Tom Brady's second-best season

Tom Brady has completed fewer than 50 percent of his passes twice this season. He's thrown at least one interception in four of his last five games -- and seven of his last nine. He's thrown three or more touchdown passes just four times. Barring a big game on Sunday against Houston, he won't come within 20 touchdown passes of the number he put up the last time he played a full season. He's finished with a quarterback rating under 75.0 three times since Thanksgiving.

Suffice to say, this hasn't been Brady's best season.

It has, however, been his second-best.

Consider the Brady leaderboard in a number of statistical categories:

Passing yards
1. 2007, 4,806
2. 2009, 4,212
3. 2005, 4,110

Completion percentage
1. 2007, 68.9
2. 2009, 65.7
3. 2001, 63.9

Yards per attempt
1. 2007, 8.3
2. 2009, 7.81
3. 2004, 7.79

Interception percentage
1. 2007, 1.4 percent of passes
2. 2009, 2.2 percent
3. 2006, 2.3 percent

Touchdown passes
1. 2007, 50
t-2. 2002, 28
t-2. 2004, 28
t-2. 2009, 28

Quarterback rating
1. 2007, 117.2
2. 2009, 97.4
3. 2004, 92.6

Brady likely will never again have the type of season he had in 2007, a season in which he broke Peyton Manning's single-season record for passing touchdowns (49) and came just short of breaking Manning's single-season record for quarterback rating (121.1). It stands with Manning's 2004 and Dan Marino's 1984 as one of the three greatest seasons ever put together by an NFL quarterback.

By that standard, Brady has had a disappointing season.

By any reasonable standard -- including one in which you consider that he's still barely a year removed from knee surgery -- Brady has had the second-best season of what almost certainly will end up as a Hall of Fame career.