of football and just barely missed out on another Super Bowl berth when the Pats fell to the rival Colts. Brady only notched 24 touchdowns and 3,500 passing yards that season, but it would go on to be the last time anyone could call Brady a "system QB."
Madden NFL 08: 99 OVR
Brady's 2007 season already started with a lot of promise, and by year's end, it would become one of the most statistically impressive seasons for any quarterback in NFL history. Joining forces with Randy Moss, who had spent a few middling years in Oakland after a few incredible years as a Minnesota Viking, Brady set a new NFL record for passing TDs in a season with an even 50, beating Peyton Manning's record from the previous season by a single touchdown.
Brady threw almost half of them to Moss himself, who set a receiving TD record of his own that year, as the Patriots went on to become the first-ever 16-0 team in league history. Unfortunately for Brady and Patriots Nation, a fierce interior pass rush and one absurd late-game David Tyree catch resulted in the Pats falling short of the perfect 19-0 season, as Brady suffered the first Super Bowl defeat of his career to the New York Giants.
Madden NFL 09: 99 OVR
In 2008, Brady no doubt had a fire lit under his seat. Determined to get back to glory after a heartbreaking loss to the G-Men, Brady wouldn't get to prove his star-studded roster could return to that promised land. He would suffer a first-half knee injury courtesy of Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard, and would go on to miss the entire season. Naturally, the Madden team could not have foreseen this, so Brady was still dominant in the virtual game that year, even as Matt Cassel tried his best to keep the team afloat in reality. Brady threw just 11 passes that year before being shelved, but his stats in Madden head-to-head were surely much better as one of the game's only 99-rated players.
Madden NFL 10: 97 OVR
Fresh off of a season of rehabbing his leg, Brady had apparently earned the trust of Tiburon and EA, as the sometimes career-ruining injury hardly resulted in Brady's Madden rating taking a hit at all. At 97 overall, he was still dominant, even if 16-0 was well out of reach for his real life counterpart. The Patriots went 10-6 that year, but Brady's most recent Super Bowl victory was starting to disappear from the rear-view mirror.
Madden NFL 11: 95 OVR
Brady's 2010 season marked the beginning of the Gronk era. The Patriots drafted Rob Gronkowski, and Brady would prosper. His slight dip in real-life numbers the year before translated to a similar shaving of his Madden overall, but his career was about to change forever. The new-look Patriots offense would go on to inspire the league to find or otherwise create dominant do-it-all tight ends like Gronk, but most such QB-TE duos today, a decade later, are still chasing the totals that Brady and Gronkowski would put up together. In Madden, the duo was unstoppable for a period of several years, too.